Joyful Prayer (Philippians 1:3-8)

Established by the Apostle Paul, Silas, Timothy, and Luke and the deep relational bond that formed between those believers in Philippi and Paul and how that bond persisted throughout Paul's missionary journeys all the way to the point of his Roman imprisonment when he writes the letter back to the church at Philippi that we're going to be looking at today.

And we also took some time last week to develop our understanding of what Paul's prayer life looked like, and we only tasted just a small amount of it. I know I read to you a ton of Paul's scripture passages that relate to prayer, but trust me, there were twice as much, if not three times as much, that I had to leave out for the sake of time.

Paul was a prolific prayer. It was just no shortage of it. It just overflowed out of the man, and it was one of our delights just to see what were his priorities, what drove him to pray, what motivated him to be so faithful in it, and to not just pray a little bit but to continue progressing forward in his prayer life.

It got deeper, it got broader, he encompassed more and more people the longer he lived in his prayer life, and that's what we're after. And it was just so encouraging for me personally to hear throughout the week from you how many of you had been praying more as the Holy Spirit started the process of applying this word to your prayer life, and just how much joy that brought you, and that will continue to bring this whole body as we all start to benefit from the ramp up of our prayer lives.

Now, I know in a group this size that I'm talking to some people who have already been consistently, faithfully exercising prayer for years. In fact, this is not the first time that you've been encouraged to pray.

You've probably been encouraged to pray many times before, and you've been faithfully obeying. I love the analogy that Jeff brought to us last week as he preached of the baton pass. You remember that if you were here?

He had talked about those who hold the baton are entrusting what they've learned to the next generation. And when my wife Jessica and I used to teach high school Sunday school class more than a decade ago, one of our favorite things to do was to take the high schoolers to visit some of the senior members of the church.

It was just fantastic because when you have a chance to hear from somebody who has been walking with God for decades of life, the wisdom and the joy and the love for Christ and his body and the work that he's doing just pours out of that person.

And a young teenager who's just getting started in the race, right? Somebody has just handed them the baton, right? They just started walking with Christ, and they're just encountering the early stages of that.

If you hand them that baton and say, run, imagine how much farther ahead they are by the time they get to that senior level of life. Some of you this morning are at the beginning. You have just started praying, and I'm encouraged by that too because I know that God will use it to strengthen you personally and this entire body as we grow in sanctification in Jesus Christ through the power of the Spirit by his word together.

As we begin this morning, I want you to consider a question. What are some of the things in life that bring you the most joy? For me, that list is long, so I just had to select a couple of key ones, but having a cup of coffee with my beautiful bride in the mornings, amazing level of joy.

Taking a bike ride on a sunny day with my daughter, fantastic amount of joy. Having a big celebratory feast with my entire clan, oh my gosh, the level of joy there is unparalleled. Singing the song, Come Praise and Glorify with believers in a large congregation, unbelievable joy.

I cannot wait to sing in the kingdom with as many believers as we can pack into one space together. Where does praying for others rank on your list of things that bring you joy? It's an important question, and if we're honest, we don't always find as much joy in prayer as in general, and specifically praying for others is not always the area that brings us the most joy in life.

In fact, we might be more likely to classify prayer of that type as a little more duty than it is delight, right? It's a mixture, but is it more duty or more delight for you? Now, I know that God can change that, and I'm confident that learning to pray for others can, and it will, unlock some of the greatest, most heartfelt joy possible, and that God wants us to share in His joy, the joy that He has when He sees saved sinners walking by faith through grace, walking in grace through faith, and obeying Him and praying for each other.

That's His joy pouring out in your lives. So the title of our lesson today is Joyful Prayer, and I want you to open your Bibles to the book of Philippians, chapter 1, verse 3. We're going to be looking at verses 3 through 8 today, so those of you who loved the Bible drill last week and were just loving flipping pages, today is not your week.

You're going to have to stay in one text, but for those of you who like that, man, this is your week. Philippians 1, verse 3, and we're going to look at this morning seven characteristics of Paul's prayer pattern so that we can cultivate true joy by praying for others.

Again, very simple, very straightforward, seven things that Paul did really well in his prayer life, seven characteristics of his prayer life, so that we, too, can pray like him and cultivate this true joy.

Now, I'm going to read this passage in a second, but I'm going to tell you this is one of my favorite passages because this just bleeds Paul's affection, joy, and love for this body. This is an amazing passage of Scripture.

Let's read it together. Chapter 1, verse 3 says, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, 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. For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all because I have you in my heart, since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of grace with me.

For God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. Isn't that an amazing prayer? I love it. And just a quickly review from last week so we catch the flow of this. Paul, Silas, Timothy, and Luke established this church on their second missionary journey, right?

The first church in Europe. And Paul writes to this church after having left there and then traveled throughout Greece and Macedonia and Corinth and so forth, gone back to Antioch, finished the second missionary journey, gone on his third missionary journey, come back, and on the way back through, right, he stopped in Philippi on his third missionary journey.

Then he went back to Jerusalem, got imprisoned, a trip to Rome. He ends up in Rome in prison in his first imprisonment. And now he writes this letter and asks Timothy and Epaphroditus to carry his words back to the church at Philippi, Epaphroditus likely having been sent out of Philippi with a financial support for Paul in prison.

And so Paul's writing back to this church. And this is one of Paul's most personal letters. If you count the pronouns, I, me, and my, he uses them over a hundred times in just this four chapter little epistle.

It's just saturated with personal expressions of love, joy, thankfulness, affection, appreciation, striving together for the same things. Paul loved the church at Philippi. And what's more amazing to me than that is they loved him.

Remember, he spent so little time with them, right? Maybe just a couple of months, if you folded it all up, right? But they loved him so much and he in turn expresses that joy and love for them. So the first characteristic that we're going to see this morning, as we look at verse three, starts right there at the beginning.

It's thankfulness. Verse three says, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you. Now the Greek word for thank here is in a present, active, indicative tense, which just simply tells us that it means it's a continuous action.

I am always thanking you is a better way to think of it. I am currently thankful for you. Thankful for you, not thanking you. God is being thanked here and Paul is expressing his thankfulness to God for this group of believers here.

Paul was continuously thankful for them. If you look at that word, remembrance, it's a recollection and it actually has the notion of mentioning it, saying it out loud. When you remember somebody, you say, you remember that guy or that gal?

I can think of a man in my life who challenged me to pray. As I remember him, as I put my mind to that, I think about that, I'm extremely thankful to that man for how he taught me to deepen my prayer life.

Remembrance is an active process. It's a mental engagement. It's not just an ethereal notion of, I remember there's a ton of people at that church back in Philippi. What were their names? No. Paul was very specific here.

He's reciting it to himself. He's basically saying, I thank my God in all of my active remembrance of all of you. And what is he thankful for? He says, I'm always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all in view of, verse five, your, this is the word participation, the Greek word koinonia, which if you've been in church for a while, you've probably heard and thought about this word before.

It's deep. It's rich. Participation, fellowship, sharing, active engagement together. And this is the word for me that really defines this church at Philippi. This was a church that actively fellowshiped with Paul and with one another.

And Paul was supremely thankful for that. So what is fellowship? Well, we could spend the entire morning this morning going through this, and we're not going to have time to do that, but it's fellowship that starts where?

Look at your texts, right? Participation, verse five, in the gospel. It starts in the reality that we are in Christ Jesus by his grace through faith, right? And therefore fellowship starts with God and the perfect fellowship that exists between the father, the son, and the spirit and has existed from eternity past and will exist forever, right?

God has brought us into that fellowship by rescuing us out of sin, out of rebellion, out of alienation, and joined us together into this union with Jesus Christ, a perfect fellowship with his son. And then he places us in faith union with a whole bunch of other people.

Some of whom we might not have chosen to be in faith union with, but that's not our choice. That's God's choice, and he chose it, and therefore it's wonderful. So fellowship then becomes the expression of this unity every single day.

Not every week. We see each other on Sunday mornings, but if seeing each other on Sunday mornings is all the fellowship you have with one another, is that sufficient? No way. So how are you going to have fellowship with this body at large if you only see each other once a week?

Well, you could try to be actively involved in each other's lives throughout the week, and depending on how far away you live and what your work schedule looks like and how much time you have for extracurriculars, you might be able to add in a little bit of extra face time with one another.

But my suggestion for you is that the most effective way to fellowship with one another every single day of the week is, you guessed it, pray for one another. Paul was thankful to God for the Philippian church.

If you look back at your text, he said participation in the gospel from the first day until now. Well, that means that when he started, right, from that first day that he spent time with the Philippian church, he had enjoyed fellowship and participation and sharing with them in the gospel.

Well, let's just briefly remind ourselves, right, how did that happen? Well, he left the church at Philippi after he and the magistrates had that disagreement over their beating him, right, and he went to Thessalonica.

And what happened? Immediately the church at Philippi said, all right, let's gather up some money and let's send it to Thessalonica. Ninety-six miles away, right? It wasn't like they just went from Sandpoint to Sagal, right?

Ninety-six miles away, they had to send someone to take a financial gift to Paul at Thessalonica. And we know it continued from there, right? We know when he was in Corinth, right, the people brought financial support for him in Corinth, that's Acts 18.

Then when Paul's in prison in Rome, they sent Epaphroditus, one of their best men, somewhere between 700 to 1200 miles, depending on the route that you take to get from Philippi to Rome, right? And Epaphroditus is sick, he almost doesn't make it, right?

If you read the best of the book of Philippians, like I asked you to this week, you're already telling me this truth, right, that Paul and the Philippian church just continued to participate together in this active support of his gospel ministry.

So, thankfulness is the key that we're looking at here. Paul was thankful for how much God had done and was continuing to do in the lives of the people at the church of Philippi. Do you take time personally to remember and recite out loud to yourself how God has been faithful to you and others in the past?

Do you encourage others by sharing with them your thanksgiving to God for his work in their lives? Do you look at a person and say, Rick, I am thankful to God for how faithful he has been to you for the past several years in your life?

Do you encourage other people that way? I know it's not in the book of Philippians, but I can't resist here. We were reading in Acts 4, it's part of my family Bible reading yesterday, and in Acts 4 .36, it says, Now Joseph, a Levite of Cyprian birth, who was also called Barnabas by the apostles, which translated means son of encouragement.

So, you realize his name wasn't Barnabas. That was his nickname. And what was his nickname? Son of encouragement. Well, why would his nickname be son of encouragement? Well, he was an encouraging guy.

Are you encouraging others by being thankful to God for them? Now, I want you to also think, what are some of the opposites of thankfulness? Some of you English people in the room who love dictionaries and thesauruses, you're like, oh man, I can give you a list of 15 different antonyms for thankfulness.

I only came up with about six of them. Ungrateful, resentful, displeased, disgruntled, discontent. So, are you thankful or are you one of those? Do you ever have to fight to be thankful to God for the people that he has placed in your life?

Is that an active engagement to say, oh, I really, I need your help, God. I need to be thankful for this individual in my life. Do you ever struggle to be thankful to God for the difficulties and the challenges that he places before you and others?

I needed to be thankful for a difficulty he brought in my life and my wife came alongside of me and spoke truth to my heart this week because I was struggling to be thankful for a difficulty. Do you practice consistent thankfulness for what he has done in the past and what he's continuing to do for you in the present and the future?

Our first characteristic of Paul's prayer life is that he was thankful. Second, look back with me, verse four, Paul was thankful and he was consistent. Verse four, 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.

Always at all times. Now, we talked about this briefly last week, but I'm just going to remind you if you don't, if you didn't remember it, if you weren't here, Paul was not superhuman. He could not pray 24 -7.

He had a lot of work that needed to be done in context. So we don't look at it always and say, well, that's Paul just being hyperbolic. He's just raising the bar so high that nobody can ever get there.

No, I don't think that Paul is raising the bar so high that we cannot follow his example. I think he's saying you need to be consistent. You need to have a pattern of prayer life that means that you are consistently actively engaging in prayer and thankfulness for others.

When he says offering in every prayer, offering prayer for you, this is a constant activity in the Greek. It's a duration that doesn't end. It doesn't have a finite ending point. So Paul is developing this pattern of prayer life that we saw last week.

When we looked at his prayer life, it was consistent. Every time Paul mentions prayer in all of those epistles, there's this consistency that's underlying it. Now, I want you to just stop and think. This is 8060 approximately.

So think about how many different churches and groups of people Paul had prayed for by this time in his ministry. There are believers in, I'm just going to list these cities, Tarsus, Jerusalem, Antioch, Salamis, Paphos, the whole island of Cyprus, Perga, Pamphylia, the city in Antioch, Iconium, Lyconia, Lystra, Derbe, Troas, Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, Laodicea, Colossae, Miletus, Rome.

And there's probably more that I don't even know because it's not recorded for us in the book of Acts or in Paul's epistles. Paul knew hundreds, if not thousands of believers, and yet he was consistently actively making time to pray for them.

Why? It was one of his highest priorities in life. How do you know when something is a priority? Pretty simple. When you make time for it. Now, can any of us make time? Dave Rich loves to say, everybody has the same amount of time.

It's all in how we use it. So, when you guard the time that you set aside for something, when you sacrifice something else to make time for it, when you preserve it at all costs, that's when it's a priority.

Paul made time for prayer. So, I'm pointing the fingers back at me just as much as I'm pointing it at you. Remember, my goal is not to guilt you into praying. If you walk away determined to pray next week because you feel guilty, I've not succeeded.

I want to inspire you to pray because the joy that is set before you is so much greater than not praying. But what change do you need to make to allow you time to pray for others? Do you need to get up 15 minutes earlier?

Can you do that? It's 15 minutes earlier. Do you need to decrease your time on Facebook, Instagram, any other social media in general by 15 minutes a day? Can you find 15 minutes of social media to cut out?

Do you need to cut out any other non-essential reading about your fill-in-the-blank favorite sports team, researching your favorite YouTube channel? 15 minutes. Can you cut 15 minutes? Can you make your first priority 15 minutes?

So, first, we see that Paul prayed with thankfulness. Second, he prayed consistently. And third, we're going to see that he prayed joyfully. Look back, verse 4. It's so fast and so quick, but it goes by so clearly.

Always offering prayer with joy. I invite every prayer for you all. Now, remember, Paul and Silas had the opportunity to experience discouragement in the context of life in Philippi. They were imprisoned falsely.

They were beaten. And we saw what happened, right? They, at midnight, were singing hymns, praying, praising God. And I talked about it last week. I aspire to that level of joy in the midst of trials. But it's not just that, right?

You can look at Paul's missionary journey, and you know how much opportunity he had to experience difficulty, discouragement. But Paul was steadfastly joyful, independent of his circumstances. The very reality that he's sitting in prison right now, writing back to this church in Philippi, expressing his joy, overflowing, amazing, confident, affectionate joy that God is working.

God will work in and through his life. And if he dies, amazing. I'm going to go be with Christ. If not, it's far better. I'm going to continue working for Christ. Paul did not derive joy from his circumstances.

Paul's circumstances continued to impel him forward into the further joy that he had by virtue of his relationship with Jesus Christ and the people he was praying for. I don't want to miss that. The joy doesn't come just from knowing God.

That would be great, but God makes it better. God placed Paul in context with a bunch of other believers, some of whom were really amazing people. Timothy, Epaphroditus, etc. Some of whom need a little bit of work.

Iodia, Syntyche, later on here in Philippines, we're going to read about people who are a little more problematic for Phil. The Corinthian church, the Galatian churches. We know there were other people in Paul's life that needed a lot of sanctification, if you know what I mean.

Okay, but Paul's joy just pours out of him. So where does joy come from? Well, it comes from the gospel, right? With joy in my every prayer for you all in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now.

Joy comes from knowing that you are loved, you are saved by grace, you're cared for, and you're in a right relationship with the perfect, loving, holy God who created you and who has an amazing purpose designed for your life.

That's what you need to be joyful. What wars against joy in prayer? Pessimism. I'm just not an optimistic kind of guy. I see the glass is half empty. It's who I am. Insufficient rest can war against joy.

When you're praying and you're not as well-rested as you should be, it can be hard work to be joyful. Selfishness and self-centeredness can absolutely get in the way of being joyful, especially when you're praying for other people who may not even know that you're praying for them, may not deserve your prayers that morning.

There can be hurt feelings, critical spirit, discouragement, disappointments. Maybe you've been praying for something for many years and it hasn't come to pass. Maybe you've been praying for a difficult situation in life and God has not answered the prayer the way that you had hoped.

Was Paul immune supernaturally to these barriers? They're our problem. They weren't his problem. No. Paul knew how to fight them, right? There's no excuse like, well, if I don't feel joyful, then I shouldn't even try to pray.

Romans 12 .12 says, rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer. Paul's admonition to the Church of Rome was persevere in tribulation and be devoted to prayer and rejoice, right? God is at work, even in your tribulations.

Luke 18 verse 1, the words of Jesus himself. He says, now he was telling them a parable to show them that at all times they ought to pray, not to lose heart. If you hear nothing else this morning, hear the words of Jesus, pray at all times and don't give up.

Don't lose heart. John MacArthur says, an infallible test of godly joy is the degree to which a believer prays more earnestly for the benefit and blessing of others than for his own. An infallible test of godly joy is to what degree you will pray to other people and their benefits, their blessings.

Think about the book of Philippians itself, right? Just looking over at chapter 2, Paul says, make my joy complete. Verse 2, by being of the same mind, maintain the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.

Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourselves. The way that Paul's joy was made complete was when other people looked at others and said, you're more important than I am.

Your needs are more important than mine. And I will demonstrate that by how I live with you. So, Paul was thankful, he was consistent, he was joyful. Number four, look back at verse six, Paul was confident.

Verse six says, 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. Confident. That word in the Greek, actually I had an opportunity to do a word study on for the Bible study tools and methods class that we just finished.

And I went into my word study with the expectation that that word would be used throughout the New Testament and it would be translated confident most times. I was wrong. It is translated confident in several spots, mainly here in Philippians, but it's more often translated in the Greek than both in Paul's writings and in the writings of the other New Testament writers as persuaded or convinced.

Which gives you the ability to see that it's something that doesn't come from inside of you. It comes from God persuading you and helping you to be convinced of a truth that you now stand firm on. We like confidence.

We love confident people. We trust them. I go to my mechanic and I am really excited about the reality that he is way more confident at what's going on inside vehicle than I am. I do not have a confidence or an expertise with my vehicle, but I'm sure glad he does.

Paul was a confident man, but what was he persuaded of? What made him so confident and so certain? Look back at verse six. He says, 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.

He was confident in the work of God. He who will perfect you, he will bring it to an end. He will accomplish it. It's done. The work is already done because Jesus Christ has already been dead, buried and raised on the cross.

And he's already planned from eternity past how he's going to finish your work of sanctification. So when I start praying for you, it's not like that's the beginning, right? The work already began a long time ago.

I'm just picking up the baton and I'm praying for you because I know that God will bring it to completion. When? Well, maybe not as soon as I want it to be, right? In the day of Christ. In that day when Christ comes to receive unto himself all of those whom he has died and purchased with his own blood and will finish the glorification process with.

Paul knew that his leadership would be judged in the day of Christ based on the faith of those that had been entrusted to him. And he prayed with confidence that God would bring about the work. So let's ask ourselves, are you confident that God is working through your prayers to accomplish his work?

Or is there a little bit of doubt there? You're like, well, maybe. I mean, I know he listens to that guy. That guy, that's Paul. He's super sanctified. So God listens to him. His prayers are effectual, but mine, I don't really know if God uses them or not.

I don't have much experience here or much evidence so far yet, but I wouldn't classify myself as confident in that. What would persuade you that prayer is a critical part of the sanctification process of those who are here in this body?

What would persuade you that your prayer is critical, not optional, critical to the sanctification process of this body? That if God is going to work to make the people in this room more like Christ, you need to pray.

Well, I'm going to suggest to you that the word of God is what makes me confident of that. Paul is a man. He's preaching the words of God. And he was confident that he was actively involved in the perfection of the people in the church of Philippi until the day of Christ Jesus.

And he was not going to stop until that day was done. So Paul was thankful, consistent, joyful, confident, purposeful. He was looking at sanctification, verse 6. He's going to perfect it when? The day of Christ Jesus.

So this is a work, right? Look at this verse. He says, for I am confident of this very thing that he who began a good work, right? That's salvation past, sanctification present, glorification in the future.

It's God's work and Philippians 2, verse 13 and 14, it's our work, right? Verse 13 of chapter 2 says, for it is God who is at work in you, both the will and to work for his good pleasure. Go back to verse 12.

It says, work out your salvation. We're working because God has worked and is working actively. And this is a prelude advertisement for next week. If you want to understand how to pray for someone's sanctification, come back next week because we're going to be in the next verse, Philippians 1, 9 through 11, which is an amazing passage on Paul's prayer for spiritual sanctification of the life of his believers.

You want to know what to pray for another person, especially if you don't really know them that well and their life circumstances. Philippians 1, 9 through 11 is what you want. Do you think to yourself sometimes that prayer is for other people who are weak in character or more needy?

It's not not as critical for me. Are you attentive to the work of sanctification that God is doing in you and more importantly in the lives of those around you? Or do you live your life with spiritual blinders on, kind of walking around saying, look, I got enough problems right here.

I don't really need to know yours. I mean, I know you got problems, but you got the same Bible as I do. You can go to the same God as I do. You can focus on your problems. I'll focus on mine. Or are you constantly looking around you going, what's going on in his life?

How is God working? How can I be praying for him? Do you tend to allow your questions in conversation with believers to stay on the surface or do you dive deep into spiritual conversation? Ask meaningful questions that lead to meaningful prayer information.

Do you follow up with the people that you're praying for to see how God is working in their lives? Paul was purposeful. He knew what he was praying for and he followed up. Look at the reality that he wrote multiple letters after he had heard back from people to say, hey, what happened?

I was praying for that. Did it change? Did you grow? Did you become more like Christ? What happened? There was a purpose to his prayer life. It wasn't just random prayer. So he was thankful, consistent, joyful, confident, purposeful.

And now, oh my gosh, this is where it gets really rich. Look at verse four and then we'll read all the way down through verse eight. He says, always offering prayer with joy and 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 and you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all because I have you in my heart since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of grace with me for God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

Paul was affectionate. He experienced a great depth of feeling for this church. Now this word feeling is not what you think, right? Feeling in this word is one of the most common words that Paul uses 23 times in all of his writings.

And 10 of them are in the book of Philippians, but it's, it's thinking it's exercising the mind. It's earnest concern. It's to think in a sympathetic concerned fashion, an action that involves both the heart and the mind.

It wasn't just a warm fuzziness. Paul didn't just have a deep kind of, Oh, I really feel good about that. No, he actively thought in a way that was concerned about them and expressed this to them in his joyful prayer and his concern and his spiritual care for this body.

And verse eight, he calls God as witness. Think about that for just one moment. If you were to call God as witness as to how affectionate you are for other believers, what would be the judgment that God would render?

Paul called God as his witness because it was right. It was just, it is only right for me to feel this way about you all. He had a deep affection, the affection that comes from who look back at verse eight, where does it come from?

Christ Jesus. It's not Paul's love. It's the love that Jesus Christ has for him. Remember, Paul knew what it was like to be a rebellious, angry opponent of Christ. And God seized him out of that life and placed him on a new path and transformed him from the inside out.

And he's done the exact same thing to you and I, we have been rescued from darkness, reprobation, disapproval, and now we are his beloved. And therefore we can love others with the same affection. So how can praying for others can increase your affection for them?

Well, if you're consistently actively looking for ways in which you can focus upon the growth and sanctification of other people, there's no way that you will not become more affectionate towards them.

It just happened. That's how God has designed it to work. So finally, we've covered six of the characteristics of Paul's prayer life so far. He is thankful, consistent, joyful, confident, purposeful, affectionate, and he is gospel focused.

All right, look at verse five. We already covered it multiple times, but it's not going to hurt you to read it again, and it's not going to hurt me to read it again, in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now.

Now look down at verse seven. Paul says, For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart, since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of grace with me.

Paul's relationship with the Philippians was born of the gospel, had been enriched while preaching the gospel to them and with their support, and was now defined by continuously defending and confirming the gospel everywhere.

In other words, if there was no gospel, there is no relationship. Paul's relationship with the Philippian church means nothing if there is no truth of the gospel. So what drove him to pray? The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The gospel points us to a solution that we could never have devised or executed, one that God alone has designed so that we can see it poured out on the lives of other people who confess their need for it, for him.

We can rejoice that God has counted us worthy to participate in gospel work every time we pray. Every time you pray, it's gospel work, whether you're praying for an unbeliever to be saved or a believer to be sanctified.

Now last week I gave you three book recommendations, but I could not resist. Milton Vincent is a pastor in Southern California that I had the privilege of meeting and working alongside of for a period of time in my younger married years, and he wrote this amazing short little book, if you're looking for a book to bump your book reading statistics up for 2024, A Gospel Primer for Christians.

It looks like primer, but we pronounce it primer. I had to be taught that at the tender age of 24. A Gospel Primer, it's the gospel in prose and the gospel in poetry. I wish I could read it all for you this morning, but sometimes my prayer life is a little dry, and when I find myself dry, I go back to the gospel and I pray the gospel.

I just want to read you just a very brief part of the poetry section. He says, so now God relates to me only with grace. The former wrath banished without any trace, and each day I'm made a bit more as I should.