Overwhelmed 2

Preparation for this Sunday, Part 2

Friday, May 20, 2016

Jeff Lampl

Death by Suburb: How to Keep the Suburbs from Killing Your Soul  is a wonderful book I read years ago and I highly recommend it to you.   It’s written by a Christian suburbanite who discovered ironically, that life in the highly Christian suburbs in which he lived actually worked against his living for God.

It is for this reason, helping you to live for God while living the rat race of trying to keep up with all the demands of suburban life, that we will begin a six week study on the book of Philippians.  Wednesday’s blog introduced you to the author Philippians, a man named Paul.  If you missed it you can read it here.   The second part of the introduction to the short book of Philippians follows

Paul’s life was difficult.  He was arrested several times and spent years of his life in prison, many of them battling discouragement, abandonment by friends, wondering where his next meal would come from, and being persecuted by those who wanted to see him fail.   In fact Paul writes this letter from prison.

Yet in this letter to a small group of believers in Philippi Paul writes as if he is full of joy. How can that be? How could it be that he wrote what is known as the New Testament "Epistle of joy" while languishing in a prison in Rome, Caesarea or Ephesus?

Most of us who are reading this introduction have not done time in prison.  Instead most of us are living the kind of life that Paul had been pursuing prior to his encounter with Jesus.  He was successful as a prosecuting attorney and legal scholar and was climbing the ladder.  Yet even the most apparently successful people face discouragement, let downs from friends, dashed hopes, shattered dreams and the day to day drudgery of the same old, same old, attempting to get things done, and never finding the rest we think we deserve.

So, how do we handle demanding bosses, unrealistic expectations from spouses and family members, expenses that surpass income, demands that exceed our energy, and the discouragement of not being able to be what others want us to be?

Our study in Philippians will have much to teach us about those very things.

Follow on Twitter @jefflampl