fear of the unknown

Philippians 1:12-18

The key words or ideas are: the gospel of Christ, chains or being imprisoned. There is a sense of joy in the words that Paul uses - perhaps my perception is coloured by him talking about how he rejoices in the faithfulness of the Philippian church in the previous paragraphs and how he rejoices that Christ is preached at the end of this section. However, it seems like he is full of joy despite his circumstance. The source of his joy is that his being in prison has actually served to further the cause of Christ (I have to admit that I would take some perverse delight that my persecutors efforts to stop the spread of the gospel have backfired).
It seems odd at first that Paul being in jail would actually embolden others to preach. I wonder if there was a bit of the fear of the unknown. As long as it was just the threat of persecution people were afraid to share Christ but when the saw the worst that the empire could do (throw you in prison and possibly kill you) and the fact that God was sovereign over the empire (despite their best efforts, the gospel continued to spread) it gave them courage.
What are we afraid of? Right now it is the vague shadow of persecution. What's the worst someone could do to us? Well, they could trash our reputation, refuse to associate with us, we could lose our friendship with them, they might think we were weird. I think that Satan uses the fear of possibly, potentially, maybe being persecuted to keep our mouths closed and our lights dim. I think it's going to take a Paul to lead us.