Pattern of joyful serving | CMF National Conference 2026

We come to some very dense but extremely rich words.

So let's together unpack Paul's train of thought and his logic as he tells us about Christ our pattern.

And we'll need God's help.

So let me pray before we start.

[clears throat] Dear Father, we come before you in humility.

May your Word now and always be our rule, the Holy Spirit our teacher, and your glory and not ours be our supreme concern.

For this we ask in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Amen.

[coughing]

Now, it's been, um, it's been a fantastic joy for me to be amongst you this weekend and chatting to many of you.

I think I want to acknowledge at the start what I've heard from you this weekend, that things are difficult in the workplace.

Work is hard, the resources are few, and sometimes colleagues can be the biggest problem.

Now, this morning, we look at a fledgling church in Philippi, also similarly under the cosh, facing severe pressures, oppressive external persecution, internal disunity, and false teaching.

The writer himself, Paul, is also in prison.

[sniffs] And yet, as we saw during the helpful session on Friday, the Christians in Philippi are called to rejoice.

In fact, the whole letter, as we know, is full of rejoicing.

So how do we square that circle? Outward pressures, but inward rejoicing.

My prayer is that our passage will show me

meAnd thus, how we can keep rejoicing in the most difficult circumstances.