Our Father's Promises

July 2023 Devotional

It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, because I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Jesus Christ. — Phil. 1:7–8

If I’m honest with myself, these words that the apostle Paul wrote to the church at Philippi often feel complicated to me. On the one hand, it’s easy to see why Paul would feel this way about the Philippeans. He obviously had fond memories from his time in that city, despite a brief stint in prison. The businesswoman Lydia was among the first who believed the gospel when Paul and Silas first arrived there, and the church that gathered in her home were among Paul’s most fervent supporters. It’s no wonder he could say “I have you in my heart.”

And yet it’s important to remember that Paul wrote these words while in prison. While he was alone. At a time when there were few concrete signs that anybody, much less a successful businesswoman somewhere in Asia Minor, cared about him at all. It would have been understandable if Paul had reacted to imprisonment in the same way that the enslaved people of Israel did when God told Moses to remind them that God would save them out of slavery. In Exodus 6:9 it says that when Moses spoke to the Israelites “they did not listen to him because of their discouragement.”

Indeed, I often feel more like the ancient Israelites than the apostle Paul. I feel weighed down by discouragement. I feel betrayed by friends who turn out to be silent allies, if not outright enemies. I feel lonely.

In those moments, it’s important to remember that our common faith has always been rooted in our Father’s promises to his people, and not in our current circumstances. And that even when our Savior was forsaken on the cross, he had you and I in his heart. So when he tells his disciples after he rose from the dead that he has to leave them, we’re not surprised to hear that he’s leaving to prepare a place for us so we can be together again. And if we can believe that our Savior has us in his heart, it becomes just a little bit easier for me to believe that my siblings in the faith also hold me in their hearts.

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