In Philippians 2, Paul calls his friends – and us – to live in a totally countercultural manner. This “upside-down living” is the very opposite of what our society sees as normal.
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What do you think God’s favorite word is? While we aren’t given a direct answer to that question, I’d like to hazard a guess.
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Paul had told his friends, the Philippians, how he had suffered for the sake of Christ. Now, he tells them that they will face the same struggle.
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When Paul wrote his letter to his Philippian friends, he was under house arrest in Rome, chained constantly to a Roman guard. But Paul saw this as an opportunity for the gospel.
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There are many kinds of prayer and many reasons for prayer, but most of the time, it seems that we pray when there is a need or crisis. Such prayers are appropriate and powerful! But is that all God had in mind when He gave us the gift of prayer?
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Have you ever started a good work and not finished it? Maybe it was a New Year’s resolution that started well, but quickly faded. Or a home project that began with good intentions but was never completed.
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Grace and peace. With this simple phrase, the Apostle Paul opens his letter to the Philippians. In fact, it’s how he opens every letter we have recorded in Scripture. Grace and peace.
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There was once a group of people - a church - who dared to live out fully the gospel that had been shared with them. Two thousand years later, we still read of them and can learn from them how we, too, can more fully live out the good news of Jesus.
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Our world is a messy, broken place filled with messy, broken people. But if the birth of Jesus tells us anything, it tells us that God is not afraid of a mess.
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In the last episode, we talked about Caesar Augustus, ruler of the vast Roman Empire at the time of Jesus’ birth. One of the ways he made governing this massive area more manageable was to establish local kings to rule on his behalf.
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