Our text for this Sunday is Philippians 2.12-18.  In verse 12, Paul gives this startling instruction: “work out your salvation with fear and trembling”. While this has perplexed many believers ever since he wrote it, we need to see that this salvation has already been given to us from God through faith in the Lord Jesus and the ‘working out’ of it flows from the humility, obedience and exaltation of Jesus that Paul has described in the previous verses. Even so there is ‘work’ for us to do so that our day to day lives reflect this salvation but always in the knowledge that we are not left to go it alone as if we have to finish what the Lord started. Instead, we have this wonderful promise that God is at work in us enabling us to will and work for his good pleasure. Although, this may at first sound mysterious it is in truth the cause of great joy and the reason for us working out our salvation ‘with fear and trembling’. (Wayne Lines)