Who Is Your Grace Friend? {Memorize Philippians 1:7}

None of us have to walk alone. God’s good news passes around from you to me, and from me to you.

Imprisoned

One of my lifelong friends is in ICU. He’s been there for weeks. Complications from a heart surgery has him tethered to a hospital bed by tubes and lines and machines.

His body is imprisoned there. His wife’s heart is captive there, too. None of us knows the outcome yet.

How does the good news help them now? Where’s the grace?

Memorize This Week

“It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.”
Philippians 1:7

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Grace Friends

Hardships can blackmail our joy. Impediments—whether physical, emotional, or mental—can try to freeze our blessings. Pains can threaten to isolate us from fellow believers when we need them most.

Except . . .

God doesn’t leave us alone. While He is always with us Himself, He also created human companionship for us. It’s one of the Father’s gifts to His kids—each other.

Whether in good times or bad, we don’t walk alone. The apostle Paul experienced that firsthand. Even while he was physically in prison, he wrote to his companions in Philippi of joy and peace and grace. Not only had they physically helped him in times past, but even the memories about them were helping him in the present.

When times get rough, we dig up the good news for each other again and again. We find grace. We share the grace we discover. And we accept the grace that others give to us.

We need other people in our lives, and other people need us in theirs.

When we partake of grace together, we hold each other in our hearts. You are in mine; I am in yours. We all are in God’s.

We get fresh glimpses of God’s goodness when we can see Him through the eyes of each other.

My friend’s physical outcome remains shaky. Every morning we’re encouraged to discover he’s still with us.

But drawing on last week’s memory verse (Philippians 1:6), I am sure of this: whether here on earth or there in heaven, God will complete the good work He’s begun in my friend. And in his many friends as they hold him in their hearts. We’re in it together. We are grace friends.

It is right for us to feel this way.