COLOSSIANS (Letter 51, Larry Crabb’s 66 Love Letters)

Do Not Expect Today What I Have Promised For Tomorrow: Live In Hope!

Dick Lucas, a faithful pastor to God’s people in Britain, wrote “the greatest gift of Christ in the present is hope for the future”.
In Colossae, where the spirit of the age influenced the theology of the church, God’s people there were in danger of placing their hope in experiences that God never promised in this life. It was that danger that was used to prompt Paul to write this letter.

Place no hope in the experience of satisfaction now. If you do, you’re shifting away from the hope held in the gospel of His Son. You will then disfigure the Christian life in a search for a fullness of felt spiritual reality and complete freedom from evil’s power that together promise to provide the life you’ve always wanted in this world.

Fruitfulness as a Christian in this life depends on fully wanting what we will not fully enjoy until we get to heaven.
Right now, God’s Son is in us as our hope of glory, not as our opportunity to experience glory now.
That hope, when grasped, will fill us with gratitude for forgiveness. Only then will we realize that what God’s Son offers us now, what He is doing in us now, is far greater than the satisfying, trouble-free, always fulfilling life that we think would be best, the life that too many counselors, pastors, spiritual warfare warriors, spiritual directors, and Christian friends tell us is available now.
For now, God gives us the power, not to experience the satisfaction we want or the relief from struggle we desire but the power to endure difficult circumstances and to be patient with difficult people while we wait and hope for satisfaction beyond what we can now imagine.

COLOSSIANS: From Ray Stedman

Click here for entire Bible Summary from Ray Stedman

to be completed

COLOSSIANS – David Jeremiah (Understanding the 66 Books of the Bible)

Key thought: Jesus Christ is Lord of all, sufficient for all our needs and worthy of all our worship and obedience.

Key Verse: He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation… the head of the body, the church… the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. Colossians 1:15,18

Key Action: Since we’ve been raised with Christ, we must set our hearts on things above, where Christ reigns (see Colossians 3:1).