Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually advanced the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard, and to everyone else, that my imprisonment is because I am in Christ. (Philippians 1:12-13)
Paul is suffering because he is imprisoned in Rome. We learned last week that a Roman prison was a hole in the ground and Paul was thankful to the Philippian church for providing money so that he had food to eat.
No one likes suffering – yet everyone suffers. In this past week, I heard from a friend who fell and broke her hip, my niece whose unborn baby is too small, and another friend whose unborn baby whose heart is not formed correctly. These people are suffering. We pray for God to heal and relieve the pain, yet we know that God is not obliged to heal and the suffering may continue. Can we encourage them to be happy?
Paul had some physical ailment which tormented him, which he called “a thorn in the flesh.” He prayed three times that God would remove it, but God’s answer was, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). Following that, Paul wrote that he would boast about his weakness, showing that Christ’s power resided in him. For, when he was physically weak, then he was strong in Christ. Can we learn from Paul’s attitude?
Returning to the imprisonment in Philippi, Paul was able to see God working through his sufferings. He wrote that because of his imprisonment, “Christ is proclaimed, and in this I rejoice. Yes, and I will continue to rejoice.” Yes, Paul was happy in suffering because he could see the good that was coming from it.
In a similar way, we can be happy in our sufferings, even though in the moment we are miserable. Often it is sometime after the suffering has ended, that we look back and can see how God was leading, providing and working through the suffering. As believers, we can cling to the promise that “all things work together for the good of those that love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28).