Stay on Mission – 16th April 2018

1. Motives
Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear.
It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice. Philippians 1:12-18
I remember when I first became a Christian from a completely ‘Never Churched’ background that there were some passages in scripture that surprised me, and this passage from Philippians was one of them. Paul writes to the church in Philippi, a church that fills him with so much joy because of their partnership in the gospel and, as he writes from a prison cell, he says: The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.
It surprised me so much when I first read these words, I thought ‘how could anybody preach Christ with a false motive!
Last week I was meeting with a group of leaders to discuss how they may use The Rooftop process to reach students across the campus of their university. As I was introduced by the leader, he said: ‘Before you arrived Dennis we were trying to decide how famous you are’, they then began to mention names of Christian leaders that I was perhaps more or less famous than.
As they were doing this in a very light-hearted way, I found two things happening inside of me. One was more ‘noble’ I genuinely wanted to say to them ‘It is an utterly irrelevant thing to be discussing, the only person that we should want to be well known is Jesus’. As much as I felt that I also had the feeling that these young people were assessing how valuable I was in the Kingdom. They weren’t doing that but I found my defense mechanisms beginning to click in!
Like every other Christian on the planet there is always a little, or sometimes even a lot of ‘me’ in the things that I do for the Lord and I am so grateful to Him that more often than not he uses me in spite of me.
My prayer is repeatedly something like: ‘Lord help me to make you known through the life that I live and the words that I speak’ – maybe this is a prayer that you could focus on this week – let’s make Him our motive!
Dennis