Sermon Transcript
So we do the business meeting, ministry meeting first, and then we do the worship service, and then we do the lunch. And I like that order. I think it just builds a sense of anticipation and excitement. So this is fun for us to be together as a church family. Usually in this message, I would focus on something that’s related to the church that we are and the church that the Lord wants us to be.
And I’m gonna kinda take a little turn and do something a little bit different in that we’re just gonna actually jump into the book that we’re now going to begin studying on Sunday mornings, which is the book of Philippians. But if you wanted your pastor to, you know, this teaching pastor, one of the pastors, to say something about, you know, the future ministry that is ahead of us, let me just say that we are still committed to what we’re all about, MC squared, okay? And if you’ve not heard MC squared, it’s more Christians, more Christlike. That’s our mission. That’s the front and the back half of the Great Commission.
It’s all about helping people come to Christ. It’s all about helping people become like Christ. And so we’re all about more Christians, seeing people come to Christ, seeing people come into the family of God, MC. MC over here, more Christlikeness. We’re all about helping those who come to Christ grow up in Jesus Christ.
So we’re going, we’re baptizing, and we’re teaching those who come to Christ to do all things. We’re talking— when we talk about that, we’re talking about a threefold relationship. We’re talking about an upward relationship. We’re talking about an inward relationship. We’re talking about an outward relationship.
An upward relationship of loving God, an inward relationship of loving each other, an outward relationship of loving the world. By the way, if you’ve never noticed this before, when you come on the campus of Bridges Community Church, we have 3 bridges, and those 3 bridges remind us of the 3 connections that we as a congregation are trying to make. We’re trying to help people get connected to God and get connected to each other and and get connected to the world. The world in this sense that we want to love the world even as God did. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.
We so long to see the world come to a place of salvation in Jesus Christ. So that’s who we are as a church. We’re in no way retreating from any of that. We’re not gonna so much focus on all of that this morning. You just heard it, so there’s a mini message right there.
In the philosophy of why do we exist. What we’re gonna do today is we’re gonna jump into a study that we’re going to be sharing together for the next few months as we study together the book of Philippians. We’re gonna study it verse by verse all the way through the book. Last week we introduced the book to you. We also suggested that you might wanna think about studying the book inductively with us.
And if you’d like to do that, you’d like a little bit of help in doing that, we’ve put on the table over there some additional handouts that we gave out last week where you could take those home and you could begin to do this inductive study. Bernice and I are working through this inductive study together and we were blessed this last week. Those of you that are probably already doing this with us, you’re just interested right now to see what I’m gonna talk about and see if it’s accurate in comparison to what you’ve studied all this week. And actually, we would really like you to be studying all week long in preparation for what it is we’re going to study next week. And that’s one of the ways that you can do it is just pick up a guide.
But you can also just look at your bulletin if you haven’t already, and you can see the passage, Lord willing, that we’ll be focused on next week so you could get some advanced work done during this week in preparation for next week as we move forward. So we’re going to be focused on Philippians, and obviously as we’re focused on Philippians, we’re going to be thinking about an upward focus. We’re going to be thinking about an inward focus, and we’re going to be thinking about an outward focus. So all 3 of those focuses come into play in the book of Philippians. This morning, the focus is primarily one of these kinds of focuses.
It’s kind of horizontal in many ways. It, it has to do with the relationship that we share with each other or the relationships that we have with people. This whole past month has been different around the Gudgel home because we’ve been faithfully taking Friday off. And actually, I should say, actually, I’ve been faithfully taking Friday off because of a last 10% conversation that Bernice recently had with me. It was over a month ago that she got my attention.
Actually, I think it took 2 or 3 times for her to get my attention on 2 or 3 different occasions. But finally the third one sunk in when she said, Dave, you know, we used to take Friday off, but we’re not taking Friday off like we used to. And I really think you need to take Friday off and you need to take it off completely, doing nothing else. I had fallen the last year or 2 years really into the mode of working on other things on Friday, not so much church ministry-related stuff, but other things that have been a part of our lives like the Bible Storyboards project that we’ve invested a lot of time in. And so I would come to Friday and I would just spend some time working on that on Friday, or maybe doing some other things and things like that.
And so she said, I really think we need to just get back to taking Friday where it’s just a day that we rest and we spend time together and family things, and we read and we do other things like that, but we’re not doing other stuff. Now, I don’t know about you, but from time to time we need somebody to come along and have a last 10% conversation with us. And a last 10% conversation oftentimes is that last part of a conversation you have with somebody where they had something that they wanted to say to you, but they haven’t yet got to it. They wanted to, you know, sort of see if it was okay to say these things, kind of test the waters in the conversation, and then maybe interject the last 10%. That 10%, you know what I’m talking about?
We’re talking about something that may be awkward to say. It might feel like the elephant in the room. It might be difficult. You’re not really sure how they’re going to respond, all of that, but yet it can come into a conversation and lead to significant change. And this last month has led to some significant change in our lives for our good, especially for my good.
As I was thinking about that and turned to Philippians chapter 1, to the first few verses in Philippians chapter 1, I began to look at Philippians 1 from a different lens. And it’s really the opposite side. It’s the first 10%. It’s the first 10% of a conversation, because what you have here in Philippians chapter 1 is you have Paul’s initial words to the church at Philippi. Today we’re looking at the first 11 verses.
If you were to do a quick study of Philippians right now, you’d find out that Philippians has 104 verses. So those of you that are math people, this is basically, okay, this is basically 10%. The first 11, basically 10% of the conversation that the Apostle Paul is going to have with the church at Philippi. Well, as I began to look at that, I thought to myself, you know, this is really good for a person to think about because we all have what we would call significant conversations or crucial conversations with each other. Crucial conversations are those conversations where we need to talk to somebody about something, that kind of conversation.
Like recently a mother said to me, you know, I need to have a conversation with my son who’s a senior in high school. This is just at the end of last school year. His grades are not really where they should be, and we need to sit down and we need to talk about it. That kind of conversation. Something significant needs to be talked about.
Well, we know from what we learned last week that the Apostle Paul in the book of Philippians is going to address 2 topics. He’s going to, first of all, thank the church at Philippi for their support. He’s grateful for the ways that they have supported him financially and in other ways. And secondly, he’s going to show support to them in them making continued progress in the Christian life. He wants to see them grow up in their faith.
So all of that is on the Apostle Paul’s mind. He’s got a lot of things that he wants to talk to them about, and some of those things are going to hopefully lead toward some change, right? Well, what’s fascinating to me is how does he begin the conversation? And what I want you to be thinking about just for a couple of minutes is, in the conversations that I have with people, when the stakes are high, when opinions vary, when progress needs to be made, in those kinds of conversations, how do I begin those conversations? And ask yourself this question.
Does my beginning come anywhere close to the Apostle Paul’s beginning? You say, well, how did he begin? Let me read for you the first 11 verses, the first 10% of the book of Philippians. I hope you have a Bible with you, or you could follow along in the message notes this morning. But this is what we find in the first 11 verses.
Paul and Timothy Servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God every time I remember you in all my prayers. For all of you I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. It’s right for me to feel this way about all of you since I have you in my heart. For whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me.
God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer, that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. Now, as you look at that, you got to notice something right away. His approach is probably a lot different than the approach that we would take if we have something we need to talk to somebody about.
Think about that. Think about the last time you had something you needed to talk to somebody about. Think about the last time somebody called you up and said, I have something I need to talk to you about. That’s an interesting phrase, isn’t it? Paul had something he needed to talk to them about.
How does he begin? Well, he begins first of all with just telling them who’s writing. Timothy was a part of this writing as well. He begins with just the perspective that, I just want you to know we’re just servants of Jesus Christ. We’re just trying to serve the Master.
He saw himself as a slave, literally. He writes to the saints. We talked about that last week when we said we should seek to become the saints that we already are. And so, if we are Christ followers, as these were at the church at Philippi, we want to become that which we are in Christ. We want to attain what we’ve already attained in Christ.
We talked about that last week. But anyway, he writes to all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers That would be the elders and the deacons. So he’s writing to everybody in the church who is there. He reminds them of the grace and peace that’s found in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. So he begins with this, this salutation, we call it, just a typical greeting of that day.
But then he goes from there and he begins to share what’s amazing. Is a positive perspective. He shares a positive perspective. He knows that he’s got something he wants to talk to them about, but I want you to notice in these words there’s no correction, there’s no reproof, and there’s no exhortation. In other words, he doesn’t begin the conversation with guns blazing and bombs dropping.
Not at all. It’s just the opposite. In fact, he kinda captures the essence of what he wants to say to them in verse 7. In verse 7, he says, I just want you to know how I feel. Now that word, for some of us, that’s like an aversion.
Are you kidding? I’m not talking to anybody about how I feel, and especially at the beginning of a conversation. He says, I want you to know how I feel, and also in verse 7, I want you to know that I have you deep in my heart. I want you to know that I love you from the core of my being. That’s where he begins the conversation.
Now, have you heard this phrase before? People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Have you heard that before? Teddy Roosevelt evidently was the one who first said that. Zig Ziglar said that also, but he added 2 words: people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care about them.
He added those 2 words, Zig Ziglar, under the quote. But anyway, so point here is the Apostle Paul knew that when you got something you need to talk to somebody about, one of the best places to start this conversation is with care. And that’s where he starts. He wants them to know that he loves them. He’s gonna address selfishness.
He’s gonna address the problem of discontentment. He’s gonna address the problem of our thought life. He’s gonna address the problem of getting along. I mean, in chapter 4, he says— he names a couple of women and says, tell those ladies to get along in the church. So he’s gonna address stuff like that.
But I want you to see that his first 10% doesn’t have any, any of that in it. He’s going to make a strong care connection. And how does he do that? Does he really care? Well, the proof is found in 2 ways.
Number one, first of all, his feelings. Did you notice that Paul first goes to his feelings? The first thing he does is he expresses his feelings. Paul expresses his feelings. This is a guy expressing his feelings.
This is going to be hard for some of us guys to swallow right now.
But he says in verse 7, it is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart. For whether I’m in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, All of you sharing God’s grace with me. I just want you to know, guys, I love you. I have feelings for you. I thank you for your support.
I thank you for the relationship that we have. Whether I’m here in prison and in chains or I’m out there impacting others with the gospel of Jesus Christ, I know that you are a part of what it is that I’m trying to do as I try to take the gospel to the world. And by the way, if you’re not sure what the gospel is, the gospel is the good news that there is life, that God has given us life, and this life is found in Jesus Christ, and Christ came to make it possible for us to have life now and life forever. That’s what the gospel is all about, and this life is found in a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and accepting the gift of life that’s found in him. So Paul’s saying, you know, if I’m doing that gospel work here in prison or I’m doing that gospel work out there, it doesn’t matter.
I know that you’re standing with me, and I want you to know something. I want you to know how I feel about you. I have feelings for you in the depth of my heart. Now notice the feeling words that he uses here. Verse 3, he’s thankful for them.
He felt thankful. Every time he thought about them he was thankful. I thank my God every time I remember you. So he has all these memories of things that they shared together, stuff that they did. He can think back on those things where they ministered together and they laughed and all those experiences that they had.
It just filled his heart with And so he goes back and he says, at the outset, I just want you to know, man, I’m so thankful. Every time I think about you, it fills my heart with thanks. And that’s not all. He felt joy. Do you notice joy in verse 5 or verse 4?
It says, in all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. Joy showed up in Paul’s prayer life, and specifically it showed up in this way. He was joyful that they were partnering with him in the Gospel Commission, that they were sharing that commission with him. We talk in the introduction to membership class around here called Bridges Intro Class, we talk about partnership and membership. Really, that’s what membership is.
It’s just simply partnership. It’s us saying together, we’re going to do this. We’re going to share this ministry together. And Paul is saying to the church at Philippi, when I think about the partnership that we have in ministry, it just absolutely fills me with joy, and I want you to know that. There’s a third word that you can circle if you’re circling this word.
You’ve circled thankful. Paul felt thanks. Paul felt joy. He felt also confidence. Look at verse 6, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
He was confident in God And that God who is now living in these people was gonna continue to change them and work through them. He wasn’t done yet. And Paul, at the very outset of this conversation, wants them to know that he sees them as a work in progress, that God is working in them, and that’s wonderful, and he wants to affirm that. Let me ask you the question: if somebody began a conversation with you that way, when they had something they needed to talk to you about, if they came to you and they said, you know, I just see God working in you and it’s fabulous, the things that are happening in your life, and I know that the Lord is not done and he’s continuing to work in you. I mean, how would that make you feel?
Pretty good. And you notice in verse 8, he also talks about affection. He felt affection for them. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. This wasn’t, you know, this, this hard relationship.
This wasn’t that he just pushed his feelings aside. No, he had deep-seated feelings for these people. He was emotionally connected. They were emotionally connected. They weren’t just a name on some church roster, you know.
Paul visited all these churches and he had all these names And that was it. You know, that’s that name. That’s that. No, there was an emotional connection. He had a heart-to-heart connection to these people.
Now let me ask the question. How would it make you feel if somebody began a conversation with you by telling you how they felt? Now I’m not talking about the other stuff that they could tell you about how they felt, you know, about the bad stuff or whatever that is. I’m just talking about the affirmation. If they came to you and the initial part of the conversation, the first 10%, wasn’t correction, it wasn’t exhortation, it wasn’t reproof, it was just simply affirmation, how would it make you feel?
You might fall off your chair. That might be what happened. I mean, how would it make you feel instead of for them to just, you know, drop the bomb on you Instead of that, they hugged you first. They hugged you before they slugged you.
How would that make you feel? And I’m not saying we should slug each other, but how would it make you feel if a person grabbed a chair and instead of standing here and saying, we got to talk, Tim, How would it make you feel instead of they assume this posture if they just sat down next to you and they put their arm around you and they said, Tim, I want you to know that what you have done here in this church has given all of us thanks for God for the ministry that you’ve had, the many ways that you’ve served behind the scenes It’s filled us with joy, and we have you in our heart. Now, you can say that in a million different ways, and all the ladies in the room could say that a lot better than I just said it, but you get the point. Are you gonna slug me? No, I’m not gonna slug you now.
See, that’s what— ah, geez, the ulterior motive, right? I know it’s coming. Can we prolong the 10%?
You see what’s happening here? He’s just telling them from the bottom of his heart how he feels. Now listen, if we start conversations like that, you know what it’ll do? It’ll change the rest of the conversation. It’ll change the way the person hears what it is that we need to say.
But you know what else it’s going to do? It’s going to change what we say and how we say it, right? Because if I’m truly thankful for you and I truly have joy in my heart for you and I truly believe God is working in you and I truly feel affection in my heart for you, that’s going to cause me to speak to you differently than I would speak to you if I didn’t have any thanks for you, and if I didn’t have any joy for you, and if I expected you to be perfect like I’m perfect.
You see what I’m saying? See, this is a life-changing thing for an individual, but this potentially is a life-changing thing for a relationship. And that’s where Paul begins. He begins with his feelings, but then he goes from his feelings to his prayers. And by showing them how he’s prayed for them, he again demonstrates that he has them in the depth of his heart.
See, you know whether or not a person has you in the depth of their heart by what they do. And one of the indications that they have you in the depth of their heart, if they’re a Christian, is that they’re praying for you. They’re praying for you.
Is prayer important in our lives? Absolutely. We pray for those that we care about, don’t we? Some of you could think of a boy or a girl, young man or young woman, or whoever it was that you met, and you all of a sudden started having feelings for them, some feelings for them. And I wouldn’t doubt that as you started to have feelings for this other person, you began to pray for them.
You began to pray, oh God, help them see the great person that I am.
Oh God, blind them to all of my bad spots, all the bad things that I do. Help them never see that. You know, somehow just blind their eyes. I mean, why would you begin to pray like that? Because you care about them and you’re beginning to have these feelings of love for them.
You’re beginning to feel some kind of connection in your heart. And so there’s this connection and now there are these prayers that come with the connection.
Connection. Paul had that for this church at Philippi. Now what I want you to see though is I want you to see how he prayed for them beginning in verse 9, because he didn’t pray for them like sometimes we pray for each other. The with prayer. Oh Lord, be with them.
The with prayer. We say, Lord, be with them. You know, the fact of the matter is, is that the Lord is already with them. It’s not that the Lord is all of a sudden going to not be with them. If they’re in Christ, he’s with them.
Does that make sense? And all of a sudden you praying and asking God to be with them isn’t going to make it any more that he’s going to be with them. He’s either with them or he’s not with them. Do you get that? Are you with me?
Okay, that’s the with prayer. And I want you also to notice this, that this is— his prayer is more than a, and, Lord, bless everybody at Philippi. Bless everybody.
The depth of a person’s heart for others oftentimes is revealed in the specifics of their prayer. And so notice the specifics of how Paul prayed for them. Verse 9, and this is my prayer, that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight. 2, so that you may be able to discern what is best. 3, and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ.
4, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. 5, to the glory and praise of God. 5 specific ways the Apostle Paul prays for this church that he has feelings for. He prayed that their love would abound more and more. The love this is, this is talking about is the love of sacrifice.
It’s the agape love. It is a love that grows through knowledge and depth of insight. Do you see that there? That as we come to understand more of who God is and his transforming work in us, as we come to gain greater and greater insight into that, our love abounds more and more and more so that we care for each other more than we do right now, so that we have greater insight and wisdom to help each other than we do right now. Tell me, is that a great prayer to pray for somebody?
Try it. I pray, Lord, that so-and-so’s love would abound more and more in knowledge and insight. And I want you to notice the so that words that are found here in verse 10. So that— in other words, what is going to follow now is the fruit or the result of love abounding more and more. Where do you start in your prayers for others?
What a great place to start. Start with May their love abound more and more in knowledge and insight. And out of that comes secondly discernment, so that you may be able to discern. So he also prayed for their discernment, that they would be wise in knowledge and insight and wisdom. They would, they would know in any and every circumstance what to do.
Is that important? Absolutely. We’re all faced with decisions, right? Some of us this morning are trying to make some decisions. Maybe they’re time decisions or repeated decisions or whatever they are, but there needs to be discernment and wisdom, knowledge.
And so Paul prays that for these people that he cares about, Philippi. Is that a great way to pray for somebody? Absolutely. Pray for their love, pray for their discernment. He also prayed for their purity, may what is— so that they can discern what’s best and be pure and blameless until the day of Christ.
So he prays in the midst of this world that’s so filled with sin that these believers would live pure lives, blameless lives, so there’s nothing to point at. Is that a prayer that we need? Absolutely. We live in a world where the morality standards are dropping, where temptation is rampant. Sin is all around us.
Absolutely, we could pray for every one of the people that we know specifically this way, that they would live a pure life, a blameless life, and it wouldn’t just be for a day, but it would be until the day that Christ comes. So until Christ takes us home to heaven, if we get to live to the day that he comes, or until the day that we die and we go to be with him. What a wonderful prayer. And then he also prayed, fourthly, he prayed that they would be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, that they would be filled with godly works, we could say, that their lives would reflect Christ. And they would reflect Christ because they are abiding in Christ.
And as they abide in Christ, Christ produces in them spiritual fruit such as Love, joy, peace, patience, all of that. And out of this fruit would come a fruitful life. And so he prays that their lives would be used in such a way that people can see Christ in them and they would honor the Lord. 4th significant way to pray. And then 5thly, he prayed that they would live for God’s glory, that it would be to the glory and the praise of God that everything that they would be doing in their life would be for one object, not to please themselves.
I heard a young adult say this to me this week as we were sitting over in Pete’s, her and her mother, and she said— and I don’t even think she realized what it was that she said, but she said, you know, I just want to please God. I just want to glorify God. And immediately I made this connection right back to this verse, and I thought, yeah, that’s exactly what we should long to do. That our lives should— are all about bringing glory to God. And so the Apostle Paul says, I’m praying for you that way.
5 specific ways that he prayed for them. Now let me ask you a question. If somebody came up to you and they said, hey, I just want you to know I’m praying for you, and let me tell you the 5 ways I’m praying for you, what do you think it would do for your relationship? What do you think it would do for you? What do you think they would be expressing to you?
Well, they would be expressing their love for you, and they would be expressing that they care about you. Probably all of us have people that have imprinted our life, that have impacted our life in some way. And some of us who are sitting here this morning would say that some of those people who have impacted our life, we are privileged to be able to say they’ve impacted us primarily through their prayers. We know they pray for us and they have prayed for us. I think about my mother.
I’ve told that story many times, so I won’t dive into that one. But I think about Wilma Price and I think about Norma White and I think about Mary Ann Miller. 3 women separately at different times came to me and said, Dave, I want to pray for you on a regular basis. Would you just communicate to me what your needs are? I want to be praying for you.
Now let me tell you, every one of those women— 2 of them are now in heaven— every one of those women made a significant impact in my life, and it primarily came through their prayers. They demonstrated to me that they cared about me and they loved me through their prayers. You say, Dave, do you have any men in your life who pray for you too? Well, yeah, I do. And I could name Jerry and Jack, and I can name Rod, and I can name Peter and others who had the same kind of a relationship with me.
And they showed me they cared by their prayers. And that’s essentially what the Apostle Paul is saying here. He’s saying to these people, listen, I’m not just like blowing smoke. I really do love you. I really do have feelings for you.
I have feelings for you in the depth of my heart. And the proof is this: as he’s expressed his feelings, and now as he’s expressed his prayers, he’s saying to them, I really, really care. By the way, when somebody prays for you on a regular basis and they’re praying specifically for you, and then there comes something in your life that somebody needs to talk to you about and they’re aware of it, guess what? If they come and talk to you about that, you’re more open to hearing it from them because you know they care. Isn’t that true?
Absolutely. Because you know they love you, and you know that you have a relationship with them, and you know that they’re not there in this conversation to fix you, but they are there to support you and see your progress in the Christian life. Is that not true? See, that’s what the Apostle Paul is saying here.
I could give you a lot of illustrations in my life where I did not take this approach and things did not turn out so well in the I have something I need to talk to you about conversations. I could think of one particular one with a staff member who I needed to talk to about something. And I didn’t talk to him well. I didn’t begin the way the Apostle Paul begins this letter here with that first 10% of care and support. I began with guns blazing.
And ultimately he had enough courage to say to me, you know, Dave, what you’re talking to me about really is appropriate. You need to talk to me about this, but not in the tone that you’re using right now. You’ve expressed to me a condescending and demeaning tone. I’ll never forget those words: condescending and demeaning tone. Do you get any condescending and demeaning tone out of Philippians chapter 1, verses 1 through 11?
None whatsoever. In fact, if you read through the rest of the book, you’re not going to find any condescending, demeaning tone in the rest of the book either. It’s just not there. It’s just inappropriate in Christian relationships. But what you will find is a demonstration of love.
The upshot of that conversation was awful. At least we both felt that way. Both of us ended up in counseling, professional counseling. We paid together to go to counseling for the two of us.
Can I just say I’ve not made that same mistake in the same way since? I didn’t want to go for more counseling in that one area. That was enough. I could think of other conversations. I could give you a whole bunch over here, so I won’t bother right now.
But maybe they were with you, and, you know, I blew it.
But I could think of a conversation I had a few years ago back in Phoenix with a gentleman that sent a typewritten letter to me regarding a staff member that was in the church. Seriously. It’s the time of computer, but this man was still not on computers, so he used a typewriter to write what he wanted to communicate to the church. It didn’t take long for us to figure out who was typing, you know? I mean, like, if you remember the typewriter years— and you kids are just going to take this by faith, but anyway— so, you know, if you remember the typewriter writing years, sometimes these typewriters had these certain ways they would type, and, you know, some keys were off and whatever.
And so this was his typewriter. You knew it. And he sent this letter in and he said, you know, you need to know the perspective we have of your woman worship director. And then he went after her, and he said some very demeaning, unkind, really out of bounds, out of bounds stuff in this letter that he sent. So, I’m in the role of, I need to talk to you about something, at this point.
So, I called him up and I said, hey, can we get together? And that took a chore for a while to just even get to the point where we could meet together, but that’s the kind of thing you got to do, right? You can’t let unresolved conflict in the body of Jesus Christ go on. I mean, this is the one thing that Jesus said something about, right? I mean, if he prayed about anything, there was one thing that really was focused on in his prayer life, and it was that we as a church family would be one.
And so here’s this man taking a slam against one of our staff members, and finally he came into the office. I had to do a lot of mental work on this one. In preparation for that and prayer. And the conversation went really well. I mean, it really went well.
We were able to bring this woman staff member into the conversation and things ended as well as you could hope they would end. And part of the reason they ended as well as you could hope was because he had a humble spirit about the whole thing and, and was repentant. He really was repentant.
I didn’t know, you know, after that how things settled out. But this summer, as Bernice and I were traveling, I got a phone call from this guy. Bernice was driving at the time, and so I took the call. And he called up and he said, hey, I just, I just want to tell you that I was just at my breakfast meeting, the Romeo meeting. I said, Romeo meeting?
He said, yeah. Retired older men eating out.
The ROMEO meeting.
Some of you older men are going to start using that now. Where are you going? I’m going to my ROMEO meeting. Retired older men eating out.
And he said, so I was at the ROMEO meeting and we were just talking about, you know, things that went on at the church and Anyway, I just called to say thanks. I just want you to know that your life impacted me and it’s continued to impact me. This is a man who’s in his middle 80s.
It impacted me, it’s continuing to impact me, and I believe it continues to impact the church. Now listen, friends, if I would have taken this approach that I took with this staff member, with this guy, this thing wouldn’t have had a Not a chance. See, the Apostle Paul has a lot that he wants to talk to these people about. His mind is filled with stuff that he wants to talk to them about, but he doesn’t go there initially. He holds back.
He wants them to know that he cares before he shares. And really, that’s kind of the bottom line of this message today, isn’t it? That in these conversations that we have with each other, in this being one as a body, we need to come to each other and express that we really care, that we really do care, that we’re thankful for one another. We need to connect emotionally. We need to connect emotionally.
And when we begin to connect emotionally, can you imagine then what that’s going to mean for the church? Can you imagine what that’s going to mean for relationships? Can you imagine what that’s going to mean for the kingdom? Can you imagine if we do that in the year ahead, what that’s going to mean for this church in the year to come? We’re going to have problems.
We’re going to have struggles as a church. That’s just life. There are areas that we all can improve in, right? I mean, that’s what this whole letter is about. Improvement is needed.
Improvement is expected. Yes, that’s going to happen. And the way that we go about helping each other improve is vital, vital. So much so that the Apostle Paul took this intentional approach under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit When he communicated to these people that he deeply cares about who needed some help in areas of concern, but he wasn’t about to go there until he made the emotional connection first.
Let me simplify it another way. This whole section is telling us this: you start with the heart.
You start with the heart. I have you in my heart.
Well, this is going to be fun, isn’t it? We’re going to have a great time together as we study Philippians, and God’s going to teach us and grow us, and I think we’re going to see great things happen in the life of the church this year. Let’s pray together.
Lord, thanks for the time this morning to reflect on the scriptures and to reflect on the life that we have together as a family, as your family, an imperfect family, but yet a family that you absolutely love, love a family that you brought together through one person, Jesus Christ. We’re so grateful Every one of us who’s received that gift of life that’s found in Jesus realized that we weren’t worthy of it, that we are sinners separated from you as we all are. But we reached out, received the gift of life and the forgiveness of sin that’s found in Christ, and we are so grateful. And we want to be, as your family members, about building up the relationships that we share with you and each other. And so help us do that well this year.
May the year ahead result in much good toward us being one and toward the, the way that we help each other toward progress in the Christian faith, but progress in relationships. May that be so. May this be a year where people see our love for each other, and they’re drawn to Christ because of it. You’ve said that’s— that is key in helping people come to faith in you. And so we pray that our love for each other would abound and abound and abound in knowledge and insight, and the result would be that people would come to know you as their Savior because they want the same thing.
And by the way, if you’re here this morning and you’ve never seen that in Christ followers, we’re sorry. We’re not perfect. We long to be better than we are. Sometimes we preach a better sermon than we live, but we’re grateful that we’re moving in a direction that’s better than the direction we were going. And we would invite you into that family.
God longs to have you as one of his children, and he waits for the day that you would say yes to a relationship with him. And if you’ve never said yes, you could even say yes this morning, and we pray you would. Tell him that you love him. Ask him to forgive you. Ask him to be your Lord and Savior, to give you a new life.
And to lead you in the way that he wants you to go. God, thank you that you hear prayers like that. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Well, we’re going to have our worship team come back and have a final song, a song of celebration.
So as we sing this together this morning, let’s sing it out from the depth of our heart and express to God our love for him, our feelings for him, and let that just be a wonderful way for us to end our service today. Yes.
