Philippians 4:10-20 I want to say something more about this verse – it has too much meaning to only write about it once or twice. It would make life so much easier if we could really understand it and integrate it fully into our being. 13Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it […]
Read morePhilippians 4:10-20 A friend of mine did not agree with the previous message. It made it seem as if Jesus is a quick fix. As if Jesus waves his magic wand and voila! All our problems disappear. No, this is not what Paul and our Christianity stand for. We’ve all experienced too much to ever […]
Read morePhilippians 4:10-20 One thing that realy irritates me is when I sit down on the couch, pick up the remote to switch on the TV, and nothing happens when I press the buttons. Usually I then push them even harder, as if I want to push them right through the remote, but nothing happens …. […]
Read morePhilippians 4:10-20 Paul has experienced both sides of life. He has done this so often that it was actually too much. However, he also had too little, actually nothing: 12I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. For many of us this sounds quite familiar. Especially about suffering hardship […]
Read morePhilippians 4:10 Paul is in jail and the congregation he is writing to has sent him a present. He is so grateful: 10I’m glad in God, far happier than you would ever guess—happy that you’re again showing such strong concern for me. Not that you ever quit praying and thinking about me. You just had […]
Read morePhilippians 4:1-9 Wow, we’ve spent some time discussing worrying and God, but there’s more. This is good, because I think most of us, if not all of us, are flattened by worrying now and then. We do not succeed in sidestepping the stress that the world throws at us. We have to get to the […]
Read moreIt’s Monday morning. I wake long before 5 o’clock. My stomach is churning and I worry about the three months ahead. I have so many irons in the fire. I’m afraid that things won’t work out as we had planned. I’m worried that the finances aren’t going to work out. I’m afraid of failing. Have […]
Read morePhilippians 4:1-9 The first sentence in Scott Peck’s book, The Road less Traveled, is: Life is difficult. That’s all. Life is difficult. Only three words, but still telling a story. Our story. Yes, all of us can write books about our own hardship stories: It’s month-end and I don’t have money to pay my assistant’s […]
Read morePhilippians 4:1-9 At a school function I was talking to business man who had gone through hard times in the past year. Others had almost stolen his business from under him. He knows about hardship. He knows about people you have trusted with your whole life who kick you in the stomach. He knows about […]
Read morePhilippians 4:1-9 Gerrie wrote anxiously: What do you do facing this mountain of debt of the relatively new business, comprising all your dreams (and money)? I hang on, stand on hope, believe that everything will improve, that my breakthrough will come, but then reality hits me with the arrival of the legal demands. I get […]
Read more