The Progress of the Gospel

A couple of weeks ago I joined about 26,000 other people who have accepted the challenge to memorize the book of Philippians in 2011.  I'm not following the exact plan but doing it at my own pace, and I'm happy with that.  It's been a couple of years since I worked on memorizing Scripture, and it has been such a happy return to that discipline.  I'll confess that I was not excited about starting.  I thought, "I don't even read my Bible every day now.  How can I do this?  I can't even finish a complete thought without being interrupted with requests for juice."  But I found it to be just as I expected.  Once I got started, I was so glad that I was doing it.  


So, today I have been adding Philippians 1:12-13 to my arsenal, and I was reminded of a suggestion one of my professors at UM made.  In talking about meditating on Scripture, Dr. Younce suggested thinking on a verse one word at a time as you said it to yourself.  He was actually suggesting it as a good way to fall asleep at night, but I was thinking today that I couldn't help doing that as I tried to remember today's verses.  Muttering the same phrase over and over to myself made meditation easy and natural.  

Now I want you to know, brethren, that my 

circumstances have turned out for the 

greater progress of the gospel...

I had a couple of thoughts.  First, even if Paul's circumstances (i.e. prison) had been different, the gospel was going to progress.  Nothing could stop that.  "The word of God is not imprisoned" (2 Timothy 2:9b).  I also thought about how different these words sounded after memorizing the verses previous and going over them in the same repetitive way.  It sounded like Paul was having an "aha" moment like we do so many times.  You know how sometimes you think, "This isn't what I wanted to happen, but I can see how it's better or how good things are coming out of it."  My second group of thoughts were about the "progress of the gospel" as it relates to my own life.  Are my circumstances effecting the progress of the gospel?  If I really believe that God is in complete control of my every circumstance and that His end goal is that I be "conformed to the image of His Son," then they ought to be.  

Prison was not a happy place to be, and I thought back to a sad circumstance in my own life, and I was happy to find that it had indeed been used for the progress of the gospel in me.  An essential part of the gospel is Christ's resurrection from the dead and the belief that I will follow Him in that, and I thought about when I miscarried, and how all of a sudden the hope of the resurrection got a lot more personal.  I really believe and put my hope in now that because of the resurrection, there's a little boy or girl enjoying the presence of the Lord now that I will get to meet one day.  And I can see that the circumstances of my life turned out for the greater progress of the gospel in me.  And that made me glad.