Where’s your joy?
Paul is in prison, things weren’t going well, he was living in the will of God, he was ministering for God, his heart was set on God, and he was in prison. Today as we carry on into Paul’s letter to the God worshipers in Philippi, we’re going to be looking at Philippains 1v12->18 and seeing Paul’s example of living in joy. In this passage we will look at two aspects of Paul’s reaction to what was happening around him and to him.
What happened to him…
Paul was in jail, and we would expect that he would be a little depressed because of the situation in which he finds himself. God has called him to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, and now he is stuck here in a jail, how frustrating! But this isn’t how Paul reacts, in verse 12 we see that instead of expressing his frustration, he sees God’s sovereign hand in what has happened to him. Paul knows that God is sovereign, and that God had allowed Paul to be in the situation that he found himself, so Paul doesn’t spend energy and emotion questioning and advising God, rather he throws all of himself into making the most of the situation that he finds himself in. Paul speaks about Jesus to the palace guard and his fellow prisoners, and Paul hears that other Christians are becoming more and more bold in proclaiming the Gospel because of what happened to Paul.
What motivated him…
Even though there is all this good news in Paul’s situation, there is still some bad news, some people are telling other people about Jesus out of impure motives. Some people were preaching the truth about Jesus, but they were doing so to try and gain things (status, recognition, profit, etc) for themselves, and to try and hurt Paul. But how does Paul react to this news? Again, he does not throw himself a pity party, nor does he feel hard done by because it is just so unfair. No, rather Paul is deeply joy-filled at the situation because Jesus is being spoken about to people who didn’t know Jesus.
This is the secret to Paul’s joy, and this can be the secret to your joy too; Paul was more concerned about Jesus than he was about himself. Right there, that is how Paul could live in unshakable joy, how even when everything around him was falling apart, as long as he had Jesus, and Jesus was being made famous then Paul had true (not fake) joy. This can be you in your life, God wants you to be joyful, in what do you honestly find your joy, if it isn’t in Jesus then you will never ever have true joy.
