A message from jail

I know a man who fell asleep at the wheel of his car. The resulting crash was a fender bender and no one was hurt, but he was horrified. He would lose his job if he lost his driver’s license. He spent the night of the accident at his kitchen table agonizing over the scenarios, which grew darker and darker as he brooded.

Do not be anxious about anything. (Phil 4:6)

I know another man who did lose his job. His company laid off the non-essential employees, which stung by itself. Then he spent a year searching for a job in his field before branching out to other job possibilities. He spent many nights hunkered over his desk trying to balance a checkbook and battle the looming depression.

Rejoice in the Lord always. (Phil 4:4)

I know a woman who knowingly delivered a dying baby girl and then, in the complications of the birth, also lost any chance to ever bear another child. Her grief was magnified by the double loss.

Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. (Phil 4:5)

Sometimes these words in Philippians seem like empty platitudes. Surely Paul wrote those words from some cushy place as an honored high official in the early church. What did he know about pain and worry?

For starters, Paul wrote those words while sitting in a Roman prison. I don’t imagine they had air conditioning and indoor plumbing in the first century. Paul recounts his adventures in his letters. He was stoned, flogged, arrested, shipwrecked, left for dead, mocked, threatened with death.

We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. (2 Cor 1:8)

Imagine the loneliness of the jail cell, abandoned by most of your friends. Imagine the fear of wearing chains on a storm-battered ship. Imagine the pain of a flogging, the agony of friends hating your very words.

Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. (2Cor 1:9)

Paul’s words of encouragement didn’t come from the ivory tower. He knew danger and grief and fear.

I am in chains for Christ. (Phil 1:13)

Notice his focus. It was not on himself but on Jesus. He feared nothing. He even understood the reason for his difficulties.

But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. (2 Cor. 1:9)

The agonies of this life will either drive us to our own resources or drive us to God’s resources. Difficulties reveal where we have made our stand. Challenges show what we rely on.

"Worrying means we do not believe that God can look after the practical details of our lives, and it is never anything but those details that worry us. Have you ever noticed what Jesus said would choke the Word He puts in us? "The cares of this world" …We say, "I will not trust when I cannot see"— and that is where unbelief begins."

Oswald Chambers

My Utmost for His Highest