At the beginning of July just under 40 professional performance artists came to our house for a barbecue.
Mostly musicians, with a couple of actors, they were from a wide variety of churches and came with different levels of Christian maturity, some having been drifting spiritually. I spent the morning finishing off preparing a short talk on Philippians 3 for the evening, and praying for the rain to stay away. The rain didn’t stay away, but amazingly we were able to fit all 38 of us in our kitchen for the talk.
Source of personal assurance
I took Philippians 3, because here Paul makes very clear that his spiritual standing is given to him only by Jesus and not by his human audience, who revere him because of his religious status. Performers are always tempted to look for their personal assurance from their audience, and often they can take this into their spiritual life. My own personal testimony is that I’m always tempted to look to my past spiritual pedigree and my present spiritual standing as a church musician. God has encouraged me daily, through Philippians, to count those things rubbish so that I may gain Christ. Finding that our righteousness can only ever come from Christ alone is a real reason for rejoicing — I’ve been a lot cheerier these days. If you’re feeling a bit low and a bit unloved as a church musician, I can very much recommend reading Philippians to cheer you up!
