Last week’s lesson was probably some of the toughest material in all of Philippians. Paul’s harsh words for the false teachers forces us to answer some harsh questions. What are we worshiping? Where do we put our confidence? What makes us think we are better than other people? Is it our looks? Our ability to make money? Our fame? How healthy we eat? The success of our children? Is it our political views? Or maybe …
Paul in Philippians 2 calls the church of Jesus to unify around the message and mission of the incarnate and crucified God. But what about Christians and churches who preach a different message or who are on a different mission? How should we relate to them? Paul in Philippians 3 tells us how we are to think about those people and their message, and he is not polite.
The Apostle Paul had a nasty history …
The people of Philippi understood strife. They knew what it meant to live in a troubled world. The city was birthed four hundred years before Paul’s letter arrived there as a military garrison of Philip II, the renown conqueror and father of Alexander the Great. Three hundred years later the city was the site of the Battle of Philippi, the military campaign that ended Rome’s bloody civil war fought over the assassination of Julius Caesar.…
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. – Romans 8:26
We do not know what to pray for. We never know what to pray for. Paul tells us that the Spirit helps us, not in our weaknesses, but in our weakness, singular. We aren’t people who mostly have it …
This morning I responded to an email from a church member who is in a unique position to do gospel ministry. In our area this past month a young boy took his own life. Now people close to the situation are approaching this church member asking searching questions about life and death. She emailed me asking how she should respond. Below is a slightly altered version of my email response. It isn’t perfect. It isn’t …
NERD ALERT: As posts on this site go, this one is in the uber-nerd category. My apologies.
Earlier this week I had to answer the following question in a discussion board for school: Why does the church in NA often struggle with finding a good tension between being in the world but not of it? Other ways to state the question are, “What is the relationship between God and this world” or, “What is the …