I do wanna invite you guys to turn in your Bibles to Philippians. I was hoping to surprise you, but Mike already gave it away, and the email I wrote yesterday, if you read it, gave it away also. but yeah, we are, beginning a study of the book of Philippians this morning, and in a sense, this is stretching out into a series on the prison epistles that Paul wrote during his first prison, Roman imprisonment. He wrote Colossians and Philemon.
And Ephesians, which we studied years ago, back when we were at Linden Street. And he also wrote the book of Philippians, that we will be looking at, today. This is the only book Paul wrote during that imprisonment that we have not yet. studied through verse by verse, so I'd like for us to do that, in the coming weeks, and the title of the message is an encouraging Start.
An encouraging start. I've mentioned this before about my dad, but my dad was a marine of 20 years, and he served 3 tours in Vietnam and, 1 tour in the Mediterranean. And, so my dad was gone for about 4 years of my life as I was growing up. And as much as I miss my dad during those times, especially when he was in Vietnam, a good memory.
That I have from those days was of my mother, receiving stacks of envelopes that were stuffed with pages that my dad had written to her. I found out later, from my dad that part of how my dad kept himself sane in Vietnam was to write letters to my mom. When the other men, soldiers were off doing the crazy stuff that soldiers do to unwind, my dad would retreat to his bunk and he would write letters to my mom. Sometimes my dad would record messages on a reel to reel, recorder....
