I am passionate about God’s Word and passionate about others catching the passion! I know what a difference it has made in my own life and I am confident it will in anyone else’s life who willingly and diligently seek the Lord through His Word. God’s Word is living, powerful and effective and precious and profitable as well. Seriously, how can we transmit our faith and values to the next generation, be the salt God calls us to be in our culture and spheres if we remain ignorant of its Truths? I am reminded of the Shema in Deuteronomy stating our responsibility (delight):
4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. Deuteronomy6:4-9 (NIV)
Scripture also tells us:
15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. 2 Timothy 2:15 (NIV)
I am also reminded of Ezra’s example in his time of His-story:
10 For Ezra had devoted himself to the study and observance of the Law of the Lord, and to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel. Ezra 7:10 (NIV)
While we all may not have a grand audience, we do each have our own spheres of influence and God-works created just for us to do. We must as believers recover our commitment to know the Truth, believe the Truth and live the Truth. This is important ladies!
Many things are “good” in this life but I want what is best for myself and my family. I had a “Paul” in my life when I was starting out with my first baby and I am so thankful that she took the time with me to point me to what is “protos” – number one - which motivates me to do likewise for others. Just as Jesus told Martha:
41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” Luke 10:41-42 (NIV)
The wording here indicates that Mary had chosen what was profitable, advantageous, useful, promoting her welfare whereas Martha had merely chosen a good service. We can know we are further along in our walks with Christ when we are forgoing the good for the best. All of life is a pruning process – think Enoch whose name means “a narrowing”. God desires for His children the best just as we desire the best for ours. This is to know Him. Because the more you know Him, the more you love Him. And the more you love Him, the more you trust Him. And the more you trust Him the more you delight to obey and serve Him. The more we obey and serve Him the more complete our joy.
My friend Donna states: “And the only way to know the God of the Word is to know the Word of God.” Ann Voskamp writes:
“His Word cannot be falsified, disqualified, modified or nullified. His Word cannot be distorted or inverted or reinvented or demerited or interpreted away. His Word is beauty, it is wooing, and it will all be accomplished absolutely. _The debate of the day may change, the crisis may change, the screaming headlines of the genuinely horrifying may change — but, in the entire heaving cosmos, this remains unchangeable, unstoppable, undaunted: The Word of God. _His Word is absolute and resolute and it will remain until time concludes. God’s Word is more permanent than any words written in granite — or in headlines or campaign slogans or PR statements or press releases or laws. Mountain rock is fleetingly temporary compared to the forever permanence of the Rock of His Word. Culture cannot shape it and society cannot silence it and scarred people cannot help but be wooed by it, healed by it, held by it. And the Lover of the letter, He soothes: ‘The mountains may pass away, but my truth will not pass away, the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever, and though the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but My steadfast love shall not depart from you.’” Ann Voskamp
Some of the last words Paul writes to his beloved Timothy are some we should take to heart as well:
1 In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: 2 Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage--with great patience and careful instruction. 3 For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5 But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry. 2 Timothy 4:1-5 (NIV)
Does this sound like our days or what??? Ignorance of God’s Word is rampant. Truth is being compromised in favor of tolerance. Pulpits preach heresy and hearers remain dull not seeking to discover if it is aligned with God’s Word. Unlike the Bereans who sought to see if Paul’s words were true, we often take the lazy way out by not searching the Scriptures for ourselves even though God has told us the these Words are to be our life – our resource for a life well lived:
45 When Moses finished reciting all these words to all Israel, 46 he said to them, “Take to heart all the words I have solemnly declared to you this day, so that you may command your children to obey carefully all the words of this law. 47 They are not just idle words for you--they are your life. By them you will live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.” Deuteronomy 32:45-47 (NIV)
The Promised Land then equals our abundant life now and they had to battle all the way in – just as we have to battle the flesh (daily). Remember, all sin carries with it a death to something. This is the life Jesus told us He came to give us:
10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10 (NIV)
The wording here on life is - full meaning more than enough, over and above, superfluous, super abundantly, more exceedingly, excellent, extraordinary life. Who doesn’t desire that for ourselves and for our families?
Remember ladies, this is our time in His story. We don’t get a do-over. We each have been given our spheres of influence divinely prepared by the Creator Himself. Since there are only two things eternal on earth today, the souls of men and the Word of God, shouldn’t we be about that?
The Church at Colosse was battling heresies in their church much as we battle the world permeating in our churches today. Indeed, sadly, the world has so gotten into the church rather than the church into the world that statistics prove we look/act no differently. Perhaps we can even espouse truth but we so often do not reflect truth. Our lives MUST reflect Truth or Truth remains strictly head knowledge which puffs up (do the Pharisees ring a bell?). More is caught in the fleshing out of Truth than taught in the wagging of our tongues. Anyone can espouse Truth but you know it if you live it. “Preach the Gospel and when necessary use words” as is often quoted but seldom obeyed! Everything we do must be bathed in love. Everything. Law apart from love is merely legalism (Pharisees) and love apart from the Law leads to license (Samson, Eli’s sons). Spurgeon writes:
“Claiming the inward without displaying the outward is hypocrisy (James 2:26); displaying the outward without desiring the inward is self-righteousness (Luke 18:9–14). Saving faith both admits the need of the inward and displays the outward (Philippians 2:12–13; James 2:22).” Charles H. Spurgeon
26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. James 2:26 (NIV)
9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ 13 But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ 14 I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” Luke 18:9-14 (NIV)
12 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed--not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence--continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. Philippians 2:12-13 (NIV)
22 You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. James 2:22 (NIV)
Our obedience flows from faith.
“Jesus wants to do much more with our lives than simply meeting our needs and making us feel better….I am deeply motivated to know God. I want to know Him as He truly is, not through the distorted reflection of those who call themselves by His Name. And I want to make Him known to others as accurately, winsomely, clearly and compellingly as I can.” Anne Graham Lotz
Paul wrote this letter to the Church at Colosse to refute heretical teachings which had begun to permeate the body. These teachings involved Judaistic tendencies of circumcision, food regulations and feast days. Included as well was a cult thought which presented itself as a philosophy for the worship of angels as intermediaries between God and man and insisting on strict Jewish requirements to the point of asceticism (sans pleasure and luxuries).
The church at Colosse was established by Epaphras and Timothy – not by Paul. It was a flourishing church both eminent and famous among the churches. Thankfully, God uses whose hands He pleases in doing His work. His purposes are not tied to the noteworthy alone. Archippus also exercised a fruitful ministry there as well as Philemon and Onesimus.
Paul penned this letter from prison in Rome while under house arrest. He writes these words to those he had never met personally. Though he did not plant the church at Colosse he did not neglect it. He was not idle in his confinement as a prisoner and the Word of God was not bound – it never is! Remember his words to Timothy:
8 Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel, 9 for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But God's word is not chained. 2 Timothy 2:8-9 (NIV)
Epaphras a member of the Colosse Church had come to Rome bringing word to Paul of the dangerous heresy making headway in the church and Paul sent this letter to combat it. His writing was a carefully developed statement of the great doctrines of the Gospel. The essence of Paul’s message: Christ is the Head of the universe. We approach Him directly, not through intermediaries, not even through angels. Christ Himself, not this or that philosophy or this or that set of rules, is our wisdom, our Life, our Hope of glory. In this book Paul emphasizes the Deity and all-sufficiency of Christ as contrasted with the emptiness of mere human philosophy in the following ways:
Lastly, Paul also emphasizes his favorite words:
Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians:
3 We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thessalonians 1:3 (NIV)
End with:
12 “Be strong and let us fight bravely for our people and the cities of our God. The Lord will do what is good in his sight." 2 Samuel 10:12 (NIV)
(Joab commander of David’s army)
Prayer: May the countenances of our faces today radiate with the love of Christ which pours forth from our hearts.
These are Beth’s personal notes, due to this fact sources are not often stated.