Re:Verse passage – Philippians 1:20-26 (day five).
“Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy in the faith,”.
Are you sometimes leery when people offer to help you “make progress”? It usually means work and learning are ahead. Is there an agenda in their mind? What am I doing wrong? What am I not doing right? On its own and by itself, progress is hard work, exhausting, and sometimes painful. But, if progress is combined with joy, it changes the equation all together. Yes, there is still difficulty. Yes, there is still struggle. Yes, there is still hard work to be done. Yet, when the facet of joy is added, the experience of making progress is life-changing and life-giving. That’s what Paul has in mind, life-changing and life-giving exhortation and ministry with the Philippians. There is hard work (progress) to be done 1:6. But God gives joy along with the work of progress.
“These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.” John 15:11 .
Lord, give us grace as joy, that we would make progress in the faith!!
Thanks for these reminders, Scott! In his commentary on 1 Thessalonians 1, William Barclay wrote, “There is the labour which is prompted by love. Bernard Newman tells how once he stayed in a Bulgarian peasant’s house. All the time he was there the daughter was stitching away at a dress. He said to her, ‘Don’t you ever get tired of that eternal sewing?’ ‘O no!’ she said, ‘you see, this is my wedding dress.’ Work done for love always has a glory.” (And joy!)