How Philippeans 1:3-8 Changed My Ministry

Philippians 1:3-6: King James Version (KJV): "I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, Always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy, For your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now; Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ: . . . .”

Philippians 1:3-6 and sometimes through 8 has appeared below my signature on more letters than I care to admit. It has been my signature verse for decades.

As you can easily see it lends itself to such use. Paul, wants to let the Christians in Philippi know they are special to him and an essential part of his ministry. That is much of the reason why I first started using it as a signature verse in my own ministry and later private correspondence. Little by little it began to take on a significance bigger that the subject matter of some of those letters.

You see, I wanted the recipients of my letter to feel that I not only liked them but appreciated them as well . . . . so much so that whenever they came into my thoughts I paused and thanked God for their roll in my life and ministry.

I also wanted them to know that I believed God had bigger and better things for their lives. It allowed mt to say that while they were not perfect God was not finished with them and that He was still working in them as well as myself to bring us to the place where He wanted us to be.

However, somewhere along the way I found myself not only penning those words but practicing them as well. It was when I made this passage an actual practice in my life I began to experience a new kind of relationship with God and also with the brethren.

By temperament I have never been a person to hold on to a grudge or an offense. But I also was not a person to take criticism laying down. I have kept a journal since my college days when Dr. Al Collins suggested it was a good idea. I did it so I could have the facts of every interaction at my finger tips. This too has been a valuable practice, but I digress.

The problem with my signature verse was that I didn’t actually do it. I just used it so people would think that’s what I did and because I had noticed that other pastors had made it their practice. However, somewhere along the way I started to practice what I had been saying I was doing but was not.

In the beginning I prayed prayers of thanksgiving for the lives of the people who I loved (family) and who I believed liked me. In short it was all about family, friends and colleagues. This proved to be easy since I wasn’t writing a lot of letters in the early years of ministry. After all, I was something of a novice in those days. It also proved to be a great tool for helping me focus on this group of people in a different way. Little by little the passage was beginning to grip my life and effecting the way I related to people in general.

I discovered that the passage had gone from being a simple signature sentiment to becoming a part of who I am. Actually doing it was changing my life.

It was about this same time that I was discovering a side of ministry no one tells you about. I don’t know whether it is a sense of idealism, over-confidence but I never realized how intense opposition in ministry can become. Early in my ministry I had an incident in which a couple of deacons had been conniving to effect my resignation. I discovered their activities on the night before I left to go to Alabama to preach a revival meeting. I remember telling the Chairman of our Deacons he’d just have to handle it without me as I had been working and praying about this meeting for weeks and would not cancel it because of two disgruntled deacons. I remember telling him, “M.A., I have all the confidence in the world in your judgement and I will let you handle it and know that whatever you decide I will honor.” For some reason I then suggested a prayer and I literally prayer Philippians 1:3-8.

When I returned from that meeting all was well. That was the first time I remember praying for God to bless people who opposed me and intended harm to me and through me my family. It also marks the very moment when I learned the power in Jesus’ statement, “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; . . . .” (Matthew 5:44).

As I thought on the instruction to pray for my enemies I realized that my enemies would rarely come from outside the body of Christ. They would be members of the congregation who for reasons sometimes they themselves did not understand would make accusations that were not true; they would turn differences of opinion into personal attacks; occasionally a false sense of what the Lord wanted done; and, in some cases fear of losing power or control.

As a Baptist I knew that in small to mid-size church there seemed to be only two kinds of pastors. Those who had been fired and those where were going to be fired. I also know most young ministers like myself would have to wade through this early ministry risk pool until we reached a stable and mature congregation. I have counseled and known fine men who were competent preachers who were destroyed as they sought to defend themselves against innuendo and outright slander.

This group became the perfect candidates for me to include in practicing my signature verse. As I made the signature verse the pattern for my prayer life I found myself able to thank God for the support those people had given to the ministry . . .my ministry; to express gratitude for their roll in shaping my faith; and for challenging my integrity.

It was at that moment in Kilgore, Texas out behind the old Fellowship Hall with M.A. Smith God brought to my mind a verse from Exodus 14:14 where He promised Israel that “The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”  I intuitive became aware that God had called me to “preach the Gospel” not battle the saints even when they wanted to battle me.

Of course letting the Lord fight the battle did not exclude speaking to, praying with and praying for those who meant me or my family harm. That was how I could know if there was any validity to their charges and/or accusations. In every case I learned something and the biggest thing was that if I let the Lord fight the battle He would deliver me from my enemies. Every time, including the most hurtful experiences, when it was all said and done I prospered (validation) and those who opposed me suffered loss.

If we who are the called out ones of the Lord would only learn to let the Lord fight our battles more of these disputes would resolve in a better way . . . . His way.

I need to point out one additional fact: I have been delivered from the anger, bitterness, and resentment that comes from being harmed as I have been enabled to forgive and deal constructively with both friend and foe. 

For me Philippians 1-3-8 became more than I signature verse . . . it became a practice of life. I found it has enabled me to be faithful to my calling and it opened the door to allowing the Lord to fight my battles. I must tell you that is easier to say than to consistently practice Indeed it runs contrary to my natural impulses. Oh, it was always easy to practice this with those who supported my efforts . . . it was those who didn't support our efforts that gave me difficulty.

So for those who know me and who have asked me the secret . . . well now you know how it came about in my life.  It has been said that "practice makes perfect" and that is certainly true in this case. But, thanking God for and asking God finish the work in both those who supported me and those who opposed me brought me significant freedom to act.

Buttigieg Defends Abortion by Suggesting the Bible Says ‘Life Begins with Breath’

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart;" (Jeremiah 1:5).

I listened to an interview of Pete Buttigieg in which he was asked about the issue of abortion. He gave all the normal ditch and divert responsive that have become the stock and trade of pro abortion activists. However, the interviewer pressed him harder eliciting a response regarding the Pro-Life's claim that all human life is sacred.

Buttigieg's response was that Christians often have many views on the same Scripture passages and that there was no universal agreement among Christian's on the meaning of passages that related to abortion. He continued to say that the primary decider on abortion should be the woman involved.

In the past he demurred to the standard pro-abortion arguments of the past. It is a woman’s body and no one should be able to tell her what to do with it. It’s a decision between her and her doctor. A fetus is nothing more than a mass of tissue and blood like a cancer tumor. In the past he never sought to identify just when human life begins.

However, in a recent interview he seemed to have discovered a religious argument for then life begins. He quotes Genesis 2:7, “then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul” and then he boldly declares that a baby does not become a human until it takes it’s first independent breathe outside the womb. Before that moment it is just a well organized mass of cells and blood.  Couple this with the governor of Virginia advocate for post birth infanticide and I think we need to take a loom at what Buttigieg called the “cosmic question of how life begins.” I suggest that he means how and when a new life begins.  Some have gone so far as to suggest that if we do not see the breathing of life into Adam as analogous to when life begins for a baby then we are theologically looney. I suggest that people who see them as analogous neither know the Scripture or the power of God.

I have no intention of talking about the superficial how new life begins in the sense of the union of a man and a woman becoming one flesh and how that produces a new life. Though I must confess that simple answer is at the heart of the more detailed, technical and sterile answer.

I suppose if one wanted to be sarcastic I would answer that the same Bible that he quoted also says in Leviticus 17:11, ““For the life of the flesh is in the blood.” I would suppose that could mean that the embryo becomes a living being the moment blood begins to flow within it and a human is considered alive as long as the blood continues to flow through his/her veins. A really strong case can be made for this argument including both man’s physical and spiritual life.

However, I want to deal with his own argument that life begins at the moment a baby draws its first breath.

First, making the moment life begins in a baby analogous to when Adam became a living soul is simply absurd on its surface. Such a view fails to see the glaring differences with how Adam came to be and how babies come into being. The first thing I might say to him is what Jesus said to the Sadducees in Matthew 22:29, “You err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God” as they tried to trap Jesus on the question of the resurrection (in which they did not believe) and equally difficult question.

I just said that the analogy of Adam’s becoming a living soul and the moment a baby becomes a living soul is in reality clear apples and oranges comparison. Apples and oranges both grow on trees and both are basically round in form. Adam once wasn’t living and became a living soul and the same can be said for babies but after that the analogy is inapplicable.

First they are different in how they came into being. Adam was created from the dust of the Earth and even the name God gave him means “red dirt,” i.e., clay. God literally fashioned Adam from the clay of a creek bed. In that state he was nothing more and nothing less that Michelangelo’s statue of David . . . an inanimate stature. With that assessment of Adam at this stage of his creation Buttigieg would probably agree.

God, having created Man out of the Earth, now placed his very own life within him by blowing into the nostrils of the inanimate man the breathe of life causing the statute to become a living soul “created” by God in His own image and after His own likeness. This very process makes humanity significantly distinctive from the rest of creation. No one from this point on in the history of mankind will come into being the way that Adam does . . . his coming into being is unique within creation.

Now, let us contrast the creation of Adam with the birth of a baby. Clearly Adam became a living being when God breathed life into him. Even in Buttigieg argument this is the case. Adam had no mother and he had no father and he could not breath on his own. It took an external living being, God, to place within him the breathe that gave him life.  Babies on the other hand are not created are conceived not created.

What does that mean? Isn’t creation and conception essentially the same thing? Well, no, no they are not. At no time in the process of making another human being is there an absence of living material. Adam was a miracle of God, babies, while we see them as miracles, are in reality  are the product of the natural order. God created Adam and then commanded him to “go forth and multiply.”  That means just as God created Adam after His own image and likeness man is to create posterity after his own image and likeness.

To carry this further let me suggest that Adam had to have the very breathe of God himself to become a living being made from the clay of the Earth to become a living being consisting of flesh, blood and bone. Babies on the other hand because they are conceived and not created only need the union of a egg and a sperm from a woman and a man to do the same. That egg and sperm when united bring together two sets of DNA . . . . . half of which come from the father and half from the mother.  This DNA is actually the record of the baby’s ancestry. It is this DNA that enables men and women to create a child with their likeness and in their own image making each child unique just as Adam was unique.

Keep in mind that Adam was inanimate until God gave him the breathe of life. Adam Had no Father and no mother to conceive him. Adam and Eve’s DNA was humanity’s first. Adam and Eve were created from an inanimate form to a living being. Babies however from their simplest state of egg and sperm are highly animate, especially the sperm element. At no point from conception to birth right on through until death is a human non-living.  So in abortion you are terminating a human life regardless of the stage of development.  My friend that is simply a biological fact of life.

But perhaps someone would argue that may be the case but that doesn’t mean that the baby is a “living soul.”  That is what Adam got from the breathe of God he became a lining soul and that animated him.  Let’s stipulate that in Adam’s creation that is the case. It had to be that way because Adam was created not birthed. 

One of the wonderful things about God creating man in his own image and after his own likeness and breathing into Adam the breathe of life is that it made all those present in every person born since Adam. The whole point of the description of how God created man was to point out that we, in may respects, are like God. He has shared with us something of His own creative self. In the same way that God made Adam a living soul we give our children not only their physical attributes but also their spiritual breath that makes them living soul.

This is why David would say, “Behold, I was shaped in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” He didn’t mean that she somehow sinfully conceived him. Rather that through his conception he received from his parents their sinful nature. Perhaps DNA comes into play at this point as well. At conception he came to be as a living soul that unfortunately also shared in the sin of our first parents, Adam & Eve.  I suspect what is said about God and marriage could also be said about conception and birth, namely, “what God hath joined together let no man cut asunder.”

So, find another excuse if you can to perpetuate the lie of abortion. Me I am going to sand with old King David and say, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

Oh, and do take not that when the breathe of God leaves our body in any other way but to create another human we are said to be dead and that is evidence by the total absence of power in the physical body.  The great thing is that the only eternal part of us is “the breath of God” which made us a distinctive living soul does not cease to exists. The Apostle Paul assures us that we can be “fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 5:8).

The Question Will Be, “Is it Biblical?”

I recently read a Blog by Tony Wolfe entitled,  Is the SBC Headed Back Toward Theological Liberalism? In that article Wolfe really doesn’t discuss the encroaching liberalism mentioned it the title of his article.

He begins with, “So you’re upset with the “liberal direction of the SBC?” as if I was actually entertaining such a concern. I have been out of the leadership loop of all state and national conventions to be able to access any liberal drift. I would not be surprised by such a drift. Baptist, because of the autonomy of the local church and the competency of the soul have moved back and forth between a “conservative” and a more “liberal” theology since 1612 but they have largely been centrist for most of those years. This is true for both theological positions and social actions.

At any rate Wolfe implies that the conventions are becoming more and more of the traditional immoral behaviors as OK. He mentions recent convention favorable resolutions dealing with race, namely, Critical Race Theory; sexual moralities, namely homosexuality and the roll of homosexuals in church leadership; and the “Me Too” movement.  

I too have concerns about the fact that in addressing those issues we seem to move away from what the Scripture says about these issues. My ministry has spanned the battle for the Bible era of the late 1970's and 1980's where artificial tests of orthodoxy were propounded thus excluding many great truly conservative scholars and pastors (thereby their churches) from the convention membership and leadership. But it did get us back to searching the Scriptures to “see if these things be so.” Unfortunately and needlessly a lot of relationships were irreparably broken.

I am concerned about the liberal approach of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (formerly the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs) on the issue of Church and State as well as other issues. However, the Southern Baptist Convention severed ties and funding to the Baptist Joint on Public Affairs in the 1980's so they don’t affect my thinking on SBC and other Baptist Conventions. I was disappointed that the BGCT. did not do the same. I did not like the direction the then BJCOPA was going on the “Separation of Church and State” issue.

Having thrown all that fat in the fire Wolfe then proceeds to suggest that it is lack of participation in the Conventions by the churches that make it. He rightly describes the organization of both the SBC and the BGCT. as being bottom up organization. However he failed to note that these Conventions only exist while they are in session at their annual meetings. Their respective Executive Committee act on their behalf between Conventions. The only avenue open to rebuking or applauding these committees and agencies is through the vote of the Convention messengers (not delegates) during the annual meeting. Wolfe’s answer is more churches sending more messengers to the conventions than presently attend. He then spends time talking about numbers.

He is right of course. More churches need to send not just their pastors but their full slate of messengers to meetings. Here is the fly in the ointment . . . . attending conventions in distant cities is expensive and most church would have to decide between the funding of their messengers or the implementation of ministry projects.

As long as I can remember, and that is a long time, attendance at the BGCT. and SBC annual meetings have represented a small percentage of the member churches. The exception was during the "Battle for the Bible" era when Paul Pressler and Page Patterson were leading a conservative resurgence movement to seize control of the SBC leadership at all institution levels. Attendance surged during those years to upward of 40K in attendance.

Prior to that movement the only person I ever saw who was able to push the program besides the various Convention committees and Boards was a preacher's wife name Jesse Sappington and they managed to get her sent to the Philippines by giving her husband an appointment. I cannot even begin to recall the number of floor motions that were either tabled by the chair, referred to committee by the chair, or just ruled out of order.

I say that to point out that we actually had two polity levels. Officially, there is the polity (structure) elaborated on in the article and to a lesser degree here. But, there was another, not as public but just as influential if not more so. Pastors who had been around any length of time knew about it and clearly understood it. It was a process whereby Convention business percolated all year long among pastors and denominational leaders and found its way to the Convention agenda. This generally culminated during the meeting of the annual pastors conference.

My point is that just getting more people to attend isn’t a foolproof solution to liberal drift.  Very often the churches and the convention were not operating on the same page and that's ok and maybe how it should be. It is a real challenge sometimes. So I want to address the three suggestions for remedying that Wolfe makes.

First he says every church, large and small should participate financially in the support of the various Conventions. In the case of the SBC that would be the Cooperative Program. The number of messengers at the BGCT. and the SBC are based upon such giving.  I have no issue here nor should any church. Every church should have skin in the game. However, having "skin in the game" does not mean a church, especially a small church, will have their voice be heard.

Second, he suggests that the church should budget and set aside funding for the maximum number messengers to which they are entitled. I again concur with this point. However, from my experience as a pastor of both small and large churches this is a large financial investment and when done in the 1980's took a significant bite out of our missions and evangelism budgets. The cost of hotels, meals, transportation can be rather hefty. These messengers must also be able to be away from their businesses and jobs on the dates of the Conventions. I believe Southern Baptist of Texas is correct in allowing a minimal number of messengers from churches affiliated but not financially contributing.

Third, he suggested sending a full slate of messengers to every annual meeting and preregister them on the annual meeting website. The larger the attendance, says Wolfe, the better the odds of the Convention leadership hearing what the member churches want and expect. He is correct in that assessment.

Truth is, I agree with all three of these items. However, while I agree with all three assertions I see significant problems with the "mass attendance" concept to finding the will of the member churches.

But as indicated above my heaviest personal involvement in these events on both the tracts I mentioned was 1970 through 2005. There is a built in self-preservation in the leaders of the conventions and its committees and agencies. There is a crusade mentality to those who wish to affect change. Liberal minded people tend to be aggressive across the board while Conservatives have tended to be less aggressive. The Conventions are not political bodies but political activity is built into its structure by the very fact that we vote on issues and as long as that is the case and as long as the institution sets the agenda people like Jesse Sappington will have to be creative to be heard.

I agree that “Until we have more voices speaking into the decision-making processes, we will not have accurate conversations about the decisions being made in our processes.”  I can vouch for the fact that what made the “Conservative Resurgence” or the “Fundamentalist Takeover” a success was the overwhelming numbers of people who showed up at the conventions. The 1985 Convention in Dallas makes that clear.

I was at Dallas in 1985 when 45,519 messengers registered compared to 8183 in 2019. I can tell you from personal experience that it does work but there were some negatives to having these pushes to get people to attend besides navigating a large crowd and shortage of bathrooms.

I’ll share a few: First and foremost there was wide spread vote corruption. I personally witnessed a number messengers vote multiple ballots for messengers not present at the meeting. In this case it was for the re-election of Charles Stanley as Convention President.

A second issue was that many of the messengers simply left after that vote. Attendance for the rest of that Convention was demonstrably reduced. People were not there to conduct the business of the convention. They were there to elect a slate of candidates. When that was done, they were gone.

A third tendency is that it gives itself to politically segregated groups. Instead of the family of faith resolving issues it becomes a Machiavellian exercise it political maneuvering and doing whatever it takes to win. I watched as men who had been friends for most of their lives, who had a strong faith in Christ and commitment to Scripture alienated from one another to the point of ostracizing and demonizing each other.

I remember sitting in the office of a friend of mine who at the time was pastor of a church in Knoxville, Tennessee and hearing him really denigrate Winfred Moore who lost the Convention Presidency to Charles Stanley in 1985. I finally interrupted him and asked, "Where did you hear all that." He replied that he heard it from some friend. I replied, "Well, all I can tell you is I have know Winfred Moore for many years and he has conducted revival services in our church and you are certainly not describing the man I know." You see, when feelings on an issue run high enough to marshal forces to get large numbers to attend for purposes of winning the day in a theological struggle you create a ecclesiastical political war in which uninformed people are moved by catch words and cliché phrases to view fellow believers as the enemy.

I suggest that as long as we have the system we have (it is about the only kind available to autonomous churches) apathy regarding annual meetings is going to be an issue. Instead of crusades to get large attendances at annual meetings perhaps a better solution is to require motions and resolutions that deal with moral, ethical and theological issues be introduce at one Convention then debated and voted on at the next. This gives notice and it also gives opportunity for local congregations to debate and formulate their position and determine their response.

Is the SBC headed toward theological liberalism? I don’t know. Impossible to say right now. I fear the publications like the Baptist Standard in Texas are trending toward a more politically correct stance. Of course I have already mentioned the BJCOPA has certainly moved to the left of center. But those are just well founded suspicions.

What I do know is that whatever the issues messengers, from wherever they come, should be shining the light of Scripture on every resolution, motion, proclamation and action by the various Conventions and their respective Boards and institutions as they make their decisions. That done it will not be a matter of is it Conservative or is it Liberal. The question will be, “Is it Biblical?” That is the only question that matters.