In our 36 years of married life, Gene and I have moved twenty-three times in ten different locations. In each place, from a small island village to one of the largest cities in the world, we’ve built a place we called home and filled it with our love, our family, our brothers and sisters in Christ, our friends.
A few days ago I climbed a very steep trail, a narrow dirt path filled with rocky outcrops and littered with slippery stones. As I reached the summit, I was rewarded with a magnificent panorama of the ocean and the beautifully sunlit California coast.
It was never difficult for me to love my Dad. Since I can remember, he and my Mom loved me and provided everything that I needed.
In Part 1 of this series, we learned that the gospel of John shows Jesus as the Son of God. His genealogy in John calls him “the only begotten of the Father.” We also saw that Jesus often spoke of bringing eternal life as savior.
Philippians 1:20: [J.B. Phillips]
…now, as always, I should honour Christ with the utmost boldness by the way I live.
I once worked on a team of four studio camera operators. Each of us had a different angle and emphasis on our subject, usually a person speaking on stage. Back in the tech room, the director had a large computer screen that showed all four camera views at once.
Gene and I bought a home in Guam, the largest purchase of our married life up to that point. We agreed on a purchase price of $75,000 with the seller of a typhoon-secure, concrete, 900-square-foot house on a third of an acre of land in the village of Talofofo.
Most Christians believe they should give money to their church. Many churches require their people to give a minimum of ten percent of their income and allow the church leadership to use that money as they see fit. Is this what God really wants?
We’ve seen that the church is an organic and growing, spiritual reality with Christ as its foundation. Jesus Christ made his heavenly Father the source and center of all he did. Today Christ is the head of the church, the body of Christ.
During his earthly ministry, Jesus Christ set the foundation for leadership and service to God. He taught his twelve apostles how to lead. They became the genuine leaders in the early church.