Welcome to Waymaker Church! We are so excited to have you join us today! We exist to Encounter, Live for, and Advance the Kingdom of God!

Recap!
Wk1 - You've Got Grit! (don't forget that! You made it this far, you can make it further!) Keep in mind that its not simply God at the top of the list, but rather God is central and all flows from him!

Wk2 - How to Have Joy. It serves as a good reminder that joy is not an involuntary response to good things. Joy is an intentional response despite outward circumstances.

First things first here is we need to recognize where Paul is while he is penning this letter to the church of Philippi. While he is writing this, he is jail. Most likely in Rome but possible Ephesus. Paul was apprehensive that his execution was close at hand, but still he longed to possibly see the church again.

In this letter, he:
-Greets them
-Give thanks and prayer for them
-Gives joy that Christ is preached
-Expresses his life for Christ and encourages the readers to live as Citizens of Heaven.
-Have the attitude of Christ, shine brightly for him!
-Then he commend Timothy and Epaphroditus for carrying the attitude and shining for Jesus!
-Then he gives us the why behind the what: The reason Paul can say these things and commend Timothy and Epaphroditus is because Paul knows:
-The priceless value of Knowing Christ.
-The power of pressing on toward the goal.
He then chooses to:
-encourage them
-thank them and sign off.

CONTENTMENT: Internal satisfaction which does not demand changes in external circumstances.

Did you catch where the discontentment arises?
Hardness of heart, trials/persecution, The worries of this life and the lure of wealth
Discontentment, at the root level, really derives from our inability to recognize God’s part to play in our lives.

Here is something that would be beneficial for all of us to see!
Paul put it best. He said that he had “learned to be content” in whatever condition that he found himself (Philippians 4:11).

Here is something I really need everyone to grab on to this morning: contentment can be learned. That means also that it can be taught.

People do not know this, and when you tell them it is true, they will often protest.

The “secret” Paul talks about in Phil 4:12, of course, is no secret at all. In passage after passage the Bible plainly shows that one learns to be content by recognizing and appropriating the truth that “all things work together for good”—for believers who love God (Romans 8:28).

This statement is a straightforward reference to God’s gracious providential ordering of events. If He has ordered all circumstances in His love toward His own, then we can content ourselves with those circumstances. The contentment comes from knowing that, because of His love, God does nothing but good for His own. We may not—at the time—understand how that is true any more clearly than Joseph did during his times of trial being sold into slavery by his brothers and being imprisoned by the lies of his bosses wife.

But in the end, along with Joseph, we may say that God meant our trials for good (Genesis 50:20).

So how do we step into a life that we too can reverberate the heart of Paul as he says “for I have learned to be content with whatever I have??”

The secret is trusting God. And the only way it really works is relationally.
I’m going to tell you the same thing Pastor did 3 weeks ago… You’ve made it this far! You’ve got GRIT! Now let’s steer that grit to doing it his ways instead of our ways. His ways are higher, greater, stronger, wider… just like His love!