Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: I'd like you to open your Bible to Acts chapter 16 and Philippians chapter one. Now, if you were writing a book about Philippians, you could call it "The Epistle to the Philippians Written by the Apostle Paul in Rome" or "Jail Mail Written by a Free Man in Chains." And that's what I want to call it. This is an absolute priceless piece of jail mail written by a free man in chains.

And what's it all about? Liberty. Freedom. I love that communion chorus: "Do you know what the blood has done for me? Do you know what the blood has done for me? Do you know what the blood has done for me? It's cleansed me and set me free." What does liberty mean? And as I began to study the book of Philippians two or three years ago for myself before I taught it, I realized that this is a book about spiritual art. There are martial arts, there are fine arts, there's all sorts of art, and there's spiritual art. There are medical arts. We say we practice medicine. That's scary, isn't it?

But any art must be practiced. And if you're going to be a doctor, you sit in school and you get the theory from a book on medicine, and then you go out and you practice medicine. Theory and practice. Theory and practice. And in the book of Philippians, you've got theory and also examples of real life people practicing spiritual art. What are the spiritual arts? We're going to see them all in this book of Philippians. There's the spiritual art of liberty. Spiritual intimacy is an art that's got to be practiced. Humility is a spiritual art. Tranquility. Simplicity.

Paul said, "I know what it is to be in plenty and I also know what it is to be in want. I know what it is to have a lot of food and I know what it is to have nothing, and I'm content with the simple things of life." The art of being content with the simple things of life—it's an art, it's got to be learned, got to be practiced. Spiritual unity, spiritual harmony—that is an art. Keeping the body together, making up, helping people get along with each other, especially in the church. And of course, Christian ministry and service is a spiritual art, and all of them are seen in the life of the Apostle Paul as he writes his jail mail from probably a jail in Rome.

People aren't quite sure. Some say Ephesus, some say other places, but most people say, "No, no, it was Rome. It was at the end of his life. He's on trial, he's preparing his case. He's alone apart from two of his closest friends, and he's waiting probably to be executed." Now, the need to achieve any competence in spiritual arts—the Christian life is a spiritual art—you need the Spirit. Spiritual. You cannot practice any of these arts without the Spirit of God. "If any man has not the Spirit of Christ, he is not a Christian," Romans teaches.

So we start right away by asking ourselves, and I ask you, do you have the Spirit of God? Have you been born from above? Does He live in your heart? You need to be a Christian. You need the Spirit in order to get the theory explained to you from the Bible in order that you might practice it in the world. Paul says being a real Jew means you're one inside, not just outside. It's not an outward show or rules or tradition. He says in chapter three, "I want to know Christ. I really want to know Him."

So being a Christian isn't one outside—what you do, you go to church, you read your Bible, you do good things. Yes, you do all that, but a Christian is one who is one inside. And Paul says it takes the Spirit of God to give us the spiritual intimacy we need to have a relationship with God. And then it takes the Spirit of God to enable us to suffer for Him. That's a spiritual art. Suffering for Christ is a spiritual art, a sacrificial art. You need the Spirit to suffer well.

I came back to a good friend in our church who has a brain tumor. And I picked up the phone to almost a howl of grief. And she was unable to talk for a bit. I didn't even know who it was. I've never heard such a cry of pain. And then I realized who it was, and she had just come back from the hospital from another MRI and it's bad news. And you know, I listened and talked and cried and laughed with that friend of mine for an hour and a half.

And at the end, I thought, "You have learned the art of suffering well." It's absolutely incredible to me because her exodus out of this world is in a fiery chariot, I tell you. And the nurses and the doctors and the friends and her husband are standing there amazed. Now, it's not without tears—what suffering is—but she has learned the art of saying, "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain," which of course, Paul says in the book of Philippians.

Now, when Paul got to a city, he checked out the jail because he knew he was going to end up there very shortly. Any city. You find that Paul has a lot of jail mail written from this jail and that jail and this city and the other city. And I'm sure he's glad of the chance to catch up, have a little time out, get his prayer list out and pray for people, write a book. But in reality, it wasn't much fun at all. And we find him in the book of Philippians struggling.

If you look at the end of chapter one—and I'm going to be in and out of different chapters and verses, so follow me if you will—but at the end of chapter one, he says, he's writing to a little group of people, a little church, "Since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had in times past and now hear I still have." Paul is struggling. Paul didn't sail through his sufferings. Suffering is a struggle. And these people have heard he's struggling. It's not easy to be in a stinking, horrible hole, beaten and lonely and cold and old, without anybody near.

And Paul says, "I'm struggling with this and you've heard about that." And then look up to verse 29, "But it's been granted to you"—and me, he says—"on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for Him." It's a gift. Who wants it? I don't want the gift of suffering and nor do you, but actually, it's a gift. It's given you the privilege on behalf of Christ not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake. Now, I've been sitting among those people who are suffering for Christ's sake, hounded, persecuted, not able to meet freely, singing their hymns in whispers case someone hears them.

And it's an art. And I watched that incredible church in that restricted country, and I watched sacrificial art. Paul says three times in chapter one, "I'm in chains for Christ." Three times. "Because of my chains." He is chained with one hand to the wall, one hand to the guard. "I'm in chains for Christ," he says. And he reminds his readers that it's because of his chains all good sort of things are happening. What do we do with chains? Well, we're going to talk a little bit about that.

It's a secret art, what you do when you find yourself chained to a situation you don't want to be chained to, or a person you don't want to be chained to, or a job you don't want to be chained to, or a health situation you find yourself chained to. What do you do with your chains? Well, Paul teaches us that because of his chains, he got to know Christ better, deeper, in a more intimate way in the deep place where nobody goes.

I'm writing a few little books, one's called "God's Front Door" and it's really the conversations with the Lord on the steps of my soul in the deep place where nobody goes. And the second little book is called "The Deep Place Where Nobody Goes" and I wrote this in the front of it: I ran to the deep place where nobody goes and found Him waiting there. "Where have you been?" He asked me. "Well, I've been in the shallow place where everyone lives," I said. Well, I knew He knew. He just wanted me to admit I'd been too busy being busy.

"I'm running out," I began. "Well, of course," He said. "Haven't seen you in a while." And He sat down on the steps of my soul in the deep place where nobody goes and He smiled at me. And an angel sang, and a shaft of light chased away the shadows and brightened my daily day. And I smiled back. "I'm such a fool." "Shh," He said, His finger on my lips. And He touched my hurried heart and, startled, it took a deep breath and skidded to a near stop.

My spirit nestled into nearness in the deep place where nobody goes. And my soul spoke then and He answered with words beyond music. Where on earth had I been while heaven waited? What grace. Paul said because of my chain, I want to know Christ. And because of my chains, I don't care whether I live or whether I die. He knew Him in such a way, he didn't care whether he lived or died. And you cannot beat a person like that. Doesn't matter who's persecuting you. If you don't care whether you live—and that's great—or whether you die—and that's better—what can they do to you?

Spiritual intimacy is the most important of the spiritual arts because from that depth of knowledge of God, that personal knowledge of God, come all the other gifts, all the other service, all the other things we do for God. And it isn't a question of just serving art, it's inside, it's in here. That's what matters. And of course, the Holy Spirit is our instructor, but other people can instruct us in the spiritual arts too. Know a definition of fellowship? Two fellows in a ship. When the ship goes up, you go up. When the ship goes down, you go down.

And I know in my life, it's been people in the same boat as me that have helped me learn spiritual arts. And Paul had two people with him: Epaphroditus, we'll hear about him later, and he had Timothy, his beloved son that he'd led to Christ. "My son in the faith," he calls him in another place. Two precious leaders of the church. And they were having fellowship in suffering. When the boat went up, they all went up, and when the boat went down, they all went down. And they learned from each other.

If you read right through the book of Philippians, you can look in the second chapter and read about Epaphroditus and read about Timothy and make a little list of the spiritual arts you see in their life. And so the Holy Spirit is one of our instructors, and we home school ourselves in a sense by opening our life and allowing Him personally to teach us about these arts, but also other people that God brings into our life can teach us too. Now, I wonder where this all began.

Because if you read a letter to a group of people in Philippi, it's absolutely nonsense to make sense of it unless you figure out what's it all about. Where did it begin? How did Christians appear in Europe? Now, that's very interesting to me because I'm European. I'm British. And I want to know when the gospel came to the UK and when the gospel came to Europe. Who brought it? What was it all about? Well, you can read about that in Acts chapter 16 because that's where the whole chapter tells you where the church began. It's the background to the book of Philippians.

And if you don't read it, the letter doesn't make much sense. But what happened was Paul had had a team—Barnabas—and young Mark was their intern. And they went on a very scary missionary journey in Turkey. It is still a wild, inhospitable place. And when Paul and Barnabas and young Mark got there, it was scary. You need to read about that also in the Acts of the Apostles and what happened when they got there. And young John Mark, he was chicken. He said, "I'm out of here. I didn't sign up for this." And he got on the next boat and he left Paul and Barnabas in the lurch without anybody to assist them and help them, and he went home to his mother.

Paul was not impressed. Barnabas, however, loved young John Mark because he was a relative. And when they got back, I can imagine John Mark hiding in the bedroom. "You mean Paul and Barnabas?" "Yes, they're back. They're coming for supper tonight," said his mother. "Oh, wow." And Barnabas wants to see you. Does Paul want to see me? No. But Barnabas does. And Barnabas talked to young John Mark—Paul didn't.

And when the time came to go on the next journey, Barnabas said, "Well, we are taking Mark, aren't we? We're going to give him another chance." Paul said, "Over my dead body." And it says in the end of chapter 15 of Acts, the argument was so strong between Paul and Barnabas they split up over it. They had a row. Paul said, "You can either take Mark or you can take me." Barnabas says, "Okay, I'll take Mark." And he did. And they never worked together again.

And that left Paul without a team. So at the beginning of Acts chapter 16, he has to find a team. And so he finds Silas, another leader in the church. And he says, "Now we need a young helper. I know—Timothy." And so he has been working in Timothy's life and he says, "Timothy, do you want to come? Next missionary journey is going to be tough. It's going to be dangerous. It's going to be difficult. Might not come back. You willing to come?" And Timothy said, "Yes, I'll come." And so here we have three members of the new team at the beginning of Acts of the Apostles.

And somewhere along the line, the doctor joins them, whose name is Luke. And there's four of them. And they get together and they say, "Now, where are we going? Are we going to Africa to the camps? Are we going over here? Are we going to Europe?" And Paul says, "No, we're not going to Europe, we're going to Asia. I want to go to Asia. I think look at Asia—never heard the gospel. Huge. Think about it. Place called China, place called Korea." Now they were called different things in those days.

"Let's go to Asia. If we win Asia, Asia will win the world." And so they began to go to Asia, and it says in Acts of the Apostles the Spirit wouldn't let them. We don't know how the Spirit did that. We don't know whether a prophet came and said, "No, you're not to go to Asia." We don't know whether they felt in their hearts, "No, that's not right," but they set off in one direction and were stopped dead. And then they set off in another direction, another part of that part of the world—if you look on your maps—and the Spirit of Jesus, it says in Acts chapter 16, said, "No, you're not to go there."

And they were absolutely flummoxed. They'd set off, they'd been sent away, the church had stood up and sung a hymn and said, "We'll pray for you, we'll support you," and off they'd gone. And now they didn't know what to do. And that night, very troubled, they went to sleep and Paul had a vision. And a man walked into his dream and he was dressed in European clothes. And he was from Macedonia—Europe. And he said, "Come and help us. We need the gospel." Wasn't an angel, it was a man.

And Paul was so convinced this was from God, he got up very early and said, "We're going to Europe. Europe—with all those pagans and all that wild stuff. Where we going? Philippi. Philippi—it's one of the most important pagan cities that there are. Plus, the Romans are there. They have garrisons, they have all sorts of people there. And there's a little tiny group of Jews, beleaguered, persecuted because they're Jews that went from Israel over there and they're trying to survive and keep their faith alive." Paul says, "The man said, 'Come and help us.' I saw him."

And so they go. Now, what did they do? Well, it says in Acts 16, they hung around. Why did they hang around? I mean, why didn't they just get out in the marketplace and preach? We don't know because it doesn't tell us, but we are allowed to think, sit and wonder, look around the corners of the verse. What would you have done? Why did they just hang around? Well, I think—and I could be wrong and I could be right—but I think they were waiting for the man to show up, the man in his dream.

And I can see Silas saying, "Is that him, just come into the restaurant?" "No, no, it doesn't look like him. He was very big and he had..." and Paul would describe him, so they all began to look for this man. They never found a man, but they found a woman instead. And Paul got fed up after a few days just hanging around waiting for the man who'd told him to come and help. And so they went and found the Jews, and the Jews were by a river because Jews in a pagan city always met by the river trying to start a little synagogue and a fellowship because they needed the river for their rituals and their cleansing.

They needed water. And so he knew where the Jews would be, and they get there and there's this woman, very, very important woman called Lydia. And she is a merchant. Now, some people don't think her name was Lydia. They think it was Euodia or Syntyche and that actually the word in the original language is Lydian. She came from an area around there called Lydia. And people that did that were called Lydians. We don't know. But anyway, it says in the NIV, a woman called Lydia—or the Lydian—came to faith. She and the whole of her household were saved.

And she said to Paul, "Will you come home to my house?" Just before I went on this trip, I was in Europe, Eastern Europe. I was in Prague and I was in Hungary, I was in Budapest. But when I was in Prague, I was meeting with women from all over Eastern Europe—key women. They sent two key Christian women who are turning their countries upside down to that conference, and I got the joy of doing the Bible teaching. And I want to tell you something: the church in Europe still meets in Lydia's house.

And they tell stories of hundreds and hundreds of homes where there are home churches. Just as it was in Acts chapter 16. "Come home to my house." And Paul was a little bit reluctant, but in the end he went. And the church was born in Lydia's house with Lydia and her family and maybe a couple of other Jews that heard and believed that day. And then Paul got very excited and he overstepped his mark as usual, and they had a very exciting time with a woman with a demon, and it got him into all sorts of trouble.

And he got thrown in jail, of course. They got thrown in the inner jail. Since I saw you last, I found myself in jail—two main jails in America. And I didn't know they had an inner jail in every jail in the world, but certainly even in America. Gatesville, 80,000 prisoners, maximum security. What happens if you commit a crime when you go to jail? Well, what do they do with you? They put you in the inner prison and the warden decides how long you stay there. No trial. Just come before him. What were you doing? This, that, and the other. Okay, in you go.

And that's where they put Paul and Silas, in the inner prison—in the hole, probably, in Paul's case. And at midnight, the other prisoners heard a sound. All of them. So how loud were those guys singing from that hole? Everybody heard them. At the top of their voice they were singing. I wonder what they were singing. "My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth and followed Thee." I don't know, probably not. But they were singing. And my husband always says when he's teaching Philippians that their singing was so bad it caused an earthquake.

Right. And there was an earthquake and the jailer thought everybody would run away, and so he took his knife out to commit suicide because he was for it. And Paul said, "No, no, no, nobody's run away," which was a miracle. "We're all here." And the man gets saved. And his house and his kids and his teenagers, and they all get baptized. And what I love in Acts 16, when they all get baptized, it says they were filled with joy because they'd come to believe in God—he and his whole family, verse 34. Filled with joy.

Now, he was probably for the high jump anyway because he let Paul and the others come into his home and he washed their wounds. But in the morning, the people found out they were Romans. And they were absolutely horrified. "You mean we put Romans in the inner jail?" And Paul rubbed it in. "Yes, we're Roman citizens. What's Rome going to think when they know that's how you treated me, a Roman citizen?" And they pleaded with him, "Oh, I'm terribly sorry. Would you please leave? Would you just get out of the place?" And Paul said, "No, I'll go at my own rate."

And when he got an apology from them, he went to Lydia's house and said goodbye and they prayed, and then he left. And that's how the church at Philippi started: with a jailer and his family—probably his wife ran the Sunday School—and Lydia and her kids and a few other Jews and a couple of pagans. That's ordinary people with extraordinary stories. Everybody has a story. And that's how the church started. And this church is one that won Paul's heart. He said, "I love these people. I love these people."

And the church was born in Europe. That's how it came. And at the end of his life, Paul's still in touch with them. Sometimes he sent Timothy, sometimes he went himself. Some people think three times he visited this church. And when we begin the book of Philippians, Paul says, "Paul and Timothy, servants of Jesus Christ." And they always started their letters with their signature. We end our letters with our signature, don't we? But in those days, they started them so you knew who you were reading the letter from—you didn't have to turn it over and say, "Who's this from?"

Oh, this is a letter from Paul and Timothy. And the word he uses is a marked man—a marked man. We're marked people. We are slaves of Jesus Christ. There were three echelons of slaves when Jesus lived and when Paul lived. There were the important slaves who were dressed with a robe down to the floor—a beautiful robe—and maybe a gold band around their head. The favorite slaves. They would possibly get wages, maybe even have a holiday, and maybe even choose who they married.

And then there were the middle sort of slaves and they just had a tunic down to their knees and sandals. And then there were the lowest form of slaves who were stripped to the waist, bare feet. Does that remind you of? Remember when Jesus washed the disciples' feet? Do you remember what He did? He stripped to the waist and took the lowest form of servant hood. Two people washed feet: women and slaves. Jesus did women's work. Jesus did a slave's work.

And Paul borrows the picture and says, "That's the sort of slaves we are who's writing to you, little group of Philippians. Just servants—it's all we are—just slaves of Jesus." And he identifies himself and he borrows a picture from the Old Testament in Exodus where if perhaps a slave loved his master and didn't want to go out free, he could say so. And the master would take him down and put him up against a post and take a wooden peg and a hammer and put it through his ear and mutilate the man's ear so that every time the man would go around doing the master's business, they'd say, "Oh, he's a marked man—earmarked."

He said, "I love my master, I will not go out free." And that is the mark of a servant of Jesus. And that's a spiritual art—to serve God as a servant of Jesus. Spiritual art. And Paul says that's who we are—we're just slaves and we're practicing serving Jesus. We're marked men—earmarked for life. And you can look up Exodus 21:6 or Deuteronomy 15:17 and find that there. What is the mark of an earmarked man? Well, the mark of an earmarked man is joy.

He was a marked man and he was a joyful man. 14 times in this book we read "rejoice" or "joy." It's a laughing letter. It is full of joy. It is tap dancing. It is an incredible piece of literature when you realize who it's written by: a man in chains, in the hole, in the inner prison, facing certain death. 14 times. "Oh, the joy," says Paul. "Oh, the joy—it won't quit." That's liberty. That's liberty when you're chained.

And here we have a man, a joyful man. Let me read you a definition of joy: a settled state of mind characterized by peace, an attitude that views the world with all of its ups and downs with equanimity, a confident way of looking at life that's rooted in faith, that's keenly aware and trusts in the living Lord of the church and is content. Paul is learning—because arts have to be learned—contentment. Whether he lives or whether he dies, whether he's hungry, whether he's full, whether he has plenty, whether he has nothing.

He says, "I have learned to be content." You know, contentment doesn't come when you ask for it. So many people say to me, "I want to know contentment. I don't have peace of mind. I need to be content with things that I have, and I'm not. Never content, never have enough. There's something missing." Paul says, "Well, you have to learn to be content." And Paul is in the school of hard knocks. Paul is in the university of suffering and often that's where you learn it.

And he says, "I haven't yet become perfect in this art of contentment or tranquility or serenity—a spiritual art. I haven't attained. In fact, in chapter three he says, 'Don't think I've arrived. I'm reaching, I'm getting there and I will get there, but I'm on the way. I'm learning to be content in any and every situation.'" So he's a marked man. He's a joyful man. And people sense the joy, just as they heard Paul and Silas singing years previously when that church was born.

And it was the joy that made the prisoners stay put and not run away. It was the joy that attracted the jailer to faith in Christ. It was the joy—oh, the joy. Here again, Paul is demonstrating the learned art of contentment and joy and peace of mind. But he intends to spread it. And joy is an evangelist. Who wants to join a miserable group of people? Tell me. And when people look around the church of Jesus Christ, why would they want to join? Well, they'll want to join if joy is the evidence of contentment and peace of mind in the people that go to the church.

And Paul says, "My chains are chains of blessing." And you need to read Philippians chapter one, but in verse 12, "I want you to know, brothers," he says, "what's happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. And as a result, it's become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I'm in chains for Christ. And because of my chains, most of the brothers in the Lord have been encouraged to speak the word of God more courageously and fearlessly because of my chains," he says.

And I don't know who or what you're chained to, but what I want to know is what's happening because of who or what you're chained to. When something happened to you, what happened to people because something happened to you? Paul says, "These are the things that happened to me—persecution, trouble, chained to the guard. But what happened when what happened to me?" And chapter one tells you what happened just in that passage I started to read to you. Read on to the end of the passage.

And he says, first of all, "I learned to pray." And you need to read the first few verses of Philippians and make a little list. Lists are great when you're reading the Bible. And if you want to learn how to pray maturely and as we should, make a list of how Paul prayed. Five, six things. What was he praying? He was praying this, he was praying that. Just get a pencil, get a notebook, read the Bible and make that list. And he said, "You know, I just can't stop praying. I thank my God every time I remember you."

There's that word: I remember you. "In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray." His prayer life was all. It was full. It was a joy. He didn't have to do it. He didn't "do his devotions." He prayed. I remember being in hospital for something or other years and years ago, lying flat on my back, and the Lord said to me, "That's a good place to have you, Jill. Nowhere to look but up. Now catch up on your prayer list."

And as I turned that situation, which was quite a painful situation, into learning how to pray, I realized that my chains to that particular hospital bed could become chains of blessing. I could go anywhere in the world from that bed. I could go to my government. I could go to other countries. I could go to people who are in need. I could go to my children. I could go to my husband. The chains were chains of blessing because of my prayer life.

And Paul says, "I learned to pray." And then secondly, he says, "Because of my chains, guess what? The church has been planted in Caesar's household." Now, what does that all mean? Well, he was chained to a guard, you see, with one hand chained to the wall with the other. And I can see Paul content with where he was, for nothing can happen to a child of God outside the will of God, and he believed that. Content. Unpacked. Chained to the wall, chained to the guard. He saw the opportunity.

And some people see an opportunity in every difficulty, and other people see a difficulty in every opportunity. I always see a difficulty in every opportunity and my husband always sees an opportunity in every difficulty—depends whether you're negative or positive. And I don't know whether Paul was negative or positive, but he had learned the art of seeing the opportunity. And here's the guard, chained every two hours.

And I can see his little eyes glinting. "Oh, here's the next one." And I can see the guard after two hours of having Paul preach at him and not being able to get away, going back and saying, "Oh, am I sorry for you, brother. Your turn. He never stops talking about this Jesus and all of that." And one by one by one, those guards came to Jesus. And they went back to the barracks and they went back to Caesar's household and they began to talk.

If you look in the very last chapter of Philippians, chapter four, right at the end, verse 21: "Greet all the saints in Christ Jesus. The brothers who are with me send greetings. All the saints send you greetings, especially those who are of Caesar's household." How did they get there? I mean, how do you have saints in Caesar's household? Well, you just win the guards, one by one by one by one. And soon you have a church right under Caesar's nose. The Praetorium—the main guards were looking after him.

And Paul wins them because he sees an opportunity in his difficulty and he doesn't lick his wounds and he isn't sorry for himself and he settles in and is content. And if you read through that chapter, you see that he had an opportunity to evangelize, an opportunity to learn to pray, an opportunity to defend the gospel. He says in verse 16, "I'm put here for the defense of the gospel. I'm going to get a chance to go on trial and I'm going to reach a whole other audience I'd never reach if I wasn't on trial here."

"And I'm going to get an opportunity to encourage the church." Did you see that? "Because of my chains, all the brothers in the church in Rome are being encouraged." How is that? It always encourages you to see somebody exercising the spiritual art of suffering. I tell you, come with me where I've been in this last trip. Who's encouraged? I haven't a clue whether I encourage those people. I can't imagine how. I'm encouraged because those incredible people walked into my life.

And I am more encouraged because of their suffering. And when you see somebody suffer well with joy—oh, the joy—then you think, "Well, they could do it, I can do it." And Paul said it helps them preach more boldly even if they get caught and they get put in prison with me. They don't care because they see me—they're modeling after me. Twice in this book, Paul says, "Look at me. Do what I'm doing." Could we say that? Could we say to people, "Look at me, how I'm suffering, and you do it"?

Wow. Paul the apostle says because of my chains, because of my chains, it was given me on behalf of Christ to be in this prison so I could win this man to Christ who could win that man to Christ who could win this man to Christ and could even perhaps tell Caesar himself about Christ. What a joy. How else could it have happened if I hadn't been in this hellhole? How else could it have happened? And because of this, I rejoice. The spiritual art of liberty. Jail mail written by a free man in chains.

Oh, I want that. Do you want that? Do you really want what Paul had in that spiritual intimacy? For me to live is Christ and to die is gain. I remember teaching in my teaching career in England English literature and I remember teaching Hamlet to some seniors in high school. And you come to the point where he says, "To be or not to be? That is the question." Poor Hamlet. If he went on living, he was absolutely miserable, and if he died, he was terrified.

And Paul says, "To be or not to be? That's the question. Now, which do I want? If I go on living, that's good for the church at Philippi and I just want to love them and help them now they're in trouble. So maybe, okay, if I live then I'll be able to perhaps be released and go home to them. But oh, if I die! If I go through the front door and see Him face to face! So I don't really care, Mr. Roman. Kill me? That's fine. Release me? That's fine." And you can't beat a man like that. That's liberty. That's liberty.

Pray with me. Heavenly Father, thank You for this jail mail. Thank You for this literature. Thank You for this letter from a man who should have been cowed and just giving up and moaning and groaning and self-centered and self-pitying. And instead, Lord, his spirit walks out of that place down the centuries into our lives, challenging us, picking us up and shaking us and saying, "Where's your faith? What's the matter with you?" and setting us free.

And Lord, I thank You for this scripture, this particular piece of scripture that has absolutely set my spirit dancing. And I pray that as we get into this wonderful letter, that it may set other people free, 2000 years later, here. We ask it for Jesus' sake and the kingdom. Amen.