Visible Faith

so that it has become evident to the whole palace guard, and to all the rest, that my chains are in Christ (Philippians 1:13 NKJV).

It is an interesting thought to ponder that when the entire palace guard and “all the rest” – whoever that included – looked at Paul in prison, they all came to one conclusion – he was not a prisoner of Rome; he was a prisoner of Christ.  That alone speaks volumes of Paul’s walk with Jesus.  His complete and total surrender to the situation in which he found himself and the consistency of his ability to let God be supreme in his life, no matter what that meant, spoke to anyone who was watching.  And the message of his life was one of humility, grace, mercy, resolve, and more than anything else, consistency to what he believed.  And when we are consistent with what we believe, that is considered faith.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, according to God’s definition found in Hebrews 11:1.  When you think about the scenario of Paul’s predicament in this Philippian prison – he finds himself without the freedom to leave, without the freedom to do whatever he would determine for his day, without the freedom to even choose what he eats or when he can go to the bathroom, and yet everyone around him sees a man who is completely free – in a way they’ve never witnessed before.  It is a freedom that comes from the innermost part of this man’s soul.  They watch him manifest joy in the midst of sorrow, hope in the most hopeless of situations, and peace when there should be turmoil.  That is a kind of freedom that can only come when someone is completely and totally convinced that they are connected to something outside of their current circumstance and world.  Paul’s joy was in his submission to a God he could not see, his hope was in a pardon he could not purchase himself, and his peace came from the certainty that whatever happened to him in the realm he could see would further and advance a Kingdom he could not see.

It is called eternal perspective and when we embrace our chains in Christ – that is, when we come to realization that our life belongs to a Savior we cannot see, but One in whom we have more certainty than we ever had in anyone we could see – then, we have the kind of faith that is evident to those around us.

I am convicted by the truth that my faith is oftentimes so shallow that it borders on faithless.  My circumstances many times will control my behavior and betray the lack of my focus on eternity.  This is a good reminder that every time I freak out over what is happening to me, I am sending the wrong message to those around me.  If I am truly dead and it is Christ who lives in me, then I should not care a whit about what happens to me in this life because dead men don’t care.

Today I will evaluate my emotional reaction to the things that happen.  When necessary, I will course correct my heart towards the path of faith and eternal perspective when I find myself clearly in chains to this world and not to Christ.