And I want you to know, my dear brothers and sisters, that everything that has happened to me here has helped to spread the Good News. For everyone here, including the whole palace guard, knows that I am in chains because of Christ. And because of my imprisonment, most of the believers here have gained confidence and boldly speak God’s message without fear. It’s true that some are preaching out of jealousy and rivalry. But others preach about Christ with pure motives. They preach because they love me, for they know I have been appointed to defend the Good News. Those others do not have pure motives as they preach about Christ. They preach with selfish ambition, not sincerely, intending to make my chains more painful to me. But that doesn’t matter. Whether their motives are false or genuine, the message about Christ is being preached either way, so I rejoice. And I will continue to rejoice. For I know that as you pray for me and the Spirit of Jesus Christ helps me, this will lead to my deliverance.
Philippians 1:12-19

Dear God, Paul really did have a remarkable way of looking beyond himself, his own comfort or agenda, and seeing what you might be doing in spite of his own circumstances. He had that ultimate level of faith that told him his life meant nothing to him, but his time on earth was about making as much of a difference for you as possible, regardless of what it cost him personally. It’s the lesson Job ultimately learned in his story, but Paul seems to have come to it much more quickly.

As for me? Well, I confess I still like my comfort and I still get fussy when I perceive my rights are being trampled. I still want to enact my agenda and how I think things should happen as opposed to how you need them to happen. I’m better. I at least am aware I have deficiencies. So that’s something. But I have a long ways to go.

Father, help me to live Paul’s words in Acts 20:24: “But my life is worth nothing to me unless I use it for finishing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus—the work of telling others the Good News about the wonderful grace of God.”

In Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen