GetWisdom PaperturnSampler FINAL SinglePages - Flipbook - Page 95
LIVING IN AUTHENTICITY
.
PHILIPPIANS
31
Wait—didn’t God direct Paul and his companions to Philippi?
Didn’t He orchestrate their meeting Lydia and teaching the women
at the river, and even healing that poor girl who was a victim of
slavery?
Here’s the thing we can’t forget: We can be 100 percent following
God’s will and still go through hard stuff. Sometimes God’s will takes
us through the hard stuff because He has a purpose in it.
Difficulty brings a rich wisdom that can’t be formed elsewhere.
If you can have joy in the darkness, you truly understand life with
Christ. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not even saying you’ll feel clarity and understanding during every second of hard seasons. But I
can promise that clinging to and loving Christ in the midst of even
the bleakest situations will develop you into a woman of incredible
depth, strength, and empathy.
Think for a moment about the painful circumstances Paul and
Silas found themselves in—and the way they chose to respond. Can
you imagine being fastened into stocks and still spending hours praying and singing hymns?
I’ve seen enough movies to understand the concept of stocks. And
when I tap on this verse (Acts 16:24) in the BLB app and find the
definition in the Interlinear, my visualization is confirmed:
stocks (xylon or ξλον, pronounced ksoo-lon): “a log or timber
with holes in which the feet, hands, neck of prisoners were
inserted and fastened with thongs” (strips of leather)13
I’m truly not sure how you could breathe, let alone sing, while
tortured and bent in this way, yet Paul and Silas did so loudly enough
that the guards and prisoners were listening. Everyone around them
got to see the depth of their relationship with God, even in the
midst of an awful situation. Without God allowing Paul and Silas’s
imprisonment, these men in the jail would not have learned of the
love and light of Jesus in such an incredible way.
93