7/20 - Philippians 2

It's pretty cool how God chooses to communicate with us. The primary sources for me haven't been the booming voice from heaven (that I sometimes act like I need to hear) but have been through preaching and through His word. Yesterday's sermon was about how we need to love one another and so is this morning's passage - Philippians 2. It might serve me well then to consider how I love other people, especially because I tend to think I'm not so bad at it. However, its good to be careful in situations like these when I think I'm good at something because when my love is tested under the microscope of the scriptures, I think I'll find some room for growth.

In verse 3, Paul commands the church: "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others." It didn't take long for me to reconsider how well I was doing loving others after this verse. There are plenty of people for whom I would gladly concede that they were better than myself - other believers in the church, pastors, friends, relatives & pretty much the people in my life that I enjoy. It's a quite another thing to consider those you don't necessarily like as better than yourself; those people whose lives show no evidence of a relationship with God, any sort of love for another person or any semblance of caring about the well-being of others. Verse 3 puts no restrictions on who we ought to consider better than us - it didn't just say other Christians or really nice people, it meant everyone. Luke 6:33, "if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same."

So God is calling us to a higher level of love. This isn't easy to do by any means but Paul puts it in context in the verses that follow. He tells us, starting at verse 5, to let our minds be like Jesus Christ who "took the form of a bondservant [and came] in the likeness of men" and "humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death." (v.7-8). Consider that Jesus, who was no stranger to annoying people, hypocrites, backbiters, betrayal, envy, and things of this sort, was able to humble Himself and die for these people. If He can die for these people, the ultimate display of love, surely our response - as we try to be more like Jesus - should be to love the 'unlovable' people in our lives. We should love anyone or anything that God loves. This is a passage from yesterday's sermon that would be good to reflect on:

"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another" (1 John 4:11)

7/18 - Philippians 1...take 3

I know I've been on this chapter for pretty much the whole week but I think God is working on me on some issues related to this chapter. I've found it thus far to be more inspiring than ever before this time around. That's the thing I love about the Bible, it's alive, always relevant and you can gain new insights from passages of scripture you may have read several times.

This chapter reveals the extent of Paul's passion for God. There's nothing that seems to be able to detract him from his mission - persecution, unfaithful friends, problems within the church, false teachers, opposition from other Christians - in spite of these things, he remained determined.

"Now I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. Because of my chains, most of the brothers in the Lord have been encouraged to speak the word of God more courageously and fearlessly" (v. 12-14)

A couple things jumped out immediately to me. First off, Paul's life had been lived in such a way that there was no doubt who he served. No one had to ask him or wonder what he believed. Secondly, it was because of his suffering for the gospel that his witness had such a great effect. I imagine that while Paul was imprisoned that he spoke to the inmates and guards about Christ ad nauseum. However, here he credits his suffering for the gospel for the fact that not only was his faith made evident but that other Christian brothers were encouraged to speak boldly about the Lord. Is our testimony anything like Paul's today? Do we suffer for the gospel? Is there any doubt amongst our various social circles that Christ is our Lord?

There's several scriptures that clearly state that the expectation for all believers is that we will suffer persecution (Luke 21:12-13, 2 Tim 3:12, Mark 10:30, Phil 1:29). So if we're not facing any persecution - ridicule about our lifestyle, for not conforming to the world, opposition from non-believers - there's a good chance we're not as serious about God as we ought to be. The world and all it's ways are diametrically opposed to God so if we find our ways to be like the world and receiviing nothng but praise & adoration from the world, there may be something wrong there. I'm not saying that receiving praise in and of itself is a bad thing, but if that's the only thing the world offers you, it may be worth considering why the verses I mentioned in this paragraph haven't applied to you. For me, this was definitely worth reflecting on this week.

7/16 - Philippians 1...pressing through

OK, I'm not giving up on this chapter. Internet Explorer, clearly a tool of the enemy, will no longer be a problem...it has been deleted. A little over the top? Maybe. But will it be a problem again? Absolutely not.

Thanks to my brother in Christ for guiding me and encouraging me to study more to find out what this 6th verse in Philippians is about - "being confident of this very thing, that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ." My study bible reveals that this phrase "has begun" is used in the Bible only in reference to salvation. When God begins a work of salvation in a person, He finishes and completes that work. This would seem to support the fact that once you're saved, you're always saved. I don't doubt that saved people can fall back into sin, but the truly saved - because of the Holy Spirit within them - will repent & come back to the Lord. I don't think God's confused about who is or isn't saved. Once you're found in Him, once you repent and are baptized by the Holy Spirit, this verse doesn't leave much wiggle room for anything else but the fact that God will complete what He has begun.

It's an awesome thing for us who believe to reflect on the fact that God is continually working on us. One of my favorite resources is desiringgod.org from the ministry of John Piper. In this article from that site, Tom Steller writes:

The fact that God is at work in his people, changing the thought patterns and preference of our sinful nature, so that we love what he loves, re-tooling the grooves in our brain, knitting together the complex strands of our emotional wounds with infinitely greater skill than the world's foremost micro-surgeon—there's no greater promise than this. It is nothing other than the New Covenant promise of Ezekiel 36. "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you, I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes."

To me that sounds like a lot of work, especially when this work is duplicated for every believer, but its a great witness to God's amazing love. This process of refining and transforming us isn't always pleasant. It's hard giving up the things that gave us so much pleasure before we were saved or before we knew any better.

Philippians 2:12-13 - "...continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose." God works in us, after our salvation, a process of sanctification which involves much of what Steller writes in the aforementioned paragraph. So this shouldn't be an opportunity for us to be complacent & rely on the fact that God is going to complete what He started. It requires our full participation and a healthy fear of offending God and a righteous awe and respect for Him.* I know there's nothing we can do to earn our salvation but we can seek to please our Saviour because He's worthy.

*from John MacArthur Study Bible

7/15 - Windows products strike again

So I wrote a pretty extensive blog this morning about Philippians 1, all I had learned and was lookign forward to sharing. As I went to submit....I lost everything. I need to go to work and can't retype everything now but here's an article I referenced -

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/ByDate/1986/555_God_Finishes_What_He_Starts/

Internet Explorer, I am done with you. I'm exculsively Mozilla from now on.

7/13 - Philippians 1...kinda

Hope the weekend treated you well. It was a great one for me - got to see my Mom from Florida, Uncle James from Las Vegas, Aunt Diane from Atlanta, my godbrother from Savannah & it's always good to see my Dad. Also two of my friends joined our church which I'm still pretty excited about. Our church has been praying for more "laborers for the harvest" (Matthew 9:37-38) and I'm sure that's what He's given our church with these two. I'm looking forward to continuing in the labor we've already begun with them.

So I've been looking at Philippians 1 for a couple days and got a little hung up on a familiar passage, verse 6:

"being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ."

How does the "day of Jesus Christ" differ from the "day of the Lord" (if in fact there is a difference)? How do I apply this verse to my life and not risk growing complacent (since God's going to complete things anyway)? Maybe I'm looking at this too deeply but I still have some questions on it & need to study a little more. So that's why I put the "kinda" in the title. I don't have much to offer today but would appreciate anyone else's insight on this topic as I'll continue to study it. Happy Monday to all

7/10 - Ephesians 6

Ephesians 6
I think I might read verse 1 to our baby tonite: "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. "Honor your father and mother"—which is the first commandment with a promise— "that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth." I know the baby's still in the womb but you can never start too early. I need to establish some things now so baby won't ever get it confused ;-). Meanwhile, I guess I'll focus on verse 4 and try to do my part now so that as they grow I can build them up in the word of God and not provoke them to anger.

Paul explains in this chapter how the employee-employer relationship for a believer should be. Now it's probably been this way for a while, but today's views of authority & management are pretty low. We see it in Dilbert cartoons, shows like The Office or Office Space and of course we experience it day to day. I don't doubt that people have legitimate beef with their managers but I would venture to guess that our relationship with them is, in general, sub-par to God's standard for it. As you read this you may be thinking of your own manager - maybe you're not convinced of their competency, maybe they actually don't have a clue, maybe they micromanage, maybe they have no people skills, maybe you feel you should be in their position...whatever it might be - the question before us is, as we read verses 5-8, can you serve a person like this as you would serve the Lord?

"Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free."

I don't pretend it's easy, but it is what we're called to do. God is always raising the standard isn't He? Well the cool part about this is that it comes with a promise: that the good you do to your employer/ manager, God will reward because the good you impart on them is as if you're imparting it on the Lord.

7/9 - Thought for the Day

To those of us who believe - we hold within us the greatest story ever told. And not just a story, an answer by which people, upon hearing it, can receive eternal life. What does it imply about us when we decide to hold this information to ourselves? What does it say when we look at a drowning victim while we stand and observe with a life preserver tucked comfortably under our arms?

As Christians, who have been saved from a fairly severe eternity, we ought to have a heart for the lost that leads us to prayer, but not only that - to act. In his book "The Way of the Master," Ray Comfort writes: "...[if] we don't share our faith with the lost, in effect this is what we're saying:

"Lord I know that You have commanded us to go into the world and preach the gospel to every creature. But we will stay here and pray. We know you have chosen the 'foolishness' of preaching to save those who believe. But we will stay here and pray. And we know that the Bible asks us, 'How will they hear without a preacher?' But we will stay here and pray, because it sure is easier to talk to God about people than it it to talk to people about God.""

Let us go beyond just caring or praying for those who don't know Jesus. Let's toss those life preservers out.