Rejoicing in Struggle

The following video transcript has been lightly edited

  So at our house we have an addition, and underneath the addition is a storage unit. Storage units aren't really helpful for Americans because it just fills with the stuff we call it the hole. If you go down into our hole, we've collected a lot of things. Some of the things. Are just junk. Like what do you do with that old tv?

Other things are tables, chairs, those kinds of things that we think, well, maybe one day one of our kids will need them, but someone is going to have to sort through all the different things that we have collected at some point in our life. Maybe it'll be me or maybe it'll be my kids someday when I am no longer here.

As Americans, we're great at collecting a lot of stuff. The other thing that I think happens in the midst of life is we collect struggles. Now, some of these struggles come and go, but what I've noticed is a lot of them, you persevere through them, but they hang with you. That financial loss, that relational brokenness. That health issue, they don't go away. They linger with us. And so as we age and as we move through life, we have these struggles that we continue to deal with, plus new ones that arrive in our life.

Paul is riding to the church at Philippi and he's writing from prison- prison in Rome to encourage the Philippians as well as to predict that he's gonna come back and see them again.

And one of the things he says that is fascinating to me is he says he rejoices in the struggle. You know, when I think about my own life, I wanna learn how to do that. I want to know, how do I rejoice even in the midst of the struggle. Because as we know, struggles are promised, that will happen. Each of us will gather some more travel through some new ones, and so if we can learn how to rejoice in the midst of those struggles, that to me sounds like something that could bring a lot of life.

And as Paul's writing in chapter one, he offers three perspectives that I think allow for him to say such a thing, to be as audacious as to be able to proclaim that he can rejoice in the midst of struggle. The first is that he finds peace in God's faithfulness. Second, he's able to see grace in it all. And third, he lives like God wins, and so he's confident of that. Let's sketch out each one a little bit more.

So finding peace in God's faithfulness. What Paul is talking about is he's saying, Hey, I know that the prayers of you all his friends, the Philippians, the spirit of Christ is going to join me and it's going to lead to his deliverance.

This struggle that he's in is not going to impact the future. The future will be set, right. He will be experiencing grace. God will meet him in it. There's nothing that can separate him from God's love. And in fact, as he's writing, he quotes directly from Job and Job has wrestled with God over the events of his life.

And he says, I trust and believe that I will find peace. I'll find deliverance. And so that's the confidence that Paul operates with. He finds peace in God's faithfulness. God's faithfulness to us is in a variety of ways.

One, we see God's faithfulness in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. What that promises us is that God has shown up for creation and will bring it to fruition.

Second, we are offered the relationships that we have one another to pray. That's God's faithfulness so we can find peace in that. I don't know about you, but I find peace when my friends are willing to show up for me at two o'clock in the morning where I look at my siblings or my wife or my kids, and I'm just grateful for their faithfulness.

And I'm reminded that's a demonstration of God's faithfulness to me as well. And lastly, Paul talks about how the spirit of Jesus will walk alongside us. And it's true for him too. And so in that way, Paul remembers that Jesus' life, death and resurrection are true, but that his spirit continues to walk alongside us, offering us peace and grace and wisdom when we need it most.

And so one of the things I would say is for us, I think in the midst of struggle to wanna operate with that sense of peace of God's faithfulness, we have to remind ourselves that we can't be separated from God's love. And Paul says that in Romans that nothing can separate us from God's love. My experience is I need to be reminded of that, and that's one of the things that I think happens in the midst of singing.

When we gather together on Sunday morning and we sing and we're reminded of God's faithfulness, it fills our hearts to give us that sense of peace and allow us to rejoice even in the midst of struggle. The second thing Paul says is the perspective that Paul offers us is to see grace in it all. So Paul is wrestling and he's saying, Hey, I'm in prison. I know that this might result in my death, but I want you to know that to live is Christ, to die is gain. He's basically saying, Hey, this is a classic win-win situation. You know, for me it's like if you offered me a Boston cream donut or an old fashioned sour cream donut, it's a win-win. I'll take either one of those here, Paul is saying, Hey, I trust that if I die, I will be reunited with Christ, I will be with God in God's realm. I'll be with Christ in Christ's realm. If I live, I get to continue to experience God and I get to be in relationship with you is what he's telling his friends in Philippi. And so he is like, I'm good with either and because I'm good with either I can move forward with this sense that whatever takes place, God will still use to show us grace.

And of course this is what we see in the cross. Henry Nowan writes that in the cross we learn that we can see grace where there is pain and life where there is death. And so that is the perspective we take in the midst of all of our struggles, both the long ones and the intense short ones that we can see grace in it.

It doesn't mean that everything's going to be great, but it does mean that there's grace in the midst of it. That there's resurrection, that there's care, that there's love, that there's restoration, if not now in the future. Because what we know is that God is going to restore all things. He's going to take the broken creation and make it whole, and he's going to vanquish evil sin and death forever.

So my question to you is, how are you finding grace? How are you reminding yourself? That there is grace in the midst of the things that we're going after.

Lastly, we wanna live like God wins. And so Paul says to the Philippians, Hey, whether I come back or not, what I want you to do is I want you to live in one spirit.

I want you to strive together. I want you to operate in one mind for the sake of the gospel. The gospel, whenever Paul talks about that, he's really just talking about the good news, the good news that has been revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, that God loves the world and in Christ's death has defeated death, evil, and sin, and will bring restoration one day.

That's the good news. And so Paul is saying, Hey, live like you know the end of it and work and operate towards that end. When I was a kid, I used to play this game Contra on the original Nintendo, and there was infinite Life code up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, B, A, select start, and that gave you unlimited lives and so you could beat the game.

I think what Paul is saying to each of us is, Hey, you know the end. You know that God has defeated death, sin, and evil. It hasn't been fully realized yet. It's still saturating all of time and history, but that's where we're going. And so what we want to do is we wanna be a people who live towards that end.

And the way we live towards that end is to be people of faith, hope and love to do that over and over again, to strive for that, to anticipate that future. And that, I think allows us to rejoice even in the midst of the struggle because in the midst of the struggle, we're still given this opportunity to reflect grace and peace and love into the world.

And so we want to do that, but in order to do that, we need to know where we're headed. And so my question to you is, do you remind yourself of who you are in Christ and the identity the future, the one in which the beauty is restored and the brokenness is ended, and are you living towards that with this sense of no matter what you're going through, that it can still lead towards that end?

Hey, I hope this is helpful. I know that each of us has struggles, we've collected and struggles we are currently going through, and we wanna learn how can we rejoice even in the midst of that? And Paul offers us this guidance. That we would be able to rejoice even in the struggle because we find peace in God's faithfulness. We're able to see grace in it all, and we know that God wins.

Hope you have a great week and we'll continue on next week with our walk through Philippians, exploring how to be a community of grace and peace. Have a great week.