Philemon 6

Philemon 6 – I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.

           I want you to take a look at how Paul words this prayer that he prays for Philemon. First Paul prays that he may be active in sharing his faith. That is important for all of us, but Paul doesn’t leave it at that. He explains why he is praying for active faith. It is so that Philemon will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.

           To put it plainly, if we are not actively sharing our faith we will never understand all that we have in Christ. Why is that? To answer that question we need to look at faith. We know that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we cannot see” (Hebrew 11:1). It takes faith to believe in Christ, because we cannot see Him or what He did for us. We must believe in what is unseen to receive Christ and all He has done for us.

           In the Bible we also see that we have abundant life through Him, but again, we can’t always see this. Sometimes our life doesn’t seem so abundant; yet we receive it by faith. Then from James we see that faith without works is dead, because our action is what proves our faith real.

           So when Paul says we must be actively sharing our faith to come to understand what we have in Christ it starts to make sense. You don’t fully understand something until you have gone through it or received it, and you don’t start receiving anything until you act on what you believe. So yes, we must believe, but it cannot stop there. Actively share what you believe so you can see it come to fruition in your life.