Day 1

Philippians 1

Greeting

 ¹Paul and Timothy, servants^[a] of Christ Jesus,
   
   To all the^(A) saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the^(B) overseers^[b] and^(C) deacons:^[c]
 2(D) Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thanksgiving and Prayer

 ^3(E) I thank my God^(F) in all my remembrance of you, ⁴always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, ^5(G) because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. ⁶And I am sure of this, that he who began^(H) a good work in you^(I) will bring it to completion at^(J) the day of Jesus Christ. ⁷It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you^(K) in my heart, for you are all^(L) partakers with me of grace,^[d] both^(M) in my imprisonment and in^(N) the defense and confirmation of the gospel. ⁸For^(O) God is my witness,^(P) how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. ⁹And it is my prayer that^(Q) your love may abound more and more,^(R) with knowledge and all discernment, ¹⁰so that you may approve what is excellent,^(S) and so be pure and blameless^(T) for the day of Christ, ¹¹filled^(U) with the fruit of righteousness that comes^(V) through Jesus Christ,^(W) to the glory and praise of God.

Thank God for those people around you who help you-encourage you to be what you ought to be; your friend who encourages you to go work out when it's the last thing you want to do; my wife who pushes me to roll out of bed and pray and read my Bible when all I want to do is get 30 more minutes of sleep. I feel like I've been in prison for the last few years - not like Paul in that I'm suffering for the gospel but rather like a prisoner to all the other demands on my time. I've had such a hard time in the last few years making myself commit time to prayer and Bible study. Fortunately, I've had several people around me who have kept me focused and thus I've done ok keeping a very menial spiritual existance going.

I know I'm not alone. I know there are others out there who have as hard a time studying and praying as I do. I think it's mostly an American phenominon. We're so busy doing all the things we think we need to do that we don't have time to do what we were designed to do: spend time with the One who made us. Only in America do we commit this kind of spiritual suicide by starvation: we neglect to feed our spiritual man, or we feed him very little, then we can't understand why our spiritual existance is pathetic. The worst part is most of us don't realize how pathetic our spiritual life has become: an exercise more in how I can get what I want from God when I want it rather than truly knowing the God of all the universe.

This is a call to all those spiritually anorexic people out there. Don't starve anymore. This is my attempt to not only get myself back into quality Bible study again, but also to bring some others along for the ride. Even if no one follows me in this exercise, one man will be better for it. Let's hope that man has the discipline necessary to keep up with this new commitment, and that it impacts others around him along the way.