[0:00] This message was recorded at Vision Baptist Church in Alfred, Georgia. It is our prayer that you will be blessed by the preaching of God's Word.
[0:14] I am glad you're here tonight. We are privileged to hear from Seth Austin. He is a nurse at the Children's Hospital. He is a real man of God.
[0:26] I know his character quite a bit, but he works very closely with Chris, and so Chris knows him extremely well. I want you to listen tonight. I really believe God's about to bless your heart big time.
[0:38] Brother Seth. There we go. Did that work? There we go. I think I'm coming through. All right. Go ahead and open up your Bibles or turn them on, whichever one you got.
[0:50] I got both. Go ahead and open up to Philippians chapter 1, verses 12 through 18. While you're flipping there, I'll talk a little bit about myself. So Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called Blink.
[1:04] He talks about in that book that we as humans have this innate ability to make these snap judgments, these really quick judgments about a person. And then from there, we take all the stuff we gather from meeting with them, and then we prove that our snap judgment was correct.
[1:20] So in other words, in about four seconds, you've probably already decided who I am and what I do, and usually it takes an act of Congress for people to change that, is what that whole book is about.
[1:32] And so I just want to clear up the mud. I know as I wobbled up here in my tennis shoes, you're probably thinking, that guy's probably a very accomplished marathon runner. Let me be clear.
[1:43] That is not who I am. That's not what I do. So the shoes are, I have tried my best to wear dress shoes. They're too long. My braces don't fit in them. And I will end up on the floor.
[1:54] And there's a good chance that I might end up on the floor still. It doesn't negate it. So all you guys in the front row, be ready to catch me in case I need to. But my name is Seth Austin. My friends more affectionately know as Crazy Legs.
[2:10] Call me Crazy Legs. I do have a logo. That means I'm legit. So that's as far as my credentials go other than nurse. But I have a couple things wrong with me, if you can tell already.
[2:22] I have cerebral palsy, a very mild case that doesn't affect my speech. The doctors say it doesn't affect my cognitive ability. My mom and a lot of my friends would say otherwise. I have spondylolisthesis, which just means my back is crooked as a politician.
[2:40] And I also have a cleft lip. I do not have a cleft palate, but I was born with a cleft lip. I've had a couple surgeries on that. Going through school, I was put in special ed. I have a couple learning disabilities along with all these other things.
[2:53] Around 13 or 14, after being in a body cast for nine months, I was in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. So most of my mouth is not my mouth. It's fake. It came from a lot of these teeth. They're not mine. They've been bridged and put back together.
[3:05] And I have actually learned to walk, like literally learned to walk, more than three times. And if you can tell, I'm not a very good student when it comes to that. So on top of all that, I've developed this eye problem called recurrent corneal erosion.
[3:20] It's as nasty as it sounds. Basically, if I wake up in the morning, then sometimes the top layer of the skin of my eyeball will just kind of peel off and it kind of puts me out for a couple days. But without going through all those things and what all those things mean, the best way I know how to sum up, this is the way I do it with my patients a lot when they ask, is what's wrong with you?
[3:39] Because kids ask that. I'm a child's nurse, children's nurse. When they ask what's wrong with you, the best way that I know how to sum that kind of stuff is that I spell, I walk, and I feel a lot like Big Bird drank a little too much eggnog at the Christmas party and fell down the stairs.
[3:55] That's kind of my life in a nutshell. But those weaknesses, those things that God gave me, are what, one of the things I want to talk to you about, is what I believe God has given me.
[4:08] I think it's what God has given you. It's what God has given us to be extremely usable. I like to say that He likes to use those things as a battering ram for the gospel. And so before we get started, I just want to say thank you for letting me come here tonight and attempt to preach.
[4:24] I definitely don't deserve to be here. It's an honor for me to stand here. If anyone in this auditorium has ever received a text or an email from me, you can testify. Just ask Trent for sure that I am not the most eloquent guy.
[4:40] I can't spell very well. I don't read very well. I'm not a brilliant guy. I've never been accused of being the smartest guy in the room. I literally can't walk and chew gum at the same time.
[4:52] It's extremely difficult for me. But it really, truly is an honor for me to be here before you guys today. At best, I don't expect you to walk out of here tonight with some kind of new truth you've never seen.
[5:06] I'm not going to uncover some deep spiritual truth that you've never heard before. At best, I strive to be what my mom would call an Acts 4.13 kind of preacher.
[5:23] In those things, you hear these people talking about Peter and John. And they say, those men are ignorant and unlearned, but they've been with Jesus. And that's what I strive to be. So just as we're going through, if I get really boring, I'm just trying to imagine me hula hooping.
[5:39] And you'll be able to stay because it's funny to watch. But go ahead and look at Philippians 1. It should be coming up on the screen. We'll read verses 12 through 18 very quick. But I would, you should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel, so that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace and in all their places.
[6:08] And many of the brethren in the Lord, waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. Some indeed preach Christ, even of envy and strife, and some of goodwill.
[6:21] The one preach Christ of contention, not sincerely supposing to add affliction to my bonds, but the other of love, knowing that I am set in defense of the gospel. What then?
[6:33] Notwithstanding every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached, and I therein do rejoice. Yea, I will rejoice.
[6:43] What Paul, to kind of give you a background of this letter without diving into anything too deep, Paul is in, he's chained to a Roman guard.
[6:55] He's chained to a very expensive Roman guard, the imperial guard, history tells us. And these guys are paid double, basically, by Caesar, because they're Caesar's most trusted guys. But Paul's chained about four to six feet away at all times to one of these guys for about two years.
[7:09] And in that process, he writes quite a few letters, and this is where the book of Philippians comes from. He's in Roman custody. Being a follower of Jesus is kind of being put on trial. That's kind of what's going on while he's in custody.
[7:22] And Paul's kind of representing the brunt end of that trial. He doesn't know if he's going to live or die. He just knows that he's there. And the work he was doing is still out there.
[7:34] And from the outside, this looks like the mission that God gave him, or what we would call the Great Commission, has been put on hold. And his life kind of hung in the balance while all this was going on.
[7:49] He writes this letter to his dear friends. If you read the first couple of verses, I would encourage you to go back and read the whole letter, because it gives a lot of context to what we're talking about tonight. But the first part of that letter, he talks to this church in Philippi, not like they're just his friends, but they're his joke fellows.
[8:02] He calls them partners in the gospel. So that's who he's writing this letter to. And he starts out in verse 12 with this bomb-dropping statement. He says, But I would you should understand, brethren, that the things which have happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel.
[8:20] And I don't know if you caught that or not, but basically what he's saying is, he's like he's reaching out of this letter. I mean, he doesn't butter these guys up. He doesn't beat around the bush.
[8:31] He's not extremely, what's the word I'm looking for? He's not being very cordial like me and you would be. He just reaches out of this letter, grabs these guys by the head, and says, I love you guys.
[8:43] I appreciate your concern for me. I know that you love me. You've been there when other churches have not been there for me. You have supported me. But I need you to understand one thing. That the things that have happened unto me, my suffering, has led to the furtherance of the gospel.
[8:59] It is not holding back. Do not write your congressman to get me out of here. We're staying right here because I'm about to go through a couple of, this whole letter I'm going to tell you how this is a good thing and not a bad thing.
[9:10] What I want us to understand is that I was asked to come here to talk about overcoming adversity.
[9:30] And I can't do that without talking about the gospel if I'm going to be true to scripture. If you want that kind of thing, then you should go to Narns and Noble or Books a Million and visit the self-help section.
[9:44] It's the largest section in that whole place. You won't find much word of God there, if any. And you'll find a lot of ways to get through adversity. And all of them will leave you empty and bring you back to this book.
[9:57] And if this message can be summed up into anything, it's that. That overcoming adversity is secondary to the gospel. What Paul states here is that, yeah, what you've heard is true.
[10:10] I'm in jail. Things aren't looking good. They're actually looking pretty grim. But it's furthering the gospel. I will probably die here. But the gospel is still alive and kicking.
[10:23] This temporary circumstance that I call life, or that we call life, is furthering the gospel, even as a prisoner. Oh, I didn't even realize there was a screen back there.
[10:37] In order to even bring or entertain the idea of overcoming adversity, we must first set the gospel, the furtherance of the gospel, as our primary concern.
[10:51] My concern for the furtherance of the gospel must be primary. My circumstances must be secondary. Always.
[11:03] No ifs, ands, or buts. When the furtherance of the gospel is my primary concern, my problems will fall into a whole new perspective. I want you to look with me in verse 13.
[11:17] He's going to start showing you. He's not just making this statement and saying, now go figure it out. He's saying, no, me as a father, I love you guys. Let me walk you through why this is the case. Verse 13, he says, so that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace, and all the palace, and in all other places.
[11:38] Those are those cognitive learning abilities I was telling you about earlier. Talked about it a while ago that he's chained to a Roman guard 24-7 for two years while he's writing this.
[11:49] These guys are taking four to six hour shifts with this strategically placed man of God. This is over, in that whole two year period, this is over 3,000 discipleship sessions, if you will, that Caesar is paying out of pocket for, for his most trusted guys, most influential guys, to be mentored by the Apostle Paul.
[12:12] And that's what he's saying. He's saying, the gospel is being furthered because there is opportunities in this place. If you go back to Acts 19, verse 15, you don't have to go there.
[12:24] I'll just mention it real quick. But if you look there, he states, as Paul is going through his conversion, it talks about that Paul was going to be separated to go before kings to share Christ and the gospel.
[12:38] The only thing is, we really didn't know it was going to break down this way. This is not the way we all expect when God says, you're going to go before kings. But I'm going to have to go through a little suffering first.
[12:49] And if you go through Paul's life, which we don't have time for, there's a lot of suffering. It wasn't just one time, two times or three times. It was a whole lifestyle. But he understood the gospel was his primary concern, not his circumstances.
[13:02] It makes me wonder, how many opportunities for the gospel have I missed out on? Because I was too busy giving God an earful about what's happened to me as if he didn't know already. Suffering brings opportunity.
[13:15] It does not hinder the mission. Always. Suffering brings opportunity. It does not hinder the mission. In our world, at least in mine, suffering, I'm told quite often and reminded that suffering is often looked at as a problem that needs to be fixed.
[13:34] I mean, I'm a nurse. That's my job as an ER nurse. You're broken, come in. I'll fix you and send you out the door. Suffering is not a problem to be fixed. Suffering is a redeemed thing of God that he uses to further his gospel.
[13:50] Suffering, of course, was not in the original plan. It's not Adam and Eve and suffering. It wasn't that way. We screwed it up. Sin came in. Suffering is a consequence of that.
[14:00] I am well aware of that. But what I'm trying to get through to you tonight is that suffering, just like this bag of sin that is standing before you right now, has been redeemed to further the gospel.
[14:11] And our suffering can do a lot for the gospel if we let it. But in order to do that, we must suffer well. And as you read this letter, this is a letter to a father, to his children, saying, let me show you how to suffer well.
[14:27] Because when you suffer well, it brings opportunity. We all suffer. We've all had our bad days. We all have things. It's not like when I was born, God stepped out of the room to go answer a very important prayer.
[14:41] And when he came back, he goes, who gave Seth cerebral palsy? The gospel's now in jeopardy. I was really going to use that guy, but now I can't because he can't talk or walk or spell.
[14:53] And that's not what happened at all. It's the same for everybody else in this room. It's not like the day that everything goes south for you, or you get that bad diagnosis, or your loved one dies.
[15:07] It's not like God doesn't know. It's painful, but it can be used of God. That's the reason we go through it.
[15:20] I'm not a smart guy, but I know why I'm standing right here on this platform. It's not because I have a degree from somewhere. It's not because someone out there thought I was brilliant.
[15:31] It's because of these legs, this crooked back, and this messed up head. It's my suffering that put me here.
[15:44] It's these crooked, forest, gumpy legs with this nasty spine that causes me pain 24-7, that gives me the ability to talk the gospel into people's lives and break down barriers while I'm doing it.
[15:56] A lot of people are a lot more keen to listen to what you have to say about Jesus Christ if you come to them as another broken individual who's been redeemed by God, and not a perfect guy who's got it all together.
[16:12] If you look in Philippians 1.29, later on in this chapter, he even says that suffering is a gift. It's kind of hard to swallow. But this gift has the power to disarm people.
[16:25] It has the power that I can use it for self-deprecation. I can get depressed real quick without even trying. It happens. It's even a gift that I personally can use for free handouts and awesome parking.
[16:39] But it is a gift that God can use to allow to touch people who may have never allowed the opportunity in the first place. And for me to take that gift and waste it away on myself is to hinder the gospel, not to further it.
[17:01] Our suffering is a gift redeemed by God. A gift that is used and redeemed by God. Don't waste it.
[17:11] That's what he's going through this letter. Don't. I'm very... I feel so loved that you guys are concerned about my state. Here in prison. But this is a gift of God.
[17:21] Let's not waste it. And as you go out and preach the gospel, don't waste it. I put... Your unemployment, difficulty with your children, your bad diagnosis, your falsely accused reputation, your struggling marriage, even things that we...
[17:40] Even the suffering we bring upon ourselves can be redeemed by God to spread the gospel if we put the gospel first. There should not be a situation that comes into my life, good or bad, that I should not be asking, how is God going to use this to further His gospel?
[17:56] That's usually the last question on my agenda. I don't know about you guys, but I've sat in quite a few prayer meetings, and in those prayer meetings, I hear, and I am guilty, of saying, God, I'm going through this.
[18:07] Please help me get out of it. The end. Sister so-and-so was going through this. They're going through a hard time. It's hard on the family. Please fix that. Very rarely, I won't say never, but very rarely do you hear someone say, yeah, I got a bad diagnosis.
[18:24] I got four months to live. God, please take this away, but show me how this can further the gospel, because I'm going to take those four months, and I'm going to further it the best I can.
[18:37] You can apply that to anything we pray about. And that just goes to show you that our motives are very rarely what Paul is saying here. Put the gospel first, and your circumstances last.
[18:48] God's got your back. Trust Him. The very thing my sinful nature curses the most is the very thing God has armed me with to do His work.
[19:04] It's like He gave me a weapon, and I keep putting it down, going, I don't know why this ain't working. I got a picture of my family.
[19:18] Those are my girls. This is my wife. I don't know what side. She's on your side. On the left. And my two-year-old in the middle, Claire. And this is Lily. She's seven days old.
[19:28] My wife's a little lazy. She's not here tonight, because she pushed that nine-pound thing out of her seven days ago, maybe eight days ago. And so they're at home, but they can tell you that I'm not preaching this because I have figured it out, and I've got it down.
[19:46] They can tell you that this is just me working through this passage. I have cried over this thing. I was crying in the car when I was going over my notes before I came in here. I'm hurting all the time.
[19:59] My knees are going out. I don't know how long I'm going to be a nurse. I don't know how long I can keep that up. But I cry. I ask God to take this away. I have. I worry on a constant basis that I'll be able to continue to provide for those girls for the next five years.
[20:17] I get mad. I get really mad about not being able to play with those two little girls like other dads do. I can't get on the floor and roll around. I can't put them on my shoulders and carry them.
[20:31] I have an extremely difficult time just getting them to the car, trying to carry two of them at one time. I'm afraid, always afraid, I'm going to drop one and hurt them. But 2 Corinthians 12 is clear.
[20:45] Our strength is in our weakness. It's not in how great we are. It's in how great He is. And He uses that suffering to speak into people's lives. Our suffering is a gift from God redeemed and used to open doors for the furtherance of the Gospel.
[21:03] Verse 13 is clear. Suffering brings opportunity. Look at verse 14. And many of the brethren in the Lord, waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.
[21:21] Verse 13, He talks about non-Christians are becoming Christians. And Christians are going out and boldly speaking the word now. That's what my suffering is doing. I'll stay here.
[21:33] It's not the most comfortable of circumstances. I may not live, but the Gospel is being preached. And it's affecting non-Christians and it's affecting my brothers and sisters.
[21:45] It's better for me to go through this than to be out there. Suffering promotes passion. It should never, we should never let it exalt defeat.
[21:59] Ever. I tell you, I can tell you stories all day long about my mom and dad. Great, wonderful parents. But my mom and my dad got this. When I was a kid, I used to have to wear these braces.
[22:13] We called them penguin shoes. And you'll understand why here in a second. They had a bar between them and they stuck out like this. I don't know if some of you guys can see me or not. They stuck out like this and I had to walk like this.
[22:26] They were white. My mom decided to paint them yellow and dress me up like a penguin. Because it was funny. But my mom realized that my life was going to be full of this stuff and we will not accept defeat.
[22:38] We will move on and we will have as much fun with it as we can. As I got older, you guys are probably experiencing this now with all the kids who are in school right now selling wrapping paper and cookie dough and in the summer we did run-a-thons and all this kind of stuff.
[22:55] When it was my turn to do that, it was like, it was easy. I didn't have to work for it. It would be the middle of December and my mom would say, go put your braces on because I had braces that came up to here and go put your shorts on.
[23:06] I know it's cold outside but we are going to only be out here for an hour, hour and a half and we are going to get this done. And I could sell ice to an Eskimo. Easy. Run-a-thons, one lap, three grand.
[23:19] No joke. Every year at Cornerstone Christian Academy, I was the highest grossing child they had off one lap. Now my mom was very big into, you're going to have a disability.
[23:33] You keep falling down. It's okay to fall down but we have got to get back up. Your life is going to be full of falling down. Get back up. Amen. And that's what, if we could apply that to our spiritual lives, how that radically changes us.
[23:51] We love to play the victim when it comes to our suffering. What Paul is saying is, suffering should promote passion amongst the unsaved and definitely the saved.
[24:08] we should never, ever let it exalt defeat. But the secret is, we must suffer well.
[24:19] He didn't say suffer and leave it be. Paul is saying, you've got to suffer but you must suffer well. As American Christians, I think we're really good at a lot of things.
[24:31] I think there's lots of things that people would say, America's doing a good job, go church. But I would think, I think I'd be going out on a limb to say that when it comes to suffering well, that we're pretty ill prepared for it.
[24:45] We don't understand it. Do you realize, Paul's in prison when he writes most of the New Testament?
[24:58] The Philippian jailer would have never been saved if Paul didn't suffer. That Praetorium guard, Caesar's household, would have, may have never let the opportunity of the Gospel in if it wasn't for Paul's suffering.
[25:12] Books we love, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, they were all written because of Paul's suffering. And he says, I'm suffering well for the furtherance of the Gospel.
[25:26] I'm not trying to tell you guys that I don't want you to, I don't want to come off as someone that's preaching at you. This is something that has not changed my life.
[25:39] This is something that is changing my life. This is something I have to go through every day, every hour, every couple of minutes.
[25:50] Growing up for me has been a process of constantly breaking. I wake up and I'm reminded every morning that I am weak and fragile. I was telling you guys, I had to buy a cane three weeks ago because my knees are going out, which scares me beyond all belief because my income goes out the window when those go out.
[26:09] I'm 28 years old, I'll be 29 next week, and I went to buy a cane just as a guy that hurts. But I have to look in the mirror and say, is my pain worth the gospel?
[26:25] Is my suffering worth the gospel? Did he just forget about me? No. He gave it to me on purpose.
[26:36] And for me to, for me not to take what he's given me to further his gospel is extremely selfish.
[26:50] He gave me his son. It makes more sense now after we go through this to say that his grace is sufficient for me. This is Paul. This is the guy who said that very same thing.
[27:02] God, take it away, but I will take pleasure in my infirmities and my reproaches. For when I am weak, I am strong. That's what he's trying to tell these guys in Philippi.
[27:15] We all have our own thing. We all have our suffering. Your suffering is not worse or better than mine. It's like sin. All sin is bad. There is no worst sin chart.
[27:27] There is no best suffering chart. Jesus says, your job, all of us, is to go and further the gospel. And I've given you tools to do that. So if you're low on the food chain or high on the food chain, your job is the same.
[27:41] Use the tools I gave you and further the gospel. If we are ever going to allow suffering to promote passion amongst the church, we must choose to suffer well.
[27:54] We must choose to suffer well. Not just suffer well, but choose. It is a conscious decision. Can you put verses 15 through 18?
[28:11] Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife, and some also of goodwill. The one preached Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds, but the other of love.
[28:27] Knowing that I am set for the defense of the gospel, what then, notwithstanding every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached, and I therein do rejoice. Yea, and I will rejoice.
[28:40] Paul basically says in that last section that we just went through in 13, or 14, he said, my suffering has emboldened other Christians to go out and spread the gospel.
[28:53] Then he, in this verse, part of the verse, he breaks those into two groups. He says, those guys who are involved to speak, who are going out and speaking the gospel. We're not talking false gospel, we're talking the gospel. He splits those up into two groups and says, some of them are going and doing out of love, and some are going and doing out of selfish ambition.
[29:10] Basically, you've got the Christians who go, Paul's in jail, there's a spot open, and the gospel's not being preached as like it was because Paul's in jail. We boys need to get in there and fill that spot because someone's got to preach the gospel.
[29:25] Then he has another crowd who said the same thing. There's a spot open. I want to be that leader. Paul's no longer out there doing his thing. This is my opportunity to advance myself in the church.
[29:36] But Paul says right here, the gospel's being preached, and that's what I care about. I'm not going to get caught up in that. Some of you guys use Logos, the Bible study program.
[29:50] I'm blessed to have it and use it. There's a joke in the Logos community. If you go to any kind of training, they talk about there's only two people that buy Logos. You have pastors who buy Logos so that they can study, get in the Word, and be able to break it down to their congregation in incredible ways.
[30:08] And then there's the guy, the other guy who buys their program who's trying to take that guy's job. That's what Paul's talking here. Believe it or not, us church people haven't really changed that much since when this letter was written.
[30:22] He's saying some preach Christ of love and some of selfish ambition. The bottom line is, Paul, the summary is, my situation is not desirable. It's very depressing.
[30:34] And to add insult to injury, there's some brothers out there who are using this as a chance to advance themselves and get ahead in the ministry. But Christ is being preached and therein I rejoice.
[30:46] Scratch that. He even says it. He says right there, I therein do rejoice. Yay. Scratch that. I will rejoice. Those guys tick me off, but I will rejoice.
[30:59] This is not easy, but I will rejoice. as we read this letter in a whole, you see that Paul had walked with God, his walk with God has brought him to a place where he really understood his place in God's army.
[31:17] I'm a soldier who's on a mission to further the gospel. That's what brings me true joy. That's what I was put here for. That's what I was created for.
[31:28] That's why I'm in prison for the furtherance of the gospel. This has nothing to do with my reputation and everything to do with the gospel. My circumstances, second. I will continue to do what I was called to do.
[31:43] And as far as those other guys and their motives, I'll make the conscious decision to rejoice in the fact that the gospel is being preached because that's what I care about.
[31:53] I will rejoice because it's not about me. It's about the gospel. And it should always be about the gospel.
[32:05] God has allowed each and every one of us to be strategically placed in our life for one reason and one reason only. And that is to glorify him by the furtherance of the gospel.
[32:16] And I want you to just look at that because a lot of us would stop that phrase as to glorify him and then let everyone else, you get to fill in the blank what that means. Paul later on in this chapter says to live is my, to live is Christ and to die is gain.
[32:31] A lot of us live to live, we would say that if we were to evaluate our life, to live is my version of Christ and to die, well let's not talk about that. To glorify him is to be furthering the gospel.
[32:45] I know you guys know what the Great Commission is. If you've been in this church longer than 20 minutes, you know what the Great Commission is. I love that. That's what he's saying. Go do that. That's how you glorify me. The sad thing is we spend most of our time and energy trying to strategically place ourselves in a position where we can preach the gospel.
[33:06] We'll stamp God on those ambitions and desires and then we'll kind of throw the gospel as a secondary agenda. The only problem with that is that very rarely do we ever get to the part of actually doing God's work.
[33:16] work. We get to those ambitions within a certain amount of time and then things just keep piling on. Am I saying to go quit your job and forget your aspirations and become a missionary?
[33:30] Maybe. There's plenty of people here who would love to talk to you about that. I want to be very clear in what I am saying. I'm saying let's stop lying to ourselves. We work so hard to avoid just the tiniest bit of suffering when that's the very thing that God wants to use.
[33:48] That He uses a lot. We will trade just we will trade suffering for a comfortable situation in a heartbeat without even giving the gospel a second thought.
[34:02] It's not that we're going oh yeah the gospel is at risk let me go to the comfortable situation. We just don't even bring the gospel into the thought process. If you look in verse 18 I love how Paul starts verse 18.
[34:15] What now? I love short sentences they're so easy to read. He says what now? Most of us get lost in the sea of God why me? And never get around to asking God what now?
[34:28] I'll give you the quick answer to why me. For the furtherance of the gospel that's why me. That's the answer always why you? For the furtherance of the gospel. And when I know that therein I do rejoice.
[34:47] I will rejoice. Is our suffering worth the furtherance of the gospel? Is it worth being falsely accused? Is it worth our five year plan? Is it worth our time?
[34:59] Is it worth our money? Is it worth our life? Or is it just worth 10% of our income in three church services a week? Because if you really want to nail down what Paul's getting at here is what is the gospel worth to you?
[35:16] These are questions that I ask myself all the time. And I never yet have I even liked the answer that I when I'm truthful with myself I have to give.
[35:27] And I'm not what I would encourage you to do is to go ask yourself these questions. What is the gospel worth to you? Write it down and then get on your knees and pray that God will change your heart and just nudge you to make it worth a little bit more for you.
[35:46] Keep doing that. You'll find yourself making some weird decisions your family will scratch their head and go why is he doing that? That doesn't make any sense because it's for the furtherance of the gospel not for the furtherance of myself.
[35:59] I gave that up when I accepted his son that paid for me. He gave himself I'm indebted to him to give him myself. Tomorrow morning if I'm lucky to wake up without a corneal abrasion I will be in some intense pain I will stumble to the bathroom I will wipe the medicine out of my eye and while I'm doing this God will allow me to question and even sometimes curse the plan that he set up for me and the entire time he's sitting there going son I love you I gave this to you use it it will bring you joy but if you don't want to if you want to curse it I'll be here when you're ready to get on board.
[36:44] What an amazing father we have that will put up with that. Is his plan worth the is his plan for our life is our pain our suffering worth the furtherance of the gospel?
[36:58] Every morning me and you both we have to choose to say I will rejoice. I will rejoice.
[37:11] End of sentence. When the sake of the gospel interferes with my circumstances I will rejoice.
[37:22] Say it with me. I will rejoice. When things get hard I will rejoice. When my five year plan falls apart and doesn't go like it's supposed to go I will rejoice.
[37:38] When my reputation is at stake I will rejoice. When I wake up in the morning look in the mirror and beat myself up over nothing going right.
[37:51] I will rejoice. And I will rejoice for the furtherance of the gospel. This message was recorded at Vision Baptist Church in Alfred, Georgia.
[38:07] For more information log on to www.visionbaptist.com where you can find our service times location contact information and more audio and video recordings.