Day 22: Philippians 1:28

"Don't be intimidated in any way by your enemies. This will be a sign to them that they are going to be destroyed, but that you are going to be saved, even by God himself." ~Philippians 1:28 NLT

... seems pretty self-explanatory to me. It's a command. Our witness to God can be shown through a lack of intimidation. But let's go a little further. Open up the Bible! (Or select the YouVersion app... flipping through all of those pages can be intimidating xD ) Starting with Philippians 1:27, ending on verse 29. That will be the context. (Note that context isn't just what happens before... dun dun dun... it's also what happens afterwards. I forget that a lot when trying to explain :)

So, start off with Paul telling the Philippians to live as citizens of Heaven. We are not citizens of the world. We do not live the way the world lives. If the world can't tell the difference between us and itself - we're failing as Christians. (Tough but true statement.) Paul tells us to live in a manner that is worthy of the Good News and of Christ. If we're giving a poor image of either, we're failing as Christians. (Still tough, still true.) It's all in hypocrisy - now don't get me wrong, if we weren't hypocrites, we wouldn't be sinners. And all have fallen short of the glory. (Romans) So one way or another, there will be hypocritical instances in life. But it's one thing to mess up once, and another thing to LIVE that way. Say for example, a Christian says "Don't gossip." If that Christian is a gossip, then s/he is living hypocritically and is not living in a manner that is worth of the Good News and of Christ, and thus s/he is living as a citizen of the world.

But when we live in Christ, the world can see there's something different about us. (Which is good.) And some of that difference comes from intimidation... We've got Christ inside of us. (And if our God is with us, who can stand against us?) We aren't afraid of other people, (or circumstances etc) because we've got Christ inside of us. And "I can do all things through Christ in me." So why be afraid? There's really no good reason TO be afraid, since we've got Jesus. Thus our lack of fear is a testimony to the world. Going on to verse 29, we've got the privilege of trusting Christ in us. Because we've accepted Him, now He is our rock. And we also get the privilege of suffering for Him - because a bully will do everything in his power to make you afraid, and that might include suffering. Getting beat up, threats, whatever. But we still don't have to be afraid, because we've still got Jesus. Nobody can take that away from us.

And when I say nobody, I mean that there is no person in the world with that power. Not one.