faith in context

This week, the discussion at church centered around Phillipians 1:3-11. It's beautiful scripture, but often taken out of context.

Thanksgiving and Prayer
3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. 8 God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.

Verse 6 is often used to say that God will finish that which He started in each of us. There's more work to be done on our part for this to happen, but that part is often neglected. Pastor Rick brought up the three questions we should ask when trying to figure out the context of scripture-easily put, to who, on what, and why. In this instance, the letter was written to the church of Phillipi because of their partnership in the gospel. Why is Paul compelled to write to them? He wanted to make sure that the fruit of God's activity was evident in their lives. To apply this to us, we should be focused on whether there is evidence of fruit in out lives considering we are saved. We should be living with authenticity and blamelessness. Salvation should have two parts:

1. Faith: We should be trusting fully in god's power
2. Fruit: We should have evidence of God's presence in our lives

Galatians 5:22-23 (New Living Translation)
22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!