Stick Out in the Crowd; Philippians

May the mumbling commence!

Do you like to stick out in a crowd?  Are you ready to stick out in a crowd?  Are you willing?  It is what Christ through the Apostle Paul calls us to do in Philippians chapter two.  Read from Eugene Peterson’s The Message paraphrase:

Do everything readily and cheerfully – no bickering, no second-guessing allowed!  Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society.  Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God.  Carry the light-giving Message into the night so I’ll have good cause to be proud of you on the day that Christ returns.  You’ll be living proof that I didn’t go to all this work for nothing.  (Verses 14-16)

How’s that for sticking out?  Do what is set out before you to do.  Do not delay.  Do it with a cheerful attitude.

There is to be no bickering or second-guessing.  That’s near ninth percent of all politics!  Christians are not to get their politics from Washington DC or from Topeka, Kansas.  Christians are to get their political nature from Christ.

Be ready.  Be cheerful.  And you will be a breath of fresh air.  The living God will breathe new life into you – good life.  And people will see the living God in your way of living.  You will make your Creator visible for all to see… even though some will deny it.

You will be a breath of fresh air, and you will be a light because of the Message of Christ that you carry in your attitudes and thoughts and words and actions.  They will set off the perpetual night that we live in more than fireworks displays or lightning.

If we trust in Christ and live in this way, we will make the cloud of witnesses, of which Paul is a part, proud of us.  We will make Christ joyful in his return.  The work that they have done and the work that we have done and will do is for something – not for nothing.

So stick out in the crowd.  Be ready.  Be cheerful.

Enough mumbling for now…

Peace Out