Home Fellowship Churches is a non-profit organization, and a franchise corporation registered in the great State of Texas. U.S.A. Certificate of Filing of Home Fellowship Churches – File Number: 803624102
Establishing and building Home Fellowship Churches (HFC) is as simple as granting a franchise without a franchise fee in different homes. We just need faithful committed Born-Again Christian believers who have the leadership and discipline to promote and/or propagate the Gospel – the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ to start at their home (Jerusalem), their State (throughout Judea), their Countries (in Samaria), to the whole world (and to the ends of the earth) in accordance to HFC Purpose and Mission and in reference in the book of Acts 1:8.
In Acts 1:8 NLT says, “8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
This Passage or Scripture is one of the bridges between the events recorded in the Gospels and the events marking the beginning of the church. Our Lord Jesus Christ spent 40 days teaching His disciples, and they were drastically changed. Before, they had argued with each other, deserted their Lord, and one (Peter) even lied about knowing our Lord Jesus Christ. Here, in a series of meetings with the living, resurrected Christ, the disciples had many questions answered. They became convinced of the Resurrection, learned about the Kingdom of God, and learned about their power source – the Holy Spirit. By reading the Bible, we can sit with the resurrected Christ in His school of discipleship. By believing in Him, we can receive His power through the Holy Spirit to be new people. By joining with other Christians, we can take part in doing His work on earth.
Power from the Holy Spirit is not limited to strength beyond the ordinary. That power also involves courage, boldness, confidence, insight, ability, and authority. The disciples would need all these gifts to fulfill their mission. If you believe in our Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, you can experience the power of the Holy Spirit in your life. Amen!
Introduction
This page “Establishing and Building Home fellowship Churches (HFC) is designed to serve as an instruction/manual for parents or homemakers, and church/fellowship leaders to gather motivation, inspiration, applied technique in establishing and building a home with structure of real worth and eternal value.
Here are four (4) terse, brief and to the point or effectively concise suggestions for parents or homemakers, and church/fellowship leaders to watch for throughout this instruction/manual:
- PRAY DAILY
- KNOW THE BIBLE
- EXPECT GOD’S HELP
- KEEP GOD FIRST
In studying the instruction/manual, refer to the questions at the close of each chapter. These tend to bring out the salient, noteworthy or important points covered under each chapter and also suggest thoughts for discussion beyond the necessary limits of these pages.
The New Living Translation (NLT) Version of the Bible have been used in making all the quotations of Scripture which are found herein.
Chapter 1 – The Meaning of Home
It was in the month of May 1980. Night had come over the City of Quezon, Philippines. High above its twinkling lights and far off noises a group of young people (some US Marines) were joyful, cheerful chattering on the stone porch of an overlooking home.
In the center of our merrymaking was a happy couple whose announced marriage was to take place before the week should end. Several parties with their usual fun and frolic or merriment had already been given in their honor. Pleasure and pride beamed from the faces of each of them. It was one of the really golden hours of life.
A charming God parent named Caroline with poetry in her soul, came out upon the porch. She raised her hand and happily quieted the pleasantries of the group. “We’re going to do something a little different at our party tonight,” she said. “In the midst of all this gladness, we want to introduce a solemn note. This wedding has been planned for outward beauty but underneath in the hearts of these, our friends, loved ones, we know there is throbbing an inward beauty that means even a great deal more to them. They are pledged to each other for a deep and great purpose, the founding of a new and noble Christian home. In a few days, these two (2) together will kindle another heart fire. We hope its flames will be warm and bright. Suppose we symbolize the things our hearts would like to say and wish them lasting warmth and radiance in its glow.”
She is the groom’s first cousin, a grandmother herself, lighted a candle, and extended it to the mother of the bride, “In the long ago,” (in Tagalog) she said, “fire and light”. The indispensables for human life had to be carefully preserved and handed down from one generation to another. They dared not let the fire go out. It burned in the heart-place of every home. It gave its warmth for cooking and for fuel; its gleams gave light and protection long after the sun had set.
Fire was a treasure from the earliest times when it was preserved and protected. Through the years, it grew in its potency and its forms of service. Man has been dependent on it ever since.
Tonight, let us say that fire (symbolize the presence of our God – the Holy Spirit) is representing utility, cleansing, and warmth of love; light is representing vision, knowledge and goodness. Each rising group catches these flames from the older generation and carries on with them during the years of its maturity, ready to transmit in turn to the young people who follow after them these elements of a happy, joyful, and useful life.”
At that moment, the mother was receiving the lighted candle, holding it out to the waiting couple. Briefly, she told of the significance of home and the sacredness of what it meant. The couple who received the fire stooped down and started the blaze among the logs already laid in the outdoor fireplace of the spacious porch.
As the cheerful flames began to mount up through the rough stone chimney, friends and loved ones threw branches of scented wood to lend them fragrance and to spread their glow out over the faces of the family, friends, loved ones, and into the shadows of the night. It was a fitting symbol of the new light (light from our Lord Jesus Christ) that was to shine in blessing and delight to itself and to the world outside.
This was one of the parties that the young people talked about for days. They had been much impressed with the serious note on the occasion, the beauty of its symbolism, the solemnity with which the act of marriage was contemplated. They liked the pause and purpose of this unique appeal. It fitted into the heart glow of youth and aspiration which they all felt.
Some such service might be planned for many other couples that stand on the verge of life’s greatest undertaking. It might awaken beauty, thought, purpose even in the hearts of the more frivolous minded and certainly would meet with satisfaction and response on the part of those who have more depth.
I. The Significance of Home
I. 1 Home, the Center of Time
It is hardly too much to say that home is the center of all time and the symbol of eternity. The flowers bloom in clusters and have their home; the beasts and the birds make their nests to raise their young and for their home often sacrifice even life itself.
With the human race, the making of one’s own home is the supreme earthly fascination to which all youth looks forward and upon which old age looks back. It is the laboratory of human experience which works with every place of human growth and sends out its influence to all walks of life. It is the objective back in the hearts of those who toil at life’s problems and its supplies. follow the industries and the professions of our land and ask the motive of so much faithful perseverance. The answer will likely come that behind the average worker there is the pulling power of home.
Home is the place where makes labor count and labor makes love sweeter. It is this tendency to build a home that stimulates the efforts of the human race.
Home is dated from the very start of man. It has priority claim in time over State, School, Church, or any other institution. Home has had its seam or showing the least pleasant aspect side. Centuries have shown changes in its attitudes and relationships, but there has always existed this family unit, this fundamental grouping for protection, economy, procreation, development, and love. It is God’s plan for the people whom He made. To have a part in the building of a Christian home is to be endowed with a partnership with God and to have an opportunity that collaborates with the forces of His universe.
I. 2 Home, the Symbol of Eternity
By analogy of home, we come to understand the nature of eternity. Our Lord Jesus Christ left His home in heaven and to that home and His Father, He returned.
On earth, the human body wears out and is laid away but “Remember him before you become fearful of falling and worry about danger in the streets; before your hair turns white like an almond tree in bloom, and you drag along without energy like a dying grasshopper, and the caperberry no longer inspires sexual desire. Remember him before you near the grave, your everlasting home, when the mourners will weep at your funeral.” (Ecclesiastes 12:5 NLT)
This seems to imply that men were already familiar with the idea of home in heaven and our Lord Jesus Christ was verifying their conviction; “2 There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? 3 When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.” (John 14:2-3 NLT). A perfect picture of our final home with God, our Lord Jesus Christ.
II. Home and Home Place not Synonymous
II. 1 Many Homes Without a Place
The meaning of home is not dependent upon a place. Many homes have functioned well without the privilege of an established home.
According to Joyce Kilmer: “If you call a gypsy a vagabond, I think you do him wrong, for he never goes a-traveling but he takes his home along.”
Some families can only be held together as they travel around. A place is impossible for them. The pioneer family, pushing on with all its baggage on a horse did not cease at any time to be a home.
In Exodus 4: 20 NLT says, “20 So Moses took his wife and sons, put them on a donkey, and headed back to the land of Egypt. In his hand he carried the staff of God.”
Moses clung tightly to the shepherd’s staff as he left for Egypt to face the greatest challenge of his life. The staff was his assurance of God’s presence and power. When feeling uncertain, some people need something to stabilize and reassure them. For assurance when facing great trials, God has given promises from His Word and examples from great heroes of faith. Any Christian may cling tightly to these. Amen!
Here was a new-found purpose in a home. Other causes have kept the family always on the move: the father’s business, the mother’s health, advantages for the children, and many other circumstances have required a nomadic life. In such groups, the members, bound by affection and mutual endeavor, can only say to one other, “When I am with you, I am at home. We need not have outward accouterments or accessory items of equipment or dress or outward forms of recognition of a home but by our attitudes and conduct can constitute a home within ourselves.
II. 2 A Place Not an Assurance of a Home
On the other hand, the possession of a house does not by any means guarantee a home. We are all familiar with the terse or a brief and to the point way in which Edgar Guest has put it: “It takes a heap of livin’ in a house t’ make it home.”
But when the house has been made a home, lived in, worn out, and left discarded, it may remain a memory in the hearts of the folk but without the family, it is certainly no longer home. In Joyce Kilmer’s half humorous poem, “The House with Nobody In it,” we get this pathetic picture:
But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life, that as put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife, A house that has echoed a baby’s laugh and hold up its stumbling feet, Is the saddest sight, when it’s left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.
But though a place cannot make a home and a home is not dependent upon a place, it still remains that the most satisfying conception of a human home involves some kind of a rather permanent place; a place with a family centered for its everyday life, for its growth, its learning, its loving its lifting, and whatever else that family is able to achieve.
III. The Fundamental Desire for a Home Place
This natural appreciation of a home place is fundamental in the human heart. “We have left all (house, mother, children), and followed thee” was the reminiscent pining from the lips of Peter. It was followed immediately by the promise of reward from our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ as a recognition of the sacrifice Peter had made. When Paul counted over his persecutions, naming grave hardships, he included with fervor as one that has caused him real heartache, “and have no certain dwelling place.”
But most pathetic of all was our Savior’s own lamentation, “the Son of man hath not where to lay His head.” There was a period when he had to find this indispensable atmosphere of home in the open air with God. “And they went every man unto his house; but Jesus went unto the mount of Olives” (John 7:53 to 8:1)
This yearning for a place is nothing to be ashamed of or to be discounted. It is rather to be sought, planned for, hoped for, prayed for, and loved for the blessing that it means to one and the purpose he can make it serve in other lives.
IV. Home Places Used of God
Consider the multiplied instances in which the Lord has directly made use of consecrated home places. Lydia’s home place enabled her to give her timely invitation to Paul and Silas, “Come into my house, and abide there.” Aquila and Priscilla turned their home place in Ephesus into a meeting place for the church. Mark’s home, alive at midnight with praying disciples, was ready to receive Peter from his prison deliverance. The upper room of a disciple’s home place sheltered the last supper with its priceless farewell conversation of the Savior and His men. We have not mentioned the use made of the home places of Martha and Mary, of Zaccheus, of Peter, and the myriad others among all nations since the Bible records closed.
The memories of the old home places with all that went to fill them have held straight the lives of many youths when footloose in the world at large. Home places of great men are preserved and displayed with interest as having a significant bearing on the character of the men. Not often do we see pointed out to us the homesteads of a noted criminal. The reason may be that few of them had the advantage of such a place. Old homesteads do not lend themselves to the breeding of the criminal kind.