IBS Application for Philippians 3:10

“...that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like Him in His death...”

Here, we see that Paul was willing to make sacrifices in his life to the point of suffering for the sake of Christ. Not only that, but as he says, “becoming like Him in His death.” He was willing to die for the sake of Christ.

Paul saw his own life as forfeit when it came to serving Christ. But this makes sense when considering the heart he had in his service to the Lord: To follow Christ’s example and walk as He walked in life. This meant going as far with that mentality as God called him to go.

And he certainly did go far with it. He was beaten several times throughout the book of Acts. He was even stoned at one point. While we don’t have the specifics of this one particular instance, we know from 2 Corinthians that he and some other disciples came under such heavy persecution at one point in their ministry in Asia that they all had every expectation that they would die; Paul himself said of the persecution that they “despaired of life itself” because of it.

Such is the price of being a disciple of Christ. To be persecuted as He was persecuted is our reality. But this isn’t without some gain. As Paul also tells us in chapter 1 of Philippians, “to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” We do the Lord’s work, and our Savior is glorified when we act for Him. And dying for His name both glorifies Him and brings us home to be glorified by Him.

This also isn’t to say that God won’t be with us in times of struggle, because He is. He was with Paul and his companions in that time of persecution that he speaks of in 2 Corinthians. He still calls God the “Father of mercies and God of all comfort,” because the Lord gave him strength and protection when he and his companions thought they would die. God will not leave us, nor forsake us in our hardships.


We can take confidence in this fact and apply it to ourselves as we set out to be made more like Christ. My application for today and the next couple of days will be to pray that I would have to boldness and the willingness to suffer for the sake of Christ. I will also pray that should times of suffering come, specifically during our field time, that I would be reminded of the Lord’s promise to stand by me and strengthen myself in Him as David did.

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