July 19, 2020 "Carpe Diem: Seeing, Seizing, and Celebrating God-given Gospel Opportunities Philippians 2:12-18a" By Pastor Kevin Dibbley

“Although suffering, Paul is scarcely languishing in prison.” (Gordon Fee)

Praise God for our Sunday worship services! I am enormously thankful for the joy and privilege that so
many of us have been granted to worship together outside! The sunshine! The beauty of Lake
Wasserman! The joy of great gospel worship! What a gift! Likewise, praise God for the numerous people
who are connecting online to worship the Lord with us. God is at work! This Sunday, we are going to see
that we can feel this way about God’s work in our lives not just on sunny summer days. You can feel this
way when locked up in a prison in Caesarea! In our study of Philippians 1:12-18, we will see how glad-
hearted the apostle Paul is because his arrest and imprisonment for the gospel has ended up advancing
the gospel in some amazing ways! Gordon Fee writes “Paul is hardly languishing in prison!” Will you pray
for your heart and my heart, for your mind and my mind? Will you pray that we would learn to see and
to seize the glorious opportunities for the gospel that God places before all of us on a regular basis.
Would we learn that there is no reason to languish in our circumstances, when Jesus is Lord. We might
be in chains but the gospel is not!