PHILIP BRITTS

When the angel Gabriel came to Mary, he told her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” And she answered, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” It was in this submission, this surrender and obedience, that Christ was conceived. And it is the laying down of power that is revealed in his birth.…This pattern of complete abandonment of human strength in total surrender to God’s will is of vital importance for us. It was in the surrender of herself to God that Mary became the mother of Christ. It was in her acceptance of Gabriel’s message that the great decisive event of history took place. And in our own lives, in our efforts to do right, what is decisive is that we accept and live by and surrender ourselves to a strength which is not our own, to the piercing white light of God’s love.

PHILIP BRITTS

We have not come like Eastern kings
With gifts upon the pommel lying.
Our hands are empty, and we came
Because we heard a baby crying.

We have not come like questing knights
With fiery swords and banners flying.
We heard a call and hurried here –
The call was like a baby crying.

But we have come with open hearts
From places where the torch is dying.
We seek a manger and a cross
Because we heard a baby crying.

”O child, Creator of all! How humbly you lie in the manger. You who rule powerfully in heaven! There the heaven of heavens cannot contain you; here, however, you are held in the narrowest manger. There, in the beginning of the world, you decorated the earth with green grasses that produced seed, with fruit-bearing trees that produced fruit, you ornamented the heavens with the sun, the moon, and the stars, the sky with winged birds, the waters with fish, you filled the land with reptiles, draft animals, and beasts; here, however, in the end of the world, you are wrapped in swaddling clothes! O majesty! O lowness! O sublimity! O humility! O immense, eternal, and Ancient of Days! O small, temporal infant whose life is not yet one day upon the earth!” Adam of Dryburgh

”Christ’s true greatness is that he is coming. Without this final future the whole of Christian faith would really be nothing. If only our hearts were completely gripped by this! Surely, in light of what is wrong in today’s world, we should all stretch out our hands toward that which is to come, so that at last the world may be redeemed from all its horrors and the dawn of the new day may break. We are placed on this earth in order to proclaim, in the midst of darkness, this message: The Morning Star has risen in my heart, in our hearts, and soon will rise over the whole of the darkened world. Repent! Believe in the gospel! He who is coming is near!” Eberhard Arnold.

Over the next few days I am going to share a number of Advent/Christmas quotes. Here is the first

”We are called to prove in our own lives that Christ is born, that God is with us. But we are constantly in danger of going about our business without Christ. We keep to our old ways of life and do not allow God to enter our daily affairs.…We will always have to struggle to make sure that Jesus enters our lives, and that he lives on earth, not only in heaven. This is the fight of the church in the world. We are placed in the restlessness and the anxiety of a world fraught with evil, but we have a battle cry and the joyful news: “To us a child is born!” (Isaiah 9:6)” Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt

¹ Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother,

To Philemon our dear friend and fellow worker— ² also to Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier—and to the church that meets in your home:

I can’t help but feel that when somebody walks into a church there should be a sense of ‘coming home’ and a feeling of family.

For the first several hundreds of years of its existence the church met in homes. There were no formal church buildings. When Jesus spoke about building His church, He was referring to a people, not a physical edifice of some kind.

As we saw yesterday, Philemon was probably a wealthy believer who had a house large enough for the church to meet in. He gave ‘hospitality’ to the church, and to individuals (22).

Always remember that the church is not the building of brick or stone in which you may meet; the church is that community of believing people who gather inside.

But it all started in homes in the the first century.

PRAYER: Lord God, show me, please, how you might want to use my home for Kingdom purposes.

¹ Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother,

To Philemon our dear friend and fellow worker— ² also to Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier—and to the church that meets in your home:

³ Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

⁴ I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, ⁵ because I hear about your love for all his holy people and your faith in the Lord Jesus. 

As Paul open this letter – his shortest recorded epistle – he does so with words of affirmation, appreciation and blessing.

The blessing comes in the form of a short, simple (yet profound) prayer (3).

The words of affirmation are for certain personal characteristics (1b, 2a) and qualities (4,5).

I often think of the story of the Scottish minister who was told, as a boy, by the local sweet shop lady, ‘Flattery is like perfume sonny. It’s okay to sniff the bottle, but don’t swallow the contents.’

The same goes even for sincere compliments. There are good and godly ways to encourage people, and it seems to me Paul repeatedly got the balance right. He found a way to let them get a good sniff of the bottle while always giving the glory to God.

(By the way, Philemon was not, as far as we know, a major leader in the church, but he was probably a wealthy man who had a house big enough for the church to meet in. Nevertheless Paul called him a ”fellow worker.”)

PRAYER: Lord, please give me words to encourage, lips to bless in prayer, and a heart that always seeks to honour and glorify you above all.

 Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother,

To Philemon our dear friend and fellow worker— ² also to Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier—and to the church that meets in your home:

³ Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

People matter.

Names matter. We tend to like it when people remember and use our names and affirm and appreciate our personal characteristics.

Team matters.

As far as I can calculate, in his New Testament letters Paul mentions over 55 people by name. Some were foes but most were friends. The lists, as here, include both men and women. Paul was not a ‘lone ranger’ leader – trying to do everything by himself. He recognised the importance of fellowship in the gospel.

Recently I read a quote from Henri Nouwen, in which he was saying that we are all gifted, and if we bring our own contribution to the table we needn’t be envious of anyone else, nor threatened by them. We can co-operate and collaborate rather than compete.

‘We do not have to think alike to think together.’ Rick Rigsby.

‘Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.’ Helen Keller

¹ Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother,

To Philemon our dear friend and fellow worker— ² also to Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier—and to the church that meets in your home:

³ Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thanksgiving and Prayer

⁴ I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, ⁵ because I hear about your love for all his holy people and your faith in the Lord Jesus. ⁶ I pray that your partnership with us in the faith may be effective in deepening your understanding of every good thing we share for the sake of Christ. ⁷ Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the Lord’s people.

Paul’s Plea for Onesimus

⁸ Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, ⁹ yet I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love. It is as none other than Paul—an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus— ¹⁰ that I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains. ¹¹ Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me.

¹² I am sending him—who is my very heart—back to you. ¹³ I would have liked to keep him with me so that he could take your place in helping me while I am in chains for the gospel. ¹⁴ But I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that any favor you do would not seem forced but would be voluntary. ¹⁵ Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back forever— ¹⁶ no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a fellow man and as a brother in the Lord.

¹⁷ So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. ¹⁸ If he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge it to me. ¹⁹ I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand. I will pay it back—not to mention that you owe me your very self. ²⁰ I do wish, brother, that I may have some benefit from you in the Lord; refresh my heart in Christ. ²¹ Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I ask.

²² And one thing more: Prepare a guest room for me, because I hope to be restored to you in answer to your prayers.

²³ Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends you greetings. ²⁴ And so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas and Luke, my fellow workers.

²⁵ The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

He was a young man from Tehran, and he came to England to study the English language at a small school, within a theological college, situated just outside a leafy Surrey village. In his first year he found himself sharing a tiny dormitory with a ‘radiant’ Christian man. About eighteen months after meeting this man he was to say to him one day, ”Anthony, many times you talked to me about Jesus. But one day I saw Jesus in your face, and now I want to become a Christian too!’

This was a ‘divine appointment.’

”Not only in the words you say,
Not only in your deeds confessed.
But in the most unconscious way
Is Christ expressed.

Is it a beatific smile?
A holy light upon your brow?
Oh no, I saw His presence when
You laughed just now.

To me twas not the truth you taught,
To you so clear to me so dim.
But when you came to me
You brought a sense of Him.

And from your life He beckons me,
And from your lips His love is shed.
Til I lose sight of you and see the Christ instead.”

Paul was a prisoner when he met Onesimus, the runaway slave, but it was a ‘divine appointment.’ Paul saw himself as Christ’s prisoner (1,9). He knew that all of his life was under Christ’s sovereign control, and if he was a jailbird the Lord had His reasons. Certainly one of them was so that he would encounter Onesimus, who formerly had been ”useless”, but once he was converted began to live up to his name (which actually means ‘useful’; see v.11).

You never know who you might run into whose life may change because of the meeting. Or it might be you who will be changed. Possibly both of you!

“We can make our plans, but the LORD determines our steps.”
(Proverbs 16:9, NLT).

Someone prayed this great prayer:

”Father, thank You for ordering my steps. Thank You for divine appointments that keep me on the right path. Help me to discern the opportunities You have placed in front of me and see clearly Your hand guiding me in Jesus’ name. Amen.”