Today’s key thought is about one-mindedness. I got to witness an amazing display of one-mindedness this week. A couple friends and I were able to go down to the Raptors game this past Tuesday. I’m a Bucks fan, but I have to give credit where credit is due. I figured there would be a couple of hundred of us. Nope. We counted 10. At one point Giannis, the Bucks star, missed a free throw and it got loud, the loudest I’ve ever heard at an event. I left there amazed at the crowd and thought, there is no way the Bucks are winning in Toronto, and after last night I guess I was right.
Paul is as big a fan of the Philippian church as anyone in that stadium. See The raptors may give their fans joy, but Paul says to the Philippian church in verse three that they can complete his joy. He’s found much joy in them, he always prays for them with joy, but now, as he has shared his hopes for them, to go on without him, he tells them how they can fill up his joy, he’s cheering for them.
complete my joy by being of the same mind,
‘I will need no further happiness,’ he says, ‘if only I can hear that you are a united church.’
See last week, we saw that Paul had told the Philippians that he may never see them again, but his one charge to them was that they would go on together living as an outpost of the kingdom of heaven, living as citizens of the heavenly kingdom set apart from the world, standing firm in the teaching, striving together in the gospel and not fearing anything. We noted last week that Paul was speaking to them as a church together, and now he addresses that togetherness, even more directly, for in order for them to continue on as an outpost of the kingdom, they must be united. They must be one-minded. For a kingdom divided cannot stand.
