Colossians
Saturday, June 19, 2004
My Prayer Today
Heavenly Father, thank You for all Your blessings in my life. I thank You for those who have shared the Good News with me. I thank You for those who pray for me every day. I thank You that You have provided for all of my spiritual and material needs. Fill me this day with Your Holy Spirit that I may extend the blessings that I have received to others. Give me a heart for the lost, and a will to do Your will in every moment. As I go about this day, may everything I do, demonstrate to those around me that I am a citizen of Your eternal Kingdom, who has been purchased with Jesus’ precious blood. This I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
God's Word For Me Today
Colossians 1:7-14
7Epaphras, our much loved co-worker, was the one who brought you the Good News. He is Christ’s faithful servant, and he is helping us in your place. 8He is the one who told us about the great love for others that the Holy Spirit has given you.
9So we have continued praying for you ever since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you a complete understanding of what he wants to do in your lives, and we ask him to make you wise with spiritual wisdom. 10Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and you will continually do good, kind things for others. All the while, you will learn to know God better and better.
11We also pray that you will be strengthened with his glorious power so that you will have all the patience and endurance you need. May you be filled with joy, 12always thanking the Father, who has enabled you to share the inheritance that belongs to God’s holy people, who live in the light. 13For he has rescued us from the one who rules in the kingdom of darkness, and he has brought us into the Kingdom of his dear Son. 14God has purchased our freedom with his blood and has forgiven all our sins.
Reflecting on God’s Word
What is the most important point in this week’s reading for you?
Thoughts...Paul's Pastoral Heart...
We see from the first fourteen verses of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, which we have examined during the past two weeks, that he truly had a pastor’s heart. While Paul was first, and foremost an apostle—one sent out by God to establish churches where no one had preached the Good News of Jesus before, we see that Paul also held a great concern for those who had already received Jesus as their Savior and Lord. Paul wanted to make absolutely certain that those who had come to know Jesus, who had been born again, to use Jesus’ term, would grow up into the full stature of the Savior and Lord. As we read Colossians, and each of Paul’s letters, it becomes quite apparent that he invested a great deal of his time in praying for the believers who had come into the kingdom as a result of his ministry and the ministry of those whom he had led into the kingdom and equipped to share the Good News! As we read the first fourteen verses of Colossians we find Paul referring to his prayers for the Colossian believers to grow strong, and his prayers of thanksgiving for their trust in Jesus and their love for others. In his first letter to the Thessalonian Christians Paul exhorted them to “pray without ceasing.” It is obvious as we read his letters that he heeded his own advice. Not only did he pray for the believers at Colosse, a church he had never visited, along with all the other churches he had started or visited, but He challenged the believers there to remain faithful, to be filled with the Holy Spirit, to share what they had received with others. The care and concern Paul displays as he writes is penetrating. We can feel it for ourselves as well as for the original readers of the letter. Paul’s pastoral heart wanted every person who knew Jesus to become like Jesus and then share Jesus with others. For him, Christianity was so much more than just a list of rules, or lists of suggestions for happy living. Christianity was a relationship with the living God, through Jesus Christ! Paul’s pastoral sensitivity comes through in many ways as he writes to the Colossian Christians, he starts by encouraging them. He wants them to know how important they are to God and him. Then He challenges them to grow. Eventually, he will exhort them to turn from heresy and return to the truth. A true pastor does not just “feed the sheep.” Sometimes the true pastor finds it necessary to “exercise the sheep,” and even to “give them medicine.” All of these are evident in Paul’s letter to the Colossians, because his ultimate goal was so much more than have a “flock” of “happy sheep.” He wanted a flock of sheep that were willing to do anything to reach out to the lost, just as his Savior and Lord, Jesus, and paid the ultimate price—laying down his life, for the “sheep.”
As we go about our life today, it’s helpful and instructive to consider what thoughts, activities and distractions fill the day. What attitude do we bring to others? Are they a “pain” to be tolerated, or are they a joy to be enjoyed? Do we live our lives with pastoral hearts, seeking to bind up the broken-hearted in the same manner as Jesus, or are we too concerned with our own agendas to worry about others? Paul gives us a great example of how to shepherd God’s flock—whether our portion is our own family, New Life Christian Ministries, our place of work or our neighborhood. Let us be good shepherds to God’s glory and honor today and always!