Philippians 1:3-6 GOD’S WORD Translation
Paul’s Prayer for the Philippians
3 I thank my God for all the memories I have of you. 4 Every time I pray for all of you, I do it with joy. 5 I can do this because of the partnership we’ve had with you in the Good News from the first day ⌞you believed⌟ until now. 6 I’m convinced that God, who began this good work in you, will carry it through to completion on the day of Christ Jesus.
The Word of God for the Children of God.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
The poet John Donne wrote,
“No man is an island, entire of itself.” (John Donne, Meditation XVII).
What that expresses poetically is what we feel intuitively: we are not as good alone as we are with one another.
There is a very sound reason that the most dreaded punishment in a prison is placement into solitary confinement: no one wants to be alone all the time.
Community is important to us.
We want a place where we belong.
We all want a group that we can call our own.
We want to be part of something bigger than ourselves.
We want to know that there are people who care for us.
We want to know that there are people who we can care for, too.
That was part of the genius of the early church: they came together, gathered and bonded together into a community.
Many of these early Christians were slaves.
Many of them had no community to belong to at all—not even a family to call their own – they had no one to love them -they had no one to care about them.
And along came the Apostle Paul and other early missionaries preaching the good news that God loves them, and that someone named Jesus died to save them, and they can be born again and they can believe, can join God’s family!
Such a radically different message, And they grabbed hold of that message with fervor, because they finally saw God’s family as something worth belonging to.
It gave their meaningless lives purpose – it gave their hopeless existence hope.
And it works the same way today – or at least it can work the same way today.
You’ve heard me say this before:
“The Church of Christ, when it is functioning properly, is the hope of the world.”
It is in the church that darkness gives way to the light, the lost have the gospel preached to them, that sinners are saved, and that mercy, forgiveness is found.
It is in the community of the church that we all discover God’s plan for our lives.
It is in the community of the church we find our lives’ true purpose, meaning.
And it is in the church that we experience a family to belong to—a community that is bigger than we are, that we can be supported and loved and encouraged and inspired by, and that we can truly support and love and empower as well.
Even with the impossible to describe problems and the imperfections that we humans bring into it, the Church of Christ remains the one hope of the world.
It was to such a church that the Apostle Paul wrote the Letter to the Philippians, and spoke fervently of all the joy that was theirs because they belonged to Jesus.
Thanks Be To God, Our Creator For All Of The People
Philippians 1:3-6 New Living Translation
Paul’s Thanksgiving and Prayer
3 Every time I think of you, I give thanks to my God. 4 Whenever I pray, I make my requests for all of you with joy, 5 for you have been my partners in spreading the Good News about Christ from the time you first heard it until now. 6 And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.
Thanksgiving season is once again here and among us and now, across our country, and indeed, across the globe, laity and pastors will preach sermons, teaching and pointing out the need for Christ-followers to be thankful people.
As both a husband, a brother, step father, grandfather, laity, a blogger and a pastor, I have made impassioned pleas for Christ-followers to rise above the ingratitude of our culture… to resist the temptation for the holiday season to become simply another opportunity for us to be self-focused, self-indulgent.
Thanksgiving isn’t just about eating to the brink of explosion; shopping to the brink of bankruptcy; the internet, watching television to the brink of insanity.
I have always tried to make the point that Thanksgiving for a person who loves God, then loves their neighbor, can be so much more before their love of self.
Even so, I have discovered in my own life that despite what I’ve preached, I have so often carelessly missed that one crucial element in the process of my being a thankful follower of my Savior Jesus in my own life – being grateful for people.
I found that over the years I have been mostly thankful for the THINGS in my life; for food, finances, the house I have lived in, clothes I have worn, and so on.
While there’s nothing wrong with being thankful to God for these things, I have that I have too often missed owning that one boat on giving my thanks unto my God, who is my Creator for the biggest blessings of my God in my life… PEOPLE.
Consider how empty, purposeless, and meaningless our lives would be without relationships -relationships have shaped who we are and who we are becoming.
Without exception, everyone I know has in one way shape and form, at some point in their life, they have all been positively influenced by other people.
While it is easy to thank God for the THINGS in our lives, we should remember to be equally thankful for the host of PEOPLE God has placed in our lives as well!
Let me give you just one example.
I am thankful for my childhood friend Chuck.
When I was a child, we would do all the things with me my father could not do and worked with me for countless hours teaching me how to use tools, operate light like chainsaws then learning to cut down trees and sledge hammers, wood splitters and heavy equipment such as tractors and brush hogs for mowing the tall and heavy grass of my fathers 40 acres of country place, and how to fish, how to just get started early in the day, be grateful for the day and get to work.
He was the only one in my young life who had befriended me unconditionally.
We would sit in the woods for hours -it was his love for the independence of country life that infected my soul for the rest of my life. I thank God for her!
How about you?
Who do you thank God for?
Today, take a few moments and thank God for the relationships in your life.
Truthfully, it can radicalize and revolutionize your life. Happy Thanksgiving!
GIVE ALL THANKS TO GOD AND INTENTIONALLY GO DEEPER WITH GOD:
1. This thanksgiving and Christmas season, make a list of the people who have shaped your life. Share the list with your community of friends and of family.
2. Explore and discover how easy is it to just thank God for things in your life!
3. Discover how you too can live a lifestyle of thankfulness more consistently?
In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,
Let us Pray,
Psalm 100 New Living Translation
Psalm 100
A psalm of thanksgiving.
1 Shout with joy to the Lord, all the earth!
2 Worship the Lord with gladness.
Come before him, singing with joy.
3 Acknowledge that the Lord is God!
He made us, and we are his.[a]
We are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving;
go into his courts with praise.
Give thanks to him and praise his name.
5 For the Lord is good.
His unfailing love continues forever,
and his faithfulness continues to each generation.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
Loving God, Living God, Loving Hope, Living Hope, Loving Living Life His Way! "Many things are possible for the person who has hope. Even more is possible for the person who has faith. And still more is possible for the person who knows how to love. But everything is possible for the person who practices all three virtues." - Brother Lawrence (1605-1691), Practicing the Presence of God (1692). 