Paul, in writing many of his letters that comprise the New Testament, begins his epistle with some form of this greeting. It serves as a short and sweet reminder of the gospel- the grace that comes to us from God, and the resulting peace that we have in Him. In a similar manner, we'd like to welcome you to the first day of SFC with this reminder of God's grace and peace that we hope you will experience throughout this retreat.

In the first verse of our theme passage, Paul commands the Philippian church to rejoice- going as far as to say it twice for emphasis. Even when our situations and circumstances are tough, we are instructed to rejoice, because our true joy is found not in the happenings of our daily lives, but in the one who loved us enough to lay down His life for our sake.

The word reasonableness here can also be translated as gentleness, and Paul commands us to make our gentleness known to everyone. Our reasonableness is rooted in Christ, for if we truly trust in Him for all things, then we do not have to take things into our own hands, knowing that he will make things right when he returns. Not only that, we can take comfort in the fact that the Lord is at hand, and look forward to his return.

Supplication is not a term everyone tends to know, but it simply means to ask for help. When we present our requests to God, we trust that he is both sovereign and loving, trusting that he will work things out for our good. Therefore we do not have to be anxious when circumstances seem out of our control, because it is never out of the control of our loving God.

From this verse, we can rest in the fact that we can trust in the peace of God to guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, and the burden of remaining within Christ is not only on us- because let's face it, we tend to drift away from Him and would continue to do so if it were solely up to us. But if we pray to and trust in Jesus, he will keep us in Him, and he will not fail us.

As Paul begins to wrap up his letter to the Philippian church, he commands the brothers to think about the things that are good. By doing so, Paul is encouraging fellow believers to bring our every thought into the obedience of Christ as our minds are renewed by the gospel.

Continuing from our previous verse, Paul doesn't stop at merely thinking about these things, but also putting them into practice so that our fruit may be true, honorable, just pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise. He goes on to say that God of peace will be with us, not just conditional on our obedience and practice of his commands, but actively helping us to obey the things we have learned, received, and heard.

In the last verse of Paul's letter to the Philippians, he once again reminds them that God's grace is with them. Grace is central to our Christian faith, and there's a good reason why Paul both begins and ends with a proclaimation of grace to his audience. We hope that this grace, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ will be with your spirit as well, as you return home from SFC.