Philippians - a letter of joy?

“Philippians is a letter whose time is coming. And it’s coming soon. We’ve enjoyed an unprecedented period of ease and goodwill in recent times. But when you look at human history—and other parts of the world—you soon realise that all this comfort is just a blip. Don’t expect it to last, because it won’t. Suffering is coming.”

For Barry Cooper, hearing Dick Lucas say those words proved to be the decisive moment as he wrote and presented Discipleship Explored, an eight-part DVD series based on Paul’s letter to the Philippians. It’s the follow-up to the hugely popular Christianity Explored, a course that is now running in thousands of places and dozens of countries at any one time.

“I was sitting in this classroom in London, and Dick was saying that Philippians prepares the church to suffer well. It struck me as odd at the time, because everyone says: ‘Oh Philippians, that’s the New Testament letter of joy.’ So my job as a writer was to try and see how those two things—joy and suffering—fitted together.”

The answer, Barry says, comes in Philippians 1 v 29. “Paul makes a staggering statement which I think I’d lost sight of. He says, ‘…it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him…’ So Paul is saying: ‘Just as your belief in Christ is a joy-filled gift, so is your suffering for him.’ And I remember thinking, ‘Well, is that really how I see my Christian life?’ I think we spend most of our lives trying to avoid any kind of suffering or discomfort. We certainly don’t see it as a joy-giving gift. It never occurred to me that when we try to dodge the discomfort of discipleship, we are actually denying ourselves good gifts from God’s hand.”

For these reasons Discipleship Explored prepares people for the reality of living wholeheartedly for Christ—both the joy and the suffering. New Christians need to know this, but so do those who’ve been following Christ for some time. Our hope and prayer is that Discipleship Explored will help Christians walk confidently in the footsteps of Christ.