One of the things that made the Bible come alive for me more than any other as I was growing up

is when the Bible went from the book that I studied in church to the collection of books that was written by real people in real situations.

And one of the things I like to remind us about Philippians every week that we open it is that this was not written

by a hipster Christian in a coffee shop listening to Hillsong United while he drank his strong coffee

besides hot tea to soothe his throat and was what you guys know hipster Christianity okay because all

of you at the 1030 this is kind of your demographic because none of the hipsters come to the 830 because

they sleep in and so it's, we have this view of Christianity that somebody

went into a room and said, ooh, the Bible. I want to write this and tell people who God is. No, Paul

wrote Philippians from a prison cell in Rome to a church in Philippi that he founded 10 years earlier about real problems.

One of them being the fact that he was in prison and the church that he founded was questioning their

investment into him because now he's in prison, how are you supposed to get the gospel out to a city

that has imprisoned you? And he's like, the gospel is not chained, even if my arms are

chained. The gospel is going out in a better way than it would have if I was free. And for me

to live as Christ, to die as gain, I've got to balance the idea that I might die in this prison

cell and I need their faith to continue to grow. And all throughout this real letter written by a real

person, you have a lot more in common

with the people who wrote the Bible than you think you do, we're reading 2,000 years later and going,

okay, how does this speak to our lives today? And it speaks the same. Paul said, whatever happens,

whether I live or die, I want you to live a life worthy of the gospel of Christ.

That's the central idea of Philippians, that our response to the message of Jesus should look like we actually believe what we say we believe.

And everything after that line in Philippians chapter 1, verses 26 through 27, everything after that point is about living a life worthy of the gospel.

So last week's message was about our relationships with one another. And I believe God moved in this place in a powerful way because many of us were set free from the lie that we

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