The Prodigal Believer

One of the people who made a major impression upon my life was Larry Phillips.  Coach Phillips was not only my football coach and math teacher at Wayside Middle School he was also my Sunday School teacher at First Baptist Church of Saginaw, Texas.  He and his wife Bobbie, who also was a teacher, were actively involved in the lives of middle school aged kids in Saginaw.  Coach Phillips was not loud and did not holler in order to get his point across during football practice.  Because we knew that Coach Phillips loved us and cared for us we would listen and try to work as hard as we could.  Once we graduated on to high school, Coach Phillips was still there to encourage and help us through life.

When I was in my junior year of high school, Coach Phillips was hired as a middle school principle in a neighboring school district.  He and Bobbie, because they were committed to being involved in the community where they lived, also changed churches even though they only moved about 10 miles away.  Not long after taking the new position, Larry Phillips was diagnosed with leukemia while in his early thirties.  One of the hardest things I had ever done was to watch my middle school head football coach and Sunday School teacher slowly die of leukemia.  Several of us who played football for Coach Phillips would go and visit him when he was in the hospital.  We wanted to go there to show him how much we loved and supported him as well as to encourage him in his time of great personal adversity.

While we were there visiting Coach Phillips an interesting thing would occur.  At some point we would go from being the encouragers to the ones being encouraged.  Coach Phillips and Bobbie always seemed to turn the situation away from themselves and begin to delve into what we were dealing with at the time.  I never came away from those hospital visits ever feeling sad about Coach Phillips but always came away being infused with the joy he had in spite of the leukemia that was slowly taking his life.  Ultimately Coach Phillips died of leukemia but even as he took his last breath, he was joyful because he knew where he was going and who he about to see.  At his funeral, the church was packed with former students and football players from the two rival school districts.  Guys who had once been enemies on the football field now sat together bound by their love and admiration for their former football coach and Sunday School teacher.

Sometimes as believers we tend to think that we are the only ones who have to endure personal adversity and difficulty.  We even at times believe that our problems are incurable and chronic.  As believers we sometimes fail to see the benefits that can come from going through times of personal trials.  Dr. David Jeremiah, in writing on personal adversity, states, “Quite often the Lord uses the adversity in our lives as a lens through which He can be seen!” Chuck Swindoll, in writing on personal adversity states, “When we arrive at such dilemmas in life and are unable to decipher the right direction to go, if we hope to maintain our joy in the process, we must allow the Lord to be our Guide, our Strength, our Wisdom, our all!….. When we do that, He trades us His joy for our anxiety.”

Paul in his letter to the Church at Philippi, encourages the believers to be joyful in spite of whatever difficult situation they may find themselves in.  He is confident in the joy that a relationship with Christ brings to all believers.  In Philippians 1:21, Paul writes “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Paul is saying that everything we go through is beneficial to our relationship with Christ and will ultimately produce joy in our lives.  To me this means that, from God’s perspective, there are benefits that I cannot receive apart from experiencing personal adversity.  When we realize the value of these benefits then we can maintain the level of joy God desires for us to have and share with others.  In Philippians 1:11-30, Paul shares with us some of the benefits we can receive that infuses our life with joy.

Personal adversity is a part of God’s plan to get us where he wants us to be. In verse 12 Paul writes, “And I want you to know, dear brothers and sisters, that everything that has happened to me here has helped to spread the Good News.” (NLT)  The word “spread” is a military term used by Roman engineers referring to removing obstacles while building a road.  The Romans built roads wherever they went in order to allow for faster travel of their armies and expand the Roman Empire.  Some of these obstacles in the roads could take months to remove and at times the obstacles that needed to be removed were part of a mountain.  The removal of these obstacles were dangerous as well as tedious.  But these obstacles had to be removed in order to insure the success of the Empire’s plans.  In our lives we are faced with obstacles that need to be removed so that God can get us where He wants us to be.  There have been several difficult times in my life (loss of a job, betrayal by a friend, trouble with my boys, etc) that when I looked back I could see how they were part of God’s plan to get me to where he needed me to be.  When I realized that it was God’s hand on my life then immediately my joy returned and my ability to endure increased.  An exercise that I have found helpful is to draw a time line of my life and how I got to where I am today.  When I do that then it is easy to see how God has had his hand on my life in those times of personal difficulty.

Personal adversity is also a part of God’s plan to help us see beyond the present and look to the future. In verse 19 of Philippians 1, Paul shares how he views his present situation in light of what his future will be, “because I know how it’s going to turn out. Through your faithful prayers and the generous response of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, everything he wants to do in and through me will be done.” (The Message)  Paul is telling us that our present adversity is temporal and not terminal.  He is encouraging us to look forward to what God has for us and rejoice in the fact that He is walking with us and will walk us out of the adversity.  What we need to take from this verse is that being a chronic complainer only achieves one goal and that is a reduction of our joy.  Instead we need to have the attitude of the 95 year old man who married a 24 year old girl and buys a house with a 30 year mortgage next to an elementary school.  When we look to the future with anticipation then our joy is not deluded by the present difficulty.

Coach Larry Philips maintained his joy all the way through his journey through leukemia.  His wife Bobbie told us that when Coach Philips passed away he just simply went to sleep with a smile on his face.  He could do this because he knew who the next face he was going to see when awoke.  “Not flinching or dodging in the slightest before the opposition. Your courage and unity will show them what they’re up against: defeat for them, victory for you – and both because of God.” Philippians 1:28. (The Message)