march 16 : philipians 1

To live is Christ and to die is gain. Those are such powerful words spoken by Apostle Paul. I think its so honorable that Paul would say this while he is in prison, for his faith. He was debating between living and not living. He mentions only one reason for his presence on earth: to preach the Gospel. How crazy is that? He is willing to trade his life for the sole purpose of saving other lives that he does not yet know. The kind of devotion he has... Another thing I learned from this passage is that Paul accepted anything that was beneficial to the church. He said a couple times that people were trying to undermine his work. That the reason why people were preaching the Gospel was to spite him. Yet Paul said that he would rejoice in knowing this because ultimately the Gospel is being preached. Cool. You know. In our fellowship we need to understand that we will have differences with people in our leadership team. There may be problems with relationships or what have you. But we need to be in harmony with each other because we know we serve one God together. That together we are all trying to accomplish the same goal. Paul says to the church in Philipians, "whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ." He knew that we would have problems in the church. But he shares with us his wisdom. Lets learn to heed it - especially me.