Learning To See God’s Bigger Picture

In review of Philippians 1:12 it says, “I want you to know, my dear brothers and sisters, that everything that has happened to me here has helped to spread the Good News”

Bottom Line:

Paul tells us that everything that has happened to him, while it was meant to diminish him, had actually helped serve and advance getting out the Good News.

What this means to me:

God will use the opposition that comes against me and the circumstances I face as I communicate and share the Good News to further advance His Message.

There is a bigger perspective to look at life with.  God’s has a bigger picture in mind and if I don’t see things from his point of view, I’ll only end up getting discouraged, frustrated, and unhappy.

There is more happiness in my circumstances if I can learn to see things from God’s point of view.  

So no matter what’s going on in my life; the good, the bad, and the ugly, God is working out a plan. Paul knew this and today’s verse in Philippians 1:12 reminds me, “I want you to know, my dear brothers and sisters, that everything that has happened to me here has helped to spread the Good News” (NLT).

It seems that ever since Paul became a Christian on the road to Damascus, he had dreamed one great dream: He wanted to preach in Rome, the center of the universe at the time. His dream was to preach the Gospel in the most important city in the world.

But God had another idea. Instead of sending Paul to Rome to preach crusades, God made him a royal prisoner of Caesar, who was at that time Nero. Nero was about as wicked and as bad as you can get.

As a royal prisoner, Paul was chained to a royal guard 24 hours a day for two years, and the guard was changed every four hours. Over two years in prison, he witnessed to 4,380 guards. So who was the real prisoner here? Who had the captive audience?

I’m sure this wasn’t Paul’s plan, but it was God’s all along. There were two results of it that we know for sure.

First, Philippians 4 says that within two years, some of Nero’s own family had become believers because of Paul’s witness in the royal court in Rome.

Secondly, it’s kind of hard to get a guy like Paul to stop moving. In prison, he was forced to be still and, as a result, wrote most of the New Testament. I wonder which had a bigger impact: his preaching in the Colosseum or the books he ended writing, such as Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians. These seven books have revealed Jesus to millions of people over the years?

In this verse I get to see that Paul knew that God had a bigger plan, and in it he could be happy because he saw what God was doing through his problem.

This is a great reminder for me.  Any time I feel I have a problem that’s starting to get me down, I need to do what Paul did; learn to see it from God’s point of view. I can ask, “What is God doing here? What’s the bigger picture? What’s the bigger perspective?” If I can think like this then I’ll be able to face the problem in faith.