Joy in the affliction of the Gospel

The Joyful suffering of Paul

Missionary Elliot Clark recounts in his book his experience of of imprisonment on the mission field. he says, “One of the mosre memorable mission trips that I’ve been on took plae in the Kurdish region of the Middle East. Our team of six planned to bisit a handful of cities, striking up conberstations with whomever we met along th eway. Our desire was that some of those chance meetings would lead to opportunities to explan th gospel. We carried cpies of the Bible, Christian literature and the Jesus film in multiple languages, in case anyone showed interest.”

he then goes on to explain how their plans to go to rural villages in the north were interrupted by a sudden blizzard. So, instead, they went south to some small towns. While they were there the locals were steangely uninterested in talking to them about the gospel,. After a few hours, his team decided to get a snack in a grocery store. That is when the police arrived and arrested them all for sharing the gospel. At the police station, they were told that the terrorist group Hezbollah had told the police that if the police did not get rid of teh missionaries, they would. The police had arrested them to escort them out of the province for their own ssafety, however while at the police station, one of the officers pulled clark aside and in a hushed tone, asked if fhe could have one ot the Jesus DVD’s so that he could learn more about Jesus.

How should we feel when we are arrested our work in the Gosple?

Serving Jesus inevietably leads christians to suffer. Read

2 cor 1:3-7

V. 12: What do we see in verse 12?

We see that Paul begins informing the Philippians about his work by saying that his imprisonment has been used to advance the gospel