Church leadership is more than a position that needs to be filled. Here in 1 Timothy 3, the Word of God reveals for us the important traits or characteristics that godly leaders should possess. Leaders are men who lead the church away from error and disunity toward living out God's truth.

After giving instruction to Timothy concerning the gospel, Paul shifts in verse 8 to give instructions to Timothy and the church at Ephesus concerning proper roles in the life of the church. In particular, he focuses on the corporate worship and the roles of men and women in the church.

Paul urges Timothy to pray for everyone as of first importance. Often our prayers are isolated on the observable and immediate physical needs we see, but God's word tells us in this context to pray not only for those, but also for the ultimate spiritual need of people - the gospel.

Paul reminds Timothy of his original call to serve as the pastor at Ephesus and gives him three important bits of advice for staying the course in his minisitry.

Paul's life before Christ is a testament to the fact that no one is too far gone to receive the mercy and grace of God. Paul’s testimony is meant to show that if God can change Saul into Paul, he can change anyone.

The law was given by God to show us His holiness because each requirement of the law illustrates as aspect of God's holy character. The purpose of the law is to point people toward God.

What is a healthy church? That’s going to be the emphasis of this entire series as we look into 1 Timothy. Because the specific issues that Paul addresses in this letter are timeless, we want to pay close attention to what the Spirit of God inspired Paul to write. As a church body we should put into place the principles of this book no matter what age our church falls into.

What does unity look like while being lived out practically in our lives?

As we've been going through this series on unity, we've seen the importance of patience and forbearance to maintaining unity. Today we are going to look at the attitudes and actions that we should avoid because they can cruch unity. The book of James has a lot to teach us on this subject.

How do we reflect that we live differently because we belong to God as His chosen people? By the way we treat other people-particularly those who share our faith. If we can't love and forgive and accept fellow believers, then we have missed the mark of putting off our old sin nature and putting on our new nature tht is being renewed in God's image.