The Letter to the Colossian Church- 2

Subtitle: A Prayer of Petition

Colossians 1:9-14.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, July 20, 2025.

We are continuing in Paul’s letter to the church in Colossae.  Last week, we looked at Paul’s prayer of thanksgiving for their faith, their love, and their hope in God.

In these verses, he moves into a prayer of petition on their behalf. 

Let’s look at our passage.

Paul asks for certain things in their lives (v. 9-11)

Just as prayers of thanksgiving are a kind of prayer, so we have prayers of petition, where we ask God for things.  The idea of petition may seem strange to connect to prayer.  However, think about how we use petitions in our society.  At its root, a petition is going before some authority and asking them for something.  Yet, due to the political nature of most authorities, we get as many people as possible to “sign” our petition, basically saying that they are asking for this also.    Thankfully, our prayers to God are not generally dependent upon getting enough people to agree with us.

We should recognize that there are different categories of things in our petitions to God.  Some things like food, money for bills, or healing from a sickness, if they are answered by God, will no longer be in our prayers of petition.  They will be a part of our prayers of thanksgiving, but we will no longer be asking God to heal someone who is already healed.

The things that Paul asks for them are not the kind of things that can be answered tomorrow and be done.  They are the kind of things that are being answered throughout our life and are completed through death and resurrection.

This brings up a side issue.  It is common for people to compare their petitions to those of others.  When we are praying for someone that has stage-4 cancer, it is common for people who are battling a cold to feel like their healing is too small to bother God.  We can find ourselves in a strange place of not praying because we are convinced God is too big to be bothered with us.  The problem here is this.  We don’t realize how we are diminishing God in thinking that He is too big to be bothered.  What we are really saying is that He is not quite big enough to be able to deal with the big and small things of life.  Your petitions are important to God because they are part of the way that He is working to make you like Jesus.

Before we get into what Paul is asking for them, he mentions that he has “not ceased to pray for” them (vs. 9).  To pray without ceasing is not so much about praying every second.  It is a prayer that is always in his heart for them.  He loves them, and he desires things that can’t be answered in a moment in time.  Thus, he continually prays that God will do these things in their lives.  He said the same thing to the Thessalonians and other churches.  Paul’s prayer for one is his prayer for all.

These are not prayers of empty (vain) repetitions.  Jesus didn’t say, “When you pray, do not repeat your prayers.”  Rather, he said, “When you pray, do not use vain repetitions.”  There is a repetition that has meaning.  It is when we are praying for things that take a life-time to complete, and we are doing so out of love.  However, empty repetitions happen when we think that we can get what we want by God through some mantra or mechanism of prayer.  People can build rituals of prayers and activities as a means of acquiring whatever they prayer.  This puts us in the driver seat and makes an answer to prayer all about our ability.  Prayer at its root needs to be a child coming to their father.  There is no way we can force our Father in heaven to give us what we ask.  But, we can seek His wisdom as we ask.

In our flesh, we can grow weary of praying for the same thing over and over.  However, the Spirit of God can stir in us a love for our family (biological or spiritual) to the point that we won’t give up praying, asking, these things for them.

Paul asks God to fill them with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

The word for knowledge here has a prefix that gives the added sense of a precise and correct knowledge.  How can we have a precise and correct knowledge of the God’s Will?  In fact, think of all the ways in which we are surrounded by imprecise and incorrect knowledge of God and His will.  The only way we can get this is if God reveals Himself to us, which He has been faithful to do.

Can you imagine this prayer being “answered” completely in this life?  I mean to the point where you never have to pray for it again.  This is the kind of thing that you will be asking God over and over again, not because He isn’t answering, but because the knowledge of God’s will has an incomprehensively large range.  It goes from the micro such as decisions for our individual life: jobs, marriage, kids, etc.  However, it stretches out to the macro, such as the response of our Republic and this world to the Gospel, to the point in time in which the saints will inherit the Kingdom of God.

God answers such a prayer as we live life and wrestle with it before Him in prayer.

Paul adds the modifiers of “spiritual wisdom” and “understanding.”  He calls it spiritual to highlight the source of the wisdom and understanding.  However, we know that Paul doesn’t mean just any spiritual source.  The devil is a spiritual source of false wisdom that many in the world embrace and call wisdom.  Paul clearly is pointing to a wisdom whose source is the Spirit of God.

This is what James speaks of in James 3:15.  He warns to have a wisdom from God, “from above,” versus a wisdom that is earthly, from the earth.   He uses two more words to describe a worthless wisdom.  The second is that it is sensual, that is, from our senses and flesh.  Lastly, James speaks of a wisdom that is demonic.  We can treat earthly, sensual, and demonic as three different kinds of wisdom, but they are tied together.  The devil uses our flesh and the world around us to manipulate us like he did to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  The wisdom of this world and the wisdom of our flesh simply becomes a proxy for the wisdom of the devil because he leads us by the nose through them.

What is the difference between understanding and wisdom?  Well, understanding is an aspect.  It is the moments when we gain insight into what God wants and why He wants it.  However, wisdom flows out of understanding and answers the question, “So, what should we do?”  The source of wisdom is critical because it will direct the things we do and don’t do.

How does God fill us with the knowledge of His will?  He does so through the written Word, through mature believers, and through the help of the Holy Spirit.  This means we must be a people who are reading the Word of God (seeking His wisdom), interacting and talking with mature believers, and seeking the leading of the Holy Spirit through prayer.

Paul also asks God that they walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, pleasing Him in all respects. There is a lot of water under the bridge in this area within the Church.  There is a whole range of how people respond to a verse like this.  On one side of the range is a group that sees absolute obedience without failing as the meaning of this.  It is a legalistic perfectionism that typically has a group of elders who are the judges of how well you are doing.  On the other side of the range is a group that promotes Jesus as such a covering for our sins that we don’t even have to quit sinning.  They will even dissuade the desire to obey God because you are trying to save yourself.  This is the easy grace crowd that demands next to nothing for those who are in their group.

Let me be clear.  Jesus is worthy of absolute perfection, but Paul is not calling for this.  He is referencing the reality that we represent our Heavenly Father and the Lord Jesus to a world that doesn’t know them.  Part of the understanding of His will that we need is to see how God works through the way we live our lives in order to draw others to Him.  A manner “worthy of the Lord” is a focused life that seeks to please Him in everything.  Anyone who does this will find themselves failing in many things, not on purpose, but simply out of falling short of Jesus.  Yet, what do we do when we fall short?  God’s word tells us to heed the Holy Spirit, repent, and pray for His help.  We shouldn’t do this out of fear, but out of a desire to please our Lord and help his purposes.

In this area, it is important to distinguish between salvation issues and discipleship issues.  I will come back to this in a moment, but this is critical here.  This “worthy manner” phrase is not about obtaining or keeping our salvation.  It is about our discipleship in Jesus.

Paul also prays that they would bear fruit in every good work, increasing in the knowledge of God.  There is a theme that begins in Genesis 1 and flows throughout the Bible.  God made humanity to be fruitful like He is.  Yet, he connects it to “every good work.”  God is the one who defines both what is fruitful and what is a good work.  He is the source of every good thing, and it is He who puts good things in front of us to do, whatever that be.  He is the teacher of both what is good and how to do it.

Some people can be picky and choosey about what they want to do or not to do.  This calls for yielding our fleshly desires and surrendering to His heavenly desires.

When we do the work that God gives us to do well, then it bears good fruit.  This involves pruning things that are not good out of our life.  It also involves pruning things that are fine in and of themselves.  However, there is too much crowded into our life, demanding our time.  It can squelch and inhibit good fruit.  Thus, a perfectly good branch can be cut off to give more sunlight and oxygen to the other branches around it.

A person led by the Spirit of God will have the very life of God springing up within their life and flowing out into the lives of others.  This fruitfulness has the by-product of increasing our knowledge of God. 

This brings us back to the tension between salvation and discipleship.  How can we do good works?  I thought all our works were as filthy rags?  The apostle Paul was not contradicting himself.  Rather, we need to distinguish between salvation and discipleship.  None of our works and worthy walking can save us.  In and of themselves they fall short of the absolute righteousness needed to save a person.  When it comes to salvation, it is the work and walk of Jesus that can save.  He creates a place within him that we can step into by faith.  It is a faith in him.  He is the One who performed the work of saving me.  However, now that we are in that saved and cleaned place, he wants us to learn of him, become like him, discipleship.  In that saved place of trusting Jesus, we can do good works and walk worthy.  Our works are no longer filthy rags because they are done by faith in Jesus, and they are stirred up by the Spirit of God.  The works that are done in Christ and by the leading of the Holy Spirit are cleansed by Jesus, and we now do them for the right reasons, to glorify God for Jesus as opposed to trying to impress Him with us.

Paul also asks that they be strengthened with all power for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience.  We can get excited about the idea of having power.  Visions of creating worlds and vanquishing the armies of Pharaoh may dance in our heads.  Yet, Paul speaks of a power that is “according to His glorious might.”  This is the power displayed by Jesus when he went to the cross.  It is in contrast to the power that the Corinthian Christians desired.  There desire was all about a power that would distinguish them above each other.  The power of Christ is distinguished by it penchant to place ourselves beneath others in order to lift them up.  It is the strength to die to what our flesh wants.  This is at the root of any good work that we may do for Christ.

Paul sees a connection between the exercise of spiritual strength and something that it produces in us.  It will make us steadfast and patient.  These two words are really about patience, but it is patience looked at from a different facet.  Steadfastness pictures patience as the ability to remain under a heavy load, rather than quitting.  It is perseverance, endurance.  The second word translated patience is the picture of not easily losing your temper and blowing your top.

Only the power of God’s Holy Spirit can help us to persevere and not lose our cool, whether this is with others or towards God.  Yet, we will need to die to the cries of our flesh to quit and get angry.  We will have to picture Jesus on the cross and choose to join Him there.

Some translations connect the phrase “with joy” to patience, i.e., having patience with joy.  Others connect it to the next verse, “joyously giving thanks…”  It is one of those strange cases where the grammar can actually allow for both interpretations.  Whether we can determine which of these Paul intended, I think the difficulty is moot in the end.  Think about it.  Is there ever a time when we shouldn’t be patient with joy?  Or is it okay for our thanksgiving to be without joy?  Regardless of which of these you think is most likely, we should do all things with joy. 

Give thanks to the Father for what He has done (v. 12-14)

We should see this as the last thing that he is praying for them.  Just as He gave thanks for them, he desires that they too become a people giving thanks to the Father, and with joy.  We should notice how all of these things tie together.  Our growing in spiritual wisdom and understanding helps us to know the Lord and be joyful for all that He does in our lives, even just for our lives.

Yet, Paul is transitioning out of what he prays for them and into a treatise about God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Thus, verses 12 through 14 describe what the Father has done for us.  When we understand what He has done for us, we will joyfully give thanks to Him even in difficult times.

He points out that our Heavenly Father has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints of light.  This could also be translated as, “qualified us for a share [a portion, a lot] in the inheritance.”  What is this inheritance of the saints?  It is the promise throughout the Old Testament that God will give the Kingdoms of the world to His representative and the saints.  This is most clearly described in Daniel 7.  Verses 13 to 14 focus on the Son of Man (aka the Messiah) who receives full dominion over the kingdoms of the world and a Kingdom that will never end.  However, later in verse 22, it explicitly states that the saints will take possession of the Kingdom.  Thus, this singular person, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the One through whom the saints can participate in the Dominion of Messiah.

By ourselves, we were (are) not worthy to receive this kingdom.  At the tower of Babel, God casts off the nations and creates a nation for Himself out of Abraham.  The nations failed to qualify.  However, we have a similar dynamic at the cross of Jesus.  Israel is cast out of the land because it has disqualified itself as a recipient of the Kingdom.  Christ then takes a remnant of Israel and uses them to be a light to the Gentile nations.  The key to this is that Jesus was the only one, Gentile or Jew, who qualified to receive the Kingdom from the Father.  Yet, the good news is that we can participate in his qualification.

There is a present aspect to the portion that we are qualified to obtain, and there is a future aspect to it, but more on that in a moment.

Why does he use the phrase, “the saints of light?”  Saints is a reference to the fact that we are set apart for God’s purpose.  This makes us holy, holy ones, and that is what the word “saints” means.  Light here is used to refer to the God of all Light.  It is symbolic of the way that truth helps us to see the realities that exist around us.  Jesus is the light of the world.  Yet, he in turn tells us that we are the light of the world. How is that?  When we put our faith in Jesus, and his Holy Spirit takes up residence within us, the light of Jesus shines through us like a clay lamp.  In and of ourselves, we are just a clay lamp.  However, with the oil and flame of God within us, we can be used of God to shine the light, the truth, of Christ to the world.

Part of what qualifies us is that the Father has rescued us from the domain of darkness.  This is external imagery that takes on a military feel.  His people have been stuck in a kingdom of darkness and need to be rescued, like Israel in Egypt.  However, this is not a rescue from a geographical place or a particular government. 

A child born into this world starts out innocent of any evil.  Yet, the darkness of this world presses in upon them.  It seeks entrance by any means.  By the time we become adults, the darkness of this world has made us a part of its dominion.  In the end, each of our hearts is where the domain of darkness reigns.

It is the Father who sent the Son to take on the nature of a man in order to rescue us from the grip of the devil.  These people in Colossae were under the dominion of the Beast Kingdom of Rome, but now they have been rescued and are no longer at the mercy of that darkness.

Finally, the Father has transferred us to the Kingdom of the Son of His love.  God hasn’t just rescued us.  He has put us in the Kingdom of Jesus.  Of course, they are still in Colossae and must deal with the Roman governance.  This is due to the “now but not yet fully” nature of the Kingdom of Jesus. 

This kingdom will never end, but it will go through phases.  We are in the phase where he is offering terms of peace to his enemies.  “Join me!  Why will you die?  Take my hand!”

He is called the Beloved Son, or Son of His Love, because it is tying into the prophecies about the ultimate son of David.  God promised a forever kingdom ruled by one who would be a son to God and God would be a Father to him.  These prophecies of an Anointed King are fulfilled in Jesus.  He is the One who has a perfect relationship of love with the Father.  It is God’s love for Jesus that is the bedrock of our hope.  If I was alone, then I could fear that He would deny me.  However, when I am with Jesus, God will not deny Himself!

Paul ends by stating that in Jesus we have redemption and forgiveness of sins.  These are also things that the Father has done, through the work of Jesus.  These are the foundation of our qualifying to inherit the Kingdom of God. 

Those who are in Christ have forgiveness of their sins.  However, this is not so that we can go out and sin more, but so that we not lose heart and give up when we fail.  Jesus cleanses us from our sins.  Yet, our cleansed state is only as we stand in Jesus.  Yes, I can be cleansed, but I am also standing within a cleansed place, the Lord Jesus.

How can we be sure that we have been redeemed and forgiven?  It is not because you have never failed, that is for sure.  We can be sure because we are obeying what the word says: put your faith in Jesus, turn from your sin, and follow him by the help of the Holy Spirit.

I pray that you have been rescued from the kingdom of darkness and are firmly in the Kingdom of the Beloved Son, Jesus.  Yes, your geography hasn’t changed, but your soul has changed!

Prayer of Thanks audio

The Acts of the Apostles 57

Subtitle: Following up with Jesus

Acts 14:21-28.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on October 1, 2023.

Today we will see Paul and Barnabas finish their first missionary trip, which went to the island of Cyprus and then central Asia Minor (current Turkey).

Luke doesn't give us a sense of how long they took on this whole journey, but the overall timeline of Acts would put it around the magnitude of around a year.

The whole emphasis of sharing the Gospel with Gentiles as well as Jews is something that blossomed in Syrian Antioch.  Yet, another persuasion was also blossoming in Judea.  This persuasion would eventually become the source of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15.  Paul and Barnabas did not teach Gentiles that they had to obey the Law of Moses in order to follow Jesus.  However, some groups from Judea believed that Gentiles had to be circumcised and taught to keep the Law of Moses in order to be saved.

That will be our topic next week.  For now, let's look at our passage.

The Gospel is preached in Derbe (v. 21)

Verse 20 ends with Paul and Barnabas leaving Lystra (where Paul had been stoned and left for dead) and going to a town called Derbe, which was approximately 65 miles east of Lystra.

In verse 21, we are told that they preached the Gospel to the city.  We are told very little about this, and can assume that they would have preached at a synagogue first, if there was one in the town.  Regardless, the reference to "the city" implies more than preaching in a synagogue.

It would be interesting to know when the Gospel first made it to each city or region in the world.  Many places that are extremely godless now have had great moves of revival in the past.  Derbe itself is now a region controlled by an Islamist State and dominated by Muslims.  You would not know that the apostles Paul and Barnabas had seen a great move of God there.

We are told that they made many disciples.  There is no mention of resistance, but it seems unlikely that everyone in town believed.  In light of the prior stoning in Lystra, we can say they only had normal resistance.  We should also note that there is no sense of Jews and people of the cities that they had visited following them.  More than likely, they believe Paul to be dead and will not find out until much later that he survived.

We should pause on the word disciple for a minute.  It is not enough to give intellectual assent to who Jesus is.  True belief will be seen in a person becoming a disciple, a student, of Jesus.  It is good to believe the report about Jesus, but this information is meant to transform your life.  You are now a student of Jesus.  You may be out of your studying years, and tell yourself that you don't read books.  However, when a person (even a non-reader) comes to believe on Jesus, they will want to know everything they can about him.  This means reading the Bible.  In the case of Derbe, there may have been only one copy of the Scriptures in town.  Thus, it would be important to gather together and read the Scriptures so that all could benefit from God's Word and learn about Jesus.  It is time to stop being a man-child who pursues his flesh and begin stepping into the maturity of seeking the truth about Jesus.

However, discipleship is more than knowledge.  It is essentially about relationship.  By the Spirit of God dwelling within us, we can develop a relationship with Jesus through prayer and the Word.  We also are in relationship with the Church of Jesus, and we benefit from those who have come in before us who are further along in their maturity and discipleship.

Discipleship is a life-long journey of growing in our knowledge and experience of becoming like Jesus, and learning to do his will.  There are ups and downs, bumps and smooth days, but all along, the character of Christ is being formed in us.  In fact, we should recognize that even the term "student" is somewhat misleading for a 21st-Century American Christian.  In the times of Christ, a disciple was someone who moved in with a master.  Each day the master would show you things, but it was always in response to what the day held.  The wisdom of the master would be both taught and caught.  It was never seen as a pure information download.

The Christian life is this process.  We will not become a "master" ourselves until we are resurrected; only then will we be perfectly like Jesus.  We are unable to physically sit at the feet of Jesus, but by the Holy Spirit, we are able to come to him through the word and through prayer.  I spiritually come before his feet in order to learn.  Each day we wrestle with the Lord Jesus about our life, what the word says, and what the Lord would have us do.  Other believers are intended to be a help to us in this process.  We can cut ourselves off from other Christians by telling ourselves that they are all hypocrites.  However, even properly dealing with a hypocrite will help you become more like Jesus than becoming a hypocrite yourself by abandoning the gathering of the saints.  When Christ says to a man to come and follow him, that man always finds others who responded around Jesus.  You cannot separate the two.

Verse 21 also tells us that they decide to return to the places where they had preached.  We are not told what the reasons are for returning back to Antioch.  They may have been running low on supplies, or winter may have been approaching.  For whatever reasons, they determine to go back to Antioch of Syria, and they determine to retrace their steps.

We should note that several of the towns had pushed them out rather abruptly.  It may be that they felt like the heat would have died down by now, and they had some more things they needed to do and say to the believers that were left in those towns.

Paul and Barnabas follow-up with the new believers (v. 22-28)

Surprisingly they go back to Lystra where Paul was stoned, then to Iconium, Pisidian Antioch and then down to the coast at Perga and Attalia.  They don't appear to focus on new evangelism, but rather on strengthening the believers who were there.  They help them to establish a strong foundation so that the church will continue.

When we share the Gospel with people, it is important to follow-up with those who have responded positively.  The Gospel is not only about relationship with Jesus.  It is also about relationship with God's people.  It is how we show that our love for Jesus is real.

By the way, we have the right and authority to share the Gospel with anyone on this planet because Jesus himself has given it to us.  However, that also begs the duty we have to determine exactly how God has gifted us to participate in spreading the Gospel.  So, telling others about Jesus is our duty to those who don't know.  Whereas, follow-up falls in this category of the duty that develops when a person has become a brother or sister in the Lord, a familial duty.

Verse 22 tells us that they strengthened the souls of the disciples.  Internal strength of heart and mind are continually assailed by our own flesh, by the world around us, and through the spiritual interference of the devil and his forces.

Jesus tells us to take possession of our souls by patience (Luke 21:19).  Of course, possession may immediately make us think of evil spirits, but the emphasis is more on a plundered inner life.  Through lusts of the flesh and the pride of life (in short, through sin), we can become a slave to many things without being actually possessed.  These strongholds in our thought-life and in our heart become a seething cauldron of all kinds of sin.  We become controlled by our flesh, and even by the culture that we have grown up in.  This puts the devil indirectly in control of us.  Jesus was purposely using the Promised Land image for our soul.  When we are being delivered by God, He will bring us to a place where we can take full possession of our soul and serve God without being in bondage to sin.  This takes trusting God to help us fight against, and tear down, strongholds of sin in our life.

Just like every one of those cities in Canaan had fortified walls and need to be torn down for Israel to take possession, so they would need to then fortify cities again against the attack of future enemies.  Christians need to learn how to guard their mind and heart against the deeds of the flesh, the corruption of culture, and the slick sales of the devil.  Through prayer, reading the word, fellowshipping with believers, and listening to the Holy Spirit, we are enabled not only to take possession of our soul, but to also fortify it against the attacks of the enemy.  Furthermore, we can help new Christians to take possession of their souls and fortify their life against the devil and his schemes.

This is why the Scripture speaks of the gifts of the Holy Spirit being distributed among God's people as He sees fit.  We need each other because this is how God has designed for us to be strengthened.  He is making us a new people of God without specific ethnic and geographical lines.  We are related by the blood of Jesus.  No matter how different the culture of their birth, a Christian can have fellowship with any believer in the world because the same Lord, Spirit, Word, etc. reigns in us both.

This is what Paul and Barnabas were doing.  They were sharing their gift of knowledge about God's plan through Jesus, the doctrine they should hold fast to, and the purpose of God in their life.

We are also told that they were "exhorting them to continue in the faith" (vs. 22).  In John 15, Jesus used the analogy of a vine to represent the relationship that a disciple needed to have with him.  We need to remain in him (a living connection) in order to stay alive spiritually and to bear fruit.  This is a living relationship and a new way of life.  This is not about a one time declaration, i.e., saying the "magic words," and moving on..  It is not about simply being on "Team Jesus."  I can say I am on the team, but only those who are drawing spiritual life from Him truly belong to Him.  We need to hold on to that.  We are going to be tested even more in the years ahead.

Essentially, Paul and Barnabas are saying to us to stay in the faith no matter what!  Don't let the enemy twist your thinking around and lose faith.  There will come days when your flesh says that it is very inconvenient for you to be so religious.  It may desire to compromise, or it may be offended and want to quit completely.  Regardless, don't walk away from Jesus.  Keep wrestling with him by faith and seeking his help to continue on.

Lastly, verse 22 tells us that they told them that they must enter the kingdom of God through many tribulations.  Like I have said up unto now, there is resistance in this life to staying in the faith.  In fact, even sinners have resistance in life.  You might as well fight for the right things and receive a blessing out of it, instead of kicking against the goads of the Holy Spirit and being destroyed by our own choices.

Some of the resistance you face will be the same kind of things that all other believers encounter.  Thus, others who have faced things you are facing can encourage you on how to continue in faith.  Yet, sometimes there are things that are very unique in our life.  These times of tribulation put the squeeze on us in ways that not everyone will understand.  I think of the image of a tube of toothpaste.  What oozes out of me when tribulation puts the squeeze on my inner faith?  Let us recognize that there will be a mixture of some sorts.  God is using tribulations to refine us.  It is our job to recognize the bad stuff that comes out of us, and by faith go to war against that sin with the Spirit's help.

Notice that they use the word "must."  It is a necessity that we have tribulations.  The world is full of difficult things, but there are even more when you refuse to run with the world in the same flood of delusion that they are.  Many will despise you for it.  Yet, part of staying in the faith is accepting that you will have to face tribulation.  In fact, if you haven't had anything difficult attack your faith yet, then you may want to start preparing your inner defenses because it will come multiples times over the course of your life.

It is also interesting that Paul places entering the Kingdom of God in the future.  We go through many tribulations in order to enter it.  Yes, we are already a part of the Kingdom of God spiritually, but Paul is specifically looking ahead to the time when Jesus Christ comes back to earth and sets up a Thousand Year reign.  The righteous will be resurrected an enabled to participate in this blessed time for the earth.  In those days, Jesus will have put down one of our big problems (our spiritual enemies) by putting Satan and his cohorts in the Bottomless Pit.  He will also deal with another one of our problems by raising up an administration of glorified saints.  No government on earth today is run by glorified saints.  Rather, they generally become halls of corruption fleecing the people under their power.

God does not remove every tribulation from the life of those whom He loves.  Think on Abraham, Moses, Joseph, David, and especially Jesus.  Rather, He uses the tribulation to refine us and make us shine like the stars.  So, don't blame God when tribulations come.  Rather, see tribulations and trials for what they are.  Firstly, they are the things the devil is trying to use to keep you from entering God's Kingdom, and second, they are the very fires in which God fashions you into the image of the Son of His Love, Jesus.  Yes, this life has difficulties, but God has an age planned in which all the righteous of every age will be glorified and blessed together!  Hallelujah!

We are also told that they helped the churches to appoint elders.  The churches would need some structure in their group so that they will be able to navigate the days and trials ahead.

The word "elders" comes from a Greek word at the root of the terms Presbyterian, or Presbyter.  It does speak of age, but the implication is more on the wisdom and experience that one has.  We might better think of it as the spiritually mature.

The Church is like a family.  Most of these people had been Christians for the same number of days.  However, there was a range of their prior experience.  Some had been devoted Jews who had studied the word of God and were waiting for Messiah.  Others may have been worshipping Zeus last week, and had no clue about what the Scriptures said.  They both may be saved on the same day, but one will be further ahead than the other.  Of course, this is a simplistic example that should not be pressed to strongly.  Sometimes people have been a Christian for decades, but have very little spiritual maturity to show for it.

In fact, we have an example of an "elder" so-called showing a dearth of spiritual maturity in Third John.  There a man named Diotrephes who "loves to have the preeminence among them."  Elders are not called to be kings and rulers over believers.  Rather, we should see them as older brothers who can help us younger siblings along.  Our day will come.  Anyone who is an elder today was not an elder 30 or 50 years ago.  The key is familial relationship that is fueled by the a love for Christ.  This becomes a strength to a church when it is properly done.

God in His wisdom will always provide mature believers to a church.  When I became a Christian, there were people there to help me grow.  Yet, we can come under the judgment of God when we walk in our flesh and choose elders who are not truly spiritually mature.

It may sound like Paul and Barnabas "appointed" these men unilaterally.  However, the word translated as appointed has the sense of raising the hand as if in a vote.  More than likely, they talked to the people about what was required of elders and what type of person would best qualify.  Then, the group as a whole would determine who best fit that category.  We should not read into it a democratic system, but neither is it autocratic on behalf of the apostles.  They are there to help the church not make a foolish decision.

Finally, they make it back to the coast of Asia Minor, and instead of going back through Cyprus, they go directly to Syrian Antioch, where they started.  These are the people who had prayed for them before going and no doubt while they were gone.  It was good for them to hear the testimonies of what God did through Paul and Barnabas in the cities where they went.

Of course, we never know the full effect of our efforts in the Lord, but we do not want to diminish the importance of people hearing the Gospel.  Whether they believe or not, a door of faith has been put in front of them.  They will know about it from then on, and hope will be possible.  We shouldn't diminish people responding in faith.  This is always an amazing miracle of God in the heart of an individual.

I think about the many people who poured into my life as a young kid.  They had much reason to feel like their teaching and prayers were falling short.  But eventually, God would get ahold of my life, praise the Lord!  That would be good news to my grandma and my mom.  How many people come to death's door while they still have an adult child running from Jesus.  They have to cross that threshold asking God to help their child.  "Okay, God, they are in your hands!  I'm leaving here, but please put my child on someone's heart!"  Some of those prayers are still being answered today, even though those people are in heaven.  Yet, it thrills the heart of any mom to hear the story of a son getting right with Jesus.  It gives them hope while they live in this life. 

The problem with open doors is that they eventually shut.  Right now we have an open door for faith in our world, but that day can shut for us as individuals, nations, and as a world.  May God help us to be faithful to share the Gospel while there is still time to work!

Following up audio

Such Love—Part V

Subtitle: Let's Be A People of Prayer

Ephesians 6:10-18.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, April 30, 2023.

God has created humanity with the ability to communicate with Him, and it is one of His greatest gifts to us.  Of course, without salvation, we do not experience the fullness of these gifts that He gives.  However, the gift of communicating with God is called prayer, and it is as simple as talking with God.

Think on this.  No matter how subjugated, tortured, and surrounded by enemies you may be, they cannot keep you from talking with God in your heart and your mind.  They can only make your flesh want to stop. 

Yes, man in his ego relishes "breaking" such people, whether by supplanting their faith in God, or by breaking their mind.  However, those who study such things have found that there are people who appear to be essentially unbreakable.  What makes them so?  Those who are unbreakable have something that is so worth living for that nothing, no propaganda, no amount of suffering, can cause them to deny its continued worth to them.  They would rather die than sacrifice its value to them.

Do I really know God and have a relationship with Him that is of such value to me?  Not that I am projecting these things, but, I don't want to wait until I'm being tortured to try and develop a relationship with God and work on my mental strength.

How can Christians all around the world be persecuted for God, die for God, even harder, live for God after their loved ones have been slaughtered for God, without giving up their faith in God?  Prayer is that foundation to our relationship with God.

We can talk about prayer as a duty, but each one of us needs to come to the place where prayer is on the level of breathing.  It becomes a necessary thing to my spiritual life.  In truth, prayer is spiritually breathing in the life of God.  It is a great ability, right, duty, and joy all wrapped up in this one thing.  If we stop at duty, then we miss out on the great joy of becoming close to God and knowing that He is with us.

Let's look at our passage.

We are to be strong in the Lord (v. 10-17)

Verse 10 has a strange command.  It is not just telling us to be strong, but rather to be strong "in the Lord."  It begs the question, "What does that look like?"  On top of this, the verbal phrase "be strong" is speaking of something that is done to us.  It is essentially commanding us, "be made strong, be empowered, in the Lord."  How can I be commanded to be made strong?

It makes perfect strength if you are thinking spiritually.  The Lord wants, is endeavoring every day, to make you strong in Him, but there are things that you need to do in order to cooperate with His strengthening work in you.  This is a command to let the Lord's mighty power be at work in, through, and around you.  This is in contrast to the things that we tend to rely upon.

Thus, verse 11 shows us the first thing we must do in order to have the Lord's strength at work in us.  We need to put on His spiritual armor, all of it.  These are listed in verses 14-17.

It may be good to point out that this contrasts with the story of the emperor's clothes (or lack thereof).  In that story, the emperor has no clothes, the people know this, but they pretend like he does have clothes on.  They refuse to speak the truth because of fear of sticking out and what may happen to them.  However, the Christian may appear to the world to be easy prey, weak, and unprotected.  What they cannot see, because they do not have eyes to see, is that the believer can be armored up more than any warrior throughout history.  This armor is invisible in some respects, but in other respects these things can be seen.  We just don't recognize them as spiritual armor, spiritual protection.

Because we are focusing on prayer this morning, I am going to go through the list of armor quickly.  Yet, make sure that you are putting these things on in your life just as a soldier wouldn't go into battle without their battle attire and battle gear.  Paul spent a lot of time with soldiers around him during house arrests.  He is telling us that we need these things.

We need to put on the Belt of Truth.  Without a belt, a warrior could literally be caught with his pants down (lower protective gear).  It also served to hold weapons and items of utility.  For the believer, walking in truth, and with Jesus the Truth, is a critical protection.

We need to put on the Breastplate of Righteousness.  This is, at its foundation the righteousness of Christ, and yet also living out that righteousness in our lives.  It becomes a protection for our heart and any mortal blow that would seek to strike it.

We need to put on the Shoes of the Readiness of the Gospel of Peace.  The shoes of the Roman soldiers had nails sticking out the bottom to help them be sure-footed across any terrain.  The believer who embraces the Gospel is both readied by that Gospel for battle, but also he is readied to share that Gospel of Peace.

We need to put on the Shield of faith.  This shield is so amazing that it even extinguishes the fiery darts that the devil shoots our way.  I think of David and Goliath in this.  David was unable to wear Saul's heavy armor of the flesh.  It didn't fit him, but God's armor always fits.  To Goliath, David appeared to have no armor, and no shield, but faith in God was his shield.  We are not talking about a mind over matter mentality in which we can actually stop real bullets with our powerful faith.  It is actually walking forward putting our faith in God and letting Him do the protection.

We need to put on the Helmet of Salvation.  Again, our head is a vital area.  The enemy continually seeks to get into your mind and turn your heart against God in bitterness, anger, or apathy.

Lastly, we need the Sword of the Spirit.  We are told that this is the Word of God.  We see Jesus using this effectively when he was in the wilderness and the devil came to tempt him.  He used the Word of God to take his stand against the scheme of the devil, and to send him away in retreat.

Just as David felt uncomfortable in Saul's armor, our flesh can feel uncomfortable in God's armor.  It will perfectly fit, and perfectly protect, but your flesh will continually seek to protect itself with the things of the world.

God's spiritual armor will protect you from your spiritual enemy.  We are enabled to stand against his wiles and schemes when we trust in God.  Some of these schemes are: temptations, fears, worldly "wisdom," even demonic "wisdom," false religion, materialism, and more.  We need to take our stand in the power of God against what the spiritual foes are trying to do in our own soul, in our family, friends, church, even in our enemies.  We are not fighting them.  We are armored up to fight the spiritual enemy that manipulates them in to playing the part of an enemy against us.

This may not be the strength that you want, and it may not be the enemy that you want to fight.  However, it is exactly the strength we need to fight the enemy that we need to defeat.  Israel wanted a military conqueror to destroy Rome.  Guess what, we essentially want the same thing.  We want God to come down and fix all the things around us, but a follower of Jesus knows that the real battle is within their own heart and mind.  The devil has taken hold of many hearts and minds through the schemes I mentioned above.  He manipulates this world for his own agenda, and too many of us love to have it so.

Verse 12 reminds us that our real battle is in this spiritual realm.  He uses various terms to refer to a hierarchy among the dark spiritual powers: principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness, spiritual hosts of wickedness.  "Heavenly places" here simply means in the spirit realm.  The key is not to discover the exact terminology used in the spirit realm among these beings, or even to discover their name.  Our power over them does not lie in such detailed knowledge.  It lies in our relationship with Jesus and our knowledge that they are our true enemy.

Though Paul continues his thought uninterrupted, there is a definite change at verse 18.

We need to be praying and watchful  (v. 18)

After such a powerful picture of a Christian who is spiritually armored up with sword in hand, we would not expect Paul's instruction in verse 18, that is unless we are thinking spiritually.  Paul emphasizes that those who are armored up in Christ need to be a praying people, and a watchful people.

Prayer is connected to the visual of watching.  Jesus spoke of this when he asked his disciples to "watch with" him on the night of his arrest.  If you pay attention to this event in Matthew 26, you will see that Jesus begins to pray (v. 38).  He then comes back to find that they have fallen asleep.  Jesus wasn't angry because they weren't watching his back.  He wanted them to pray just as he was doing.  It is in v. 41 of that passage that Jesus directly ties our watchfulness in prayer with our ability to avoid falling into temptation.  The sleepiness, lack of prayer, of the disciples the night before would be their weakness against temptation the next day.  But, this is how we are in our flesh.  We want to be great in God, but do not watch in prayer like we should.  Jesus told them, "Watch and pray, lest you enter temptation.  The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."  If they had spent that night strengthening their spirit and weakening their flesh through prayer, it may have been a different story the next day.

Peter's bragging about his great faithfulness to Jesus could not be backed up because his flesh was too strong.  He had not fought the battle against his own flesh in prayer.  Why is Jesus praying?  I get it.  Jesus is God, and so we tell ourselves that he doesn't really need to pray.  Jesus knows that he will be dead by the end of the next day,  What does he do?  He talks with his Father in heaven, and so much more should we.  He has shown us the way.  Will we walk in it?

Up to this point in Ephesians 6, Paul has been describing what he means by the armor of God.  Verse 18 stops this description and moves to the activity we should do.  We can infer some activity in some of the armor, but here we are told to give ourselves to prayer.  Could it be that the act of putting on the armor is part of what gives us the strength to battle in prayer?  I believe so.

Verse 18 employs the word "all," or "always," four times.  This is not an overemphasis.  Rather, Paul is stressing just how important prayer is in the life of a believer.  The first description of the activity of a spiritual Christian warrior is that they are praying always.

Whatever the excuses that may arise in my heart and mind, Christ is calling me to always be praying.  We are to pray without ceasing.  Of course, the mind of flesh scoffs at the idea that we should always be praying.  The point is not that we never do anything else, but that there is always an open channel of communication between the Lord and me.  Does God get a busy signal when He comes calling for me?  Do I answer God's texts and social media messages?  I am not trying to make communication with God trite, but rather, help us to see that we often have our "coms" down and then scramble in difficult times to get God to talk with us.  We are to be a praying people always.

Next, he mentions that we need to pray with all prayer.  In other words, with all different kinds of prayer.  A good acronym for memorizing the different kinds of prayer is ACTS.  It stands for prayers of Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and lastly Supplication.  Supplication is a prayer of petition.  It is helpful to think of this in to forms: petitions for others (Intercession) and petitions for ourselves.  It is probably best to make petitions for ourselves last because we tend to let the prayers we do pray become all about what we need/want. 

He then describes that we should pray with all perseverance, or endurance.  Don't give up on prayer, don't become discouraged and quit.  People can say that they have prayed for years and it didn't work.  They become discouraged and quit.  However, be careful with that phrase, "it didn't work."  We are terrible at defining what it means when prayer works.  In fact, the greatest work of prayer is what is does to you, not for you.  It shapes you into a person who is more like Christ than you were before  you persevered in prayer.

Atheists will sometimes scoff that God must have a big ego because He wants everyone praising and worshipping him.  However, we do not pray prayers of adoration and thanksgiving because God has a big ego.  We worship God because we have an ego that is too big.  Don't let the enemy use tricks and sleight of hand to pull you away from talking with God.  And, don't let prayer just become a duty.  Learn the joy of relationship in prayer, rather than the "joy" of God giving us something we asked for.  In prayer, God gives us Himself, and that is all we need.

There is a passage in Isaiah where the people are crying out to God asking where He is.  They cry out for him to rend the skies and destroy their enemies.  God's answer is basically this.  Where were you when I can knocking all those times before?  If I do come down there, you are not going to like it because I will come down there and give you discipline.

Paul then says that we are to pray for all the saints.  It is not good enough for our prayers to be always centered on ourselves.  We need to pray for all of God's people, all the time, with all endurance, and with all kinds of prayer.

This is a person who is readied for any attack from the enemy.  Jesus was in the wilderness fasting and praying when the devil attacked.  He was ready to use the sword of the Spirit because he had been vigilant with the Lord.  Let us learn this lesson.  In this sense, prayer is a part of our protection, or readiness.

Exhortations in prayer

I want to finish with some exhortations in the area of prayer.

Prayer should be an expression of a relationship with God.  It is not good for a child to refuse to talk with their parents.  If we have put our faith in Jesus, then we are His spiritual children and He is our Father.  Yes, the relationship is different because He is a spiritual being.  This has always been true and understood by all who have gone on before us.  Yet, we need to keep our relationship with God in prayer at the level of a child coming to their Father.  We do this by faith.  Prayer is an act of faith in a loving Father.

Therefore, do not let your prayers become rote, scripted, mantras that you say because you think the words themselves have power.  People will try and learn Hebrew, memorize prayers because they have come to believe that such things make our prayers more powerful.  What makes prayer powerful is that you are God's child.  He doesn't need perfect Hebrew, or English from you.  He doesn't need candles and a certain ambiance.  He needs you pouring your heart out to Him. 

This doesn't mean that a written prayer cannot be used.  Praying through Scripture, particularly the Psalms, can be a meaningful experience.  Praying the Lord's Prayer can be a wonderful thing, but it can also turn into a mechanical thing that we do because we think it works.  Or, we may be hurrying to say it so many times, and in such a ritual, that God always answers this prayer.  The power is in the Lord.  It flows into our life when we approach Him by faith.  Such a person will grow in spiritual strength over time.

If you find yourself wandering in prayer, then just stop and tell the Lord that you don't want to be wandering unfocused.  Tell Him that you don't want to be simply doing a ritual, that you really want to connect to Him by His Spirit.  Invite God's Spirit into your mind and heart and ask Him to help you to grow in this relationship.

The next exhortation is to remember that public prayer is only so good as our private prayer.  There are pitfalls on both sides of this issue.  I can be cowardly about praying openly, and I can lust for attention of people in public prayer.

Your public prayer may bless people and encourage them.  However, if you are not praying in private, then you are accomplishing nothing with God in your public prayers.  You are like a clanging cymbal in His ears.

I don't think that God has a formula, or ratio, for comparing private prayer to public prayer.  However, it is safe to say that you should pray more in private than you do in public.  For a new believer, the trial is generally in the fear of people seeing you pray in public.  However, it is important to recognize that many who lust for attention in public prayer are just as cowardly towards private prayer.  Let us avoid both of these pitfalls.

A third exhortation is to understand that private prayer is acid to the ego.  Private prayer is when no one is listening.  It is just God and me.  This is very hard on our flesh.  If you aren't sleepy, just try praying.  You will be amazed at how quickly your mind will feel sleepy.  This is generally because we haven't developed the self-discipline that it takes to pray to God for very long.

When I say it is acid to the ego, I mean that a person, who tries to pray because they know that they should, will run into resistance from their own fleshly pride.  All kinds of thoughts will crop up in the mind of a person trying to pray.  How can this really do anything?  I probably look and sound silly.  I really have a bunch of other things to do.  I don't have time to do this.  Is God really hearing me?  Do I look like I have lost my mind? 

These are all the excellent flesh-reasons why we should not pray.  However, by faith, we take hold of our flesh and say, "No, flesh, I will yet praise the Lord!"  As our ego diminishes, as we diminish the control of our fleshly self, Christ increases in us by His Spirit.  Life will begin to flow as God intended it.  It is only in private prayer that we can wrestle with our flesh and become a person of the Spirit of God.  This is a daily work, a daily joy.

My last exhortation is that some things will only happen through prayer and fasting.  Jesus mentions this in Mark 9:29 in regards to a demon that his disciples could not cast out.  He said, "This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting."  This is interesting because Jesus had given them authority to cast out demons and they had successfully done so (Mark 6).  This demon was powerful enough that only a person of private prayer and fasting would have the spiritual strength to cast it out.  Thus, the disciples had not done the hard work of prayer.  They had not learned the lesson from Jesus.  The point is that times of private prayer and fasting were needed, otherwise, this wouldn't happen.

God in His sovereignty determines that some things will happen regardless of what we do.  Jesus will come back again, cast out the usurpers, and establish His kingdom.  However, there are things that He will only do if we dare to believe for them through prayer.  We are not given a list of what those things are.  We know that we should pray in accordance with the will of God.  Yet, we pray in faith.  Prayer is a relationship in which we discover the purpose and the mind of God in our life.  It changes us, and gains more grace from the Lord for others.

Prayer was never intended to be a kind of cosmic vending machine.  Rather, it is an anvil on which God tempers His people.  It is the place where God teaches us to follow Him! 

Let us be a people of prayer, particularly, private prayer!

People of Prayer

When Our Tank Is Empty

Matthew 11:27-30.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on January 27, 2019.

Running on empty is a metaphor that uses the image of a vehicle that is nearly out of fuel.  It can be picturing a physical aspect of a person who is not eating right and or sleeping enough.  However, it also can picture something that happens spiritually in our life, regardless of how much good food and quality sleep we get.  Christians can find themselves feeling empty even though they still have faith in Jesus and are trying to live for Him. 

Part of this is just our humanity.  We are frail and will have such moments, but we are not intended to remain stuck in that situation.  God has provided a way for us to fill up our tank, so to speak.  I don’t want to make this a crass and simplistic answer.  However, it is true that we can lose sight of where our strength lies.

So let’s look at our passage today.

We need the rest that only Jesus can give

In many ways the call of Jesus to come unto him is the call to sinners who haven’t heard the truth, or who have, but haven’t yet responded in faith towards Christ.  He is calling to those who are harassed and beaten down, without strength to go on, and offering hope.  His way is much easier on our soul than the ways of our own making and the world around us.

However, believers can never think that this call is no longer to us, since we have responded in faith towards Christ.  This same call is the echo of the Holy Spirit in the heart of God’s people every day and everywhere.  It is an echo of that first call to which we responded, reminding us not to go it alone and forge our own way.  If we “soldier on” trying to be a good Christian in the strength of our initial salvation then we are going to burn out spiritually.

So let’s talk about our salvation.

Understanding the salvation that Jesus is offering and taking hold of it is compared to resting.  It clearly means a rest for your inner self.  Be careful that you do not let the Gospel become some version of this.  Come join our group, follow this list of do’s and don’ts, and God will be happy with you.  Such an offer is not that of Christ’s.  The true Gospel is that the Son of God has joined our group (humanity).  He has satisfied all the requirements of God the Father and has paid the price for our sin and rebellion.  If we will simply yield to him as our Lord by putting our faith in Him (His actions and His teachings) then we have eternal life welling up within us.  The true Gospel removes the focus from me trying to measure up enough in order to be acceptable and it places it upon staying close to Jesus.  I don’t need to measure up, I just need to keep clinging to Jesus by faith.  Good News, He also holds onto us.  Faith in Christ is how we overcome this world and its temptations that pull us away from our Father in Heaven.

Thus, Jesus uses the image of a yoke.  Here we see that He is offering far more than just knowing that we are eternally safe.  It is very much about changing masters and the expectations that cling to our hearts and minds.  The yokes that the world puts upon us and the ones that we put on ourselves are all the obligations and expectations that connect us to the world.  They become very heavy.  In fact, they are impossibly heavy.  Thus the phrase, “I can’t breathe,” could be a metaphorical statement of life in this world.  It can become so heavy that you can’t even draw a spiritual breath. 

Some in this world believe that the answer is to toss off all yokes including Christ’s.  However, this is impossible.  Our flesh is a creature of servitude by nature (cue Bob Dylan song, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody”).  It is the default setting of humanity.  Even if we manage to break off all attachments to people and society outside of ourselves, we will still end up serving our own fleshly desires.  Believe me, they can be the worst of task masters.  The only way to be freed from it is to get a stronger master who is not interested in making you a slave.  Yes, we serve Christ and are His servants.  However, in so doing we are made free because He wants us to be free.

So does this mean a Christian should ignore any obligations they may have in this world?  No, it doesn’t.  You see, Jesus told His disciples to pay their taxes and be good citizens of the world.  However, they were to do so to please Him, not the government.  When we quit trying to please everyone, self included, and only serve Jesus, our soul is finally allowed to breathe and the breath it takes in is life itself. Yet, He helps us to truly serve the world around us without the insufferable, crushing weight of their expectations.

This is not intended to be a onetime thing.  We need to come back to Jesus continually and find the rest of simply serving Him.  When we lose focus of this truth, we become harassed by all the obligations that we feel.  Just as you need sleep every night in order to be any good the next day, so we need to rest in Jesus continually in order to have any hope of accomplishing something.  This is His gift to us, rest.  Let us take hold of it.  It is one of the reasons why many believers feel like their tank is empty.

We need the food and water that only Jesus can give us

The phrase in verse 29, “learn from me,” involves us receiving from Christ.  This receiving is not just a mystical, intuitive recharge.  Rather, it is a rational, informing of our heart and mind of the Truth of God.  We can’t just learn about Jesus, we must truly learn from Him.  There are things that only He can teach you.  At best a good, spiritual teacher can only point us to the truth, but we must come into relationship with that truth in order for it to truly be ours.  It is the Spirit of Christ that helps this to happen. 

So how does this spiritual learning happen?  In 1 Corinthians 10:3-4 the Apostle Paul compares Christ to Spiritual Food and Spiritual Drink.  Just as we need to rest daily, so we need food and water daily.  This is where we get down to earth in our walk with Christ.  How do I learn from Christ?  It starts with the Word of God.  It gives us food for our spirit.  The Bible compares the Word to food, calling some parts of it milk and other parts of it solid food (1 Corinthians 3:2; Hebrews 5:12).  We cannot ignore God’s Word and think that we will be mystically fed by Christ.  Yet, we cannot rely only on spiritual teachers to be our only source of hearing the Word of God.  As a spiritual baby we may need help to know which parts of the word will be easier for us to digest, but at some point we have to take ownership of this need of our to feed spiritually upon the Truth of God (Which is only a literal form of our Lord Himself).  Believers need to be in the Word and seeking Christ for wisdom through it.  When we don’t understand something, it is fine to talk with other people, but ultimately we will only learn it from Christ Himself. 

Of course your flesh will be resistant to spending time in the Word, meditating on it, and conversing with the Lord about it.  However, we need it nonetheless.  Without this in our lives, we will find ourselves trying to run on an empty tank.

It also involves more than just reading the Word or spending X amount of minutes asking God for things.  Fellowship with God through prayer enables the Word to strengthen us spiritually.  It is easy to let our prayers remain at a level of simply asking God to do things for us.  However, the Holy Spirit uses the difficulties of life to call us up to a higher interaction with God (this does not mean we quit praying for His help in matters).  Just as you would spend time talking about your day with a spouse, or friend, even more so we need to talk with the Lord.  This spiritual interaction, fueled by spending time in God’s Word and trying to live life as He has shown us, gives us a place where God teaches us.  In that holy place He gives us strength and vitality that we need. 

We all need spiritual replenishment and spiritual refreshing, and that every day.  Yet, God has provided Himself as the means to that end.  Don’t settle for only having knowledge about Jesus and carrying Him around like a lucky rabbit’s foot.  Instead take time this week to rest in Christ and draw strength from His Word through the holy fellowship He calls you into, instead of telling yourself that you don’t have time for it.  He is there for you, waiting to fill you with Him strength and His life.

Empty Tank audio