One day I received a text from my college roommate saying that she had just read Philippians, and she encouraged me to read it too. Now I don't know about you, but I'm much more likely to follow through with something if another person is counting on me to do it, too. I was excited that my roommate challenged me to read it, and I assured her that I would! It had been a while since I had looked at Philippians though, and I was secretly hoping it wasn't one of the lengthier books in the Bible. It's not that I don't enjoy reading the Bible, because I do. But I knew that I have a pretty short attention span when it comes to reading and that I wouldn't be up for a long, long read. Of course God knows me better than I know myself, and when I turned to Philippians, I found that it was only six pages long. *insert praise hands emoji*
So, the first thing that I took away from this short letter was that we should not be living for our own advancement.
Philippians 1:21 (ESV)
"For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."
Everything we do should be done in hopes of spreading Christ's love and forwarding His kingdom. Paul considers both living and dying as great privileges: in life, we get to serve Christ but in death, we get to be in Christ's presence. But Paul reminds the Philippians (and us) in Phil. 1:27, "let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ." We should reflect the Gospel through our actions and aim to please God in every area of our lives.
How do we begin to accomplish that? We follow Christ's example of humility and servant-hood.
Philippians 2:3-4 (ESV)
"Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others."
Paul says that Christ, who was God and had every right to act entitled, "emptied himself" and took "the form of a servant" (Phil. 2:7). We need to do the exact same! There's no better way for you to be a witness than to lay your personal desires aside and show that you truly care more about others than you do yourself. Humbling yourself to serve others isn't limited to helping out at a soup kitchen on a Saturday, either. It can be done by looking away from Twitter for a few minutes to help your mom fold the laundry, or by picking up something that someone drops even when you're about to be late for class. It's about transforming your heart into that of a servant.
Later on, Paul explains that the things he once considered valuable are worth nothing compared to Christ.
Philippians 3:7-8 (ESV)
"But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ..."
If we know who God is, what He does and acknowledge that we are completely dependent upon Him, nothing else in the world will come to close to having as much value as He does in our lives - simple as that.
