Is this not a mighty challenge confronting each of us and particularly those who find themselves in positions of leadership? We model ourselves and pattern our activities on other people and that can be a highly positive thing to do provided we choose the right people! Over the past month or so I have been reading and studying carefully and prayerfully Paul's letter to the church at Philippi and these gleanings emerge and flow from my researched conclusions.
Paul, as an apostolic leader, encourages these disciples of Jesus Christ to be careful as to what they allow into their thinking and also as to what they allow to fill their minds.
In what is called Chapter 4, he recounts a most positive list of seven characteristics which we would be most wise to give heed and our serious attention.
The writer to the Hebrews gives us another type of list of those who lived by faith.
They were those who had real living obedient faith, and we are to learn from them, but we are also told to fix our eyes on Jesus.
Paul comes out with a remarkable statement when, having taught profound truths in a straightforward and rather simple manner, says that as we live according to these guidelines, the God of peace shall be with us.
He speaks earlier of the peace of God being in our lives and beings, but now Paul writes that the God of peace shall be with you.
God will be with you.
We need to hear that.
We need to be reminded of that.
God will be with you.
The God of peace will be with us, even when we find it hard to receive and experience the peace of God? I raise that as a question.
Is this not a dilemma which many confront? This leader gives such reassuring instruction and encouragement.
The tone of the letter suddenly changes.
This is what makes it very much a letter to friends he cared about a great deal, and not primarily a theological document.
He had received a gift from these disciples of Jesus and he is so grateful.
Did he need the gift? Well, yes and no! Yes, he needed the gift to meet his physical needs, but he had also learned to be content whether there be gift or no gift, and again that is difficult! To be content when you have nothing or when you have little, and when you are in prison is not easy, and let us not simply limit this to money gifts, or financial or physical gifts.
Be content no matter what is going on around you.
That is what this brave leader is teaching.
Sometimes God sets us tests and exams and they are more than two three hour papers.
Paul had been a Pharisee, and we know from Luke Chapter 16 and verse 14, that they were lovers of money.
They were covetous.
They did not know how to be content.
Paul had received this gift.
This was a token of their concern.
He had learned the hard and difficult lesson of the secret of being content in any and every situation.
Paul has had a variety of experiences over these past years in his ministry in the front line of the Kingdom of God.
He testifies to these in other places too.
He is the type of man who is able to say, "I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.
" Jesus Christ will never ask us to do anything without supplying the required and necessary strength.
All this is not said at a time of tremendous spiritual high, but when in prison, where he was limited in so many ways, and yet able to speak and teach and preach and write.
There is a secret revealed here and we can learn it.
It is the secret "of being content in any and every situation".
Now, not many leaders teach this vital lesson and display this high quality of leadership which is so required no matter where we go in these present times.
Sandy Shaw