One of the ladies in our church invites others to her home a few nights a year. There’s always delicious desserts, tea and jigsaw PUZZLES. If you’re like toddlers, you’ll pick up two random pieces and attempt to smash them together. When you enter Kindergarten, your teacher demonstrates the technique of the finding the four corner pieces first followed by filling in the border. At these dessert and puzzle nights, the entire dining room table is littered with over a 1000 tiny pieces that are all meant to fit together. As the evening commences, the corners are found and the border is quickly constructed. Over time though, as women are chatting, sipping tea and filling in the sky section, the doubt begins to creep in.
People frantically spend their lives searching for meaning. Ancient and modern writers call it a God-shaped hole that we all strive frantically to fill.
But what about those who have found meaning. We’ve found our ultimate meaning in a relationship with God, made possible by his Son, Jesus. Even then most of us haven’t stopped looking.
What if we’re missing a piece?
What if I haven’t done enough to please God?
I know Jesus died for me, but what if there’s more to it?
What if you aren’t good enough?
What if you're missing something?
Paul soothes the anxiety for Christians in the book Philippians.
Paul, a late convert to Christianity, was responsible for bringing the good news about Jesus to the unbelieving people of Philippi. To continue with the puzzle analogy, he sets out the corner and border pieces of the puzzle of faith for them. He leaves them to complete the puzzle on their own, confident that in his absence their faith and relationship with God would continue to grow and mature.
Years later, he’s in prison and he writes to them. Remembering them and their partnership in the Gospel with joy. He reassures them that he is confident that their faith is true having benefitted from their generosity and hearing of their perseverance.
Some of the Philippians weren’t so sure. After Paul left, others came and sought to divide the church. They tried to convince the church in Philippi that there were pieces missing from their puzzle. They taught:
If you are a true child of God you ought to worship a certain way, dress a certain way, eat certain food, mutilate your body, today you might hear some say that you have to read THIS version of the Bible, vote THIS way, educate your children in THIS manner, etc.
Paul calls this focusing on the flesh instead of the Gospel.
Perhaps the Philippians began to doubt their own salvation. “Am I truly saved? Maybe I haven’t done enough? Maybe SHE hasn’t done enough.”
Listen to the whole talk on Philippians 1 here.