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Growing Joy May 11 Devotional

by David Joynt on May 11, 2023


PHILIPPIANS 1:7 | 7 It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because I hold you in my heart, for all of you are my partners in God’s grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.

 

Paul also remembers that his friends in Philippi “hold him in their hearts.” Mutual remembering leads to mutual joy! The process of blessed memory is reciprocal and reinforcing. Isolated and physically alone, Paul is spiritually and emotionally connected to those who remember and pray for him. This element of their relationship was real and concrete, for we learn in verses 2:25 that Epaphroditus was sent by the Philippian congregation to help Paul (Timothy was also a go between, see 2:19).

 

Who holds you in their heart?

 

 

Gracious God,

Despite distance and physical separation, we can be connected to others. Help us remember today those who hold us in their hearts.

Amen.

 

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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