TEARS OF JOY

. . . always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now.  For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus (Philippians 1:4-6).

I'm working on the 2nd in a series of sermons from the book of Philippians.  In the first, I pointed out that the Church, and individual Christians, are out-posts of Heaven.  Like the city of Philippi was an out-post of Rome, committed to Roman law, culture and defense, so the Church, and its members, are committed to Jesus Christ, his law, his culture and his defense--For our citizenship is in heaven . . . (3:20).

The 2nd in the series, I am looking at joy as the theme.  How are we able to be joyful in the face of adversity?  The culture of Christ is not one of "gloom and doom" in times of adversity and trials, but of optimism and joy.  I will freely admit that there are times when the trials come that we are "misty optics" rather than "optimistics" as we look at life through a vale of tears.  In a recent Christian Counseling Today I read an article written by Gary Oliver called, Lessons Learned from the Doorstep of Death.  In it he chronicled the deaths of his dad, wife, son, sister and his own personal battle with cancer.  As a result of his tribulations, Dr. Oliver shares this wisdom, I have discovered there is a big difference between surviving and thriving and know Christ did not die and rise again for us to merely survive. Just treading water is not what He meant by "becoming more than conquerors." (emphasis is mine)

In faith we draw on a resevoir of Divine grace, hope and fellowship so that we can live out our days, until His return, with joy.  The Christian does not deny the pain of tribulation in his life, but, while acknowledging it, chooses to be joyful because Christ is working in us and he will keep his promises.

Our Father's Love,
Tom