We mean it when we say, “Everyone is Welcome here!”

COMING IN MARCH: Potato Bar Potluck – MARCH 15th, Palm Sunday – MARCH 29th

March 4 – 10 , 2026

This Week @ First Church

Wednesday March 4

Mindful Meditation – 6 p.m.

Come every Wednesday evening and leave the troubles of the world outside as you spend an hour in meditation. Enter the church through the Delaware Street entrance.

Thursday March 5

Let’s Pray Together – 2 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.

St. Paul Lutheran Church – 329 East State Street – Mason City, IA.

Sunday March 8 – DAYLIGHT SAVINGS STARTS!!!

Turn Your Clocks Ahead One Hour Saturday Night!

Worship Service – 10 a.m.

Sermon – “Living Water” Based on Psalm 95:1-7, Romans 5:1-8 and John 4:5-14

Notes for Romans 5:1-8
Our first reading today is from Romans 5:1-8. Paul is reminding us that God showed how much He loved us while we were still sinners, not when we became worthy. As believers in Christ, this grace of God’s has saved us; providing us with peace, hope and love everlasting.

Romans 5:1-8

5 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we [a]  have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ,  2  through whom we have gained access by faith into this
grace in which we now stand. And we [b]  boast in the hope of the glory of God.  3  Not only
so, but we [c]  also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces
perseverance;  4  perseverance, character; and character, hope.  5  And hope does not put
us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy
Spirit, who has been given to us.
6  You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the
ungodly.  7  Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person
someone might possibly dare to die.  8  But God demonstrates his own love for us in this:
While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Notes for John 4: 5-14

Our Gospel message today is from John 4: 5-14 where we see Jesus crossing cultural, gender and religious boundaries to talk with a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. Here Jesus shares the salvation we each have through the Living Water that renews and restores us spiritually. 

John 4: 5-14 

5  So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had
given to his son Joseph.  6  Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the
journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
7  When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a
drink?”  8  (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
9  The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How
can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. [a] )
10  Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a
drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
11  “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can
you get this living water?  12  Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the
well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
13  Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14  but whoever
drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become
in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

HYMNS

“God Is Here! As We Your People Meet”

“Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross”

“Guide Me, O My Great Redeemer”