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

COLOSSIANS: Power to Endure with Joy

This letter is the great proclamation and explanation of the power of the Christian’s life through Christ as the resource of the individual.

We also pray that you will be strengthened with all his glorious power so you will have all the endurance and patience you need. May you be filled with joy, (Col 1:11 NLT)

Christ died for us, so that he might live in us. This is the full glory of the Christian gospel.

The apostle analyzes what is wrong with human knowledge.

• First, that the source is suspect because it comes from tradition. Consequently, human knowledge is made up of great
  quantities of truth mingled with error. Those who accept it uncritically are bound to accept as much error as they do truth.
• In the second place, he says, human knowledge is according to the dark powers that govern the minds of men. Human knowledge, then, stays on the periphery of truth, never getting to the real heart of things. Human knowledge does not go to the heart of things as
  the Word of God does. There must be a critical evaluation of the words, as they are subjected to the wisdom of God.
• The final objection Paul makes is that it is not according to Christ. Therefore, human wisdom lacks the ability to insert the great positives into life. It does not produce the qualities of love, truth, joy, peace, and power that come only from Jesus Christ.

The world does not know how to take trials with a smile, to endure hardships with faith and patience and joy. As far as the world is concerned, this takes an unknown kind of power, the power that is resident only in Jesus Christ. This power will transform our hardships and our difficulties into joyful experiences, not just phony manifestations of joy. They are genuine. We learn things from these trials. If our heart is right with Christ, if we are putting off the old and putting on the new we discover that these experiences, instead of producing grumbling, griping, and complaining provide a basis for joy, as we are “strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might.

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

To the 1st Century Christians, becoming a Christian meant a radical transformation, resulting from a revolutionary change of government.

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