Letters to the Seven Churches: Study for LentExemplo

Be Encouraged in Opposition: The Church at Philadelphia 

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Where in your life do you face difficulties or obstacles?

Katie Davis epitomized the American dream. She was beautiful, an honor student, senior class president, homecoming queen, and had a handsome boyfriend and a convertible.  Her life was mapped out: She would attend the college of her choice, marry the love of her life, then ride off into the sunset. Cue the credits. But her life took an unexpected turn. A three-week mission trip to Uganda over Christmas break of her senior year of high school turned Katie’s life upside down. As she volunteered in a home for abandoned or orphaned babies, she knew she would never be the same. She decided to delay college for a year and returned to Uganda to teach kindergarten at the same orphanage. Her parents were skeptical, but let her go so that she could get this obsession with Uganda out of her system. 

If you have read Katie Davis Majors’ book Kisses from Katie, which details her love story with Uganda, you know that nothing about that year was easy. Soon after she arrived, the pastor decided to allow children from a nearby impoverished neighborhood to attend the kindergarten, so Katie went from teaching 12 children to 138. The children and Katie did not share a language, and some kids feared her because they had never seen a white person before. The classroom sat between the pit latrines and farm animals so it smelled horrible. Geckos, ants, and crickets crawled in her bed while a cat-sized rat lived in her bathroom and bats lived in her shower. Electricity was scarce and cooking and laundering were laborious. She was often exhausted, lonely and overwhelmed and would cry herself to sleep at night. She wrote: “Sometimes I feel like I am emptying the ocean with an eyedropper. And just when I have about half a cup full of water it rains: more orphaned children from the north migrate to where I live, more abandoned and dead bodies are found, more people are infected with HIV.”

Why would Katie endure such difficulty? Her life could have been so much smoother and safer. She could have attended college to become a nurse. With a secure job and salary, she could have taken an occasional mission trip to Uganda to further her work with children. At age 18, what would motivate her to walk such a road paved with obstacles?

In Jesus’ letter to the Philadelphian church in Revelation, He praises them for their patient endurance of opposition and obstacles. In fact, this is the only congregation of the seven that receives nothing but praise from our Lord (Revelation 3:7-13).

Personal Reflection  

1. The name “Philadelphia” means “brotherly love” but Christians in this city suffered substantial opposition from the Jews living there. Nonetheless, the believers remained steadfast in their faith and because of their patient endurance, Jesus promised to protect them from an unspecified “hour of trial.”
   
   • From 1% to 100%, what number best represents your patient endurance of opposition or difficult circumstances?   
2. Jesus’ description of Himself to this church does not use imagery from John’s vision in chapter 1. Instead, He refutes the Jews who rejected Him as the Messiah with an image from Isaiah 22:22: He has the “key of David.” Later Jesus promised that those Jews will have to acknowledge that He loves the Philadelphians, who have accepted Him.
   
   • How does it affect you to know that someday the non-Christians who oppose you will acknowledge that Jesus is the One who is holy and true and that He loves you? What about this can motivate you to pray for them?
   
   • In what area of your life can you be comforted by the knowledge that Jesus will destroy all lies and pretense?   
3. In Romans 5:3-4, Paul writes, “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” In what ways have you found this to be true in your own life?   
4. Jesus placed before the Philadelphians an open door to grow and develop spiritually.
   
   • Name a time that God gave you an open door to such growth. Did you walk through it? If so, list the things God did in your life as a result of taking advantage of such an opportunity.
   
   • What open door is God giving you right now? What makes it difficult to walk through it? What compels you forward?

Watch video:

Discuss  

• What is something you want to remember from the video?    
• How does what you have learned encourage you to persevere in your relationship with God?

Take Away

Jesus tells the faithful church in Philadelphia, “I know that you have little strength” (Revelation 3:8). Although this might sound discouraging, it is actually the opposite because God promises to supply the strength that we need to do the work He has called us to do, and His power is “made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Katie’s life seems amazing to many people. By the time she was 23 years old, she had adopted 13 orphaned Ugandan girls. She created a ministry called Amazima that feeds, educates, and shares the love of Jesus with children in need. But Katie is quick to point out that she is just an average girl who chose to say ‘yes’ to the things and people that God placed in front of her. In her words, “I am just an ordinary person serving an extraordinary God.”

If the church at Philadelphia holds on and doesn’t let anyone take their crown, Jesus promises to make them a “pillar in the temple of my God,” a place they will never have to leave (Revelation 3:12). This would have been a powerful image for citizens there since Philadelphia was vulnerable to earthquakes that destroyed buildings. Jesus promised the victors would be as eternally secure and safe as strong pillars in God’s temple, which is in Heaven where no earthquakes cause destruction. Furthermore, Jesus promised to write on the victorious Philadelphians the name of God the Father, the new Jerusalem, and Jesus’ own name. These names all signify that they belong to Him for eternity. What a glorious picture!

Instead of deterring her, obstacles Katie faced taught her the spiritual benefit of difficulty. She writes that on the other side of struggle “is something beautiful, because He has used the hard place to increase my sense of urgency and align my desires with His.” This makes her want to return to those hard places because there she gains “more wisdom, and though with wisdom comes sorrow, on the other side of sorrow is joy.”

Katie is a woman who lives this truth: “He is coming! He is coming to bandage our wounds, to bind up our broken hearts, to take our faces into His hands and whisper, ‘I am always here.’” We can face trials, struggles, opposition and difficulty as believers because God goes before us, opens and shuts doors, fights our battles for us, gives us strength to go on and reminds us He will be here soon.   

• Jesus says in Revelation 3:11, “I am coming soon.” How does knowing that Jesus is coming back help you when facing obstacles or difficult people?     
• What is one thing you want to remember from this devotional?    
• What does this mean for your life this week?

— Susan Rogers Davis