Power Tools for Christian Ministry
Philippians 3:1-21 (NIV)
The New Testament is full of people who were used by God to do great things. Among these the one that stands out the most is the Apostle Paul. He wrote the majority of the New Testament and led the Church in Spreading the Gospel. If that isn’t enough, 2000 years later, most Church historians credit Paul and the way that he wrote with forming
Christian theology.
All of us want to be involved in God’s purposes. There are plenty of titles at the Christian bookstore that illustrates this fact.
Your Best Life Now
The Total Money Makeover
Wild At Heart
Don’t Waste Your Life
In the Bible we get a unique description of what it takes to be a believer God can use.
I’m going to refer to these as Power-Tools for Christian Ministry
I believe that as we look at this passage, God can speak to us about how we can adopt the attitude in this passage, and make ourselves available to really be used by God
1. The Power-Tool of a Positive Perspective
Look UP
1 Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord!
Paul understood the simple fact that for the Christian there are 2 realities.
1. God is always faithful
2. Christians have to decide to worship
Throughout Scripture we discover that believers in the OT and the New have to make the decision to “Rejoice in the Lord”
Psalm 31:7 (ESV)
7 I will rejoice and be glad in your steadfast love, because you have seen my affliction; you have known the distress of my soul,
Habakkuk 3:18 (ESV)
18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
Philippians 1:18 (ESV)
18 What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice,
[1]
It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you.
2 Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh. 3 For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh— 4 though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless. 7
2. Power Tool of Value
But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.
8 What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to
the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.
I consider them rubbish,
that I may gain Christ
9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.
3. Power Tool of Commitment
10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.
But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,
14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. 15 All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. 16 Only let us live up to what we have already attained. 17 Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you.
18 For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things.
5. Power Tool of Purpose
20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
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[1] The Holy Bible : English Standard Version. Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2001.
4. Power Tool of Persistance