I invite you, if you would, to turn with me to Philippians, continuing our study through Philippians together. Philippians chapter 1. Last week we left off at verse 14, and that's where I'll pick it up this morning. Philippians 1, beginning at verse 14. Most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the Gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of rivalry, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice." Yes, and I will rejoice. Let's pray. Father, as we do each and every time we come together, we now come to Your Word. We are asking that through the power of Your Spirit, You would bless the preaching of Your Word this morning, that You would minister to us through Your Word this morning. Pray that You would speak to each one of our hearts. That You would equip us for lives that are filled with joy. Joy in our Christ. Joy in seeing the Gospel proclaimed. joy in seeing the glory of God hallowed among the nations. I pray that you would keep me faithful to your word. Say what you would have said to your people this morning. And all this we ask in the name of Christ. Amen. started to consider and will continue to consider throughout the rest of chapter 1 of the book of Philippians are the various detriments to joy that Paul starts to sort of outline for us as he goes through to the end of the chapter. Now remember the connection, just briefly, we started the book of Philippians on as we have finished our series through the Gospel of John, through the book of Hebrews, the connection that we're talking about is what we're seeing in Philippians is this life of unshakable joy that Paul is living because of the supremacy of Christ. And so as we think about all that Scripture has to say, and as we think about all that I've said over and over again about the connection between the glory of Christ and the supremacy of Christ and the beauty and the majesty of Christ, there's a connection there that these things are not simply presented to us in order that we would simply know more about Christ, but they are presented to us in order that we would be so taken and captivated by His beauty and by His glory. that we would be willing to forsake everything in an earthly sense, in a worldly sense, in a temporal sense in this life for joy in Him. And what we're seeing as we look at the life of Paul through the way that he speaks to the Philippians here in this letter, we're seeing a life that is lived as if this man believes what he knows about the beauty of Christ. That's what's grounding him in his joy. Paul is a strange person. He absolutely refuses to allow anything in this life to cause him to lose his joy. He even says that, as we saw last week, in verse 18, yes, and I will rejoice. Even a monk, as we looked at last week, his trying circumstances and his tribulations that he's found himself in under Roman imprisonment and under Roman guard, He will rejoice. Not only are these circumstances potentially able to cause Him to lose His own joy, but we also know they are potentially able to cause the Philippians themselves to lose their joy as well, as they think about their Father in the faith. They will give in to worry, or anxiety, or any other type of emotion as they think about Paul and his imprisonment. And so he says, I want you to know that all of this is simply working together, in verse 12, has served to advance the gospel. You know, we know a lot about Paul's circumstances. He outlines the type of things that he has endured for the sake of the Gospel. He does this, for example, in 2 Corinthians 11. He talks about all of the countless beatings and the imprisonments and the near-death experiences five times, verse 24 of 2 Corinthians 11. At the hands of the Jews, the forty lashes less one. Three times beaten with rods. Once stoned. Three times shipwrecked. A day and a night at sea. Adrift at sea. Frequent journeys. Danger from rivers. Danger from robbers. Danger from my own people. Danger from Gentiles. In the city. In the wilderness. At sea. From false brothers. Toil and hardship. Sleepless nights. Hunger and thirst. Without food. Cold and exposure. There's even the daily pressure of his anxiety for the churches. All of this circumstance that he has had to deal with as he thinks about, or as he's out ministering the gospel and preaching the gospel, and yet he'll go on in 2 Corinthians to say what? He's going to boast in his weakness, because it's in his weakness that the power of God rests upon him. When he's weak, he's strong. These circumstances are extremely difficult for Paul, but as he looks at the gospel being advanced and being proclaimed, even in spite of his circumstances, he will rejoice. You remember how he put it to the Colossians, I rejoice in my suffering for your sake, and in my flesh I fill up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of the body that is the church. When Paul looks at his affliction and he looks at his suffering, he doesn't consider it a detriment to the presentation of the Gospel to the world. Instead, when Paul looks at his affliction and his suffering, he looks at it as the very vehicle by which God has chosen to get the Gospel to the end of the world. And therefore, when he finds himself in trials and tribulations, and in suffering and persecution, His joy cannot be diminished because His joy is found in something far greater. It's found in Christ. God gives the glory. And in that, Paul rejoices. There's another detriment to His joy that Paul talks about in these verses. We have seen His joy in spite of His circumstances. Next, we consider His joy in spite of people. His joy in spite of people. Verses 14-18, Paul talks about the various types of people that are involved in the ministry of the Gospel. First, he sees the way that his circumstance have made others bold for the advancement of the Gospel. He sees the way that his circumstances that we talked about last week have made other people bold for the advancement of the Gospel. Look at verse 14. Most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the Word without fear. That word for having become confident means to trust. It speaks to trusting in the Lord. They have found full trust in the Lord. They see Paul in all of his suffering, in all of his affliction, in all of his imprisonment, in all that Paul has gone through, and he makes it clear that they know that his imprisonment, in verse 13, is for Christ. To all the rest, my imprisonment is for Christ. And they see this, these other ministers, these other preachers, and because they see it, and because they see Paul's joy, and because they see Paul's confidence, and because they see Paul's trust in Christ and in Christ alone, they too have been emboldened and encouraged to trust Christ as well in any and all circumstance as they go to preach the Gospel. They have confidence to preach Christ no matter what may fall upon them. If Paul can do it as an earthly example of what it looks like to be confident in Christ, we can do it as well. That is what their mentality is. They are much more bold to speak the Word without fear, he says. They are much more bold, they are much more courageous. It means that they are willing not to dread or to shun through fear the preaching of the gospel. That's exactly what the verse is. They are much more bold to speak the word without fear. Remember that this is a time when simply identifying yourself with Christ will bring persecution, will bring pain. How much more so then for those who are willing to preach the message of the Gospel. If simply identifying yourself with Christ will bring pain, how much more for those who preach the message of the Gospel. Here's what Paul said to the Thessalonians about his time in Philippi. You remember Acts chapter 16 is when he first comes into Philippi, and he meets Lydia, and then he's thrown into prison, and the slave girl with the demon, and then they're thrown into prison, Paul and Silas are. After their run out of Philippi, in Acts chapter 17, they go to Thessalonica. Later on, he writes the letters to the Thessalonians. And in his first letter to them, in chapter 2, verse 1, he says, You yourselves know, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain. But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the Gospel of God in the midst of much conflict. Paul went right from Philippi into Thessalonica preaching the Gospel. He went from place to place, and usually when he left a place, it was because he was run out of town. It was because he was in much affliction. It was because he was being persecuted for what he was preaching. And yet every time he came to a new town, he preached the Word. willing to allow the way that he was previously treated in another place to affect the way that he preached when he came into a new place. He immediately leaves Philippi after being imprisoned, and he goes straight to Thessalonica, and he says, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the Gospel of God, even in the midst of much conflict. He's writing to the Philippians now, And He's telling them of the continued boldness to declare the Gospel that He has, even while He's under house arrest in Rome at the end of the book of Acts. Remember, He was still allowed to receive people. He was still allowed to preach and to teach. Even though He's under lock and key because of these false charges that have been brought against Him, because of the message that He's preaching, as long as they are willing to let Him preach, He's still preaching the message for which He is imprisoned for. And as he does that, others, through his example, you know, he tells the Corinthians, be imitators of me as I am of Christ. Through his example, others are becoming bold to speak the Word without fear as well. Look at what else he says about them in this passage. In verse 15, at the end of the verse, he says that they are the ones who preach from good will. And then in verse 16, He says, they are the ones who do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. They do it out of love. They do it out of good will. They want the best. They want people to come to Christ. They want the gospel to be proclaimed. They want the name of God to be glorified and the gospel of Christ to be hallowed. And they want people to accept and receive Christ. They want Christianity to spread and to grow. They want to be obedient to the Great Commission and to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They want this. With everything that they are, they are just like Paul in a sense. Their passion is for the Gospel, and their passion is for Christ. And as he looks at these people, he rejoices. It connects right into what we said last week, right? His circumstances have caused others to boldly preach Christ, and so he will rejoice. Now it's easy to think of rejoicing with those kind of people. You know, there's certain people in our lives that it's easy to rejoice with, it's easy to be happy with, it's easy to be joyful with. But there's a contrast in this passage as well. There's another type of person that's out there as well. It's not all primrose paths for Paul. There's another type of person out there preaching and teaching and preaching Christ. First, we see those who preach Christ well and preach Christ boldly and preach Christ with pure motives. But secondly, we see those who preach Christ with ill will. The first group, good will. The second group, with ill will. This is a hard issue for Paul. When you think about it, I just mentioned that passage from 2 Corinthians. At the end of all that, he says what? At the end of everything, at the end of everything that I've suffered, I think for Paul, the biggest point of anxiety that he had, and the biggest point of trial and suffering that he had, according to that passage, and the way that he presents it, is his daily anxiety for the churches. All of the physical abuse that he had encountered, all of the mistreatings and the beatings and the floggings, and so forth, and the imprisonments, All of that paled in comparison to Paul's love for the church and his constant concern and anxiety for the church. Why? Because Paul's passion was the gospel. Paul's passion was seeing people live in light of the gospel. This is tough. It's tough whenever you look at the way Paul talks about these men in the remainder of these verses, the ones who preach Christ from envy and rivalry and out of selfish ambition. This is tough. It's tough to be mistreated by the very people who should be uplifting you and edifying you and partnering with you in the Gospel. You know, we here in this area, we experienced a little bit of this, obviously not to the extent that Paul has with being in prison and so forth. We experienced a little bit of this as we attempted to pull the churches in this area together a few months back. or just last month, really, earlier this month. Like I said, nothing, of course, on the level of persecution that Paul is enduring here. But still, there is an undercurrent sometimes of envy or rivalry when you try to work together with other churches for the advancement of the Gospel. There's a sense of, well, this is my pocket, and that's your pocket, and that's their pocket over there, and we're not coming together, we're not going to cross lines, we're not going to cross borders. assumed and understood borders for churches in some areas. It's hard to endure. It's hard to take when you just want to work together for the advancement of the gospel. It's hard to endure when you're dealing with it from people that you shouldn't be dealing with it from. You know, the world, it's going to hate Christians. We're told that over and over in Scripture. Jesus promises it. It's just a reality of it. They hate Christ, and therefore, they hate us. You expect mistreatment from the world. You expect mistreatment from those who are in the world and persecution. You expect them to want to throw you in jail. You expect them to want to behead you like they're doing over in other parts of the world. You expect them to want to martyr you and to malign you and mischaracterize you. We expect hatred and persecution from the world. In some sense, we even expect hatred and persecution from professed people within the visible church, liberal branches of evangelicalism who, at the end of the day, deny the very fundamental core beliefs and doctrines of our faith. liberal branches of academia that deny that Christ was truly the Son of God and yet want to still consider themselves Christians, who deny the reality of the Trinity, who deny the reality of the sufficiency, inerrancy, and infallibility of Holy Scripture. We sort of expect hatred and persecution even from these liberal branches of what is the so-called church. But we don't expect it from true brothers. We don't expect them to mistreat, malign, to look down upon us. But it happens all the time, and it's tragic, and it's sad, but it happens. So what does Paul have to say about these types of people? It says in verse 15, some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry. So you've got this first group that are bold to preach Christ, and then he says, Some of them preach out of envy and rivalry. Others from goodwill, but some of them out of envy and rivalry. You say, what's that mean? It means that they preach with a heart of jealousy. Envy. Rivalry. They're opponents to Paul. They're not working with Paul. They're rivals to him. They're envious of him. What are they jealous of? We're not really told. We know they're jealous of something. Maybe they're jealous of his success. Paul is the appointed minister to the Gentiles. He holds a special position as an apostle. He had seen a vision of the resurrected Christ and had gone off for 12 to 15 years and studied under the tutelage of the resurrected Christ before he went on his missionary journeys. He's considered an apostle. an endorsement by the main apostles in the church at Jerusalem. Maybe they're jealous of his success. He's been going all across Asia Minor, mightily preaching the Word of God, establishing churches. The churches looked up to him as a spiritual father. Paul, next to Christ, is the greatest preacher who has ever walked to the face of the earth. He took the Gospel into all of Asia Minor. He took the Gospel where it was not preached. He tells the Romans that's his passion, to go where Christ is not proclaimed. We don't know exactly what they're jealous of, but the way Paul talks about it, we know that they are preaching Christ. Now understand this, they're preaching Christ. Paul is very careful to not give us any indication that they're preaching a different Gospel. This is not a Galatians issue. He's not declaring anathema on them and declaring them accursed because they're preaching a different gospel. They're preaching Christ. They just do it with impure hearts. They do it with impure motives of jealousy and envy. They want what He has. They want that acclaim. They want that position. They want that power. But they're not preaching a different gospel. The problem is not with their message. The problem is with the character of the messenger. That's what Paul is talking about here. This too is rampant in the church today. So many people want to know why their pastor isn't like so-and-so or such-and-such. Why my Sunday school teacher isn't like this person over here or that person over here. not engaging enough, not vibrant enough, not charismatic enough, not learned enough. Pastors themselves who say this type of thing. Boy, if I could just be like so-and-so, I'd really have it made, I'd have it going on. This is such a detriment to true spiritual growth, not only for the pastors, but for the people. I'm not this or that person. You know, I have to be me. And you have to be you. God has gifted you, He's gifted me with various types of talents and gifts and we are here to serve the church. We are who we are and we are who He has made us to serve in the church. And quite frankly, we are where we are and He has put us here for a reason. I was listening to a message a couple of weeks ago now by John MacArthur. He was doing the chapel service there at the Master's Seminary. And he was talking to these students in the seminary. Some of them are seniors this year. They'll be graduating and going out. And he was sort of talking about ministry and what it would be like once they got out of seminary. And one of the pieces of advice that he gave them is to expect little success from an earthly standpoint. Expect little success. You know, he had mentioned that, you know, the Master's Seminary is right there on the church campus, if I'm not mistaken. And so they serve in the church there. It's this big, you know, mega-church over there in the Los Angeles area. And you kind of get used to that environment and that atmosphere. The reality is those are the exception to the rule, the big mega-churches in America. Most churches are, to be quite honest, the size of ours. And most pastors will spend their entire lives ministering and evangelizing and just not see a lot of earthly success. That was one of his words of encouragement. He mentioned that when he tells people that, a common response is, well, you know, it's easy for you to say that. You have this big, huge church with 8,000 people coming. And he reminded them to be realistic, that they have the same number of people on Sunday mornings that they had 20 years ago. They're not growing either. Yeah, they're big, but they're not growing either. They're still trying to reach their community, their context. They do, like I said, about 8,000 people on Sunday mornings across two services. By contrast, we have 35 or so Sunday mornings. Well, we live in an area where the population is 1689 in Bernice, according to the 2010 census. That's about 2%. 8,000 people is about 3 or 4% of the same area with the population density in the area of that church. And he mentioned all that. Be realistic. We're still trying to reach more than the majority of our community, even as you're going to be trying to reach more than the majority of yours. expect little success. So what am I going to do? Am I going to watch his conference messages and hear reports of his church and be jealous of all the people that come to him? To be completely honest, when I think 8,000, I just can't even fathom it. I have a hard enough time with the 30 to 35 we have. I remember a quote, and I cannot, I tried to find it, I cannot remember who said it, but he, and this is my paraphrase, you know, he said, don't begrudge, if you're, don't begrudge yourself if your flock is small, and you get to the judgment, and you will give an account for the lives of the people that were in your flock, you will think it was big enough. And it's true. Jealousy in the ministry is an ugly thing. It truly is. And Paul looks at these people and he says they're preaching from envy and they're preaching from rivalry. But not only do they preach from envy and rivalry, that jealousy leads to a selfishness in their hearts. And then that selfishness acts itself out. The former proclaimed Christ out of rivalry, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. They preach with a selfish ambition. They preach with a selfish ambition. In contrast to preaching out of goodwill and out of love, which is the first group, they preach selfishly. They preach with a desire to step up the ministry ladder, if you will. Their current situation is simply another rung on the stair step up to the top of the heap where they view Paul as being. And what does this selfishness that they preach with result in? It results in them wanting to afflict Him in His imprisonment. They preach Christ out of rivalry or selfishness, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. They aren't sincere when they preach. They preach the right message. They say all the right things. But they aren't saying it with the right motives. They seek to afflict me and to hinder me, to keep me down so that they can rise up to the top. Once again, we don't know specifically how they sought to afflict Paul in his imprisonment, but whatever it is, as I said, at the same time that they are preaching Christ, they are also trying to discredit Paul in order to gain his acclaim, in order to gain the attention that he has for themselves. You know, we do get a glimpse of what people began to do to Paul once he was under Roman imprisonment and under Roman guard, the type of heartache that he endured. He talks about it as he writes to Timothy. Listen to this. You can almost feel the pain come through as he closes his letter to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4, verse 9. He says, Do your best to come to me soon. For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia. Titus to Dalmatia. Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry. Tychicus I have sent to Ephesus. When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books and above all the parchments. Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm. The Lord will repay him according to his deeds. Beware of him yourself, for he strongly opposed our message. At my first defense, no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. May it not be charged against them. but the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it." So I was rescued from the lion's mouth. Everybody has deserted Paul. They've left. They've cowered. They've gone away. Only a few remain that are willing to call Paul a partner in the ministry. In the end, Paul has been completely abandoned by almost everyone. That's the kind of people that are out there, there's the type who preach well and who hung out with Paul, and there's the type who are jealous and rivalrous and ambitious and selfish, and they preach out of those motive. Speaking to someone once about sermons and preaching and stuff like that, I had told him at one point, I said, look, the way I look at it, if the man in the pulpit is faithfully and rightly handling the Word of God, he's going to get a lot of leeway with me. He really is. You must preach Christ rightly and faithfully and boldly. I'm willing to give him a lot of rope. You know, I've listened to the type of men who preach for over an hour. And I can handle that if you're preaching right. If you're handling the Word of God right, length doesn't bother me, tone doesn't bother me, you know, being the kind of guy who's walking around the stage and all that, that doesn't really bother me either, as long as you're preaching right. I want to know what He's saying. I want to know what He's telling His people. I want to know what He's telling me from the Scriptures. But if the substance of it is off, then I might say something. But that's not an attack on the man, that's an assessment of the message. What Paul is saying here is there's nothing wrong with their message, but when they bring it, they do it in a way that attacks Paul and causes him further affliction in his imprisonment. They are afflicting him, they are causing him So I take it to mean that it's not that they're trying to get the Romans to treat Paul worse while he is in their custody. It just means that when they preach, they're sort of twisting that knife in his back a little deeper, a little more, a little harder. And that's what really hurts these men, faithful preachers of the gospel. Why would they treat another brother like this? Why would they do him like this? Why would they act like this? Why would they go about preaching in such a way as to cause Paul this kind of pain and to discredit him? Now what does Paul do? What's his response to these selfish, ambitious, and envious people? He could tear into them. He could invoke some sort of righteous anger sort of attitude. He could maybe, even though the letter hasn't been written yet, he could go into what John goes into in his first epistle, about if you don't love the brothers, you don't love God, the love of God does not abide in you. But he doesn't do that. He doesn't give us this passage because he wants us to feel sorry for him. He doesn't give us this passage because he wants the Philippians to have a little pity party with Paul. He doesn't do it because he's got some frustration to vent, and everybody needs to vent every once in a while, and so he's got some things to get off his chest. No, he says in the opening to this portion of the letter, in verse 12, I want you to know that what is happening to me is advancing the gospel. Keep your eyes on the prize, Philippians. I know what's going on. I know what they're saying. I know how they're preaching. But what is happening to me is serving to advance the gospel. And that's exactly how he caps it off in verse 18. What then? What then? What am I going to say? What am I going to do? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. whether in pretense, meaning they do it well and they do it out of the right motives, or simply in truth, in the sense of they do it out of wrong motives, but it's still in truth, Christ is proclaimed. And in that I rejoice, yes, and I will rejoice. I will not lose my joy because Christ is proclaimed. Last week we said Paul had one ambition, he had one passion, he had one goal, and it was for the glory of God and the message of the Gospel of Christ. That's how he could maintain his joy in spite of his circumstances, and that's how he could maintain his joy in spite of these people, because Christ is proclaimed. What they were doing could maybe cause him to lose his joy, but he saw it and he knows that they are preaching Christ. And so he says, I will rejoice. You know what I love about this in the end? Paul doesn't care who gets the credit. He was the apostle to the Gentiles. We've already said, he was selected specifically by Jesus, miraculously converted on the road to Damascus, on his way to persecute Christians. So much so was he chosen that God gave him a thorn in the flesh to keep him humble because of the greatness of the revelations that he had received. He had every reason on earth to be proud. He had every reason on earth to be boastful. And he had every, in an earthly sense, every claim to authority to tell these guys to shut up. And the church probably would have listened to him. He had every reason to try to lord his power and authority over others, but Paul didn't care about any of that. You remember what he told the Ephesian elders in Acts 20? I don't count my life of any value or as precious to myself if only I might finish my course to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. It didn't matter to him if these men got credit for preaching Christ, even if they did it from impure motives. selfish, envious motives. It only mattered to Him that the Gospel was preached. You ask, can God use this type of selfish person to advance the Kingdom and to advance the Gospel and to convert the heathen? Can God use a selfish person? And the answer is, yes, He can. Because the power of God is in what? The Gospel. It's in the message. It's not in the messenger. That's why Paul says he's not ashamed of the Gospel. For it is the power of God. It's a good thing it doesn't take a perfect man to preach the Gospel in order to see others converted, or else we would all be hopelessly lost. God can use even these types of broken vessels. He may not be pleased to use them as effectively, He may not use them and put them in His providence in situations where they receive earthly acclaim and earthly prestige, but the power is in the message, not the messenger. So Paul says, look, as long as they're out there preaching Christ, I will rejoice and let God handle the rest of it. They weren't going to rob him of his joy in seeing others come to faith in Christ. That's what he truly found his joy in. He found his joy in Christ. And his joy was made complete by seeing others come to faith in Christ. And that's a lesson we should take to heart as well, as we consider our work in being faithful witnesses to Christ. a little bit of a conversation on social media earlier this week and it was about a back and forth about forgiveness and the gospel and repentance and all those things and finally I sarcastically put a comment to make the point I wanted to make. You know, I'm okay with the gospel. I'm fine with the gospel. As long as it's my sins being covered. My sins being washed away. My sins being forgiven. But when it's someone else having their sins washed away and forgiven, well, maybe that's another story. They really repent it, they really mean it, and you start to question someone else's conversion. You know, the Gospel is a scandalous message. There is enough atoning work in the power of the blood of Christ. There is atoning power in the blood of Christ. to cover a white lie when there is enough atoning power in the blood of Christ to cover the murderer on death row. And the question is, are we okay that they both receive forgiveness and they can both be washed white as snow? Paul rejoiced in seeing others come to faith in Christ. Paul himself is an example. A man who was about as wicked as you could be in this life. That's why he constantly calls himself the chief of sinners. You know, we talked about one morning in Sunday school what's happening over across the world with ISIS and persecution and murder and beheadings and so forth. That was Paul before his conversion. Standing at the head of Stephen as he was being stoned. and martyred for his faith. This is the scandal of the Gospel, and Paul understood the scandal of the Gospel, and he loved seeing people come to faith. And so whether he knew men who were preaching from good will, or whether he knew men who were preaching from ill will, as long as they preached Christ, he said, I will rejoice. Let's pray. So Father, we do ask that as we think about our own witness, as we think about our own joy, so many times people in our lives are able to get under our skin, are able to cause us to lose heart. We pray that you would help us to stay at the heart of the gospel. Help us to remember that our joy is not found in our earthly circumstances and it's not found in our earthly relationships, but our joy is found in Christ. Help us to maintain joy as we see Christ being proclaimed. Help us to be joyful in the Lord. Restore to us, we pray with the psalmist, the joy of our salvation. In all this we ask in His name, amen.