Truth That Changes Lives

Guest (Male): Sharing the gospel is a team effort. So here's the question. Are you on the team?

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining us on Truth That Changes Lives. Pastor JP Jones is the senior pastor of Crossline Community Church in Laguna Hills, California, and a professor in biblical studies at Biola University. Today on Truth That Changes Lives, Pastor JP will be giving us a message from a series entitled Joy. Let's listen in as JP gives us part two of Philippians 1:11.

Host (JP Jones): Now Paul tells us here in this passage, not only that we should be praying regularly for one another and when we do so, it gives us joy. He tells us what we're to be praying for. Drop down to verse 9. He says this, and this is my prayer.

And this is my prayer, that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and the depth of insight so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

Paul tells us in this passage that our prayers for one another need to be scripturally based and spiritually transforming.

I mean, I think we ought to be praying for all the real stuff that we talk about, financial provision and health and the issues of life that come up. I hope you're praying for all that stuff for yourself and praying for that for me and praying for that for one another. But when Paul talks about his prayer for the Philippians, he doesn't highlight some of those specific day-to-day needs. What he talks about are those deep spiritual things that he wants to see happen in their lives.

And remember this is inspired by the Holy Spirit. What we need to be praying for one another is that Christ would change our lives, that Christ would be real to us, that Christ would transform us, that Christ would mold our character, that Christ would produce his fruit in our lives, and that Christ would use us as his servants.

Paul says, I pray that your love would abound more and more.

That it would be a love with a real knowledge and love with a depth of insight and that the result of that love abounding, that discerning and knowledgeable love abounding, there would be the ability to discern, this is verse 10, what is best. It's the Greek word *dokimazo*. *Dokimazo* literally means to approve something after testing.

So Paul's prayer is that the love of Christ would be so real in their lives, it would be abounding and it would be with real knowledge, and it would be with moral insight so they'd have spiritual discernment to test and approve things and then to choose the best. And they'd be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, verse 11, they'd be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.

See, Paul prays spirit-inspired prayers. We got several of them mentioned in the New Testament. Ephesians chapter 1, Ephesians chapter 3, Colossians chapter 1, here in Philippians chapter 1.

If you're not sure how to pray for me or how to pray for the people in your small group or how to pray for one another in the body of Christ, just pray these prayers. Just open your Bible to Philippians 1, Colossians 1, Ephesians 1, Ephesians 3, and pray the prayers in the Bible for one another.

When we pray scripture back to God, the Holy Spirit uses that to transform people and to work in people, to do a deep work.

We need to pray regularly and we need to pray scripturally, and when we do, based upon shared relationship, we find our joy in Christ. That's what Paul says.

Here's a third observation. We gain confidence when we see God at work in our lives and in our church.

We gain confidence. Paul says this starting in verse 5. Because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

It's right for me to feel this way about you all, since I have you in my heart and whether I'm in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God's grace with me.

Paul says that his ministry was a shared ministry. He shared in it with the Philippians. He shared in it through their prayer support for him. He shared in it in their financial support of him. He later on says at the end of chapter 4, that the Philippian church was the only church that continued to support him as a missionary. And so he counts that financial support of actually partnering with him.

In ministry. Did you know that when you support a missionary, you're actually partnering with them? When you support the ministry of this church, you are actually partnering with everything that we do as a church in ministry.

We are partners through our prayers, we're partners through our financial support, and we're partners through actually being in the trenches with one another, doing the work together.

Paul says that from first-hand, up-front, close, interpersonal observation, he was able to see God's work.

And it gave him confidence. Confidence in the past, present and future working of God. Past, present, and future working of God. Verse 6 says this, being confident of this that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ.

So there was a point Paul says that God began the good work. He was continuing the good work in the present and he was going to continue it up into the future until the day of Christ. He's speaking about the consummation of the age.

This is not only true of the Philippians, it's true of every believer. Every believer, to be a believer, begin your spiritual life crossing the line in accepting Christ.

That's when you begin and God begins to work in you. And then God continues that work all throughout your spiritual journey until its full completion. When we meet the Lord.

Paul says as he was thinking about his relationship with the Philippians, his partnership with them, he said, I'm confident because I saw God's work in you at the beginning. I see his present work in you and I know he's going to continue it on into the future.

We gain spiritual confidence when we see God working in our lives and God working in our church.

Remember our four-year anniversary? How many of you were here with us when we celebrated our four-year anniversary? Not everybody, but quite a few of you. So those of you that were here with us when we celebrated.

Do you remember we shared a lot of stories of what God's been doing in our body and how he's been changing lives? Remember when we had the Williams family up here and Kylie Joy standing here? We shared their story that the doctors told them that there was just no hope for Kylie to ever walk because she wasn't born with all the chromosomes necessary to do that? Remember that? And we talked about how we prayed and asked God to do a miracle and then James brought his daughter up here and sat Kylie right here and then he got to the other end of the stage and Kylie walked across the stage with a big old smile on her face.

How many of you who saw that, that gave you joy when you saw it? Look at that. Now think about it. The reason it gave you joy is because you saw God work.

You saw that God changes lives and you saw that not just from an abstract sense, but because that's a part of our body, you feel connected there because the Williams family, they're a part of us and God was working in their lives and God was answering prayer and that gave you a sense of joy and it gave all of us a sense of confidence because God changes lives. And if God could change their life, maybe he could change my life. And if God could answer their prayers, maybe he could answer my prayers.

And if God is in the miracle business, maybe he could do a miracle for me. You see, when we see God working in our lives and we see God working in our church, it gives us confidence. That's why we want to make much of what God does.

That's why we show videos of what God did at the women's retreat. That's why we share with you what God did at our Easter outreach. That's why we talk about how God answers prayer. It's not to say anything about us. Far from it, the exact opposite. It's to say something about God.

The Apostle Paul, as he's writing this letter to the Philippians, he's thinking, I shared in ministry with you guys. You received from me the gospel. Paul planted the church at Philippi. He preached the gospel.

But then it wasn't just him giving, it became him receiving. And then it became together, shared ministry.

And as a result of that, Paul said, I found joy and I gained confidence.

Here's the fourth observation. Sharing the gospel is a team effort.

Sharing the gospel is a team effort.

Philippians 1:7, it's right for me to feel this way. What what way? Confident. It's right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart. For whether I was in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God's grace with me.

Do you hear what Paul's saying? He's talking about the fact that this mission to know Christ and to make Christ known, that this commitment to share the gospel with people, that this kingdom focus was not something that Paul experienced in isolation, it was something that he shared in with the Philippians. They were in it together, they were on the same team.

Sharing the gospel is is not just the work of the overseers. It's not just the work of the deacons. It's not just the work of the apostles. It's not just the work of the evangelists. And by the way, you know there are, when you really think about it and you're able to kind of strip away what we see with our human eyes and just understand the way God works from a real spiritual perspective, there are no superstar evangelists.

You might think there are.

This past week a group of us from Crossline, we were partnering with Harvest Crusade Ministry in a fundraiser with them. And at the dinner, I was talking to Greg Laurie with the Harvest Crusade. If, you know, if we were to say there were superstar evangelists, you might say Greg Laurie is a superstar evangelist in terms of the Harvest Crusade.

We were talking about it and he was just saying something that is just so simple and basic and true and comes right out of what Philippians 1 says. He said, you know what we've discovered, is that the people who come to the Harvest Crusade and really make decisions for Christ, are not people who are just kind of random on the street and see a sign that says the Harvest Crusade.

It's not like they just hear on the radio there's a Harvest Crusade and somehow their car makes it to Anaheim Stadium.

No, they're invited by somebody.

And also what we've discovered is we train prayer counselors. In fact, Crossline is the South Orange County Hub Church for training and for partnering with the Harvest Crusade, and so we will have prayer counselor evangelism training as we anticipate the next Harvest Crusade this summer.

He said, we train prayer counselors, and so when someone comes forward at the end of the message at the Harvest Crusade and they walk out on the field at the invitation, they will be introduced to someone who's a prayer counselor, and they might come from, you know, a whole variety of churches that partner with us. But we've discovered if someone makes a commitment to Christ at the Harvest Crusade, you know where they end up going to church? It's not my church. Greg Laurie's pastor of a church in Riverside. He goes, and they don't go to the church of the person who's the prayer counselor down on the field. You know where they end up going to church? They go to the church of the person who invited them to the Harvest Crusade in the first place.

So here you have this friend who invites somebody to the Harvest Crusade. You got Greg Laurie, the quote-unquote superstar evangelist, and then you got the prayer counselor on the field. But you know what? It's a team effort. Sharing the gospel is a team effort.

Here's the Apostle Paul writing to the church at Philippi and including them as co-members of the team and speaking to them as people that are in it with him together, you see, in this ministry of experiencing and expressing God's grace.

Sharing the gospel is a team effort. So here's the question, are you on the team?

Do you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?

What role do you play on the team? Are you praying for people? Are you sharing your faith with people? Are you inviting people to church? Are you introducing people to people who might lead them to Christ? What's your role on the team?

And are you playing your position?

Paul writes to the Philippians and he encourages them and he finds confidence with them and he finds joy in knowing that he's partners with them.

Here's the last observation. When we share in this ministry with one another, it fills us with godly affection.

I just find this interesting because this is from the Apostle Paul and if you were to read his bio from the book of Acts, you know, by anybody's imagination, if he were just to take one of these temperament tests, Paul would be like off the charts Type A kind of guy. Hard charger.

He says this in Philippians 1:7 and 8, "It's right for me to feel this way about all of you since I have you in my heart for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel. All of you share in God's grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus."

When we share in ministry with one another, it fills us with a godly affection. I mean, the Apostle Paul is using feeling language. He's talking about the tender, loving affection and mercy of Christ that he felt for the Philippians, that he felt for them because he shared in life with them, he ministered with them, he served with them. They were on the same team and they'd partnered together and he'd prayed for them. And as a result of all that, God had filled him with a tender love for them.

In fact, he uses the word that's kind of lost in our translation, so it's actually translated differently. If you were to look up in the King James Version, if any of you are devotees to the King James Version of the Bible, but if you have the King James Version here in Philippians 1:8, it actually says, "I long for you with all the bowels of Christ Jesus." Now, I don't know about you, but when I think of bowels, I don't really think of mercy and affection and and love.

That's literally the word though. It's the Greek word *splagnon*. The *splagnon* were the guts, the bowels, the small intestines. You're like, what in the world is he talking about? In the Greek culture, we talk about in our culture loving someone with all your heart. Not in the Greeks. The Greeks thought about it, it's like it's in the gut. And if you really have tender, merciful, compassion and affection and just deep feelings for someone or something, it's the bowels.

Now, it wasn't meant to be understood literally, it was figurative to the feeling, you see? And that's why in the New Testament it's translated most of the time as compassion or affection or tender mercies. Paul says that's the way he felt towards these folks because he'd shared his life with them and they'd shared their lives with him and they'd been together in the work of the gospel and they'd prayed for each other and they'd rejoiced with those who rejoiced and they'd wept with those who who weep and they felt all of that stuff together. So there was a bond. A holy, godly bond.

That's what God wants to do in our church. What God wants to do is fill us with that kind of affection for one another because we're committed together in knowing Christ and making him known.

We're sharing in ministry together, and as a result, we have joy and we have confidence and we have tender affection.

We just as a church did our church health survey. Many of you participated in that for us. We've been doing that since we began. Scott Horn and his wife Delores, they work with Church Resource Ministries. And one of the things they do is they consult churches and help churches develop a healthy church plan. You know, you can be a growing church but not be healthy. But if you're a healthy church, you'll grow because healthy things grow. So if you focus on church health, you'll become healthy and you'll grow.

So we've been doing that for the past four years since we've been started. We just did our church health survey, just got the results back. Many of you participated in that, and it kind of looks at the church from several diagnostic perspectives in terms of evaluating health. And our highest area of evaluation from your perspective was that Crossline is a place where there's loving relationships. And then underneath that, in all of the various criteria, the subcategory that got the highest evaluation of anything in our church was that there is an atmosphere of joy and acceptance at Crossline.

An atmosphere of joy and acceptance. Well, I'll tell you, based upon Philippians 1:1-11, that means God's working here. That means God's doing something here because that's what God produces when people share together a common love for Christ and for one another and a work of the gospel.

He produces joy and he produces confidence and he produces godly affection.

Well, what's what's happening in your heart and in your life?

Because if you're like me, you want to have joy. And what Philippians 1:1-11 tells us is that joy is found when we partner with one another in the work of the gospel.

Guest (Male): What a great message for all of us today. Pastor JP provides us with great insight. That is why we'd like to make it available to you on CD. Just get in touch and mention today's date. We'll send it your way for just $5. Or if you'd like to support this ministry, you can write us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653, or give us a call at 949-916-0250. That's 949-916-0250.

For your gift of $25 or more, we will send you a signed copy of JP's new book, *Facing Goliath*.

Please join us every Sunday at 9:00 or 11:00 AM at Crossline Church in Laguna Hills. The address is 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653.

Or check us out on the web at crosslinechurch.com. We're going to get to the address and phone number again in a moment, but before we do that, Pastor JP, do you have any insight from today's message?

Host (JP Jones): Thanks Greg. Philippians chapter 1, verses 1-11 is an introduction to this book, a book that's all about joy. In the book of Philippians, the Apostle Paul writes that joy is found in a vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ.

When we've crossed the line and we've asked Jesus to come into our life and Jesus is the Lord of our life, we can experience joy because it's his joy within us. And that joy becomes real and practical when we align our lives with God's purposes. When we seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, we find joy not in external circumstances, but we find joy in an abiding relationship with Jesus. And in Philippians 1:1-11, Paul basically says that that joy is made practical for us when we partner with other believers in the cause of the gospel.

We find our joy when we experience loving relationships with one another, and we find our joy when our relationships are redemptive, when it's all about working and serving God's kingdom and helping others find Christ as their Lord and Savior.

The greatest thing that has ever happened to me is that I gave my life to Jesus Christ. And I believe that the greatest thing I could do for someone else is to help them come into a relationship with Christ.

My joy in doing that is multiplied when I do that with other believers, when I share and fellowship with other believers and together we work towards knowing Christ and making Christ known.

You can find real joy in your life when you first and foremost give your life to Jesus. And secondly, when you reach out and have a really encouraging and positive relationship with a group of believers. And thirdly, when you work together with those believers to make the gospel of Jesus Christ known in your community and around the world.

What we're really talking about is God's great intention for the church. You see, in the local church is where we worship God, we fellowship with one another, we're equipped with God's word, and then we go out as witnesses for Jesus to reach the world for Christ.

God wants us to experience joy and we experience joy when we partner with one another in the gospel.

And here in Philippians chapter 1, Paul says that this is such a holy calling and a calling that so produces joy, it involves prayerful relationships with one another. He talks about his prayer for the Philippians and it is a role model for how we ought to pray for one another in the body of Christ, how we should pray for our family, how we should pray for our pastors, how we should pray for fellow members of the church, how we should pray for those who are in our small group.

We are to pray for one another because when we pray, we're asking God to do his supernatural work among us, and when God works among us, it increases our faith, it raises our level of joy, and we experience more of the life that God has come to give us.

So Philippians 1 gives us a game plan for joy and it gives us some very specific tactics to experience that joy. They involve partnering with other believers in the gospel, it involves showing love towards one another, it involves praying for one another, and it involves being united in one spirit towards this common goal of knowing Christ and making Christ known.

Let me ask you, have you given your life to Jesus Christ? Are you committed to a group of believers where you're growing and fellowship with one another and are you using the time and talent and treasure that God has given you to make the gospel known to others? When you can say yes to each of those questions, that's when your joy can be multiplied in your life.

And if you'd like to have that kind of joy, let me pray for you right now. God, I pray that your joy would fill myself, fill all of our listeners, and I pray Lord, that that joy would come from being committed to Jesus, committed to other believers, and committed to the cause of Christ. I pray for that in Jesus' name. Amen.

Guest (Male): We want to help you in your relationship with Christ. Please get in touch with us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653. Or call us at 949-916-0250. On the internet, you will find us at crosslinechurch.com. We hope to see you at one of our services every Sunday at our new campus in Laguna Hills. For more information and directions, please go to crosslinechurch.com. Please join us next time on Truth That Changes Lives.