Shame will lose its power when you're truly surrendered to Jesus.
When you don't care about yourself and you've truly surrendered your life to him.
That's when shame will have no power over you.
In this episode, we're covering Philippians 12 to verse 20.
So let's read from verse 12 to verse 18.
But I want you to know, brethren, that the things which happened to me have actually turned out for the furtherance of the gospel,
so that it has become evident to the whole palace guard and to the rest that my chains are in Christ.
And most of the brethren in the Lord, having become confident by my chains, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.
Some indeed preach Christ even from envy and strife, and some also from goodwill.
The former preach Christ from selfish ambition, not sincerely supposing it out of affliction to my chains,
but the latter out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel.
What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached.
And in this I rejoice. Yes, I will rejoice.
When you're reading that, as I was reading and studying, the Holy Spirit asked me this.
What is my motivation for preaching the gospel?
Why am I choosing this?
Because when you read Paul's desire, you just see a man who's ready to put everything on the altar for the Lord.
And then the Lord asked me this.
Do I want fame, money, and influence?
Or do I want the Holy Spirit, Jesus, and the Father?
What is my motivation of doing this podcast right now?
Is it so that you guys can like the message and think I'm all this big guy?
Or is it that the message of Christ is being preached?
What is your motivation for doing anything?
So I can stay and camp there, but let's move forward because our motivation is what,
when the coming of the age comes, the Lord is going to expose our motivation for a lot of things.
And that's why it's beautiful to be intimate with the Lord because He checks and reveals your motivation.
Paul's perspective is something that's very interesting to me.
This is a man who's in jail.
People are badmouthing him, but he's keeping his eyes on the prize.
He said, regardless of whether they're doing it out of envy or strife,
regardless whether they're trying to bring me down in my chains,
it doesn't matter because Christ is being preached.
And I pray, and this is not something that I'm just saying this because I'm here.
I genuinely pray that I personally, and we all, will get to that level of surrender
where we say, it doesn't matter what's happening to me, around me.
What matters is Christ is being preached.
That's always tested when your numbers are low, you have a church, or when you're going through a tough time.
Do you genuinely mean that?
So that's kind of like the overall view of verses 12 to 18.
But let's go deep verse by verse.
So let's go to verse 13 and 14.
This is what it says.
Jesus Christ was Paul's only goal.
For as long as Jesus' name was being preached, he was willing to go through anything.
Paul had a very interesting calling.
Very interesting.
And you can see his calling in Acts 9 from 15 to 16.
Now the context of Acts 9 is when Paul is going to Damascus,
and if you've heard this story, you probably already know it too well.
He encounters Christ, he's knocked off the horse, he's gone blind.
And then later in that chapter, Jesus approaches a man called Ananias,
and tells him about Paul.
And this is what Jesus tells Ananias about the call of Paul.
At the beginning of his calling, suffering was in the package.
That was part of his journey.
And if you read through the epistles, you see how much suffering that man went through.
Paul's calling was steeped in suffering for Jesus' sake.
It is interesting when Jesus leads us in our calling, he never gives us the full picture.
He just shows you the mountaintops, but he never shows you the valley.
And I think He does that to protect us.
Because when you see, when you're in your calling and then you begin to encounter all these challenges,
there are times when you'll be questioning,
do I really want to do this?
And I believe He takes us through these situations to test our motivations.
To test, why are you doing this?
When I said yes to Jesus, and I said yes to pursuing His call,
I had no idea how many times I'll go without eating
because I chose to believe God and moved to a different city.
I had no idea how much pain the calling brings
when He's walking you through the fire to purify you,
to make sure that you're ready.
I didn't know.
If I knew, I might, I might say no.
But a little thing about my test, my calling,
I had this encounter and I'm not going to share the whole encounter.
I had this open vision and towards the end of this open vision,
the Lord asks me, are you willing to preach the gospel?
And He wasn't just asking me like, yes or no.
When He asked me, I got a glimpse of what it meant
and all the suffering that it comes with saying yes to the call.
And He questions that.
He asks you that so that you can know, is this what you want?
Because if you look at the lives of the apostles,
they were not celebrated like the way we celebrate them today.
They went through a lot.
And the Lord does that to test your motivation.
By the time Paul is writing this letter,
he was completely surrendered to whatever the Lord was leading him to.
He had gone through the valleys and the mountains.
He had gone through it all.
And by this time he was ready to say yes to whatever Jesus wanted him to do.
Verses 15 and 18 are challenging verses to me
because they remind me of what our heart posture should look like.
Regardless of what others are saying about you,
the only thing that matters is what is Jesus saying about you.
What is the Lord telling you?
This is why it's important for you to be intimate with Him.
If you're not intimate with Him, if you don't know how to hear His voice,
how are you going to know what He's telling you?
How are you going to know what He's telling you not to believe or what to believe?
How are you going to know the path to take?
Because a lot of the times the Lord is leading you,
the decisions you make, they are between good and good things.
It's not like an obviously bad thing and obviously good thing.
This is a good thing. This is a good thing.
What are you trying to tell me?
And you need to hear His voice so that you can know this is the path to take.
And then when you're taking that path, when the going gets rough,
when there's nothing for you, when all your friends are abandoning you,
when you're all alone, you'll go back to that day when the Lord told you,
go left because that is what's going to keep you.
And so you see Paul who knows that his chains are for Christ.
His chains are for the spreading of the gospel.
That's why he's in the chains.
And so when people are talking bad about him,
it doesn't affect him because he knows he's exactly where God wants him to be.
That's the importance of hearing his voice.
That's the importance of being intimate with him.
Paul never let what others said about him affect him.
He knew his chains were approved by Jesus.
And so he comforted himself in that truth.
This is like David in the Old Testament where he says,
David strengthened himself in the Lord.
Paul comforted himself in the truth that his chains were for the purpose of the gospel.
So now let's go to verse 19 and 20.
In verse 19, you see a man who's still in pain but still standing.
He didn't let the pain affect the calling that God had upon him.
He's in a prison in Rome but still preaching the gospel.
Think about that.
The prisons in Rome were not the nice ones like we have today.
He was going through a tough time but he never took his eyes off the gospel,
off what God told him to do.
He wrote four books in prison.
So the prison didn't derail him.
So when you're going through a bad time, if you look at the life of Paul,
that's not an excuse for you to start sinning or start doing other things like that.
God does not want you to do.
Going through tough times does not mean anything.
It only means stay true to what God has called you to do.
That's when you're truly tested.
Everybody can preach the gospel when things are going well.
Everybody can be the good Christian when things are going well.
Can you be a good Christian when life is not going your way?
Can you be a good Christian when you have to deal with
unorganizedly painful stuff?
That's when your motivation is truly tested.
See, Paul is counting on the prayer of the Philippians and many other believers
so that he can be delivered. And in the second part of verse 19,
I read that and I just stopped because I was like, that is very interesting.
So Paul is praying that he's,
and this is what he says at the beginning part of verse 19,
for I know that this will turn out for my deliverance through your prayer.
And this is what he says.
And the supply of the spirit of Jesus Christ,
the supply of the spirit of Jesus Christ.
We know the spirit of Jesus is the Holy Spirit,
but the way he uses the word supply, it's intriguing to me.
And we know as believers, the day you get saved,
the Holy Spirit comes and dwells in you. We know that.
We also know that when you baptize in the Holy Spirit,
we get an overflow of the Holy Spirit to impact other people and to give us
power to preach the gospel.
But what does the supply of the spirit of Christ means?
So if you look at the Greek word of that word supply,
it means a couple of different things. It means to supply, obviously,
to furnish and to present.
And it also means to be supplied, ministered to or assisted.
In other words,
that word can be translated to mean to minister nourishment or minister
unto. That's what that supply can mean.
And so we can rewrite the verse in 19 and say,
for I know that this will turn out for my deliverance through your prayer and
the ministry of the spirit of Jesus Christ.
So he's depending on the prayers of his people, of his friends, colleagues,
and the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
And look at what Jesus said,
the purpose of the Holy Spirit in John chapter 14 from verse 25 to 26.
These things I have spoken to you while being present with you,
but the helper,
the Holy Spirit whom the father will send in my name will teach you all things
and bring to your remembrance all the things that I say to you.
Jesus calls the Holy Spirit the helper.
That means the Holy Spirit will help us in whatever situation we're in.
He's here with us and for us regardless of the situation.
And in verse 20,
Paul as another raises the standard again.
Look at verse 20 says this.
So after the Holy Spirit is ministering to you,
he goes and says this according to my earnest expectation and hope that in
nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness as always.
So now also Christ will be magnified in my body.
Whether by life or death.
So the first thing that Paul talks about is shame.
One thing that Paul never seemed that Paul seemed to have the victory over was
shame.
He never let shame affect his stance on the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And shame is one of the most powerful tools the enemy uses.
But do you know what defeats shame?
Shame will lose its power when you're truly surrendered to Jesus.
When you don't care about yourself and you've truly surrendered your life to
him, that's when shame will have no power over you.
And the last verse of verse 20,
you see a man who's completely surrendered to Jesus.
His goal in life is to glorify Christ.
And if that means he dies, he's okay with that.
That's why I'm calling this episode total surrender to Christ because you see
we are a man in Paul who's put everything on the altar and whatever happens,
let it happen for as long the gospel of Jesus is preached.
And I pray that that will be our goal to leave our selfish ambition behind,
to leave our selfish fears.
Whatever it is that is preventing you from advancing the kingdom,
you should put that on the altar. Matter of fact,
we ourselves should be on the altar and let the Lord lead us.
Let the Lord do what he needs to do in our lives so that his gospel,
his kingdom can be preached and expanded. Amen.