Relationships: The Beauty Of The Church

While I was at Brown Trail, I did not know anyone in the vicinity of 500 miles. I had no family there or friends at first. But there was this one couple that chooses to befriend me. It was an older couple. Most of the younger couples had children and were involved in their kid’s events. This is the beauty of the church. The older couple had some children but they lived a long ways off. The couple had some extra time and love to share with others. I needed someone to help me out. I needed some family and the older couple needed some family. God is putting people who need each other together in the church. The church is beautiful when we have people who are different working together.

Paul talks about this diverse nature of the church. He says in Ephesians 3:28-29 “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. Only in the church do these groups come together. Never in the world do older people who are not family and younger people spend time together. In the world people who are poor spent time with the rich. A slave would never get to know a master and a master become friends with a slave. The church breaks down the barriers of class, racial, group, and type. We are one in Christ. And we have the blessing of knowing people who are different from us. We help those who need help and people help us.

This is what Paul is instructing in Titus 2:2-6 “Older men are to be temperate, dignified, sensible, sound in faith, in love, in perseverance. Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips, nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be dishonored. Likewise urge the young men to be sensible.” This is the great thing about the church. These relationships make our world better. We learn life skills. Young men have older men teaching them. Young women have older women teaching them. Most weeks do not go by without Charity mentioning something that Mrs. Lorene has taught her, in fact, when my mother-in-law comes to visit, she always learns something from Lorene also. I have learned so much from older men and young men.

I still remember the day that Daniel Roark invited me over to his house after services. Daniel was a new Christian. He became a Christian after watching a “Truth and Love” T.V. programmed produced by Brown Trail. Ever since then, he was a dedicated Christian. His wife passed away some time back and he sat in the back row of Church. I sat with him one day and we became friends. On that Sunday he had me over for lunch and he said he wanted to teach me something. After lunch he pulled out all this paper work. I said, “I am going to teach you how to invest.” On that Sunday he told me about investing and how to read shocks and mutual funds, taxes, Roth IRA’s and 401Ks. He was a retired shock broker and was very well off. He asked me how much I had to invest and I said 100 dollars. So on the next Wednesday night, he passed me a check for 400 dollars and said, “You need five hundred to get into this fund now, you take your money and my money and do the paper work like I showed you. I did, and since then I have been investing and planning my retirement. Only in the church does this happen for free, someone who is knowledge about something help someone else. Older people invest in younger people. And all of us together help each other out in life.