Summit Drive Church

In this passage, we look at how role models play a critical role in our spiritual growth and how to find good role models in our church community.

Sometimes an event can shake our world to the core and cause us to reevaluate everything; our value system, the way we see the world. Paul has a serious warning against false teaching in our text where he uses his own story to counteract any suggestion that you need Jesus plus anything else. Paul is relearning how to ‘count’ and how to ‘read.’ And we learn to as well.

Philippians reminds us that the spread of God's good news is a group project, and our unity is central to the success of our mission. Group projects fall apart when we complain and bicker, in the same way our witness fails when we complain and bicker.

We live in this “gap” between who we are and who God, in Christ, is making us to be. In Philippians 2, Paul narrates the life of Jesus as the one who gives “shape” and “definition” to the kind of shared life we were created and redeemed to enjoy. In our study, we’ll see how the gospel that saves us also transforms us deeply.

Paul’s words in Philippians 1:27-30 call our assumptions of the "good life” into serious question. We, who have been drinking steadily and deeply from a cultural norm that assumes that the good life is cozy, easy, comfortable, might be quite shocked that Paul sees participation in Jesus’ work, which includes tension, pressure, even suffering, as part of the gift of following him. Our text is an invitation to embrace our identity as God’s set-apart people in surprising and beautiful ways.

When someone writes to you from prison, you expect them to tell you how they are. Paul uses his prison letter to show us how to bear up under difficult circumstances—trusting in providence, reconnecting with our purpose, and being for and with other people.

The book of Philippians is known for its tone of joy and call to keep ‘rejoicing’ in God’s good work. As we begin our series, we’ll see how Paul’s joy is not based on his circumstances but on the good work God is doing in the Philippian church and in the rich relationships that are formed by the gospel. We’ll see how we are drawn into this same joy as we embrace the kind of affection Paul speaks of for this community and, as we pray with Paul, for a deepening of thoughtful love and discernment.

This week, we look at Psalm 65, a text which paints a picture of God as the God of Abundance. We're invited to respond to him by becoming people who give thanks to him as we engage in the practice of gratitude.

The resurrection of Jesus changes everything. As we’ll see, God the Father “vindicates” Jesus, the innocent One, who humbles himself all the way to death, even death on a cross. And that, as we trust and follow Jesus, even our biggest struggles will not end in defeat but God’s victory through it.

Jesus passes the three tests he faces in the wilderness, but that isn’t the end of the Enemy's work. The ‘final exam’ comes as Jesus is faced with the full force of what the cross means in the Garden of Gethsemane. In the end, we find that Good Friday is so good because Jesus passes the test in all the ways that we don’t.