©1998 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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11/22/98
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Finding Fulfillment
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Philippians 3:8-14
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11/22/98 Finding Fulfillment
How do you feel about life?
I mean generally...how would you describe it?
Is it frightening?
Does it take all of your mental and emotional
reserves
just to face one more day?
Is it boring?
Do you have to continually find
some new project,
some new destination,
some new hiding place
from the otherwise dreary monotony of daily living?
Is life intensely good?
Do you find yourself generally deeply satisfied
with the experience of living?
Perhaps life for you right now
is deeply painful,
filled with a constant battle
to find the strength
to take one more step
or live one more day.
Or maybe you find life rather disappointing-
perhaps you have not obtained or achieved
what you wanted in life,
or, even worse, perhaps you have
and you have discovered
that it doesn't satisfy.
Maybe for you right now
life is just terribly confusing.
There seem to be so many choices,
or there seem to be none at all,
and you just don't know what to do.
I'd like to read for us once again
a passage from the writings of the Apostle Paul,
a passage in which he shares with us
a snapshot of his own life experience,
and through it offers us insight
into what we can expect from our own.
For those of you who show up here on a regular
basis
this passage will be familiar.
It's found in Philippians 3:8-14
Phil. 3:8 More than that, I count all things
to be loss in view of the surpassing value
of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for
whom I have suffered the loss of all
things, and count them but rubbish so that
I may gain Christ,
Phil. 3:9 and may be found in Him, not
having a righteousness of my own derived
from the Law, but that which is through
faith in Christ, the righteousness which
comes from God on the basis of faith,
Phil. 3:10 that I may know Him and the
power of His resurrection and the
fellowship of His sufferings, being
conformed to His death;
Phil. 3:11 in order that I may attain to the
resurrection from the dead.
Phil. 3:12 ¶ Not that I have already
obtained it or have already become perfect,
but I press on so that I may lay hold of
that for which also I was laid hold of by
Christ Jesus.
Phil. 3:13 Brethren, I do not regard myself
as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing
I do: forgetting what lies behind and
reaching forward to what lies ahead,
Phil. 3:14 I press on toward the goal for
the prize of the upward call of God in
Christ Jesus.
In those verses
Paul tells us that he has found a life
that is intensely worth living.
It is certainly not a life
that is free from pain -
he talks about "the fellowship of His sufferings"
and he talks about being
"conformed to His death".
But two things are clear from the passage:
1. What Paul had found
was a life that was deeply satisfying.
2. And that satisfaction
was not the result of what he was doing,
or what was happening to him,
or around him,
or in him,
but rather that satisfaction
was the result of what was happening
between him and his Lord Jesus Christ.
OK,
we've been together here for maybe five or six
minutes so far.
We all know that I have
another 20 or 25 minutes allotted to me.
I could take more than that if I wanted to,
but I would lose many of you in the process.
In fact,
I've already lost some of you.
You've settled into your "sermon mode"
to the point where your mind
has already drifted back
to whatever project
or fear
or fun thing it was chewing on
earlier this morning.
The problem is
that I just made a statement
that I consider to be among
the most significant things
I have ever shared with you.
And many of you didn't really hear it
and probably none of you realized
how important I felt it was...
that is, none of you until now.
So, with that reintroduction,
let me state for us again
what I see to be the heart
of what Paul is sharing with us
through these words
from the 3rd chapter of Phil.
He is saying two things:
1. Paul had found
a life that was deeply satisfying.
2. And that satisfaction
was not the result of what he was doing,
or what was happening to him,
or around him,
or in him,
but rather his satisfaction
was the result of what was happening
between him and his Lord Jesus Christ.
As we've studied this passage together
we've seen Paul break that thought down into
smaller pieces for us.
He talks about "knowing Christ"
and knowing "the power of His resurrection"
and knowing "the fellowship of His
sufferings"
and even about being "conformed to His
death".
But his basic message is clear -
for us as human beings
true satisfaction in life
is directly related to what's happening
between ourselves and our God.
That word "satisfaction"
may not be the best selection
for what I'm trying to say.
I thought about using "quality of life",
and I considered "fulfillment",
then I went to "satisfaction",
and to be honest
I don't really like any of them.
What I want is a word that says,
"Deep within my spirit,
at the very center of my life,
I know this is good,
and this is right,
and this truly is what I want."
And I hope you understand
that I am not talking here
about being "happy".
Happiness is an emotion.
It's a nice emotion,
but it is only an emotion.
All sorts of things can make us feel happy.
Something as trivial as a song
or a movie
or finding a $5.00 bill in the pocket of an
old fishing coat can make us feel happy.
The problem with happiness, of course,
is that it can be replaced just as quickly
by some negative emotion
like the emotion we feel
when a gust of wind suddenly
pulls that $5.00 bill out of our fingers
and drops it into the Kenai River
and we stand watching it float on out of
sight.
That's the way with emotions.
They're fine in their way
so long as we never forget
that none of them ever last -
neither the good ones
nor the bad ones.
But Paul is not talking about how Jesus makes him
feel in this passage.
He is talking about what has really made his life
worth living,
what has brought a true sense of gratitude,
and thankfulness,
and fulfillment to his life.
And he tells us
that gratitude is a direct result
of his having been able to share all of life with
Christ.
There is something I have been seeing in this
passage
as we have been studying it
that I want very much to try to put into
words.
Obviously Paul is proclaiming
his own deep satisfaction with life
in this passage,
and through that proclamation
offering us the assurance
that each of us can know
that same depth of satisfaction.
But I want us to think about that for a minute.
You see,
unless we listen very carefully
to what Paul is saying,
a statement like that can sound like
nonsense to us
BECAUSE our minds just naturally associate
fulfillment
and satisfaction
with circumstances.
Being the good Americans we are,
we assume that fulfillment in life
comes from getting what we want
or achieving what we want
or going where we want to go.
But then look at this...
here is Paul speaking to every Christian
who has ever lived
throughout all of human history.
He is talking to Christians
who have lived in extreme poverty,
literally praying each day,
"Lord give us this day our daily bread."
He is talking to Christians
who have been tortured,
and executed for their faith in Christ.
He is talking to Christians
who are struggling through the confusing years
of high school,
or college.
He is talking to Christians
who are sick, or dying.
He was talking to me
when I was 26 years old,
all alone,
living on the Island of Trinidad,
teaching the Bible in a chicken coop
where we literally had to scrape the poop off the
benches before we sat down.
And He's talking to me now,
at 51 years old,
with my life filled with people who love me.
And here is Paul assuring every one of us
at every period in history
and every point in our lives
that we can know true fulfillment
and true satisfaction in life.
How can that be?
If fulfillment and satisfaction
is in any way tied to our external
circumstances
that would be impossible,
because our circumstances can rarely be controlled.
And yet, here we are
with Paul telling us
that true life fulfillment is available
to every Christian.
Why?
How can that be?
It can be because true life fulfillment
is not the result of what we are doing,
or what's happening to us,
or around us,
or in us,
but rather true life fulfillment
is the result of what is happening
between us and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let me try to rephrase that
and maybe it will make more sense.
Every day we live
we are confronted with a constant stream of
things that enter our lives.
Some of them we have sought,
many of them we have not.
When I was on this very sentence
writing up my notes for this morning
the phone rang and an Alaskan friend
I've known for more than 20 years
called.
During our conversation
I found out that, as we talked,
he was laying on the living room floor,
unable to move because of an injury to his back.
I've been there.
So have many of you.
I remember the first year Sandee and I were married
we were visiting the Carlsbad Caverns
and I went in to use the public restroom
there.
My back had been giving me problems for some
time,
but when I finished my business there
and tried to stand up
and I couldn't do it.
The pain in my back was so intense
I couldn't move.
I want you to know,
that's an extremely awkward situation.
Sandee must have been waiting outside for me for
close to half an hour,
wondering if I'd been mugged,
or died of a heart attack.
For obvious reasons
I was hesitant to call out for help.
I mean, who know's who'd come.
If you heard someone asking for help
from inside the stall of a public restroom,
would you go?
Eventually I managed to claw my way to my feet,
by wedging my arms along the walls,
made myself presentable,
and made it back to my wife.
I didn't ask for that event to enter my life.
It just did.
Sometimes physical pain
jabs itself into our lives.
Sometimes its emotional pain.
Sometimes it's nice things that crowd into our lives.
Sometimes it's an endless routine,
or monotony,
or confusion,
or loneliness.
But my point is this:
with everything that enters our life each day
we are faced with a choice -
will this be something we choose
to share with our Lord,
or will it be something we use
to hide from Him.
And the choice really is ours.
It doesn't matter whether it's a new friendship,
or a new car,
or problems with our children,
or problems with our parents,
or a salary increase,
or the loss of our job,
or fears over the future,
or regrets over the past,
or a leaky faucet,
or a driveway full of snow,
or a vacation we've waited for for months,
or a test in Algebra,
or getting stuck in the stall of a public
restroom.
With each thing that enters our lives
we face a choice -
do I choose to share this with my Lord,
or do I choose to use it
as a hiding place from Him.
And here is the amazing thing -
when we choose to share it with Him,
even the bad things,
the painful things,
the things we would not have chosen for
ourselves for anything in the world,
even those will be reshaped
and reformed by our Master's hands
until He will actually turn evil
into good in our lives,
and pain into rejoicing.
These words were spoken by the prophet Isaiah to
describe the work Christ would accomplish
in the lives of those who turned to Him:
Is. 61:1 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon
me, Because the Lord has anointed me To
bring good news to the afflicted; He has
sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, To
proclaim liberty to captives And freedom to
prisoners;
Is. 61:2 To proclaim the favorable year of
the Lord And the day of vengeance of our
God; To comfort all who mourn,
Is. 61:3 To grant those who mourn in Zion,
Giving them a garland instead of ashes, The
oil of gladness instead of mourning, The
mantle of praise instead of a spirit of
fainting. So they will be called oaks of
righteousness, The planting of the Lord,
that He may be glorified.
And at those times
when we choose to use the things that enter our
lives
to hide from our Lord,
rather than sharing them with Him,
even the things we knew
would make us happy
will leave us feeling empty inside.
Because it is not what life brings
or doesn't bring that makes life good,
it is what happens
between us and our God
in the process of dealing with those things.
For, in the end we will find
that everything is temporary,
everything, that is,
except our God,
and the love we allow Him to bring into our
lives.