This talk is the fourth in a series I gave on the book of Philippians this past summer. To listen to it, click Below:

Content in Christ – 3 Promises – Peace, Power, Provision

Have you ever been through something really grim and been ‘comforted’ by someone who clearly hasn’t got a clue what they’re talking about? They haven’t been through what you’re experiencing, so it rings hollow and you actually just want to tell them where to go! But when someone listens deeply and you know they ‘get’ it, you really listen to them.

I listen to Paul because he’s living the reality of a costly authentic gospel, isn’t he? So when he talks about having peace with all the stuff that he’s gone through, I’m going to listen to him. 

This was true of Bonhoeffer – one of my heroes of the faith – when he wrote: “When Christ calls a man/woman, he bids them come and die.” That’s not a soft sell, is it? But why listen to him? Because he left the cushiness of exile in America to go back to Nazi Germany. He was part of the plot to assassinate Hitler. And in the end – sadly for us – he was executed just a few months before the end of the Second World War. Yet at the last, to his Nazi executioners who were about to kill him, he said, “For you this is the end, but for me it is the beginning.”

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