Let that be enough
I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.
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"I have learned..."
Those two lines from Paul in Philippians 4 were life changing for me when I first "got it" a few decades ago and they're still paying off with newer understanding and deeper insight as the years go by.
There were a lot of supernatural or magical assumptions I'd picked up along the way about God, life, church, and how of it works together. In spite of actually seeing what Paul and others would say, it was often still taught that a lot of what you get from God comes "magically".
Yeah, I know that doesn't make sense at all, but that's how a lot of it came across in the early years. Just do the right things, pray the right prayers, stand this way, think these thoughts and suddenly some kind of Hollywood magic would work and we'd all "get it" - whatever "it" was we were being taught.
And that never worked. Ever. We all would parrot the right answers so we could move on to the next lesson and get gold stars, but rarely was there a deeper insight gained, to my memory.
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Paul, the last apostle to be called by Jesus personally, to our knowledge, had it all going on - good education, good reputation, good networking skills, good thinker, and so on. And Jesus cuts him off on the highway and shows him a path he'd never imagined before. (Read Acts and get the actual story).
The interesting thing about Paul as I learned more about him over the years is that he didn't have a nice, large, always-supportive entourage. Quite the opposite. His life wasn't good, or fun, or easy after meeting Jesus. But he'd met the risen-Jesus and knew what was true and that he had to tell everyone about it.
In those early years with the flannel graph lessons in Bible class, we learned the large stories and the big movements of Paul and the other characters in the Bible, but didn't focus to close up on the their life.
Later I learned that Paul could 100% have had no idea the impact that his work would have later, after he was gone. Most of the "churches" he wrote were small and would be unrecognizable to most all of us. He probably thought his influence was zero, at times.
And yet he persisted on trying to tell more people about what God had done through Jesus. In the face of hunger, poverty, nakedness, dangers of all kinds from people and the wild, terrible accidents, literal persecutions, and more - he kept going.
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And in Philippians 4 he says that verse above. He had learned. He wasn't struck with the Holy Spirit, knocking him into some kind of spiritual stupor where he didn't feel sick, poor, lonely, etc.
He had learned how to walk with God in trust and dependence that whatever he had at hand would be enough. If he had a lot, he was grateful. If he had a little or nothing, he'd manage.
He had learned that all he really needed was God and that whatever God provided, he was okay with that - even if it was death.
God is the one who gave him the strength.
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Earlier in the previous chapter, Paul says how sad it made him to know that there are/were people who lived as enemies of the cross of Christ - that those were people who were destined for destruction because their god was their stomach and their pride and joy was doing whatever they wanted.
I don't think it stuck with me till the middle of life what it is to have your stomach as your god. Now it makes sense, but now I see more fully that it is anything you live for that is temporary - it's a dog eat dog world, get what you can while you can, stay out of my way.
It was weird to me that Paul was sad about that - sad that people were living for what they wanted. Why would he care? Why be concerned about people who are just doing their thing and minding their business? After all, God isn't counting sin against the world anymore, why not just move along Paul?
And I think it's because he had more fully developed the ability to see as God sees and he could see the pain, the emptiness, and the futility of living that way. His heart was for people and his sorrow was because they couldn't see what he saw.
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In the middle of all that, he'd learned to be okay with things that were outside his control.
He still felt. He still had opinions and emotions, but he'd learned to be at a place of contentment in the middle of any circumstance - even those that were not good and those that were.
I think I'm relearning that with each passing year in ways I didn't know existed before.
And that's probably the big win recently - learning that a part of growing in our trust and dependence on God requires actually learning.
And it isn't all "classroom work", but as a part of the flow of life.
And God himself does all the teaching as we walk alongside him and he us.
That's pretty big. And it is more than enough.
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