Partners in the Gospel?

There’s immense pressure. I feel like I’m, like, I mean, there’s no following passage David. And, but there was a verse in Philippians that just came and as I sat with it, I really believe that that is the word of the Lord for us today. But I want to start off because I so gratefully received prayer from you last Sunday as Gord O’Brien and Pastor Dave prayed over myself and my family to welcome us officially to the church. And I realize that as much as there’s times that I’ve done introductions instead of few things, some of you might still know me as the lady who plays a piano and sing some songs or that the lady whose kids are the ones who feel like this place is their own personal playground and they’re constantly, you’re probably hearing me say, stop, sit down. And I think a lot of you remember what that was like. Thank you for your graciousness for my family and kids. So I wanted to take today as an opportunity for two things.

One, to share a bit of my story with you and not to just share Jaisy’s story. But my desire is that today you’ll get a glimpse of what God has done. In and through my life. But that links directly to the other thing I wanted to do today is to exhort us as a community. Exhort us through the words of Paul. And to that end, I’m hoping that throughout today as we dive into his word, that the Holy Spirit will convict us, each and every one of us in our exact seasons and times and your journey with God. That we may be able to answer this question with some clarity and conviction, which is what does it mean for us to partner in the gospel right now? Are we ready to church for the word? Let me read this and I’ll share a little bit and go back and share a bit about myself. Today we’re reading from Philippians chapter one. And I’m gonna read from verses three to eight. And I’m going to also then pray at the end verses nine to 11 as an exhortation prayer.

But here it is, the words of Paul. 

I thank God, I thank my God every time I remember you in all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the very first day until now. Being confident in this, this is my favorite part, that he who began a good work in you will carry it out onto completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Amen? It is right for me to feel this way about all of you since I have you in my heart. And whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. This is the word of the Lord through Apostle Paul.

Friends, while you might know me in the little that I’ve revealed, I hope this morning breaks a lot of walls as I get to know you as my church family. While you might know I play piano and I love leading worship and I love the word of God and I love my kids. And I live in Beamsville and my husband’s Matt, can you? He does not like to be a church.

He’s not, can you? He does not like to be at the center of attention. So please, making them uncomfortable on my behalf. I have three kids. There’s a picture, but you probably have seen them running around. What you might not know is that I did not grow up in the church. In fact, I was saved at the age of 23 at a little church in the Toronto area that was just a little church plan for young adults trying to gather together and love God. And the amazing thing is that I didn’t know that for four years there were people from that little community praying for me. Because my younger brother got saved in that church and the first person he brought into prayer to the community was his prodigal sister, me. 

Without going into all the details of what my life was like, I would say if you imagine your kids and grandkids in their 20s, maybe grandkids for a lot of you, but think about your grandkids and all the things you probably don’t want them to do and experience in their 20s, that was my life. I was, however, also very driven, wanting to control and make something of myself. And there was my little brother who I thought wouldn’t amount to anything. 

Is it not God’s style to start with that? The youngest one in my family was the one who began the chain of events that changed the course of my family’s life. To the point where I got to baptize my own mom and then I also got to baptize my own grandfather, who is now with Jesus, and he passed away four years ago at the age of 90. And I want to share that with you because I want you to see that the very fact that I’m standing here today with you is a testament of God’s faithfulness. And I know we can all say that, and that’s going to be important for us to do today as we dive into what Paul was saying. But I think offhand sometimes, it’s hard to feel like we have anything in common. I did not, by the way, I’m not saying that I didn’t feel welcomed or anything in common here, but it’s the fact that I do.

And I think that’s what Paul is saying in our text today when we look at it. But amazing Grace How Sweet the Sound that saved a wretch like me. I think that’s all of our stories, and for me it’s true, that if God can save someone as stubborn minded and bullheaded as me who fought him my entire life, and when I say fight, it’s that I grew up in a Buddhist household, not just a non-Christian household, a mom who worshiped and had, she went to the temples, but she had a shrine at home for almost 30 years.  And so even though I wasn’t a Buddhist, and my father wasn’t, it was culturally embedded.

And when you’re a Chinese family, even if you’re not committed to a certain religion or a Buddhist proclaiming Buddhist, there are elements of Buddhism from morality, ethics, ways of living, even superstitions that end up defining how you live. So that was what I was growing up with. And the amazing thing is that somehow in the midst of that, of her devout Buddhism, my mom chose to send me and my brother to an Anglican school. Is God not good? Does God not love his children?

Yes, he does. But that doesn’t mean that I was responding to all of his invitations all those years because I didn’t. However, so many seeds were planted. Every morning I had chapel. I sat with my friends. I had my own hymnbook. I was singing hymns without really understanding what they were. I was praising the Lord, not really knowing who I was praising, but I was doing it. And I had Bible classes till grade eight. I celebrated Christmas, but then we would go to church and sing in choirs. All of that was not because of all the great choices my mom and our family was making, but that the Lord’s hand was over our life, even when we didn’t know. And to say that it is a miracle that I am standing in front of you, that I’ve had somehow any contribution into the kingdom is amazing. Because if you knew me back then, you would say, Jay-Z would not be in Beamsville. She may not have children. She would definitely be in a city somewhere climbing up some sort of corporate ladder.

That would have been the life I would have chosen for myself. And I guarantee you now that I look in hindsight, I would have probably had all the worldly treasure that I was pursuing, but I would have been miserable. One hundred percent certain of that. Because while I fought in my own stubbornness, every invitation that God gave me over the years, I continued some of that fight even when I got married to my husband. And God was calling us to Beamsville. I was like, I don’t go to Beamsville. Who lives in Beamsville? I love it, by the way. It is home. It is home.

But man, in my, you know, world-least stupidity and humanity, I don’t know what’s good for me. None of us really do, do we? But yet the Lord is faithful. And I’m here. And I’m not trying to downgrade the choices that we make as people to follow in obedience to the Lord.

I’m saying we do have to do that. But I’m standing here because of His goodness and His faithfulness. Meeting Pastor David in April, meeting all of you, getting to be part of this community. This is God’s faithfulness and goodness. Can we say amen? And so I want to begin with that as like, to set the table for us, to take the light away from me personally, but to say, this is where I came from, and this is where I am now, and now our stories are intertwined. Because God, for all of the reasons that we know, and most of the reasons we do not know, is doing something here. Yeah? And when we look at the words of Paul, I’m guilty of this, I’m going to confess this. Many times when I read the letters of Paul, I tend to glaze over the first chapters where he does this letter thing, and he says, grace and peace to you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I like to get to the chapters where he’s calling people out, or he’s correcting, and he’s saying all these profound things for the church, in Corinth, Ephesus, Corinthians.

But for some reason, I ate some humble pie this week, as he said, all of this is my word, Jaisy. And as I read and dove into those verses we just read a few minutes ago, I was amazed at what was not said. That is the premise under these words, as Paul was writing from a prison. 

He was in for two years, writing this letter to the people, to the Philippians, and this church that he planted in his second missionary journey. And I think about that, and I’m like, oh, he was a stranger going in there, and he met these people, and they became a community, right? Not because they necessarily had too much in common, in fact they might not have, because the demographic in that area that composed the church of Philippi was a lot of retired military people and a lot of Jews actually. But then there was Paul, who used to be Saul, and maybe they connected in some history, but he was also not there for very long. And then all of a sudden they find out he’s in prison. But yet when you hear the words of Paul here, he’s like, I can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. That is not a small comment. That is not a, I really care about you, I’m thinking of you. There is something that connects Paul to these people that is unique to this particular community.

And I’ve never actually sat long enough to really ask the question, why? Why? And think about how difficult it is, where at that time you’re separated not only physically, but now the guy is in jail. So, I mean, it’s not like the people in the church can just be like, I’m just going to pay Paul a visit every Saturday. They’re separated by, and for many reasons they recognize that they may never see each other again.

But yet while he’s in chains, he says, whether I’m in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. Sharing God’s grace with Paul. They said reading some commentaries, they said that a lot of people in that church end up sending things to meet the needs that Paul had in prison because it couldn’t be there. And you think of what it might be like, what it might have been like for Paul. And it amazes me that of all things he could have said to the church, I’m lonely, it’s difficult. I don’t want to be here. These are just the human reactions, right? I can’t wait to get out. He says none of that. Instead, he says, I have you in my heart. There’s this burning, this burning in his heart for these people.

And instead of thinking of how dire his situation was, he’s saying, I just, I want to be with you. I can’t wait to be with you. And that God’s grace is with me and with you. And I want to nail in on this is that sometimes we think that the connections we make as a church is because we have everything in common. I think I’ve said this numerous times when we’re starting a time of worship, that we can come into these doors and have absolutely nothing in common. And it wouldn’t matter. And I think Paul is alluding to that because the only thing that connected them through distance in the world, through distance in time, yes, is a bit of shared history, but that wasn’t it. It was a shared grace that they lived under. A shared grace. All of you share in God’s grace with me. And that didn’t mean just from God to the people and saying, we have one thing in common is that we live under the grace of God. Each and every one of us every single day, no matter where we are. And that’s true.

But the other part is what it looks like horizontally is that even though they were separated, even though they shared no situation in common, they did not abandon Paul. They did not say, well, it’s really unfortunate that you’re in jail. We cannot wait till you get out so that we can see you again. They helped. They sent things for him. And I would imagine that that really reminded Paul that he wasn’t alone, even though he was alone.

Shared grace is what makes community what it is in Jesus’ name. It is not the situational, contextual, factual, experiential, historical things that we may or may not have in common, even though that helps build relationships. But that’s what it means to be held by his grace, is that we share a common need for Jesus every single day. And that when we walk into worship as a community, that is more prominent. And we were reminded that every week so that we can go out and live our lives and be reminded again. Shared grace.

But that’s not the only thing that Paul is reminding us of in this text. We go back to the first few verses and he says, I thank God every time I remember you in all my prayers for all of you. And different translations, I think it was the American stuttering version. The word prayer is replaced with the word supplication. And those of you who were here last week with Pastor Cuke, that was a big thing he was reminding us last week about prayer in intercession. And it’s not just about intercessory prayer for each other, supplication. This burning heart is something that the Lord has impressed on us.

But this is the key word. I always pray for my supplication, I pray with joy. That puzzled me. I don’t know if it puzzles you. I’m going to ask you this. In your prayers as you’ve prayed for your family members, or the future of the church, or this church, or the things that are burning in your heart, has the prayer been filled with joy. And this is not to condemn or to make anything of your prayer, but it has joy been the thing holding your prayer as we pray intercessory, as we pray in supplication.

How did he do this? And why? He tells us because of your partnership in the gospel from the very first day until now. He prays with joy not because his situation is joyful, not because it’s super fun and prison. But because he knows and he remembers and he knows that once he’s out, he’s good at it. He’s going to continue to work with him whether or not, that there is a shared call as well. As you live under a shared grace, there is a shared call as partners in the gospel.

Partners, we’ve been invited as co-hearers of Christ. Partners, as brothers and sisters and followers of Jesus. And the amazing thing is when we think about partnership, it’s not just that we do this for mission purposes outside of these church walls, which is great, and definitely making disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son of the Holy Spirit. Yes. But partners in the gospel where we are the embodiment of the gospel for each other, amen? Because while we know the Lord, it does not eliminate us from suffering, from hardship, from falling away, from sin. We need each other to be the church.

We are partners in the gospel as the Lord calls us to partner in his good work for the advancement of the kingdom. He’s also calling us to partner with each other to embody Jesus to each other. Amen? Because of this, Paul says, I pray with joy. Friends, let’s pray with joy because we are partners in the gospel. And the thing that we can hold onto is not the goodness or the faithfulness of one another. It’s not me, it’s not you, because we will always fail each other inevitably at some point.

The key is that this last part, because the confidence that Paul says is the confidence in which we all stand in the shared grace, which is what? 

That he who began a good work and you will carry it on into completion. 

He who began a good work. Church family, we are not saving our family. We are not the ones saving our grandkids and our kids. We are not the ones saving our neighbours, right? We know this.

But when we go through our days and what the results that we want and the timing that we hope for, it is so hard to see family and friends not know Jesus. I know this. I still have most of my family and friends that I grew up with for over 30, 40 years that I’m waiting for. And sometimes it feels like, what am I not doing? What is it that I have to do more of? And sometimes it does require something. But the invitation that Paul has for us is to remember that because we are partners in the Gospel, number one, we’re never alone.

This is why praying for each other, with each other, over people and over situations is necessary because we are not alone in the Gospel. And we’re not alone. We are partners. We need to be reminded of who started this good work and to surrender the things that we cannot control and we should not control. And that is not our part. And tune in more to what the Holy Spirit is doing and inviting us to. Partners in the Gospel.

Friends, I shared about my life today because truly, I want you to know that it is he who began a good work in me. Before the age of 23, but to me, that was the first day of a totally different trajectory of life. And in fact, that morning when I walked into a church, it was after reading, um, Rick Warren’s, is it Rick Warren? That’s great. Yeah, Rick Warren’s. What is it?

40? A purpose-driven life. Thank you. Actually, I gave my copy to my mom with all my notes and all my highlights in it because when I read through that book and every time there was a scripture in there, it popped out because for the first time I read the truth and I realized that this is where it came from. Interestingly enough, all the things I was taught through Buddhism and my mom had a very similar essence to ethical living, moral living, being a good person, all that kind of stuff. But for the first time, the Holy Spirit opened my eyes, my spiritual eyes to see the truth and I realized I remember sitting there in my kitchen and going, oh my goodness, this is where it comes from. I couldn’t put it down.

And I said, for after these 40 days, if this is how I feel and what I experience, I’m going to church with no promises. And that day came and I walked into a church building like this one with a cross behind me, also with exit signs like that one, but there were three of them. And I know that because I remember being very, very uncomfortable. I didn’t know who I was looking for, even though it was always God. I was still too stubborn. The moment I walked into that room and to that place of worship, I was still so, I was filled with so much doubt and hesitation because I’ve been disappointed, I’ve disappointed myself my whole life, I’ve disappointed, and I’ve been disappointed enough that it didn’t seem possible that there was someone and something out there that actually could care and understand and take me through a tough, tough season of my life where I felt like I was rock bottom.

So I came, treading water very lightly knowing that the moment I felt like this was enough for me, I knew where I could run out the door. 

But what I didn’t know was that Jesus was going to meet me so profoundly and powerfully in that moment that not only did I not leave that day, but I never left again. And that can only happen when you experience the living God. I sat there in the front row by myself listening to a worship song that I’d never heard before because I didn’t listen to Christian music. And for the five minutes that this happened, it felt like an eternity, but a good eternity where I was just in some weird space and I heard someone say, these are your questions, Jay-Z, I know. And the lyrics were, if I give you my heart, could I go there with you? Because I’ve been there before, but I know there’s still more, oh Lord, I need to know you.

I’d never heard this song before, but it was the burning questions that were in my heart. And in that moment, I could just hear the Lord saying, I know this is what’s on your heart. And I know you are so scared. Underneath this tough exterior, which I was putting on, was pretty good for everybody else. I could not hide from God. None of us can, even if we tried. And he broke me.

That was the first day of the rest of my life with Jesus. And very soon after I sensed this call to ministry that yet I fought again, I was like, you don’t need me to do this stuff, God. I love you. Whatever other things that I’d like to do. Look, I studied different things. I can be used in other ways. God has been so faithful.

And what I want to invite us right now are two things. One, is to spend some time reflecting and remembering. Moments of shared grace in your life with the different churches or this church. And moments where you can recognize the people who are in your life. And the privilege for me, I have to say this, says, getting to know Pastor Dave and April and a lot of you. I, what a gift in the kingdom where we get to be together in this journey, different generations. Dave and April, and some of you have lived quite literally double the amount of life that I have lived.

And the privilege of being here, I have to say that I have lived quite literally double the amount of life that I have lived. And that is not a bad thing in any way. There is a reason why we are the kingdom when we’re partners in the gospel. Is that there is purpose as long as we have breath in our lungs. There is purpose in what that partnership looks like. And so as we reflect and take some time to reflect on the on the on the faithfulness of God and the shared grace that we have all lived in. I invite you to also then ask the Lord this question.

What does it mean for me and for us, this I’m preaching to myself. What does it mean for me to partner in the gospel today? I’m going to tell you for myself, those of you who have lived 10, 20, 30, 40 years longer than I have, we need you. And it could mean you pouring into people like me and anyone who’s younger than you. That could be your partnership in the gospel. It could be pouring into your grandkids in whatever way that shows them love and Jesus. I’m not going to give you more examples.

I’m going to allow the Lord to reveal to you. But right now I’m just going to go to the piano. I’m going to give some space for reflection. And then at the right time I’m going to invite you to ask the Lord that question. And then we’re going to worship and we’re going to close. Does it sound okay? Would you trace back the trajectory of your life?

All the seasons where God has revealed his faithfulness. 

Great is Thy faithfulness. Oh God, my Father, there is no shadow of turning with thee. Thou changes not like compassion they’ve failed not. As thou has been thou forever will be. Great is Thy, faithfulness. Great is Thy, faithfulness.

Morning by morning, new mercies I see. All I have needed, thy hand has provided. Grate His life, faithfulness. Lord unto me. Sing, greatest, thy faithfulness. Grate His life, faithfulness. Morning by morning, new mercies I see.

All I have needed, thy hand has provided. Grate His life, faithfulness. Lord unto me. Church, would you take a moment to ask the Lord this burning question? What does it look like? What does it mean for you to partner in the gospel? In this church, in your life, in proximity of the people around you?

A singular word of God. A singular word of God. A singular word of God. A singular word of God. A singular word of God. You are worthy of it all. Would you stand if you can?

You are worthy of it all. For from you are all things, and to you are all things. You deserve the glory. You are worthy. You are worthy of it all. You are worthy of it all. For from you are all things, and to you are all things.

You deserve the glory. Church, sing, you are worthy. You are worthy of it all. You are worthy of it all. For from you are all things, and to you are all things. You deserve the glory. Church, from the Apostle Paul, this is our prayer.

That your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth and insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and what may be pure and what may be blameless for the day of Christ.

Filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and to the praise of God. And all people say, Amen.

You may be seated.