7. The Power of Joy In The Prison Of Pain in Philippians (part6)

Someone has said “Don’t let people drive you crazy when you know it’s in walking distance.”  There’s a bazillion things that can shatter our confidence or demolish our feel that things are not going to work out for the best.  Surging, irritating, outwardly relentless problems can drive us from the banks of success into the sea of failure. 

David Brinkley wrote
“A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at them. 

Confidence is turning our back on looking at ourselves through others eyes.  It’s refusing to judge ourselves on what others say about us or how we feel they see us.  Confidence is looking strait through God’s eyes by a developing faith and relaxing rest in all He’s made us in Christ.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t pain in the weirdness of our interactions and social environment, but within these hurts there’s joy in the Lord.

Our joy is this confidence, not in ourselves, not in others, but in our God.  Confidence is faith.  To others, and to us often, faith appears intangible, unseen, imperceptible and often vague.  But God is unlimited and unrestricted so we prayer to God to undertake for us and through us in what may appear impossible.  This is how we embrace this confidence of faith.

When we get all hung up on our self, then faith becomes terminal.  And when faith ceases to prompt us to pray and confidence refuses to confide in Christ, then we sink and feel beat up by all our faults, hurts and insecurities.  The Lord has asked us out into the impossible, the sometimes intolerable and often the incredibly unreasonable.       

Prayers Position Phil. 1:6

 Regarding Others

Pray Confidently    Being confident of this very thing,

Pray Competently that he which hath begun a good work in you

Pray Completely     will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ

We’re capable, not in our self but in the Lord.  His hand is on us.  We’re confident in “this very thing” as we learn more and more to look too Him and see His touches all around us.

The Psalmist spoke out of these traces; these brush strokes of God that are too open our eyes and cause us too marvel in His creation and wonder in our daily circumstances from morning to evening.  Even in our climate we see our Lord pouring out His love by refreshing us, filling us with His resources and designing our intrinsic requirements.  He renews us, repairs us and relaxes us with His reactions, His reaping and His remedies.

We can at times feel surrounded by gigantic problems and gargantuan pressures.  These issues are to move us from self-confidence to faith confidence in God.

Joshua and Caleb came back from spying on the promised real estate with the ten spies they’d dispatched with.  They went in to snoop it out, even though God had promised it to them.  The giant challenges shattered the confidence of the ten, but secured the confidence of Joshua and Caleb.  The ten were fixated on the problems and became obsessed with exaggerations and neurotic with fear.  Joshua and Caleb pleaded with the Israeli’s in Numbers 14:8 saying:

If the Lord delight in us, then He will bring us into this Land and give it to us.

This is not the “if” of possibility but the “if” of probability.  It could be rendered since the Lord delights in us.  The Lord does delight in us, He finds His pleasure in us and we are His joy because we’ve opened our heart to Jesus.

We’re not grasshoppers in the face of giants.  We’re not meager, miserable, inadequate insects in the shadow of hateful hulks.  The fact that terrorists surround us and are committed to our total destruction is not to be our focus of despair or mania of obsession. 

David writes in Psalms 3:6  

I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people that have organized against me, and that surround me at my every move.         

PSALMS 65:6-13

GOD HEARS AND HE ANSWERS IN CREATION V.6-7

GOD HEARS AND HE ANSWERS IN CIRCUMSTANCES V.8

  HIS POSITIONS FROM POST TO POST

ARE PLEASURABLE

FROM EAST (SUNRISE) You make the outgoings of the morning

FROM WEST (SUNSET)  and evening to rejoice.

GOD HEARS AND HE ANSWERS IN CLIMATE V.9-13

  HIS VISITS BRING BLESSING You visit the earth,

REFRESHMENT                and water it:

RESOURCES                   You greatly enrich it with the river of

God, which is full of water:

REQUIREMENTS            You prepare our corn, when

You have so provided for it.

     RENEWAL V.10            You water the ridges abundantly:

REPAIR                        You settle the furrows thereof:

RELAXING                      You make it soft with showers:

REACTING                      You bless the springing

REAPING V.11              You crown the year with Your goodness

REMEDIES                    and Your paths drop fatness.

REVIVAL V.12              They drop upon the pastures of the

wilderness:

REJOICING                  and the little hills rejoice on every side.

 RESPONSE V.13           The pastures are clothed with flocks;

the valleys also are covered over with

corn; they shout for joy, they also sing

Prayers Pressure  Philippians 1:7

Pray Concerned  Even as its right for me to think this of you all

Pray Compassionately BecauseI have you in my heart

Pray Committed         inasmuch as both in my bonds

Prayer Participation

  Pray Convincingly

Endorse                  and in the defense

Encourage               and confirmation of the gospel,

Embrace                 you all are partakers of my grace.

 Prayers Passion v.8

A Stable Fact            For God is my record,

A Sincere Fixation        how greatly I long after you all

A Sensitive Feeling     in the bowels of Jesus Christ

Prayers Petitions v.9-11

Increased Love v.9    and this I pray, that your Love may

abound yet more and more

Improved Learning

Comprehension       in knowledge

Capacity                and in all judgment;

Insightful Living v.10

Approval                   That ye may approve

Advisability             things that are excellent;

Indisputable Legitimacy

Sincere               that ye may be sincere

Sensitive             and without offence till the day of Christ

Imbued Light v.11

Controlled              Being filled with the fruits of righteousness

Christ like               which are by Jesus Christ,

Commendable       unto the glory and praise of God.