This study on Phillipians over the past few weeks have taught us to love more, to be more joyful, to place our trust in God, to live as citizens our heaven, to be humble in our citizenship, to honour God and to develop a mindset like God’s.
This book has been very challenging and full of incredible wisdom. I hope that you have enjoyed studying it with us.

Looking into chapter four of Phillipians we find another great truth that will help us in our walk with God. Peace!

Phillipians 4:7
7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

It is the peace of God that will help us to guard our hearts. In other words God’s peace protects you. How? Verse eight gives us the answer:

8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.

Peace comes from focusing on worthy, lovely, commendable and excellent things. Focusing on the things of God brings peace. We guard our hearts by focusing on Godly things which bring a peace to us.

Think about this a bit more. The reason peace protects us is because it “transcends understanding!” When we try to understand something we are trying to achieve something. We do it in our own strength. Peace in our hearts comes from trusting in God regardless of our understanding of current circumstances.

It’s easy to trust in God when you focus on Him. He is great, powerful, mighty, graceful, loving, peaceful, trustworthy, reliable, constant and merciful. When you focus on Him you begin to trust Him as He reveals Himself to you. Our need to understand is superseded by our love for Him and our trust in Him. Peace comes from a decision to trust God and not trust in ourselves.

Trusting in our own ability often brings anxiety and doubt. Trusting in God brings peace because He has proved Himself undoubtedly trustworthy.

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As we study Phillipians chapter three we can find three main point that show us how to live as citizens of heaven.

1. Be on your guard
2. Know your heritage
3. Move forward

Be on your guard
Verse to tells us to ‘watch out’ for people you do not honour God (vs 2). It is important to be aware of those people who live in such a way because it stops us from being caught up in their ways. We need to be constantly on our guard from any idea’s, concepts, ways of life and actions that do not honour God.

Know Your Heritage
To know God and what He has done for you will always put your heart right in every circumstance. To understand that your righteousness comes from God and not your works (vs 3-7) keeps us humble. God is able to use a humble person because they are more reliant on Him than themselves.
Knowing our heritage as a citizen of heaven gives us an better understanding of who we are, what we believe and how we should live. The only place that explains our heritage is the Word of God and this is why we need to spend quality time reading His word. In order that we may know our heritage in Christ Jesus.

Move Forward
Paul asks us to move forward continually. To press on toward the goal (vs 14). In our lives as Christians we should always be seeking and striving for more. More fellowship, more intimacy, more obedience, more understanding and more wisdom from Christ. We do this because we have seen Christ in our lives and we have chosen to live in for Him in His kingdom. According to His purpose.
As citizens of heaven we acknowledge God as our King. We are proud of our heritage in Christ and we stay on guard of those who come against our King.

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Psalm 100 has to be one of my favourite Psalms. This may be evident in the fact that I regularly read it when I lead worship. The passage speaks in such simple terms the call to worship and gives us a clear description of how we are to worship. God desires us to worship Him, He loves our worship. Today’s devotion is not as long as the others you normally get from onthingsabove but I hope that it will be a great blessing to you.

Psalm 100

A psalm. For giving thanks.

¹ Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.

² Worship the LORD with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.

³ Know that the LORD is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his ^[a] ;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

⁴ Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.

⁵ For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.

Call out with Joy

In every aspect of our lives we should be ready to call out with joy to God. This is not easy to follow because we are emotional beings who are not always filled with joy. Our natural response to anything in life is closely linked to the way we feel at the time. So to approach God with joy can be difficult when the woes of life are getting us down.

God does not discount this fact. However, in His wisdom, God reveals to us later in this Psalm that if we approach God with thanksgiving instead of our list of troubles, we will see that He is in control of all things. Our natural reaction to that realisation will be to worship joyfully. Then when we lift our troubles to God, we lift them knowing that he has the power and strength to resolve all the troubles you face. Further than that, as you give thanks to God for the great things He has done in your life, you will see His plan unfold, how He has brought you out of troubles in the past, how He was always with you – even when you could not feel Him there.

When we approach God with thanksgiving first, we set our hearts and minds on Him (Colossians 3). However, when we come to God with our list of problems we are experiencing we are too focused on our problems to worship God.

I am not saying that you should not raise your troubles to God. I am suggesting that when we lift only problems to God then those problems can overcome us. When we start by giving thanks to God – we focus on Him and His greatness and then we can lift our troubles to Him – worshipfully – knowing that He has been faithful to us through everything so far.

“Enter His gates giving thanks” and “Honour His name” are two things that we can do that will focus our hearts and minds on the greatness of God, His loving kindness and His faithfulness to us.

Be Glad as you Serve the Lord

As we focus on giving God thanks for the blessings in our life. As we focus our hearts and minds on His kindness, grace and faithfulness our natural response would be gratitude. God loves to hear our gratitude and our gratitude is seen in the way that we serve Him. Our commitment and desire to serve God, to do the best for God is a picture of our gratitude towards God.

‘Be Glad as You Serve God’ simply means to respond to God’s greatness by being obedient in your service to Him.

In the future, why not try starting your prayers and worship with thanksgiving. I believe that your natural reaction will then be to worship God both in word and deed. Your obedience to God will be a natural outcome of your gratitude to Him. Your worship will feel more natural because you are focused on God and His glory instead of on your needs and desires.

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God shows us His glory in the healing of a blind man, the Pharisees respond by dismissing it because they don’t understand it. What happens to the people who faithfully and humbly accept the miracle is God’s. Today we look at the impact on the man born blind and how his life is changed by God.

John 9: 35 – 41

Spiritual Blindness

³⁵Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

³⁶“Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.”

³⁷Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”

³⁸Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.

³⁹Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”

⁴⁰Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”

⁴¹Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.

The blind man in this story goes through a process that begins with the healing of his eyesight and ends with the healing of his heart. Lets look at this process and how God\’s plan to display His glory affected this man.

The Man Meets Jesus:

Jesus walks past the man at some point during His ministry on earth and responds to the man by seeing the need in his life and filling the void. Jesus does this exactly the way that God intended in order to display the glory of God in his life.

The Man Experiences the Glory of God:

As God heals the blind man, the man experiences the power of God in the fact that he is healed. Everything is different for him, life as he knows it has changed drastically and for the better. The man may have gotten used to the idea of being blind and may not even have completely realised what he was missing. God healed him and the man can now experience life in a very different way thanks to God\’s will working out in his life.

The Man Shows Jesus His Faith:

During the trial, the man comes to the realisation that Jesus is from God. After the trail, Jesus comes to him and they have the following conversation:

Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

“Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.”

Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”

Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.

The man chooses to believe Jesus because he has realised that he comes from God. Whatever Jesus says the man will believe because he comes from God. The man’s life was impacted in such a real way that he undoubtably believed that anything from Jesus and God was good. He wanted to believe because of the experience he had not necessarily because it all made sense to him.

What happens when we see His glory?

Like in this story, God often chooses to display His glory to us. We can then choose to be a part of that Glory. The man in this story, became a part of the story by obeying the directions that Jesus gave Him (Go and wash in the pool of Siloam). Once the man had obeyed Jesus instruction he experienced the blessing that came from his obedience.

God\’s glory was experienced by the man because the man was obedient to God. If we want to see God’s glory displayed in our life we need to be obedient to Him. He has laid His law out in the bible, that is His instruction manual to us. As we obey the things of God, laid out in His word, we will no doubt see they glory of God displayed in our lives.

Seeing the glory of God in our lives lead us to trust God and to worship Him because He is worthy (Psalm 100). His glory in our lives will lead to a heart of thanksgiving for what we have seen and experienced from God.

How do we react to His Glory?

To wrap up this series on John 9 let me ask you 3 simple questions:

1) When was the last time you saw the glory of God displayed before you?
2) Are you letting your interpretations of God’s word cloud you spiritual eyes, that you have become judgmental of whatever does not make sense to you?
3) Or are you simply trusting God and obeying, because of your experience of Him?

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Jesus heals a man who was born blind. This man experiences the touch of God in his life and God is glorified as He displays his power in his life.

John 9: 1 – 12

Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind

¹As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. ²His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

³“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. ⁴As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. ⁵While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

⁶Having said this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. ⁷“Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means Sent). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.

⁸His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, “Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?” ⁹Some claimed that he was.
Others said, “No, he only looks like him.”
But he himself insisted, “I am the man.”

¹⁰“How then were your eyes opened?” they demanded.

¹¹He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.”

¹²“Where is this man?” they asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said.

The disciples open up a conversation with Jesus by asking a simple question. According to their culture, for this man to be born blind either he or is parents must have sinned. This was a culturally accepted understanding and therefore the question seemed common enough.

However Jesus corrects the disciples and their culturally accepted norm, neither this mans sin nor the sin of his parents is the reason for his blindness. The reason for the blindness is so that God’s glory can be displayed in his life.

God wants to show people how awesome he is by healing this man from his blindness. This kind of miracle had not even been heard of yet. A man, blind form birth, receiving his eyesight. God was showing off, catching the attention of the people of this earth. By glorifying Himself like this God reveals to us part of who He is.

The purpose of this mans blindness up until that point was so that God could show us the following things:

1) God is a healer

Disease and deformity have no control over Him. Should He desire He is able to heal people from the disease that troubles their life, from the deformity that plagues them. We see so often in the new testament how God chose to heal people. The lepers were healed and people were bought back from the dead. Sometimes God chooses not to heal us. However that does not mean that He is not a healer. It simply means that God has chosen not to heal. That brings us to our next point.

2) God has a plan.

This man was blind so that God’s glory can be displayed. The reason he was born blind was because God planned it like that. He wanted this man to experience the glory of God in such a way that the people around him would stand up and take notice. Before he met Jesus, this man and others who knew him may not have understood why he was blind. They may have questioned God’s existence or they may have blamed his blindness on the sin of his parents. Either way they probably didn’t come to the conclusion that he was born blind to glorify God.

3) God’s plan is not predictable.

God is so great, so powerful, and so mighty that our understanding of who God is could never bring us to a point of being able to predict God’s actions. This is simply because we could never really completely understand every aspect of God. Just because we didn’t predict God’s action towards something in our lives, or we don’t understand God’s plan, does not mean that God is not at work and that he has no plan or purpose for our lives.

Getting Practical

Therefore the next time something happens to you or someone you know that you don’t understand, remember the man who was born blind. Remember that God’s plan, although it may not always make sense, is still at work in your life and the life of others.

God is glorified when His plan works it’s way through our lives. Like this man, God was glorified when He healed him of his blindness. The man’s life was blessed and enriched because God chose to heal him, and that was God’s plan for this mans life! Blessing and enrichment.

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