I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ.
--Philippians 1:12-13
Problems, pressures, and pain really can produce possibilities and opportunities in our lives. While we often can’t see it at the time, God is always creatively and constructively at work in the life of the believer.
For example, Paul wrote two-thirds of the New Testament in a jail cell! Paul was a proactive missionary…one who traveled throughout the ancient world proclaiming the Good News. Yet God allowed him to go to prison.
And there in prison, the great apostle, the great missionary heard from God and recorded these great passages of Scripture that describe the Christian life and the Christian faith. It was because of his prison experience that Paul said, “What has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel.” Paul was able to see the big picture beyond the pain of his circumstances. He was able to look and see the possibilities of the future.
God’s light shines so brightly in the darkness! And I dare say, if you surveyed your circle of friends, most of them would say the most defining moments in their lives would be times of adversity, times of trouble, and tests of character.
Because it’s during these times that you experience the presence of God and the reality of His love!
Today, I challenge you to start thinking about your troubles in a new light. Instead of seeing them as negatives, thank God that He’s working in your life!
And remember Paul’s promise in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18: “For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
God is always creatively and constructively at work in the life of the believer.
by Dr. Paul Chappell
“So that servant came, and shewed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.”
Luke 14:21–23
On Sunday night, October 8, 1871, D. L. Moody was preaching at his church in Chicago on the topic, “What Shall I Do with Jesus?” At the conclusion of the sermon, he told the large crowd to take the text home and think it over. The following week he announced that he would preach on the cross, and ask them to answer the question. But that night the Great Chicago Fire swept across the city, destroying thousands of buildings, including Moody’s church, and leaving some three hundred people dead.
“I have never since dared,” Moody later said, “to give an audience a week to think of their salvation. If they were lost they might rise up, in judgment against me. I have never seen that congregation since. But I want to tell you of one lesson that I learned that night which I have never forgotten, and that is, when I preach, to press Christ upon the people then and there and try to bring them to a decision on the spot. I would rather have that right hand cut off than to give an audience a week now to decide what to do with Jesus.”
Salvation is literally a matter of life and death—eternal life and death—and our presentation of the gospel to others should reflect that. It should be a matter of greatest urgency.
Today’s Growth Principle:
If we realize the certainty of Heaven and Hell, there is no room for casual witnessing to the lost.
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