"Joyful Endurance" - Joy Bomb - Week 3
The Gospel either works for all people or it works for none.
Joyful Endurance.
Pain.
Humanity is fluent in the language of suffering.
Philippians 3:10–14 (NLT) 10 I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, 11 so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead!
12 I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection (completion). But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me.
13 . . . I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.
“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” - C. S. Lewis
Perspective.
“Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead”
Philippians 3:20–21 (NLT) 20 “But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior. 21 He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control.”
Revelation 21:4 (NLT) 4 “He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.”
The curse is reversed.
Pain + Perspective + Perseverance = Joyful Endurance
21 “He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control.”