Philippians 2 (NRSV)
2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3 I thank my God for every remembrance of you, 4 always in every one of my prayers for all of you, praying with joy 5 for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. 6 I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.
Wholeness is both initiated and completed by the Spirit of God.
Here are some questions for discussion:
1. As Pastor Trey stated, God is committed to our wholeness. Are there areas of your life where you sense God working right now to heal and transform you into wholeness? Are there areas where you don’t feel the weight of the not yet? How does the reality of the work toward wholeness affect your hope?
2. Pastor Trey repeatedly used the plural form of you when talking about this week’s scripture reading. How do you see God Calling us back to wholeness together? What practices in your community point toward God’s ongoing work of repair and restoration?
3. In bondage Paul found joy. In the face of His imminent death Jesus found hope. What kernel of hope can we glean from these examples and this message to keep faithful through difficult times? How has this been manifested in your life?
If you’d like to dig a little deeper, consider the following:
1. What do you think of describing our predicament as “fractured” compared to how we talk about concepts such as “sin” and “separation”?
2. We are told that we are already made whole in Christ (“unfractured”), but how do we think about that when we look at our own lives and the struggles we have?
3. In Verse 3, Paul thanks God for the Philippians. Why do you think gratitude is important in the process of spiritual and emotional restoration? Who in your life helps you feel more whole or seen? How can you show them gratitude?
4. Verse 5 praises the Philippians for “sharing in the gospel from the first day until now.” What does partnership in the gospel mean when the gospel is understood as good news to the oppressed (Luke 4:18)?
5. How might theology shift if we believe that God’s best work often happens not in palaces but in prisons—in spaces of suffering and resistance? How can we learn to proclaim grace and peace and experience joy in these places? What would doing so proclaim to others about our God?
6. When you and I endeavor only to meet our own standard, and let the funk pile up in our lives, we fall short of the expectations of God. What reminders can we find or see that help us to bridge the gap between our standards and God’s?
7. Both ‘perfect’ and ‘complete’ can be used as either an adjective or as a verb. Perfect as an adjective is something that is ideal and whole. Perfect as a verb is something in process of improving. Complete as an adjective is something that is whole and unfractured. Complete as a verb is something in the process of being made or assembled. That the path bears the name of the destination, how can we find strength in God’s faithfulness as we stand in the verbs while aiming for the adjectives?
8. God knows us in complete wholeness, knowing our full potential. What kind of hope or inspiration can we derive from knowing that God loves our whole self in anticipation of what we are capable of being?
For further contemplation, consider these quotes & prompts:
1. Trey mentioned two standards of “cleanliness,” the first being “what enough for me to get by” and the other “the state of what was originally intended.” How do you see yourself as “clean” or “whole” when thinking about these two examples?
2. What do you think “wholeness” means when thinking about your day-to-day living in a world that is frankly set up to fracture you?
3. In what ways do we settle for worldly standards when we confront injustice and inhumane systems?
4. When you hear the phrase “God ain’t done with me yet,” what do you think and how do you react? Are there downsides of thinking like this?
5. It’s easy to see that the right doctrines are not a stand-in for loving like God but in a challenging turbulent world of chaos how can we resist falling into a routine where the familiarity of a doctrine replaces the dynamic state of loving like God?