“Yes, and if I am being poured out on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. For the same reason you also be glad and rejoice with me.” Philippians 2:17-18

Poured Out For Others

If I knew my hardship was going to be for the benefit of others, would I rejoice and be glad?

Picture a missionary couple. They go live a remote village and wash their clothes in the river, get bit by mosquitoes and eat insects and other strange food. They don’t complain about these hardships because they know that they are there for the benefit of the people in that village. Perhaps the river, or the malaria, or the insects won’t directly result in anyone’s salvation (although sometimes they do!) but they remember they have a greater purpose: to build faith.

Yes, you say, but those missionaries chose that life. I wanted a soft, cushy, life, and I have had hardship thrust upon me.

Did you choose to follow Christ? Did He choose hardship to benefit others? “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:5-8).

Perhaps your hardship won’t directly benefit others, or perhaps it will. Paul said earlier in the letter that the whole palace guard could see that his chains were for Christ (Philippians 1:13). Paul’s hardship also created a space for him to write to the church in Philippi and benefit not only them, but Christians around the globe. Even though He felt poured out, as a drink offering would be dumped on the alter, he remembered there was a greater purpose to his being there, which is why he asked them to be glad and rejoice with him.

I can put that perspective on my own hardship, picturing myself like the missionary, like Paul, like Christ. I won’t complain as I do the equivalent of “washing my clothes in the river.” I can rejoice even as I feel “poured out” in the service of others, knowing that as I walk with Christ through it, He is going to use it.

Jesus, shape my thinking to conform to Yours. Help me to keep this perspective in my hardship: that You are building faith all around me as I walk with You in it. Even as I feel “poured out” with nothing left, fill me with your Spirit today and give me the strength to rejoice. Amen.