Joy in Hardship: The Gospel's Lifeline

Your name and your reputation, not the most important thing. There is one name and one one reputation that is worth building your life around. His name is Jesus. You build your life around his name and not your own name, and you get beautiful things thrown in. Listen. Listen. You can either waste your life trying to build your own name and your own reputation. At the end of your life, you get whatever you can scrape together by the sweat of your own brow. You could waste your life trying to build your own name or give up on that project. Devote your life to Jesus' name. He vindicates you. He defends you. He is for you. He is with you. And when you devote your life to Jesus’ name, you get Jesus every day of your life and then eternity forever and ever. Amen.

And part of why Paul has joy in the midst of that is he's bold in collaborating with the Holy Spirit. He's bold in sharing his faith to the palace guards. Listen. Sometimes there's joy waiting for you on the other side of obedience. And some of us never experience a joy because we put off the obedience piece. Because the obedience doesn't always make sense. But the scriptures invite us—sometimes we have to say, “Okay, I'm gonna take the step of faith. I'm gonna declare the good news to the doctors and nurses or the palace guards even though I'm in chains or even though I'm struggling.” I'm gonna take the step of faith, and the joy is waiting for you on the other side.

The palace guards think that Paul is the prisoner, but, actually, Paul has them captive. They're a captive audience. They can't go anywhere. So he's just telling them all about Jesus. A couple months ago, I went to visit a couple in the hospital, and he’d just had massive surgery—the kind of surgery where you’d expect them to be totally self-absorbed. But you know what they were praying before and during the hospital stay? They were praying that they would demonstrate the peace of Christ and the power of Christ to doctors, nurses, and janitors. Hardship put them in new relationships where they could share the good news of God’s love. Isn’t that awesome?

Listen. Paul can rejoice in jail, not because of jail, but because jail is an opportunity for him to declare the good news of what God has done in Jesus Christ. So Paul can take joy in declaring that good news to people who wouldn't hear it otherwise. So what I wanna do is give us a prayer you could pray in the midst of your challenges, in the midst of your hardships. Prayer not only invites God into our situation—prayer invites God to reset our mindsets and our heart sets, so the truth moves from theory into us. “Lord, I believe the good news that you went to the cross and conquered the grave for me.”

This is hard. We're not gonna pretend your hardships aren't hardships. We're gonna be honest about those things, and then we're gonna hold on to the joy lifeline of the gospel. Today, I choose to cling to the joy lifeline of the gospel that reframes this hardship as an opportunity. I pray expectantly that even this hardship will serve to advance the gospel in me and through me. I am willing to do whatever you might call me to do. Little prayer in the midst of hardship, to reframe hardship as an opportunity to grow in the gospel.

How is God inviting me to trust him more deeply, more fully? Is this surfacing things in me that the Lord wants to deal with—invite me to repent, leave at his feet? Listen. Every now and then something pushes my buttons, and I wanna blame that person or that situation. You know what God says back to me? “What's that button doing there to start with?” Why do you have a button to start with? Maybe God wants to deal with that button. Hardship surfaces stuff in us that nothing else can, and sometimes what God's doing is inviting us to leave something at his feet.

Either way—either way—I experience more of God's grace. Either I'd live, and for me to live is Christ: every day that you're alive, you get to experience more of Jesus—more of his grace, more of his love, more of his truth. Paul says, “To die is gain.” I either get more of Jesus in my life, or I die and meet him face to face. Either way, winner winner chicken dinner—Paul wins. Either he lives even in prison and experiences more grace, or he dies and meets Jesus face to face. Either way, blessed be the name of the Lord.

Instead of naming names, Paul says this: “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.” People are running Paul’s name through the mud, and Paul used to care about that stuff. But he’s spent the last twenty five, thirty years finding something more important than his own name. He's met Jesus. And now Jesus' name matters more than Paul's own name. It's no longer project Paul's glory; it’s project Jesus’ glory. So Paul trusts the Lord to vindicate him. Two thousand years later—who are we talking about?

So in answer to the Philippians—“Paul, how are you doing really?”—Paul writes this unexpected thing: “What’s happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel.” But Paul, what about the food in jail? What about your cellmates? What about how limited your freedom is? Yeah—those things stink. Those are terrible. We’re not gonna pretend these things aren’t bad. There’s just a greater good available even in jail. Prison does not get the last word. The gospel advances anyway.

In any season when the gospel is our good, when the gospel is our hope, when the gospel is the center of our being—every situation is an opportunity for joy. You can either experience more of the gospel or share more of the gospel or both. The gospel has totally turned Paul's life upside down, inside out. And so he says, “Listen.”

It's almost like Paul was like an inside out sock that you pull out of the dryer—inside out, upside down. And what Jesus has done in Paul's life is gone all the way down to the depths of Paul's being and turned him right side out and right side up again. Jesus has totally turned Paul. He used to be self righteous, zealous, murderous, vindictive. But Paul now is a different man because of the good news of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. He has been totally transformed.

And yet what Paul says is over and over again: because of the gospel—this good news of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection—there are wins, opportunities for joy and rejoicing. So Paul’s in jail, and that’s miserable. But he’s been in training with Jesus for twenty five, thirty years. Paul used to be all about his own name, his own fame, his own glory, but Paul has been made new by Jesus. Like, he is a different man than he was twenty five or thirty years ago as he's been walking, cultivating this life.

So I've got four kids in college, and I feel like I've ended up in a lot of conversations with other parents about transitions with kids, like different seasons. Here's one of my core principles about parenting: every season has wins. You should be aware of them. Every season—from infant to adult children—has wins. Being awake to those, pivoting your parenting and expectations, entering into the opportunities present in that season—even with teenagers. So Paul's in jail, and it doesn't look like there's any wins.