Sunrise Church

Truth, love and obedience stand as the tests of our Christian faith.

As followers of Jesus, we should be known for and led by the love of God. It should impact our relationships, our priorities, and how we live our daily lives.

While financial circumstances don’t dictate Gospel outcomes, financial partnership in Gospel ministry multiples the fruit of the endeavor.

The Christian faith is not merely one of informational assent, but of transformational truth. Information is the cheapest shortcut to feigning maturity. Robust theology and doctrine is nothing if it is not transformative. Truth is transformative.

The Christian life is not a life of perfection, but of progress. Though we are fully redeemed and set apart by the Holy Spirit, we continue to grow in holiness as we are shaped more and more into the image of Christ.

False understanding of the gospel will inevitably lead to misplaced confidence in what has been done BY us instead of what has been done FOR us by Jesus Christ.

Christians must steward their honor diligently and refrain from giving honor reserved for good and Godly people, to the wrong people.

Unity isn’t a baseless idea. It comes from a common gospel experience; meaning it comes to us from a shared experience of redemption. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and our unity is founded on the common hope and faith in this reality. We are all together, in Christ, now truly alive and on the path of God in the confidence of the truth of the gospel.

The dualism of the Christian life is found in Paul’s Predicament: life or death…either way there is victory.

The Christian life is one of gospel partnership and proclamation, love for others, knowledge and discernment, sometimes strife and persecution, but all for the glory of God. In all this, we are called to be faithful and joyful citizens of Christ’s kingdom.

Much of the mess in the Corinthian church could have been avoided if they had merely obeyed Paul's five final commands to be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong and act in love.

The church should take seriously the call to support suffering Christians around the world, support the advance of the gospel and provide real support to those who are discouraged.

Death is an inevitable reality, but for believers in Christ, death allows the perishable to give way to the imperishable and in resurrection, there is true victory. Therefore, Christians can live steadfastly in the light of Christ's victorious resurrection, always abounding in the work of the Lord.

We do not only have hope in Christ in this life and we are not a people to be pitied. We have a deep and abiding hope of our own future victory over eternal death because Christ has delivered us from death by His own resurrection.

What we see in this chapter is essentially a rubric for assessing the maturity of a church and its members and a format for understanding the role of our gifts in serving the church. 

The church's health is not measured by the activities we undertake, nor the programs we falsely assume establish our legitimacy or the petty things we think define ourselves, but by our love for one another.

So let us remember that the Gifts of the Spirit are given BY the Holy Spirit TO individuals FOR the well-being of the Church.

The Lord’s Supper is a symbolic act of obedience whereby members of the church, through partaking of the bread and the fruit of the vine, memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming. (Baptist Faith and Message 2000)

In our churches, men and women are to clearly, both in presentation and behavior, present themselves as men and women. As God’s image bearers, there should be no ambiguity in our homes and our church regarding the roles of men and women. The order of our church and our homes is meant to demonstrate the the glory of God regardless of the oppositional nature of the culture. 

When was the last time you didn’t do something for the sake of someone else’s spiritual good or well-being? Even if it meant the deprivation of our own wants or even the limitations of our own freedoms.

There is a real spiritual world and our contest is spiritual and we choose a side every time we give our praise to something lesser, every time we grumble and test the Lord, every time we ignore prohibitions against sinful practices and we must be reminded that when we do this, we are provoking God’s jealousy.

We are called to willingly lay ourselves down for others in order that some may be saved while rejecting the temptation of sin as we seek to reach sinners.

Paul makes the case that it is his right to be supported because God has made provision for it, but that the greater reward of ministry is the spiritual fruit.

Paul contends that our priority concern in the church isn’t what we know informationally, but that we know the love of God and that that knowledge shapes how we walk with our fellow church members.