But then I thought, well, then instead of putting that money in the bank in 1986 – what if we had instead invested it in a reputable company – What if we had invested it in Ford? Well, if we had invested that same $100 in Ford in 1986, today it would be worth $716.38. That’s a little bit better isn’t it? As you see on our little bar graph chart, that’s nearly twice as much as you would have made from the bank. That would have been a much better investment.

Now I know that some of you don’t really appreciate Ford vehicles, so you’re not likely to invest with them. So let’s say instead that you invested in another big name company – General Electric. That same $100 invested in 1986 in General Electric would now be worth some $1552.13. That’s a 1400 percent increase! That’s twice as much as Ford, and four times as much as the bank. If only you had know this back in 1986.

But you know, both Ford and General Electric are pretty ‘safe’ companies. They’ve both been around for a long, long time – over a hundred years now. What if we had been a little more risky and invested in a company that had just formed only ten years prior to 1986? What if we had invested in Apple Computers Inc.? Are you ready for this? Well, believe it or not, that $100 invested in 1986 in Apple Computers Inc, would now be worth… over $45,000. $45,818.81 to be specific. That’s just from a little $100 dollar investment. Isn’t that incredible? If you had $100 in 1986 – you could have done that!

But let me give you just one more scenario. Back in 1986, no one had any idea that apple would do so well, so they might have invested in a different tech company, maybe the Microsoft Corporation. If you had invested just $100 in the Microsoft Corporation in 1986, today that $100 would be worth $180,672.18. Imagine if you had only had the foresight in 1986 to invest $100 in Microsoft! We would not be needing to do this “Demolish the Debt” building fund drive! You could have just paid the whole thing off yourself with that little $100 investment!

Isn’t it incredible how a simple little investment can grow into something amazing! Well, that’s just exactly what Jesus is talking about this parable that we’re going to look this morning.

If you have your Bibles, you can follow along in Matthew chapter 25. We’re going to start at verse 14.

Now before we get into this parable, does anyone remember what a parable is? Two weeks ago we talked about how a parable is a parallel. It’s a short story about something very common and very familiar that illustrates a unfamiliar spiritual truth. The story and the spiritual truth would run parallel to each other – you can compare the two to help you understand the spiritual truth.

So this is what Jesus is doing here. He begins in verse 14…

14 “Again, the Kingdom of Heaven can be illustrated by the story of a man going on a long trip.

That’s our hint to watch for the parallel. What’s the hidden spiritual truth we need to learn from this story? Well, let’s find out…

He called together his servants and entrusted his money to them while he was gone. 15 He gave five bags of silver to one, two bags of silver to another, and one bag of silver to the last—dividing it in proportion to their abilities. He then left on his trip.” Matthew 25:14-15

Now we’ll stop there for a minute. Depending on what translation you have, where the New Living Translation says “bags of silver”, yours might say “talents” or even “bags of gold” or “a thousand coins”. So if you’re wondering, “Why the difference?” Let me try to explain why that is.

Today, the word “talent” means something much different than it used to. Today when we think of a talent – we think of some special ability like playing piano or juggling or something like that. Someone who is skilled is said to have a “talent.” But the talent that the Bible is talking about here is actually a unit of measurement that they used when talking about precious metals like gold or silver. For example, we measure our gold and silver today in “ounces”. Today an ounce of gold is worth around $1600.

A talent is a similar kind of measurement – but it’s much larger than an ounce. Scholars have had a hard time figuring out exactly what a “talent” was worth because its value seems to have changed in different times and in different places – but they figure it was roughly worth about 20 years of common labour. So if you were paid minimum wage for 20 years, much much would you make? In today’s economy in Canada, it would be about $400,000 over 20 years.

So to put that figure in our story, the first guy (with five talents or five bags of silver) – He would have about 2 million dollars. The second guy, with two talents would have about $800,000 – and the last guy would get about $400,000.

That’s a pretty good pile of cash. This master must have had a lot of faith in these three servants to entrust them with that much money. But let’s read what happens:

“The servant who received the five bags of silver began to invest the money and earned five more. 17 The servant with two bags of silver also went to work and earned two more. 18 But the servant who received the one bag of silver dug a hole in the ground and hid the master’s money.” Matthew 25:16-18

Now isn’t that interesting. The first guy goes out and, and using that 2 million dollars, he earns 2 million more. He doubles his masters money. We’re not told exactly how – maybe he invested in land or did some trading in the spice market or bought a business – or whatever it was – but he invested wisely and ended up doubling his money.

The second guy did the same thing. Using his $800,000 – he invests wisely and he too, ends up doubling his masters money.

But now this last guy, just digs a hole in the ground and plunks nearly half a million dollars in the dirt and covers it up! He does nothing with it. No investments. No business deals. It just sits there in the ground.

Now before you get all upset at this guy for being an idiot, put yourself in his shoes. Say your boss calls you up one day and tells you that he’s going to Bermuda for the next three years and while he’s gone, he wants you to manage his money for him. He plunks half a million dollars cash in your lap and he heads for the airport. What would you do? You’ve got half a million dollars of your boss’s money. What are you going to do with it?

You could invest it – but every investment comes with risk. Are you willing to risk losing your bosses money?

Well, this guy sure wasn’t. It seems he was a little fearful of what his boss might do if he lost his money, so He buries it in the ground to insure none of it goes missing. So now let’s see how this all pans out when the master comes home.

19 “After a long time their master returned from his trip and called them to give an account of how they had used his money. 20 The servant to whom he had entrusted the five bags of silver came forward with five more and said, ‘Master, you gave me five bags of silver to invest, and I have earned five more.’
21 “The master was full of praise. ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let’s celebrate together!’
22 “The servant who had received the two bags of silver came forward and said, ‘Master, you gave me two bags of silver to invest, and I have earned two more.’
23 “The master said, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let’s celebrate together!’
24 “Then the servant with the one bag of silver came and said, ‘Master, I knew you were a harsh man, harvesting crops you didn’t plant and gathering crops you didn’t cultivate. 25 I was afraid I would lose your money, so I hid it in the earth. Look, here is your money back.’
26 “But the master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy servant! If you knew I harvested crops I didn’t plant and gathered crops I didn’t cultivate, 27 why didn’t you deposit my money in the bank? At least I could have gotten some interest on it.’
28 “Then he ordered, ‘Take the money from this servant, and give it to the one with the ten bags of silver. 29 To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away. 30 Now throw this useless servant into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
Matthew 25:19-30

That is one interesting story, isn’t it? If we hadn’t heard this story so many times before, I think we would have been pretty shocked to hear how it ends. The guy who plays it safe – the guy who doesn’t risk losing his master’s money – ends up getting tossed out. He’s called wicked. Lazy. Useless. Those are some pretty harsh words.

So if that’s the parable… what’s the parallel? What’s the hidden spiritual truth in this story? What’s the lesson that Jesus wants us to learn?

Well, unlike our parable two weeks ago where Jesus goes through and explains what it all means, He doesn’t do that for this one. We’re going to have to be a little discerning and work through it on our own.

So here’s what I want to do. I want to do something a little unusual this morning – so bear with me. If you’re new here today, don’t worry – we don’t do this all the time, but for today this is what I want you to do. I want you to take just the next three minutes and talk with the people sitting around you about this parable. Talk with your family or the folks sitting behind you. What are your thoughts? What hidden spiritual truths can you see in this story and how do they apply to you? I’ll give you just three minutes to do that, and then I’ll come back up and share some of my observations.

[discussion time]

The general overall theme of this parable seems to be, that God has entrusted us with certain resources. And He expects us to use those resources in a way that is profitable to Him. Now what does that all mean specifically for us? Well, let’s work our way back through the parable.

The parable starts off with the master entrusting his money to his servants. And isn’t that what God has done for us? Remember, nothing that we have is our own. Everything belongs to God.

“The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him.” Psalm 24:1

Everything we have – our wealth, our homes, our vehicles, our families, our jobs, our abilities, our time, our health – everything is a gift to us – on loan from God.

And God has been extremely generous with us. Even in the parable, the guy with the least amount still had a pretty massive pile of cash – $400,000. God has been equally generous with us. The poorest among us here in Canada is still very well off compared to the rest of the world. I think all of us have a place to live. All of us have food to eat. All of us have more than enough clothes to wear. And that’s just the material things. What about the family God has given you? What about your friends? What about the talents and abilities that God has given you? What about your health?

God has lavished us with all kinds of blessings.

And you’ve probably noticed that He doesn’t give us all the same stuff. The master in the parable didn’t either.

15 He gave five bags of silver to one, two bags of silver to another, and one bag of silver to the last—dividing it in proportion to their abilities.” Matthew 25:15a

God doesn’t give us all the same resources – He give it to us according to our abilities and according to his purpose for us. To some of us, He gives great material wealth. To others, not so much. To some, He gives great musical ability. To others, not so much. To some, He gives certain spiritual gifts. To some He gives good health. To some He gives long life. To some He gives great people skills. But He gives us exactly what we need and exactly what we can handle – according to our abilities and according to his purpose for us.

And why does He do this? So that we can bring Him profit. And I’m not talking about financial profit – because as we already determined, God already owns it all anyway. But He wants us to be profitable for Him. We see this all throughout the Bible.

Two week ago in our parable about the four different types of soil, what did the seed on the good soil do? It produced a harvest of 30, 60, or 100 times over.

In John 15:1-2, Jesus tells us that God wants us to bear fruit.

“I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more.” John 15:1-2

In the great commission in Matthew 28, Jesus tells his disciples to go and make disciples.

There is this repeated theme of being productive. Make disciples. Bear fruit. Produce a harvest. God wants us to be profitable for Him. He wants us to be part of growing the Kingdom of God. He wants us to bring Him glory.

In my research for this sermon, I ran across an interesting couple of paragraphs in a commentary on this parable that I want to share with you.

What if the church were to be scrutinized as a business? The first question one would ask is, “How much profit did it make?” We are so used to thinking in “non-profit” terms that we are almost shocked to hear such a question raised. Yet is this not what our Lord is teaching us in this parable? God expects a profit, and He holds us accountable for what we have done with what He has entrusted to us.

Pressing this matter just a little further, if the church were to be considered a business and every member were to be viewed as an employee, how many of us should reasonably expect to “keep our jobs”? Each one of us needs to ask the question, “Just what is it that I am doing that is kingdom work?” “Just what is it that I am doing for Christ and His kingdom that is “profitable”?

That’s quite a thought, isn’t it? If you were an employee of Jesus, working for the kingdom of God – based on what you’ve done in this past year – would you keep your job? Would Jesus have to call you into the office and say “I’m sorry, but it’s just not working out. I’m going to have to let you go.”

Of course, that’s not how it works. Perhaps thankfully. But it’s a great question to ponder.

What have you done with the resources that God has given you? Your wealth, your home, your vehicles, your job, your abilities, your time. How have you been profitable to God? How have you brought Him glory?

Because as verse 29 says…

“To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away.” Matthew 25:29

I sure don’t want to be the guy who does nothing with what God gives me. At the end of my life, I want to be able to stand before God and show Him how I made good use of the things that He entrusted to me. I want to hear the words…

“Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let’s celebrate together!’ Matthew 25:21

Wouldn’t that be awesome?

So how are you going to invest what God has given you? If you’ve ever done any financial investing, you know if can be difficult to know what you should invest in. So to close this morning, if you don’t mind, I’d like to share with you five no-fail investments that I’ve discovered.

The first thing I recommend is that you…
#1. Invest some time & effort with Jesus.
Our relationship with Jesus Christ is the most important relationship we can have. In fact, the reason we were created, is to have this relationship. So invest some time and effort with Jesus. And there are lots of ways that you can do this: For me personally, I find that by getting up early and spending some time reading God’s Word and praying (and maybe writing down my thoughts) – it really sets the tone for the day. I don’t alway enjoy the getting up early part, but spending that time with Jesus is time well invested.

#2. Invest in your wife/husband
The Bible has lots to say about how to invest in your spouse. If you need some ideas, look at Ephesians 5 or Colossians 3… and once you’ve got those figured out, you can look at Proverbs and Song of Solomon. But make sure you invest a great deal in your spouse. Proverbs 18:22 says that “The man who finds a wife finds a treasure.” Your spouse is your most valuable ally on this planet. So invest in them!

Take 30 seconds to send an email that says “I love you.” Pray for them when you’re investing time with Jesus. Husbands, wash the dishes for her. Wife, wash the truck for him. Invest in each other.

#3. Invest in your Family
Now it’s Mother’s day, so certainly we are reminded of the great investments that a mother puts into her family. The sleepless nights, the diapers, the cooking and cleaning, the driving to soccer practice and ballet, the list goes on… And on Father’s day we’ll do the same thing for Dads. But I want to remind you today to invest in the rest of your family too.

1 Timothy 5:8 says “But those who won’t care for their relatives, especially those in their own household, have denied the true faith. Such people are worse than unbelievers.”

When we were in Mexico, the family that we stayed with had Grandma that lived just down the street from them. And even though she lived in a different house, man, she was a part of that family. She’d come over and wash the dishes or fix us breakfast or just hang out. She wasn’t a visitor – she belonged.

And I think we’ve missed out on some of that in our North American Culture. Other cultures have their entire extended family all under the same roof. But not here. One of my regrets is that I haven’t invested enough time and effort to get to know my extended family more. Remember life is all about relationships. So invest in your family.

#4. Invest in kids
Not necessarily just your kids – but just kids in general. Jesus always took the time to invest in kids. He said “Let the little children come to me.” Make sure you say the same thing. We adults have a tendency to brush them off – go away – I’m busy right now. But just 30 seconds of your undivided attention, makes a huge difference in their life.

Gord, from Camp Little Red, anytime He comes up to see us or we go down to see him, he always has a little treat for our kids. And that speaks to them. That tells them that they are important and loved and cared for. That $.75 candy is a great long-term investment.

So invest in kids. Give them your attention when they’re talking to you. Take 20 minutes to go play with your kids and their friends. Get involved in a youth program. Pay the way for a kid to go to camp. There’s lots of things that you can do.

#5. Invest in Others
This includes your church family, your friends & neighbors, and even people you’ve never met. There are lots of ways in invest in people, so your options are wide open. You can pretty much take anything that God has given you and use it to invest in people.

For example: Do you have a firepit in your back yard? Invite a family over and use that firepit to build relationships and encourage them and maybe even pray for them.
Has God given you the ability to fix engines? Why not use that ability to tune up the car of that little old lady down the street – show her God’s love through that.
Has God blessed you with great wealth? Put that money to work – sponsor a child, support a missionary family or two, pay for a month of groceries for the single mom you know.
Has God given you great skill in baking? Make up a batch of cookies and mail it to that young guy that’s away at college. Put together a casserole for that family with the kid in the hospital.

Anything God has given you – your wealth, your home, our vehicle, your abilities, your time – all of your resources can be invested in others.

That’s why God has given you all that stuff.

So I hope I’ve stirred your imagination a little bit with these ideas. I hope the wheels are turning in your head as you try to think of how you can invest the things that God has given you. How are you going to be profitable for God?

“One day Jesus told a story in the form of a parable…” Luke 8:4

Now we’re just going to stop right there. Before we go any further, we need to talk about this verse – specifically about this word “parable” that we just read. Now if you don’t speak Christian-ese, this word “parable” might seem a little foreign. It’s not really a common, everyday-language kind of word. The guys in the coffee shop don’t usually tell ‘parables’. But Jesus did. And lots of them. In fact the count in my Bible says that Jesus told 39 different parables in the books of Matthew, Mark, & Luke. And He probably told more that just weren’t recorded.

So what exactly is a parable? Simply speaking, a parable is really just a short story about something very common and very familiar that illustrates a unfamiliar spiritual truth. Jesus would tell a story about something very common like a farmer planting seeds – everybody in that time understood what that was all about – many of his listeners would have been farmers themselves, so they knew about planting seeds. But within that story of a farmer planting seeds, Jesus would have a hidden spiritual truth that would be illustrated by the characters and events that happen in the story.

You could almost think of a parable as a parallel. You know how parallel lines run directly beside each other? Well, the story and the spiritual truth would run parallel to each other – you could compare the two. In fact quite often Jesus would begin his parables by saying something like “The kingdom of heaven is like…. THIS” – then He would tell this story – drawing a parallel between the story and the spiritual truth about the Kingdom of heaven that He wanted His listeners to learn.

So when we read in Luke 8:4 that…. “One day Jesus told a story in the form of a parable…” we know that Jesus is about to tell us a story about something very common and very familiar – something we already understand – and that in that story will be a parallel, hidden spiritual truth that Jesus wants us to learn and understand.

So let’s try this again: Luke chapter 8 – starting at verse 4:

One day Jesus told a story in the form of a parable to a large crowd that had gathered from many towns to hear him: 5 “A farmer went out to plant his seed. As he scattered it across his field, some seed fell on a footpath, where it was stepped on, and the birds ate it.6 Other seed fell among rocks. It began to grow, but the plant soon wilted and died for lack of moisture. 7 Other seed fell among thorns that grew up with it and choked out the tender plants. 8 Still other seed fell on fertile soil. This seed grew and produced a crop that was a hundred times as much as had been planted!” When he had said this, he called out,“Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.” Luke 8:4-8

So let’s see if we can wrap our heads around this story. Jesus starts off telling us about this farmer who goes out to plant some seeds in his field. Now of course, he’s not going out with his big John Deere air-seeder, he’s going out with a big pouch of seeds – probably wheat or barley – that was the common crop of that area.

And the system for planting was simple. Reach your hand into the pouch, grab a handful of seeds, and scatter them around as you walk. It was pretty simple. And for the most part, that system worked really good – but there was one problem. You see, with today’s high-tech equipment, a farmer can place each seed exactly where they want it – right down to the cm… But when you’re just flinging handfuls of seed all around, sometimes the seeds don’t end up where you intend them to.

And actually, I experienced this last summer when we were planting the grass seed for the lawn here at the church. I actually had a grass seed spreader – which was basically a pouch with a hole in the bottom that slowly let the seed fall out into spinner. As you turn the crank the spinner would fling the seed all around. But as I was doing this, some of the seed didn’t land in the dirt. Some landed on the sidewalk. Some landed in the parking lot. Some ended up in my shoes – and some even in my hair. Most of the seed landed in the dirt, but certainly not all of it.

And this is what is happening in the story that Jesus is telling. This farmer is out there flinging seed all around and it’s landing in different places – on four different types of soil.

Verse 5 has the first type of soil. It says…

“As he scattered it across his field, some seed fell on a footpath, where it was stepped on, and the birds ate it.” Luke 8:5

Now of course, the footpath would not be prime soil. It would have been packed and baked in the sun like a brick. It would have been rock hard. It would be like this: [jar of baked, hard soil]

That’s what this footpath would have been like. So there is no way those seeds were going to get down into the soil where they could grow. It was just a matter of time until the birds saw them gobbled them up as they lay there on the surface.

Verse 6 has the next type of soil:

“Other seed fell among rocks. It began to grow, but the plant soon wilted and died for lack of moisture.” Luke 8:6

They would start to grow, but they would never last. They would shrivel up and die. Without the soil to hold the moisture for their roots, they wouldn’t last a day in the hot sun. That’s what happened to the farmer’s seed that fell among the rocks.

Then verse 7 tells us about another kind of soil:

“Other seed fell among thorns that grew up with it and choked out the tender plants.” Luke 8:7

Again, back in those days they didn’t have round-up or weed killer. So if the grain seed fell in an area that was full of weeds, there wasn’t much hope. The thorns and weeds would block out it’s sunlight, drink up its water, and use up the available nutrients in the soil. And so basically, the plant would starve and never fully develop.

But there is one more type of soil. Look at verse 8:

“Still other seed fell on fertile soil. This seed grew and produced a crop that was a hundred times as much as had been planted!” Luke 8:8

This is the soil that the farmer was aiming for. The rich black soil where the seeds could sprout, take root, and grow up and produce a fantastic crop.

And so that was it. That was the parable of the farmer scattering his seeds. But what did it mean? What was the parallel? What was the hidden spiritual truth within the story? I think that if I were one of the original listeners to that story – I’d have no idea what the point was. I’d say that hidden truth was hidden pretty good. And I think the disciples would say the same thing, because in verse 9, they ask Jesus to explain what the parable meant. So let’s pick it up in verse 9.

 His disciples asked him what this parable meant. 10 He replied, “You are permitted to understand the secrets of the Kingdom of God. But I use parables to teach the others so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled: ‘When they look, they won’t really see. When they hear, they won’t understand.’
11 “This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is God’s word. 12 The seeds that fell on the footpath represent those who hear the message, only to have the devil come and take it away from their hearts and prevent them from believing and being saved. 13 The seeds on the rocky soil represent those who hear the message and receive it with joy. But since they don’t have deep roots, they believe for a while, then they fall away when they face temptation. 14 The seeds that fell among the thorns represent those who hear the message, but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the cares and riches and pleasures of this life. And so they never grow into maturity. 15 And the seeds that fell on the good soil represent honest, good-hearted people who hear God’s word, cling to it, and patiently produce a huge harvest.” Luke 8:9-15

That’s pretty good isn’t it? It’s a simple little story of a farmer scattering seeds, yet it packs a pretty pointed message for you and I, doesn’t it? It applies just as much to us today as it did to Jesus’ listeners back then. All of us are like one of those soils – which one are you?

Verse 12 says:

“The seeds that fell on the footpath represent those who hear the message, only to have the devil come and take it away from their hearts and prevent them from believing and being saved.” Luke 8:12

Is that you? Are you the hard packed soil on the footpath? Is your heart hard towards God? When you hear God’s Word – do you just block it out – and not allow it to sink into your heart? Maybe you’ve heard the Gospel many times… You’ve heard John 3:16 which says…

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

But you don’t let that truly sink in. You’ve heard Romans 10:9 which says…

“If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,”and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:9

But you just block it out. You’ve heard Proverbs 3:5-6 which says….

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;6 in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” Proverbs 3:5-6

You’ve heard all those Scriptures. You’ve heard that God loves you like crazy and He’s just waiting for you with open arms – and yet… You still put Him off. You refuse to accept His forgiveness. You refuse to submit your life to Him. You refuse to soften your heart. Are you the hard soil?

Or maybe you’re the rocky soil. Verse 13 says…

“The seeds on the rocky soil represent those who hear the message and receive it with joy. But since they don’t have deep roots, they believe for a while, then they fall away when they face temptation.” Luke 8:13

Does that sound like your experience? Matthew, in his account of this same parable, words it just little differently…

 “The seed on the rocky soil represents those who hear the message and immediately receive it with joy. 21 But since they don’t have deep roots, they don’t last long. They fall away as soon as they have problems or are persecuted for believing God’s word.” Matthew 13:20-21

Does that sound like you? At one time you accepted Christ with great joy! It was exciting and new and life would never be the same again! But then some hard times came along. Maybe you were teased at school for being a Christian. Maybe the guys at the shop snickered when you told them you went to church last Sunday. Maybe some other stuff happened. Maybe you got health problems or family problems or financial problems or whatever, but you started doubting the decision that you made to follow Christ. You started falling away from God. Are you the rocky soil?

Perhaps you’re the soil that’s full of weeds? Verse 14 says…

“The seeds that fell among the thorns represent those who hear the message, but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the cares and riches and pleasures of this life. And so they never grow into maturity.” Luke 8:14

Maybe you’ve let the good things of this life crowd out the best things? Perhaps your career or your reputation, or a special relationship has stolen your focus from Christ? Being part of the world is just too much fun – and you’re not willing to make the necessary sacrifices to really give your life to God. You want to be in control. You want to set the agenda. You want to do what you want to do. And that’s killing your relationship with God.

If I were to generalize, I’d say this is likely the most common soil for most North American Christians. It is so easy to lose sight of eternity and simply focus on the here and now. How many things that have eternal value do we sacrifice so that we have pleasure for a moment right now? It’s difficult to spend 15 minutes in prayer with God, but it’s easy to sit through a 3 hour movie. We can’t afford to give $500 to overseas missions, but we’ll spend that easily on junk food in a year.

“…all too quickly the message is crowded out by the cares and riches and pleasures of this life. And so they never grow into maturity.” Is that you?

Or are you the good soil?

“And the seeds that fell on the good soil represent honest, good-hearted people who hear God’s word, cling to it, and patiently produce a huge harvest.” Luke 8:15

The passage in Matthew says the seed on the good soil produces “a harvest of thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times as much as had been planted!”

Is your life producing a harvest? Is your life producing fruit? If you’re the good soil, there should be two kinds of fruit evident in your life. One is the fruit of the Spirit. And of course, we don’t produce that, but the Holy Spirit produces that in our lives as we grow in our relationship with God.

“But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,23 gentleness, and self-control.” Galatians 5:22-23

Are those things growing in your life? Here’s how you know if you’re the good soil: If you can say, “Yes, I am more loving than I was last year. Yes, I have more patience than I did last year. Yes, I have greater self-control than I did last year. etc etc…That’s the mark of the good soil.

The other fruit we produce is more disciples of Jesus Christ. In Matthew 28:18-19 we read:

“Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. 19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Matthew 28:19

This is one of our main objectives here on Planet earth. So the second evidence of good soil is someone who is making disciples. At the end of your life will you be able to look back and see a harvest of 30, 60, or 100 people that have come to know and love Jesus because of you? Are you making disciples?

At the Camp Little Red banquet last Saturday, we took some time to remember the life of Howard Crane – one of the camp’s directors – who had passed away earlier this year. And this was a guy who was definitely one of the “good soil” people. He was just a regular guy – But he heard God’s Word, He clung to it, and patiently produced a huge harvest. His life was marked by an ever growing love for God and for people. And I certainly don’t know the numbers, but I would be very confident to say that because of his life, there will be more than 30, 60, or 100 people that will be joining Him in Heaven one day. He was the good soil.

What kind of soil are you?

If this morning you find that your heart has been hard, if to this point, you’ve not responded Jesus, you’ve not accepted his love and his forgiveness, you’ve not submitted your life to Him – well, you can change that today. You can decide right now to soften your heart and accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour. You can begin a new life. One that’s not always easy – but one that’s absolutely worth it. You can do that today – and I certainly hope that you will.

Or maybe you’re like the rocky soil and because of problems or persecution or temptation or whatever the reason, you’ve been falling away from God. Your relationship with God has been strained or you’re feeling distant from Him. But its not too late to come back. God hasn’t gone anywhere – He’s just waiting for you to look to Him for help – and He’ll be right there. You don’t have to face your problems or your temptations alone. Certainly God is with you all the way and He understands what you’re going through. And not only that, God’s given you a church family to help you along the way too. Believe it or not – there are people right here in this building who know how you feel – they face the same struggles – they fight the same temptations. You’re not alone. And part of our job as church is to help each other grow deep roots, so that we can get through the problems, endure the persecution, and escape the temptation. We’re here to help each other. We want to help you succeed.

I know sometimes its hard to find somebody to talk to about stuff like this, but I’d sure recommend #1. talk to God first – He’s got a lot more answers than any of us do – but #2. talk to me or someone else that you trust – we want to help you get through whatever struggles you’re dealing with.

Or maybe you find yourself a little more like the weedy soil this morning. Maybe there is stuff that you’re allowed to grow up in your life that has taken your focus away from Jesus. Maybe there is stuff that has become more important to you than your relationship with God. The Bible calls those idols. And it tells us to get rid of them. There is a lot of “good stuff” in this world that can choke out our relationship with Christ. Money. Sports. Facebook. Relationships. Career. Possessions. None of those things in themselves are bad. But the minute they start taking priority over our relationship with God, they become idols and they begin to choke the life from us.

If that’s where you’re at this morning, I encourage you to be ruthless. Get rid of any of those “good things” that are hindering your relationship God. Pull the weeds. It’s not going to be easy. It’s not going to be fun. But we have to live with eternity in mind – not just the moment. What’s going to really matter in a 1000 years? How you built your relationship with God – or how you enjoyed all that “good stuff?” Get rid of the weeds that steal your life.

And if, by chance, you’re the good soil this morning, that’s awesome! Keep it up – but be careful. For its very easy for our hearts to become a little hard – a little rocky – or a little weedy.

One final thought before we close: As you reflect on the state of your heart this morning – whether it be hard, rocky, weedy, or even good – know this: When it comes to the soil of our hearts – Jesus is the master gardener. He can soften the hardest hearts. He can de-stone the rockiest soil. He can uproot the most stubborn weeds. And He can produce a harvest in people like you wouldn’t believe. It doesn’t matter what kind of heart you start with, if you give it to Jesus, He can make it rich and productive, producing a harvest in your life of 30, 60, or 100 times as was sown.

We’re going to close this morning with the song – Take my Life and Let it be. And I think the words are absolutely applicable this morning. Let me read just a few snippets.

Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.

Take my will and make it Thine,?It shall be no longer mine.?

Take my heart, it is Thine own,?It shall be Thy royal throne.?

Take myself and I will be?Ever, only, all for Thee.

We so easily get sidetracked and distracted from the main thing – it’s good to spend some time going back to the basics.

If you’re a football fan, you might know the name “Vince Lombardi”. He was the coach of the Greenbay Packers from 1959-1967. Of the 130 games he coached, his team won 96 of them – including two Superbowl championships. So this guy knew what he was doing.

One of the things that Vince Lombardi was famous for was a speech he gave at every pre-season training camp. He would begin by holding up a football and saying, “Gentlemen, this is a football.”

He would then go over the basics of what a football is and its role in the game.  He would then take his team out and show them the field, explaining where the out-of-bounds lines and the end zones were.  He would go over the fundamentals of the game – touch downs, tackles, field goals – explaining the rules and organization of players.

Now keep in mind that this was not little leagues. These players were not beginners. They were the seasoned, professional NFL players. They’d known all this stuff for years already. And yet every year, Lombardi would begin with the most basic, fundamental principles of football. Why? Because he knew that to build a winning team, they had to understand the basic fundamentals of the game.

And that’s just what we’ve been doing. As we’ve been looking at Paul’s letter to the Colossians – his Christianity in a Nutshell so to speak, we’ve been reviewing the most basic, fundamental principles of the Christian life. Who is Jesus? What did He accomplish by dying on the cross and rising again from the grave? How do we walk in close relationship with God? How does the Holy Spirit guide our lives? And how do we relate to each other now that Christ lives within us? These are the basics of Christianity. And these are what we have to understand if we, together, are going to be a winning team for Christ.

We’re going to pick it up today in Colossians chapter 4 – starting at verse 2.

“2 Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart. 3 Pray for us, too, that God will give us many opportunities to speak about his mysterious plan concerning Christ. That is why I am here in chains. 4 Pray that I will proclaim this message as clearly as I should.
 5 Live wisely among those who are not believers, and make the most of every opportunity. 6 Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone.”
Colossians 4:2-6

Last week we talked about how, in whatever we say or do, we do it as representatives of the Lord Jesus Christ – no matter what position of life we are in. For example, we talked about husbands and wives – and how we are to reflect the attitude of Christ in our marriage. We talked about parents and children – and how we can reflect Christ to our family. And we also talked about slaves and masters (or employers and employees) and how we can show what God is like by what we say and do in our workplace.

And so we had these three sets of relationships – these three areas of life – that we are to represent Christ in. And I told you at the end of last week’s message that today we are going to look at one more relationship – one other area of life where we need to be ambassadors of Christ. And that is in our relationship with those who are not believers. People who don’t share our beliefs. I like to use the term “pre-Christians” – people who have not yet accepted Christ Jesus as their Lord and Saviour – though we hope one day, they will. How do we represent Christ to these people?

Now depending on your situation, this area might overlap into some of these other areas that we’ve already talked about. It could very well be that some of you have a spouse who has yet to accept Christ as their Saviour. Some of you have children who are not currently walking with the Lord. Probably most of you work with people who don’t share your beliefs. And certainly, all the things we talked about last week would still apply to these relationships whether they are believers or not, but now Paul gives us some further, specific instructions for our relationships with people who don’t share our beliefs – those who are currently unbelievers.

And he starts off, as we should in every situation – with prayer. He says in verse 2…

“Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart.” Colossians 4:2

Now this could really be a ‘stand-alone’ verse. We could ignore everything else that Paul says before and after this, and it would still be a great verse to focus on. Prayer is a foundational element of the Christian life. I think all of us could do well to devote ourselves to prayer.

However, I don’t think, that when Paul wrote this, that he intended it to be a ‘stand-alone’ verse. It’s not just a general statement that he threw in there to say “And by the way, Christians should pray. It’s a good thing. You should do it.” No, he’s more intentional. He’s got an agenda in mind. He’s not just throwing in random bits of good advice – he’s still talking about how we are to represent Christ to the people around us. Look at the next couple of verses…

Pray for us, too, that God will give us many opportunities to speak about his mysterious plan concerning Christ. That is why I am here in chains. 4 Pray that I will proclaim this message as clearly as I should.
Colossians 4:3-4

You see, this is the kind of praying that Paul is talking about here: Praying for opportunities to speak to people about Christ and then praying that he would make the message clear when those opportunities come. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but it seems to me that if Paul wanted them to pray that way for him, wouldn’t he want them to pray that way for themselves too?

I mean, sure, Paul had dedicated his life to sharing the Gospel. He was a professional missionary. Certainly, it makes sense that people would pray that he would have opportunities to share the Gospel and that He would share it clearly.

But shouldn’t we pray that same way for all of us too? Shouldn’t that be how we pray here in our church and in our homes? Praying that God would give us opportunities to share His message with the people around us? Absolutely!

Sometimes I think we limit the scope of our prayers to just “keep my loved ones safe and healthy”, don’t we? Especially when we meet together as a church. The most common prayer requests we get are either “keep us safe as we travel” or “pray for my sick relative”. And there is certainly nothing wrong with that. God wants us to bring all our concerns to Him – including our traveling and our health. But should we not also be concerned about the people around us that don’t know Jesus as their Saviour? The neighbors and friends and relatives that need to hear how much God loves them and how He died in their place so that they could have life! Absolutely we should be concerned!

We’ve got to pray that God would open doors and give us opportunities to share the good news of Jesus Christ with them. But of course with that, if we pray that God would send us opportunities, then we’d better be watching for those opportunities to come.

Look again at verse 2 – and I like how the NIV puts it: In that version it reads…

“Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.” Colossians 4:2 NIV

We need to be watchful (and thankful) for the opportunities that God brings us. Too often I think we pray and then forget to watch for the answer.

Over the years I’ve had lots of conversations with a friend of mine about a lot of topics. And in those conversations there have been opportunities for me to share about Christ – about what God has done in my life and and what I know God wants to do in his life. And sometimes I’ve taken those opportunities – but I know sometimes I’ve missed them. I go home after talking with him and I realize – “I could have said this – God set up the opportunity, but I missed it.”

We need to be watchful for the opportunities that God brings us to share the message of Christ with the people around us. Now of course, that doesn’t mean that we need to launch into a full 45 minute sermon whenever we meet someone in the grocery store. Look at verses 5 & 6…

“Live wisely among those who are not believers, and make the most of every opportunity. 6 Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone.”
Colossians 4:5-6

I’m not sure that a 45 minute sermon in the grocery store would be gracious and attractive. I’m not sure that would be living wisely among those who are not believers. I mean, perhaps in the right situation it could be, but that’s probably not the norm.

So what DO we do? When God brings us these opportunities, how do we share the message of Jesus in a gracious, attractive way? How do we share with the people around us – our friends, neighbors, and relatives – how God has changed our lives? How God has forgiven us and made us right with Himself? How God has been working in our lives to get rid of the sinful junk that causes us so much pain and misery and instead, how God has been replacing that stuff with things like joy, peace, goodness, love?

How do we share all that in way that is gracious and attractive? How do we make the most of the opportunities that God sends us?

Well, let’s look at that verse 6 in a different light for a minute. The NIV puts it this way:

“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” Colossians 4:6

Hmmm. Seasoned with salt. Isn’t that interesting? What’s the purpose of seasoning something with salt? Salt brings out the flavor, doesn’t it? French fries without salt would be pretty bland – wouldn’t they? The intensely satisfying flavor in bacon comes from it sitting in salt as it’s made into bacon. Same thing with pickles – they soak in salt. Salt is also a key ingredient of cheese. It seems that many of the most delicious foods on the planet can only be created by using salt.

So the idea here is, what salt does for food, we do for our conversations we have with the people around us. We bring a little bit of Christ into the conversation. We enhance the conversation with a little encourage, a little joy, a little hope. We offer them a taste of how good God is. We share how God has been working in our lives and maybe how we can see God working in theirs. That’s seasoning your conversation with salt.

But you have to be careful with salt too. Too much salt is not only unhealthy – but it can make good food inedible. At our house, occasionally we have salt and pepper shakers on the table and when our kids see us sprinkle some salt on our food, they want to do the same. But of course, they think – if a little is good, a lot must be better and so they don’t sprinkle – they pour it on. And everything gets covered with salt. And of course, that ruins the food – you can’t eat it. It’s too salty.

The key to salt is to use just the right amount. Too little and it tastes bland – too much and its inedible. And I think this the idea that Paul is trying to convey in these verses.

We need to season our conversations with salt – not too much, not too little. That 45 minute sermon in the grocery store – that’s probably too much salt. That’s not going to leave a good taste in people’s mouths. That’s not going to make you or your Jesus attractive to them. In fact, you’ll probably accomplish the opposite.

But on the other hand, saying nothing about Christ – you say nothing about the relationship you have with the Creator of the Universe, you say nothing about what God has done in your life – then you’re no different from anyone else they meet. You’re just another bland person who has nothing to offer them.

We must….

“Live wisely among those who are not believers, and make the most of every opportunity. 6 Let your conversation be gracious and attractive [seasoned with salt] so that you will have the right response for everyone.”
Colossians 4:5-6

You know, another attribute of salt is that it makes you thirsty. If you sit down in front of the tv with a bag of potato chips, before long you’re going to want that glass of Pepsi, right? Or if you’re a little more healthy minded, a glass of orange juice. Or if you’re really healthy minded – a glass of water (but if that’s the case, you’re probably not eating potato chips in front of the tv in the first place…) But regardless… salt makes you thirsty.

And when we season our conversations with salt (not too much, and not too little), when we share snippets of what God is doing in our life, when they begin to see the joy and the peace and the hope we have because of Jesus Christ, they’re going to get thirsty. They’re going to want what we have. They’re going to want to experience those same things too.

And that is exactly the point.

The whole point of us being representatives of Christ, of praying and watching for opportunities, of seasoning our conversations with salt, is so that the people around us – whether they be our spouse, our kids, our parents, our employers, our employees, our neighbors, our relatives, our friends, or just some guy we meet in the grocery store – whoever they are – the point of all that is so they can know that there is a God in heaven who made them, who loves them like crazy, who wants to forgive them and give them new, abundant, eternal life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

That’s the point. That’s why we do this. So here’s my challenge for you this morning:

What I’d like you to do is this: if you believe that the abundant life that God has given you is worth so much that you’d like to share with someone else, then I want you to write down the name of a person you know, who – at this point – has not yet accept that gift of abundant life from God.

And I want you to begin praying daily for that person. And I want you to start watching for the opportunities that God will bring for you to have a salty conversation with that person. Be ready to bring a little bit of Christ into the conversation. Be ready to enhance the conversation with a little encourage, a little joy, a little hope. Offer them a taste of how good God is. Let them know what God has done for you and what He can do for them.

And when you’ve done that, keep on praying for them. Ask God to bless their socks off so that they can taste and see how good God is.

And maybe if  you’ve never accepted God’s gift of abundant life – maybe you never even knew such a thing existed until today. And maybe you don’t really understand what it’s all about, and all this stuff I’ve been talking about  seems a little weird and unusual… But if I’ve piqued your curiosity and you want to know more about this God who loves you like crazy and this abundant life that He offers you freely, drop me an email on my contact page. I’d love to have a salty conversation with you and tell you what Christ has done in my life and how He can do the same in yours.

Paul has addressed all of these questions and more in this short little letter to the church in Colossae. So I hope that over these past few weeks, you’ve really been encouraged and spurred on in your own walk with Christ and that you’ve been able to apply some of these principles that we’ve been learning. I know that I sure have.

Now these last couple of weeks, our focus has been on our new nature. That is, the new desires of our heart that we get when Christ comes to dwell within us. It’s our desire to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit and to please God – instead of following our old sinful nature which just wants to please ourselves.

We read two weeks ago how Paul says to “strip off our old sinful nature”, and to “put on“ or “cloth ourselves” with our new nature. And we do that by keeping our focus on Jesus – by setting our sights on the realities of heaven – not getting caught up in the things of this world.

Then last week we dug into that a little deeper and we identified some practical ways to do that. We talked about following the leading of the Holy Spirit every moment of every day – and how, by filling our minds with God’s Word, by teaching and counseling each other with the wisdom God gives, and by worshipping God with a thankful heart – we can actually hear what the Holy Spirit is saying so we can follow Him and walk in our new nature, close to God continuously.

And it’s this idea of continuously walking in our new nature that springboards us into our passage this morning.

We ended last week in mid-paragraph. I’m not sure how your Bible has all the verses divided up on the page, but I think in all of the Bibles that I’ve seen, verses 16 & 17 of Colossians 3 are always lumped together. In fact many Bibles lump together everything from verse 12 to 17 into one paragraph.

But you might have noticed that we stopped last week at verse 16 – without including verse 17. Now, why did we do that? Well, let’s read through our passage this morning and I’ll see if I can explain my thinking: Start at verse 17 and we’ll go down to the first verse of chapter 4.

“And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father. 18 Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting for those who belong to the Lord.
 19 Husbands, love your wives and never treat them harshly.
 20 Children, always obey your parents, for this pleases the Lord. 21 Fathers, do not aggravate your children, or they will become discouraged.
 22 Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything you do. Try to please them all the time, not just when they are watching you. Serve them sincerely because of your reverent fear of the Lord. 23 Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. 24 Remember that the Lord will give you an inheritance as your reward, and that the Master you are serving is Christ. 25 But if you do what is wrong, you will be paid back for the wrong you have done. For God has no favorites. 1 Masters, be just and fair to your slaves. Remember that you also have a Master—in heaven.

Colossians 3:17 – 4:1

Now in my mind, when I read through that, it sure seems to be a hodgepodge of instructions. It’s like the misc section – a little of this, a little of that, a little of something else. It’s like reading through some of the Proverbs – it seems to be just random bits of good advice.

But actually, I think it’s that verse 17 that gives it all a common theme. It’s like a bridge between everything Paul just told us about our new nature and all these seemingly random bits of good advice. So let’s look at verse 17.

And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.
Colossians 3:17

Paul’s telling us, that since we are living in our new nature – since we’re following the leading of the Holy Spirit in every moment of every day – everything we do will be a reflection of God. Everything we do or say, we do it all as a representative of the Lord Jesus. It’s like we’re His ambassadors. We speak and act on behalf of our King. Whatever Jesus would do – that’s what we’re doing.

And so to give us some concrete examples of this, Paul goes through some of the different relationships we have in life: Husbands and wives – how can we represent Jesus in our marriage? Parents & Children – how can we reflect Christ in our families? Slaves & Masters – how can we be ambassadors of our King in our workplace? The idea here is that no matter what position we find ourselves in, (whether we are a husband or a wife, a child or a parent, a slave or a master) everything we do or say should be a reflection of our God. So let’s go through those different examples this morning.

Paul starts with husbands and wives. He says in verse 18 & 19.

“Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting for those who belong to the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and never treat them harshly.” Colossians 3:18-19

Now honestly, quite often these verses can be a hot button topic – people tend to cringe whenever they hear these verses. But that’s because our culture has so twisted its meaning into something that the Bible never intended. You see, Paul’s not being chauvinistic. He’s simply instructing husbands and wives to take on the attitude of Jesus Christ and apply it to their marriage relationship. We are to represent Christ even to our spouse.

That means, Husbands – you need to love your wife like Christ loves you. And wives, you need to submit to your husband like Christ submits to God.

And if you need some examples to follow, husbands – look at Romans 5:8. Here’s how Christ loves you.

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8

When we were still God’s enemies, He loved us so much that He died for us. That’s some kind of love – and that’s the kind of love that we need to have for our wives.

It’s pretty easy to love our wives most of the time. When they’re thoughtful, and pleasant, when they make you supper and say how wonderful you are – it’s easy to love your wife. But what happens in those times when they aren’t so perfect? (And I know that doesn’t happen often – but on the rare occasion when they’re not) – when they get short tempered, when they treat you unkindly, when they make unreasonable demands of you, when they ignore your needs… Do you still unconditionally demonstrate your love to your wife? Do you continue to serve her? Do you continue take care of her needs? Do you continue to cherish her? That’s how Christ loves you.

And wives, here’s how Christ submits to God.

“You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. 6 Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to.  7 Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, 8 he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.” Philippians 2:5-8

We talked a few weeks ago how Jesus Christ was indeed God – the Creator of the Universe. He didn’t have to submit to anyone. Yet because of His love for us, He gave up his divine privileges to become a frail human being and He humbled Himself in obedience to God and He died on a cross in our place.

This is the same attitude you wives must have towards your husbands. You may very well be as capable or even more capable than your husband at many things. And you are certainly no less important or no less valuable.

But in your role as a wife, God has called you to love you husband by submitting to His leadership. I found a good definition of submission on the internet.

“Submission is the divine calling of a wife to honor and affirm her husband’s leadership and help carry it through according to her gifts.”

This is God’s design – and it works really good. When husbands unconditionally love their wives – its easy for the wives to submit to the leadership of their husbands. And when wives submit to the leadership of their husbands, it easy for the husbands to unconditionally love their wives.

And I know there is a lot more than could be said on this topic, but I think we’ll save that perhaps for one of our upcoming Growth Groups – so watch for that in the future. But for now, I want to go back to our main point – and that is being a representative of Jesus in everything we say or do. Husbands – show the love of Christ to everyone around you – including your wife – by loving your wife as Christ loves you. Wives – show the love of Christ to everyone around you – including your husband – by submitting to your husband as Christ submitted Himself out of love for you.

The next set of relationships that Paul talks about in this passage is the parent/child relationship. How can we reflect Christ in our families?

 20 “Children, always obey your parents, for this pleases the Lord. 21 Fathers, do not aggravate your children, or they will become discouraged.”
Colossians 3:20-21

Ok, so let’s start with the children. What was Christ’s attitude when it came to obeying His Father? Well, we already read the passage in Philippians about how Jesus humbled Himself in obedience to God when He died on the cross. In fact, there is a verse in Luke that pretty much shows us the same thing. This is while Jesus was praying just before He was arrested and crucified.

“Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” Luke 22:42

Jesus was not looking forward to what He was about to go through. To say the least, it was not going to be a pleasant experience. But Jesus was still willing to obey His Father. Jesus wasn’t obeying because He had to – it was a willing obedience. He said “Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” And children, teens, or grown ups still living with your parents – this is the kind of attitude that you are to have towards your parents. A willing obedience. Not a reluctant obedience or a grudging obedience. But a willing obedience.

My brothers & I all love the Calvin & Hobbes comic strips – I don’t know if you guys read those anymore. We’ve got the whole collection of books. And in one of the books that we have, Calvin has this little poetic saying:

“Mom and Dad can make the rules and certain things forbid – but I can make them wish that they had never had a kid.”

That’s not the attitude that reflects Christ. We need to have an attitude of willing obedience. Obeying your parents – not because you have to, but because you want to. Because you recognize that God has put them in authority over you. Because you recognize that they love you and want the best for you. That’s the attitude that reflects Christ.

And on the flip side of that, Paul also address the fathers. He says…

“Fathers, do not aggravate your children, or they will become discouraged.”
Colossians 3:21

The King James version says “Provoke not your children to anger.” But you know, even as good Christian dads, sometimes I think we do. Now I’m not talking about being abusive – clearly that goes completely against the character of Christ. That goes without saying.

But I think sometimes in more subtle ways, we provoke our children – we aggravate them. Not on purpose, but in our moments of thoughtlessness, it happens. Let me give you a few examples of what I mean:

One way we can aggravate our children is by having double standards. Where we tell them not to do something, but we go ahead and do it ourselves. Maybe we punish them for bad-mouthing a teacher, but at the dinner table, they hear us bad-mouth the leaders of our government. Or maybe we’re always telling them to share their toys, but we don’t let anybody touch our stuff. Simple things like that, things that we don’t even think about, can be aggravating to our children.

Another way we might aggravate our kids is with broken promises. “Dad, you said you’d play with me after supper.” “Well yeah, but I’m really tired – maybe another time.” That’s discouraging stuff for a kid. I guarantee that kid slowly walks away with a wounded heart.

Or how about criticism without encouragement? Dads have a reputation for making sure their kids know what they did wrong – but its a lot less common that we tell them what they did right. Certainly, our kids need discipline and correction, but along with that, they need encouragement too. Without that encouragement, it is so easy for them to lose heart.

Are you staring to get the picture? Fathers, do not aggravate your children. After all, you are the #1 influence of your child’s view of God. What they think about you, that’s what they think about their Heavenly Father.

So how well are you representing God to your kids? If you aggravate them in these ways – by having double standards, breaking your promises, always being critical, being unreliable, being unfair, being absent – living like that tells your kids that their Heavenly Father is like that too. That’s sure not the picture I want to paint for my kids.

I want my kids to know that their Heavenly Father is always there for them – He’s never too busy. He’s always gracious and kind. He’s always forgiving – no matter what the offense. What He says is absolute – He doesn’t change His mind just because it’s inconvenient. I want them to know that they count on their Heaven Father.

You all probably know the passage in 1 Corinthians 13 – the “Love chapter”. I was looking at a couple of those verses this week and I wondered if my kids could take out that word “love” and put in “My Dad.” Could your kids read it like this: (Put in “My Dad” instead of “love”)

 4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Isn’t that what you want your kids to say about you? How well are you representing Christ to your kids? Remember, whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus.

The last set of relationships that Paul talks about in this passage is the slave/master relationship. He says in verse 22.

Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything you do. Try to please them all the time, not just when they are watching you. Serve them sincerely because of your reverent fear of the Lord. 23 Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.
Colossians 3:22-23

Now I don’t think any of us are slaves in the way that Paul was thinking when he wrote this, but certainly all of us at one time have worked for someone else – so I think this applies well to us. And its the same principle here that we’ve been looking at all morning. Whatever do we or say, including how we work, we do it as representatives of Christ.

Imagine for a minute what kind of a worker Jesus would have been. By trade, Jesus was a carpenter. Now I don’t know if that meant He built houses or fine furniture or whatever, but we can be pretty sure that He would have spent several years working for other people.

So what kind of worker would he have been? Would he show up at work late – and go home early? Would he cut corners and cover up mistakes instead of fixing them? Would he charge for hours he didn’t work or take extended lunch-breaks? Would he spend his lunch hour griping about his boss? Would He sluff off whenever the boss wasn’t looking?

Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous – Jesus would never do that. So neither should we. We need to represent our Lord well at our workplace. You might be the only “Jesus” your co-workers ever see. So we’d better paint an accurate picture.

And masters or bosses, foremen, managers – whatever term you want to us – the same principle applies to you.

“Masters, be just and fair to your slaves. Remember that you also have a Master—in heaven.” Colossians 4:1

Think about all the blessings that our Master in heaven has poured out on us. Think the undeserved favor we have. How kind and gracious and generous is our Master! Should we not reflect that – even in our business dealings?

“And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.” Colossians 3:17

Let us be good and accurate ambassadors of our King. Let us represent Him well. Whether we are husbands or wives, children or parents, slaves or masters – whatever position you find yourself – you are the representative of Christ. Let’s represent Him well.

Last week we talked about the battle between our two natures. We have our old sinful nature that just wants to please me – and we have our new Christ-like nature that wants to please God. And these two natures are constantly in conflict with each other. We always have this struggle between doing what I want – and doing what God wants. And this battle is the reason that so many Christians feel defeated. Time and time again, they really want to do what is right, but they inevitably do what is wrong. So they feel like failures.

But Paul tell us that we don’t have to live that way. We don’t have to follow our sinful nature. Through the power of Jesus Christ who lives within us, we can strip off our old sinful nature and put on our new Christ-like nature. We looked at Colossians 3:10 last week…

“Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him.” Colossians 3:10

And so that’s where we want to pick up this discussion this morning. How do we put on our new nature? Is it something we do or is it something God does? And what exactly does our new nature look like? How will our lives change as we start following our new nature? There’s all kinds of questions – and hopefully our passage today will provide us with some answers.

We begin this morning in Colossians 3 – verse 12. Paul writes…

12 Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. 13 Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.14 Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful.
Colossians 3:12-15

Now in that verse 10 that we looked at last week, Paul tells us to “put on our new nature” and here in these verses, Paul tells us exactly what he’s talking about. He gives us this list of things that we are to “clothe” ourselves with. These are characteristics of our new nature. This is what we “put on” – mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, love, peace, and thankfulness.

Paul wants us to put these things on – like we would a coat or a shirt. You see, Paul is using the image of clothing to talk about our two natures. This old sinful nature that we have is kinda like my old hoody. It’s old, worn out – getting ragged at the edge – its got holes, stains, and patch jobs. But I like to wear it. I’ve spent a lot of time wearing this hoody. It’s comfortable. It’s familiar.

And isn’t that like our old sinful nature? We like to wear it. It’s familiar. It’s comfortable. Right? When we are faced with a tough choice between following our sinful nature or doing what’s right, it’s always easier to give into our sinful nature. Sin is always easier. It always offers a more immediate satisfaction. Sin is the comfortable default.

The problem is… sin is death. It always bites us. It always has consequences and regrets. Sure, it’s comfortable now – but it always comes with a lot of pain later.

So Paul says get rid of that old hoodie – its junk. It’s no good. That’s not you any more. God’s given you a new nature – so get rid of the junk and put on the new.

Remember how we read last week to “strip off” our old sinful nature? Back in verses 5,8-9….

So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires. Don’t be greedy, for a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world. …Now is the time to get rid of anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander, and dirty language. 9 Don’t lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds.
Colossians 3:5, 8-9

This stuff is garbage and we know it. So Paul tells us to strip all this junk off, and put the good stuff on.

So instead of all that junk, we “cloth ourselves” instead – with mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, love, peace, and thankfulness.

We put on our new nature. We begin to get to know God and become like Him. And its great – we get to live without guilt – we feel good inside – we have peace and joy… But the problem comes when, before too long, we look down at that old sinful nature crumpled up on the floor and we remember how comfy it was. We forget what a piece of junk it really is, and we pick it up and try to put it back on.  In fact, we try to put on both natures at the same time – and we find that it doesn’t work very well. It’s a bit of a struggle.

And I think this is the state that many Christians live their lives in. They’re trying to wear both natures at the same time – and it’s not really working so good. They want to please God – but they keep giving in to their old sinful nature. So what do we do? How do we keep that old nature off, and keep our new nature on? Because I don’t know about you – but I’m tired of wearing this old nature. I’m tired of getting sucked back into doing those things that I don’t want to do. So how do we do it?

We talked a little bit about this last week, and the solution that Paul gave us at the beginning of chapter 3 was to keep our eyes on Jesus – to focus on the realities of heaven. So this morning I want to dig into that a little bit more. I want to know what I can do to keep my focus on Jesus so that I can always go around wearing my new nature – instead of my old.

Now one of the things that I noticed when I was reading through this chapter in Colossians, is that it was very similar to another passage in Galatians. Let’s flip over to Galatians chapter 5 for a minute – starting at verse 19.

When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, 20 idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, 21 envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

That’s pretty much the same list of things that Paul told us to strip off in our Colossians passage, right? Let’s read a little further…

 22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

Again, a very similar list to the things that Paul says we are to “cloth ourselves” with. This is what we want to be like. Now let’s read just two more verses…

 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there. 25 Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives.
Galatians 5:19-25

And that there is the phrase of the day. This the key to keeping our focus on Jesus – By following the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives.

Did you know that the Holy Spirit wants to lead you in every part of your life? Not just the big decisions of where to live, who to marry, what job to take and all those other ‘big decision’. The Holy Spirit wants to lead you in every part of your life. He wants to guide you in what you say to your spouse at the breakfast table. He wants to guide your thoughts as you drive to work. He wants to guide your conversation when you meet with your banker or your insurance agent. He even wants to guide you as you play with your kids before bed.

The Holy Spirit wants to lead us in every part of our lives – our job is simply to follow Him every moment of every day. And if we consistently do that, we’ll find that we’ll be consistently putting on our new nature – and leaving our old nature off.

Let me say that again, because this is what I want you to take home today: If we consistently follow the leading of the Holy Spirit every moment of every day, we will be consistently putting on our new nature – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. As a result, our old nature will begin to lose it’s grip on us and we will consistently walk in close fellowship with God. The key is to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.

And I know that’s not always easy. In fact, it’s almost never easy. We already talked about how sin is the comfortable default. Sin is easy – following the Holy Spirit is not.

And what makes it even more difficult for us today is that our culture has made it very difficult to even hear the Holy Spirit – let alone follow Him. How can we follow His leading if can’t we hear what He’s saying or see what He’s doing?

Our culture has us so busy every moment of every day. Culture tells us that successful people are frantically busy people. We’re always plugged in to our ipods or our iphones. We’re texting or browsing or something every moment of every day. We’re running to meetings, going to events, serving on committees, and doing all kinds of good things. But how, in the midst of all that, can we hear what the Holy Spirit is saying to us? How can He lead us in every part of our lives if we’re not listening to Him?

Now that’s not to say that all that stuff is bad, but I fear that we tend to fill our lives up so much – with so much stuff and so much activity and so much busyness – that we don’t leave any room or any time to listen to the Holy Spirit and let Him can lead us.

Go back to our passage in Colossians. Look at verse 16:

Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives. Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives. Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts.
Colossians 3:16

Paul tells us to fill our lives with the message of Christ. Not with meetings or events or other good things – but with the message about Christ and all it’s richness. So the question for us is: what’s your life filled with? Is it filled with the busyness and the activity and the distractions of life – or is it filled with the message of Christ in all its richness?

You know, even as a pastor, I find that my life gets filled up with the busyness and the activity and the distractions of life very easily. Most of it is church related stuff. But I have to continually make time (not find time, cuz it won’t be there, but make time) to listen to the Holy Spirit. To spend time with God. To let the message of Christ fill my life. To allow others to teach and counsel me with all the wisdom God has given them. To sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God with a thankful heart.

These are all ways that we can hear and be led by the Holy Spirit. In fact, let’s go through these one at time to see some practical ways of how we can live like this. The first part of that verse says…

To let the message of Christ in all its richness fill your life.

It seems to me that that if we are going to fill our lives with the message of Christ, a really good first step would be to read God’s Word. God has given us this book, called the Bible, that is filled with information about Him. It tell us what what He’s like and what He’s done – and what He’s going to do and what He wants you to do. As we fill out minds with the truths of Scripture, the Holy Spirit can use that information to communicate specific things to us at specific times. When we are faced with certain situations, quite often the Holy Spirit will bring to mind passages of Scripture that fit our situation perfectly. But He can’t do that if we don’t have those passages in our minds. So we need to fill our lives with the message of Christ! We need to read His Word. Memorize it. Meditate on it.

And by the way, meditation is not a new-agey thing where you sit cross-legged on the floor and go “aaohm”. Meditation is more like regurgitation. It’s like a cow chewing on it’s cud. You know how that works – cow eats the grass, swallows it into one of it’s stomachs… later it brings it up and chews on it some more. Then it swallows it and does it all again.

We need to do that with the Scripture we read. Read a passage before breakfast, and then sometime mid-morning, bring it up again. Remember it. Or re-read it. Think about what it means. Then we do it all again later. Not only does that help you understand it, but it makes it readily available to the Holy Spirit when He wants to communicate with you.

I find that this is one of the greatest benefits of writing sermons. All week long I get to meditate and regurgitate a passage of Scripture as I try to understand it and then prepare to explain it to you on Sunday. This get’s God’s Word stuck in my mind so that the Holy Spirit can use those verses to speak to me. So maybe you want to start writing sermons as part of your daily routine – it might be a real benefit to you! (But I’ll leave that to you.)

Anyway, the second part of that verse is to “Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives.”

We need the input of our fellow believers. God uses people to communicate to us – to guide us and lead us. Some of that we are doing right now – as you listen to me explain these Scriptures. The Holy Spirit is communicating to you as you listen to me. But don’t stop with that. Twenty minutes a week is not enough. We need to spend time throughout the week – several times if possible – talking and listening to other people too. Find out what God is teaching them. Maybe study some Scripture together.

Probably the two greatest means of spiritual growth in my life has been through either being mentored by someone or by being a part of a small group. That’s where I’ve experienced my greatest spiritual growth. So this teaching and counseling that we receive from one another is really key to our spiritual well-being.

So I encourage you, teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom He gives. Start meeting with someone regularly to study God’s Word and pray together. Be part of a small group. Start a small group. But get some people in your life that the Holy Spirit can use to speak to you.

And the last part of that verse says to “Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts.” In other words, worship Him. And I know that worship is more than just singing songs, but for whatever reason, God seems to really like it when we make a joyful noise to Him with thankful hearts.

There is something about pouring our hearts out to God in song – I guess it’s like a deep heart-felt prayer. But when we do that, when we’re communicating our worship to God, very often God uses that time to communicate back to us. Prayer and worship is not just about us talking to God – but it’s also about stopping and taking time to listen to Him as well.

So we need to do that. And not just here at church. It’s great that we have great music team and its great that we have a crowd of other people to sing with us – but we don’t need all that. You can sing to God from your heart in the shower… In your tractor… In your car…. Along to a CD… whatever. Don’t just wait for Sundays. Sing those psalms and hymns and spiritual songs all week long. Pour out our heart to God and then listen for what He has to say to you.

And you know what happens? As you focus on Jesus throughout your week – throughout your day… throughout each hour… As you fill your mind with the truths of Scripture – remembering them… meditating on them…. regurgitating them… As you meet together with others and spend time learning from each other. And as you make those joyful noises to the Lord throughout your day, pouring out your heart with great thankfulness to Him… Do you know what will happen?

You will hear the Holy Spirit. Probably not audibly – but you’ll hear Him – but you’ll know what He wants you to do. He’ll speak to you through the Scriptures. He’ll speak to you through the people around you. He’ll speak to you as you worship Him. You’ll be able to follow where He leads. You’ll be able to put on that new nature and leave your old nature nailed to the cross. You’ll be able to consistently walk in close relationship with you Creator.

I can’t speak for you, but I know that’s what I want. That’s the kind of life I want to live.

We ended last week on the theme of having a relationship with God. And of course, that leads to the question: How? And not “How do we begin a relationship with God?” – we’ve talked about that already. It begins by confessing with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believing in your heart that God raised Him from the dead. That’s how we start our relationship with God – But the question I want to talk about today is, how do we live in continuing, close relationship with God? What do we do? What does God do? How does it all work together? What is life together with God supposed to look like?

I don’t know if you’re like me – but I struggle with this. It is difficult for me to understand how exactly to experience a continuing, close relationship with God. And maybe that surprises you, but I’m just being honest. I don’t have it all figured out – but I’m learning.

And one of the greatest privileges I have as your pastor is to be able to stand in front of you week after week and share with you the lessons that I’ve been learning. That’s not to say that I’ve mastered it all. In fact, if you hear me preach on the same topic several times, it’s probably because God hasn’t got through to me yet. But I’m learning, and I’d love to have you learn with me.

Today we begin chapter three of Colossians. You might have noticed that we skipped a few verses in chapter two and we’ll probably skip some in chapter four as well – but that’s certainly not to say they aren’t important. In fact, there is some really good stuff in there that I’d encourage you to read through and study sometime this week. But for the purpose of our study this morning, let’s start in chapter 3 – verse 1. We’ll read our entire passage and then we’ll work through it bit by bit.

“Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. 2 Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. 3 For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 And when Christ, who is your life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory.”

So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires. Don’t be greedy, for a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world. 6 Because of these sins, the anger of God is coming. 7 You used to do these things when your life was still part of this world. 8 But now is the time to get rid of anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander, and dirty language. 9 Don’t lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds. 10 Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. 11 In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us.”
Colossians 3:1-11

That’s a pretty full passage, isn’t it? Now this might seem like an odd way to go about it, but I’d actually like to start in the middle of this passage. Let’s jump back and re-read verses 6-9.

“So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires. Don’t be greedy, for a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world. 6 Because of these sins, the anger of God is coming. 7 You used to do these things when your life was still part of this world. 8 But now is the time to get rid of anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander, and dirty language. 9 Don’t lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds.”
Colossians 3:6-9

Now when I read that, my first reaction is “Well, that’s a lot easier said than done.” I would love to put to death all the sinful, earthly things lurking within me. I would love to strip off my old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds and be totally done with sin! I would love to never have to deal with that junk again! But that just doesn’t seem possible. At least – not this side of heaven.

It seems no matter what I do, a bit of that sinful nature stays within me. I can’t shake it. It stays alive and sticks to me. Maybe you’ve got that problem too. No matter how hard you try to stop doing wrong things – you still end up doing them. And it seems that Paul – the very guy who wrote these instructions – had the same problem. In Romans 7 Paul tells us about his continuing struggle with sin.

“I want to do what is right, but I can’t. 19 I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.

I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. 22 I love God’s law with all my heart. 23 But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me.”
Romans 7:18-19, 21-23

So what’s the deal? On one hand, Paul tells us “strip off your sinful nature – put it to death” – but yet on the other hand he tells us that he, Himself, still struggles with sin. So is Paul sending us mixed messages or what?

No, I don’t think He is.

Let’s jump back to last week’s message for a minute. Remember what we read in Colossians 2:6-7?

“And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. 7 Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.”
Colossians 2:6-7

Christianity is not about a one-time event where you ask Jesus into your heart and whamo! Everything is right again. Now of course, forgiveness is instant and being made right with God is instant. But developing a relationship with God takes time. Becoming like Christ is a process. We have to continue follow Him. We have to continue to grow in Him. We have to continue to be built on Him. It’s a process.

So when Paul tells us that we are to put to death the sinful, earthly things that lurk within us – he means we have to do that continually. We have to strip off our sinful nature continually. It’s not a one-time event. The fact is, that even though Jesus has defeated sin and it has no more power over us, it’s still going to continue to fight with us until we reach heaven.

I’m reminded of what God said to Cain just before he murdered his brother Abel. You might remember the story how God accepted Abel’s sacrifice but he rejected Cain’s. And this made Cain very angry with his brother. But God said to Cain…

“Sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” Genesis 4:7

That’s us too. Sin is always crouching at your door. It desires to have you. But we must rule over it. But of course, that just takes us back to our original question. How? How do we rule over our sinful natures? How do we put it to death? How do we strip it off?

Well, Paul gives us the answer for that too. Go back to Romans 7 where Paul is explaining his struggle with sin – we cut him off earlier and didn’t let him finish his thought. So let’s read just a little further. After saying how he keeps doing what He doesn’t want to do, he says…

24 Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? 25 Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Romans 7:24-25

Paul hits the nail right on the head. The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. Let’s look again at our Colossians passage. We looked at the middle of our passage before – let’s now look at the end. Starting at verse 10 of Colossians 3.

“Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. 11 In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us.”
Colossians 3:10-11

Because we have Christ Jesus living within us – the very same Jesus Christ who defeated sin and death by dying on the cross and rising again from the grave – we too, can have victory over sin.

When we accept Christ as our Saviour and Christ comes to live within us, He gives us a new nature – a Christ-like nature. This new nature is completely contrary to our old nature. The old nature is sinful, selfish – and wants to please only itself. But our new nature wants to please God and become like Him.

So as you can imagine, (and as you’ve probably experienced) this creates a huge battle within us – with both natures fighting against each other. On one hand, we really want to please God – but on the other hand – we really want to please ourselves. On one hand we want to be honorable and good, but on the other hand, we just want to be selfish. Isn’t that true?

You see, this is the battle that each of us face every day. Do we follow our old, selfish, sinful nature – or do we follow our new Christ-like nature?

And this takes us right back to our original question of the day. We asked, how do we experience a continuing, close relationship with God? Well, the answer to that is: by continually following our new nature. We experience a close relationship with God when we, as Paul says in verse 10, “put on our new nature, and we are renewed as we learn to know our Creator and become like him.”

You see, the outcome of this every day battle, between our old nature and our new nature, is exactly what will determine whether we’re walking close to God – or walking away from Him. A person that enjoys a close relationship with God is a person who is following their new nature. A person who’s relationship with God is growing more and more distant – is a person who is following their old nature. That’s how it works.

So if, when you look at your life, you see that your relationship with God has been growing distant over the past days, weeks, or years – that’s a warning signal. That tells you that you’ve been following your old sinful nature, instead of your new Christ-like one.

But the good news is this: It does have to stay that way. You can change that in a flash. It really is just a matter of your decision to strip off the old, and put on the new. Remember, the same power that defeated sin at the cross now lives within you. That same power is available to you to conquer your sinful nature.

Now I don’t mean to make this sound easy – because I know it isn’t. It’s straightforward – But it’s not easy. Our sinful nature is not about to roll over and die without a fight. But we can beat it. We can live in victory over our sinful nature. We can walk in close, continuous relationship with God. And Paul gives us some advice on just how to do that.

Go right back to the beginning of our passage.

“Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. 2 Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth.” Colossians 3:1-2

When I was talking driver’s ed, back when I was 16 – I learned a valuable lesson that I remember even today. My driving instructor told me that our vehicle follows our eyes. That is to say, we will steer toward whatever we are looking at. For example, if we are gawking out our window at the accident on the side of the road, we tend to steer towards that accident. At night time, when you’re blinded by the oncoming headlights, my instructor told me to look at the white line on the side of the road – and not at the headlights – because if you look at the headlights, you tend to steer towards them and risk a head-on collision. But if you look at the white line, to tend to stay on your side of the road. We tend to follow our eyes.

This is the principle that Paul is applying here. He says “Set your sights on the realities of heaven.” Focus on Jesus. Think about the things of heaven – not the things of earth. Why? Because we tend to follow our eyes. We steer towards whatever we are looking at. We follow our focus.

So if we’re focused on ourselves – on our needs and our wants and our desires – what direction are we going to go? Which nature are we going to follow? It’s going to be that old sinful, selfish nature, isn’t it?

But if we are focused on Jesus – on the realities of heaven – on what God wants, what God desires – what direction are we going to go then? Which nature will we follow? Our new Christ-like nature, right?

There’s a passage in Hebrews that says very much the same thing.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. 2 We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.” Hebrews 12:1-2

We have to keep looking towards our goal. We have to keep our eyes on Jesus. That is how we win the race. That is how we live in our new nature. That is how we walk in a continuous, close relationship with God – By keeping our eyes on Jesus – By setting our sights on the realities of heaven.

So where have you set your sights? Where is your focus? Do you spend your time thinking about and working towards the things of earth – things that are here today and gone tomorrow? Or do you spend your time thinking about and working towards the realities of heaven – things that will last forever?

Do you get caught up thinking about how you can be more like Christ – how you can make a bigger impact on the people around you for eternity? Or do you simply think about making those extra dollars to buy those extra toys?

Do you scheme and plan how you can advance the kingdom of God in your community – or do you scheme and plan how to advance your career or your social status?

When you get together with your friends, do you celebrate the amazing things that God has been doing in your lives – or do you simply celebrate the fact that a big guy on skates slapped a puck into the net last night?

Where is your focus? Where have you set your sights?

“Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand.”

Well, yes. Accepting Christ as our Saviour does mean that we are saved, that we’ve been forgiven, and that we have the hope of eternal life. But what does that really mean? I mean, how does that affect your life right now? What difference does it make? Is Christianity merely a ‘get out of jail free’ card for when you die? Is it just a ticket to heaven? Is the Christian life about collecting heavenly airmiles by our good behavior so we can cash them in for a bigger mansion when we get to heaven? Is that what Christianity is all about?

Or does God have something else in mind? Is there something more to being a Christian than just being saved?

Well, I gotta tell ya, I am totally excited to explore that question with you this morning. We’ve been studying the book of Colossians – Paul’s letter to the church in Colossae – what we’ve subtitled – “Christianity in Nutshell”.

And so far, we’ve been discovering some great ‘nutshell truths’ about what Christianity is all about. As I mentioned earlier, last Sunday we talked about who Jesus Christ really is and what He really did for us when He died on the cross and rose from the grave. So now that we know who He is and what He did – this morning, I want to explore what that means for us. What does it mean for us to be Christians? And I think the answer might surprise some of us.

This morning we begin where we left off last Sunday. Colossians chapter 1, verse 24.

“I am glad when I suffer for you in my body, for I am participating in the sufferings of Christ that continue for his body, the church. 25 God has given me the responsibility of serving his church by proclaiming his entire message to you. 26 This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past, but now it has been revealed to God’s people. 27 For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory.”

Colossians 1:24-27

Pause here for now. This little phrase in verse 27 sets the stage for the rest of the book of Colossians. This is the secret – this is God’s mysterious plan for anyone who accepts Jesus as their Savior. That is that Jesus Christ lives in you.

Think about this for a little bit. Jesus Christ – whom we established last week, was indeed the Almighty, Everlasting God – lives in you! That’s amazing!

And do you know what makes that so incredible? Do you know why it’s so significant that Christ lives in us? The Bible teaches us that without Christ, we have no life. 1 John 5:11-12 says…

 11 “And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life.” 1 John 5:11-12

It seems pretty plain and simple. If we have Christ in us, we have life. If we don’t have Christ in us, we don’t have life. Now this can be a confusing point of Christianity – all this talk of life and death, because our human definition of life and death are different than how God defines life and death.

See if you can track with me. As humans, we define death as our spirit being separated from our body. Right? When someone dies, their body is still there – but their spirit is gone. That’s death to us. Our body separated from our spirit. But God’s definition is a little different. God defines death as our spirit being separated from Him. (not from our body – from Him)

That’s why He says that the wages of sin is death – sin causes us to be separated from God – thats death.

That’s why God told Adam & Eve that if they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would surely die – their sin would separate them from God – that’s death.

That’s why Jesus told Nicodemus that He had to be born again – because his sin kept him separated from God – he was dead – He would have to become alive again – born again.

God defines death as our separation from him. And of course, the flip side of that, is that life is our being together with Him. If we read a little further in Colossians – jump down to chapter 2 verse 13, we read…

 13 “You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. 14 He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross.” Colossians 2:13-14

And Romans 8:10 says very much the same thing…

“And Christ lives within you, so even though your body will die because of sin, the Spirit gives you life because you have been made right with God.” 

Romans 8:10

Death is separation from God – Life is being together with Him.

Because you have Christ living in you – you have life – instead of death. You are now with God – instead of separated from Him. And that’s why you were created. You were created to have life – to be together with God. And that’s the definition of a Christian – someone who has Christ living within them – they have life – they are together with God.

But so many people miss the mark on this one. They think being a Christian is about going to church, or knowing lots ABOUT Jesus, being a good person, doing right things. No. Those are all bi-products. Being a Christian is about being together with God – its having Christ in you. It’s having a relationship with your Creator.

Can I ask you a question this morning? Do you have a relationship with your Creator? Remember, the question isn’t “Do you do good things?” or “Do you know a lot about God?” – “Do you go to church?” The question is: “Do you have a relationship with your Creator?”

And maybe before you answer that, perhaps I should define what I mean by “relationship”. We all have many different kinds of relationships in our lives. I have a relationship with my neighbor. I have a relationship with my mom. I have a relationship with my wife. But those are all very different kinds of relationships. My relationship with Heather is much different than my relationship with my Mom – which is also much different from my relationship with my neighbor. So what exactly should our relationship with God look like?

Well, let’s finish up Colossians chapter 1 – look at verse 28 & 29.

 28 “So we tell others about Christ, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all the wisdom God has given us. We want to present them to God, perfect in their relationship to Christ. 29 That’s why I work and struggle so hard, depending on Christ’s mighty power that works within me.” Colossians 1:28-29

That phrase “perfect in their relationship with Christ” in the NIV reads “fully mature in Christ.” Now hold that thought and jump down into chapter 2 – starting at verse 6.

And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. 7 Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.” Colossians 2:6-7

So what kind of relationship is Paul saying we are to have with God? Clearly it is a growing relationship. A maturing relationship.

When I got married, I had my two best friends (not counting Heather) to be my groomsmen. Jerel Peters & Mark Koop were the guys. Now I had spend a good part of my life with these guys. I had gone to Bible college with both of them. I had traveled to South America with Mark. I had gone to high school and youth group and church with Jerel. These are the guys I had shared my life with. They were my closest friends.

Fast forward ten years: Today, my relationship with those two guys is quite a bit different. As life happened and as our paths went off in different directions – we got married and all had families of our own and moved to different places – we ended up not spending as much time together anymore. In fact, in the past five years, I’ve probably only seen them maybe five times each. Now I still like hanging out with them – I still have a relationship with them. I read their newsletters and facebook updates, but we don’t really have growing relationship anymore.

And I this illustrates the difference between what our relationship with God should be – (what Paul’s talking about here in these verses) and what too often it actually is.

God desires to have a growing relationship with us. He wants us to share our life with Him. After all – he does live right inside us. He wants to be right beside us as we go through the ups and downs of life. He wants to be our closest friend.

But far too often, as Christians, our relationship with God looks more like the “ten years later” pictures. We hardly ever talk to Him anymore. Maybe we read about Him in the Bible or in church we hear about what He’s been doing – but we don’t have a personal growing relationship with Him anymore.

But that was never part of God’s plan. He didn’t die on that cross so that you could know ABOUT Him! He didn’t take the punishment for your sins so that you could hear what He’s been up to. He did all that so that He could go through life together with you. He wants to have a growing relationship with you!

And what a privilege that is for us! You know, most of us probably know a small handful of people in our lives that just amaze us. People that have enriched our lives so much over the years. People that we consider it an honor just to know them. Well, if we feel so privileged to know people like that – even though they are sinful, imperfect people – what a greater privilege it is for us to have a deep, growing relationship with the God of the Universe.

That’s why Paul says in Philippians 3….

Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ 9 and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith. 10 I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, 11 so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead!

Philippians 3:8-11

Paul understood what life is about. He understood what it means to be a Christian. That is to know Christ. That’s our purpose. That’s why we were created – to know God. And that’s why Paul writes to the Colossians:

And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. 7 Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.” Colossians 2:6-7

We have to pursue our relationship with God. That’s the most important thing in life.

You know I told you earlier about my two best friends from ten years ago and how our relationship kind flatlined. We stopped growing – we drifted apart. Well, let me tell you about my  relationship with my other best friend from ten years ago. That was Heather.

We got married. We committed to going through life together. And we have. Shortly after we got married, we spent four months working at a camp in Australia. That was both an exciting time – but also very difficult time for us – but we did it together. We came home and started working for Camp Little Red. We spend our summers together at camp and our winters together running youth groups and discipling kids. We’ve now got three kids of our own – and of course that comes with great joy and great trials. But we’ve gone through it together. In the past ten years we’ve gone through a lot – but we’ve done it together. And because of that, our relationship has continually been growing, and changing, and maturing as we get to know each other in every circumstance of life – through good times and bad times.

And today, my relationship with Heather has gone just the opposite of my relationship with Jerel & Mark. With Jerel & Mark, we’ve kinda stopped sharing our lives together and we’ve drifted further and further apart. But with Heather, we share every part of our lives together and  through that we’ve grown closer and closer together.

I think that’s a picture of how God wants His relationship with us to be. He wants to share every part of our life with Him – (not just 15 minutes in the morning and an hour on Sunday) He wants us to share every moment of every day with Him and through that, through the good times and the bad times, we grow closer and closer together. Our relationship deepens and grows stronger.

So to close this morning, I want to give you this challenge: I’ve told you what God’s desire is.  He wants you to be with Him. He wants you to share your life with Him. He created you. He loves you. He died on a cross so that He could be with you. He wants you to have life. That’s His desire.

What’s your desire? Do you want to know your Creator? Do you want to know Christ? Do you want to share your life with the Almighty God? If you do, here’s my advice:

#1. If you have no relationship with God today, you can start right now. Christ’s death on the cross paid the price for your sins – so there’s no reason why you can’t be forgiven today. No reason why you can’t invite Jesus to come and live right within you. You can start your journey with God today. And by the way, if today is the day that you want to start your journey with God, I would sure love to hear about and help you in any way I can. Feel free to talk to me after the service or call me up sometime this week.

My other advice is this: If your relationship with God has grown distant in recent days – maybe you know about God, but you don’t really KNOW GOD… If you’re only sharing your life with God for an hour on Sunday instead of every moment of every day… If Christianity has just become your ticket to heaven instead of a growing relationship with your Creator, then maybe you need to make some changes in your life. Maybe you need to work at your relationship with God. Because after all, all relationships take work. And all relationships take time. Its not going to happen over night. But if you’ll commit to getting to know God (not just knowing about Him) but knowing God – going through life together with Him – I guarantee that your relationship with God will change. It will grow. It will deepen.

And next week, when we start to look at Colossians chapter 3, we’re going to look at what sort of practical things we can do work at our relationship with God – and how, when we do those things, God changes our lives. It’s gonna be really cool – so make sure you show up again next Sunday. But for now, I encourage you just to make the decision in mind that you want to get to know your Creator. You want to share your life with Christ. Make that commitment today.

Who is Jesus? As you can see, you can find a wide variety of answers to that question. That clip that we just watched was taken in Baltimore, USA, but I’m sure if you asked the same question in Red Deer, you’d get the same variety of responses.

We talked last week a little bit about counterfeits and how tragic it is when people get duped – not just out of their hard-earned money – but in matters of eternal consequences. And judging by the wide variety of responses in this video, it’s clear that many people are getting duped about Jesus Christ. They’ve been deceived about who He really is.

And that’s not just in the secular world. If you were to ask that same question – “Who is Jesus” to people who have gone to church for years, I fear there would be many people who could not give a full and accurate answer of who Jesus is and what He’s done.

And this was the exact problem that the church in Colossae was facing in 60 AD. There were people in the church who were being confused and deceived about who Jesus Christ is. False teachers were spreading counterfeit beliefs about Jesus. And so that’s one of the main reasons that Paul writes this letter (what we call the book of Colossians) to the church in Colossae. To address this issue, Paul’s gives them – what I’ve called Christianity in a Nutshell – and He spells out for them in no uncertain terms the truth about Jesus Christ.

And so that’s exactly what we want to look at today, because quite frankly, I don’t want to get duped. I don’t know about you, but I want to know the truth – especially when my eternal future is on the line. I want to know the truth. What does the Bible say? Who is Jesus Christ? So that’s what we’re going to look at this morning.

We want to pick up today where we left off last Sunday – Colossians chapter 1, today starting at verse 15.

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. 

      He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation,

 16 for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. 

   He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see— 

   such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. 

      Everything was created through him and for him. 

 17 He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together.

Colossians 1:15-17

So here’s the first fact that Paul establishes about Jesus Christ: Jesus Christ was not just a man – He was God.

Now most people today have no problem accepting the fact that Jesus existed. There is enough historical evidence around that if you do your research, you would likely conclude that, Yes, somewhere around 30 AD there was a man named Jesus who lived in Israel. But what most people refuse to accept is that that man, Jesus, was God. They’ll say He was a good man, he was a great teacher, he was a prophet of God. But they don’t accept that Jesus was God. And yet that’s exactly what Paul is clearly stating in these verses. Look at…

verse 15:

 He existed before anything was created…

Clearly, Jesus was not created. He existed before anything was created.

verse 16

through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth….

So not only did Jesus already exist before creation, everything was created through Him.

verse 17

He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together…

Paul is not describing ‘a good man’. Paul is not describing ‘a great teacher’. And Paul is not describing ‘a prophet of God’. Paul is describing someone who could be nothing less than God.

And these verses in Colossians sound very similar to the first few verses in the Gospel of John. Let me read those for you. John 1:1.

In the beginning the Word already existed. 

      The Word was with God, and the Word was God. 

 2 He existed in the beginning with God. 

 3 God created everything through him, 

      and nothing was created except through him. 

 4 The Word gave life to everything that was created,

      and his life brought light to everyone.

Skip down to verse 14

 14 So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son.

John 1:1-4, 14

So who is Jesus? It seems very clear from the Scriptures that Jesus Christ was no ordinary man. He was not just a good person, not just a great teacher, and not just a prophet of God. But Jesus Christ is indeed the Son of God.

And this is a foundational truth of Christianity. Because an ordinary man could not have died in our place. (He would have been paying for His own sins, not ours.) Only God could die in our place.

When you read about the Old Testament sacrifices, you’ll notice that the animals that they would sacrifice had to be without defect. Look at Leviticus 22:21-22.

“If you present a peace offering to the LORD from the herd or the flock, whether it is to fulfill a vow or is a voluntary offering, you must offer a perfect animal. It may have no defect of any kind. 22 You must not offer an animal that is blind, crippled, or injured, or that has a wart, a skin sore, or scabs. Such animals must never be offered on the altar as special gifts to the LORD.

Leviticus 22:21-22

Only perfect animals could be offered as sacrifices to the Lord. And that same principle applies to the sacrifice for our sins. Only a perfect, sinless person could be the sacrifice for our sins. And Jesus Christ is the only qualified person for that. The Bible tell us that all of mankind have sinned. Romans 3:23 states:

For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.

Romans 3:23

But not Jesus. 1 Peter 1:18-19 says…

 “For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And the ransom he paid was not mere gold or silver. 19 It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God.”

1 Peter 1:18-19

If Jesus was just another ordinary man, he would have been born with sin – just like you and me. He would have been sinful – not sinless – and there would have been no way He could have paid the price for our sins. But praise God that Jesus was not just another ordinary man – Jesus Christ is God. And He did pay the penalty for our sins so that we could have eternal life.

Paul goes on to say in verse 18…

 Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body. He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead. So he is first in everything. 

 19 For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, 20 and through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.

 21 This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. 22 Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. 

Colossians 1:18-22

That word ‘reconciled’ – it means brought back together again. That’s what Jesus did when He died on the cross – He brought you and God back together again.

You see, before, you were enemies – your sin kept you separated from Him. God’s holiness and his justice demanded that you be separated from Him forever. God would not be just if He didn’t punish sin in that way. And according to Romans 6:23, “the wages of sin is death”. That’s not just physical death – that’s eternal separation from God.

But, while God’s holiness and justice demanded that you pay the price for your sins and be separated from Him forever, God’s love and compassion demanded that you be forgiven and be reconciled to God. You see, God loved you so much that He couldn’t bear the thought of being separated from you forever. After all, He created you. He formed you in your mother’s womb. He gave you your unique personality, your talents, and your abilities. You are his special creation and He loves you like crazy. And although you’ve sinned and run away from God, He wants nothing more than to forgive you and begin a new relationship with you. But He couldn’t just ignore your sin either. The penalty had to be paid.

And so the only way for both God’s justice and his love to be satisfied, was for Jesus, God’s Son, to come to earth as a man, and to die on the cross – to pay the price for your sin so that you could be forgiven and be reconciled to God. That’s a crazy love, isn’t it?

And look at the result. Paul says in the last part of verse 22:

As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.

Colossians 1:22

Can you imagine! When you accept God’s forgiveness, He wipes the slate absolutely clean. It’s as if you are perfect. Like you never, ever sinned. You are holy and blameless before Him.

Sometimes as Christians, when we blow it, when we mess up and sin, we think, “Man, I am such a loser. God, why do you even put up with me?” But the thing is, when we have been forgiven, God doesn’t see it that way at all. God sees you just as He created you to be – sinless. Faultless. Perfect. Isn’t that incredible?!

Now of course, that’s not a license to sin – to do whatever we want, thinking that God will be oblivious to it all. That’s not the case. God knows your heart. He knows when you’re sincere and when you’re just trying to get away with stuff. But if you’re truly sincere, the Bible tells us….

“But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.” 1 John 1:9

He wipes the slate clean and He sees us just as clean and as sinless as Jesus. THAT is incredible! And Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, ends this section of his letter basically by saying “And don’t you forget it!”

“But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don’t drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News. The Good News has been preached all over the world, and I, Paul, have been appointed as God’s servant to proclaim it.”

Colossians 1:23

So I too, want to encourage you this morning – believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He died in your place so that your sins can be forgiven and you can be reconciled with God. If you believe and accept God’s free gift of Salvation, your sins will be completely wiped out and in God’s eyes, you will be perfect and without fault. This is the good news!

And so depending on where you are in your journey with God this morning, you can apply all kinds of  lessons from this passage in a lot of different ways.

If you’ve never made the decision to accept the forgiveness that Jesus has made available to you, why don’t you do that today? There is no reason to put it off any longer. God is waiting and ready to wipe your slate clean and give you a fresh start.

Or maybe you have accepted Christ’s forgiveness sometime in the past, but you know that in recent days or weeks or months or even years, you’ve turned your back on God. You’ve gone your own way and done your own thing. But you know, God hasn’t changed how He feels about you. He still loves you like crazy. He won’t give up on you. For you too, He is waiting and ready to wipe your slate clean and give you a fresh start.

For others, perhaps the lesson for you in this passage is a little different. One of the things that I thought of as I was preparing this message is, how much do I trust really God?

Sometime we doubt the goodness of God. We doubt if God really has the best in store for us. Just like Adam and Eve thought that God was keeping good things from them when He told them not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – sometimes we think we know best and we don’t want to do things God’s way.

But if God loved us so much that He sent His Son Jesus to earth as man – that the Almighty God would give up the glories of heaven and be confined to a human body – for the Creator of the world to be a helpless baby – to be hungry – to feel pain – and then to experience the horrible death on the cross and be raised to life again – all because He loved us and wanted to be with us. Can I not trust a God who loves me so?

If God would go through all that, if God loves me that much – can I not trust Him in every area of my life? Absolutely. Absolutely.

We began today with the question: Who is Jesus? And I hope that the Scriptures that we’ve looked at today have helped you answer that question. But its quite possible that in answering that question, you’ve come up with several more.

Perhaps questions like: If Jesus is God – what does that mean for me? How should I respond to that? How does that impact my life? And I would encourage you, think about and pray about those questions this week – and then come back next week to see what Paul has to say about it in the next chapter.

Have any of you ever been duped by counterfeit money? I’ve never experienced getting stuck with counterfeit money and I hope I never do. But I know others have. And that’s got to be a terrible feeling.

Imagine that you’re selling your car on Kijiji for maybe a couple thousand dollars. Some guy comes and checks it out and want to pay cash for it. So he gives you 20 one hundred dollar bills. He takes the car, you take the money and when you go to deposit it in the bank, the teller tells you that it’s all counterfeit. It’s fake. You got ripped off and there’s nothing you can do about.

That would stink big time! Wouldn’t you be mad? Mad at the guy for ripping you off and mad at yourself for not checking the money closer? No body likes getting duped.

But you know, people get duped all the time. Not just with counterfeit money, but with all kinds of things. We get duped by the “no-money-down” commercials on tv, or the “drink this beer and life will become a party” advertisements. We’re likely to see several of those during the superbowl this afternoon. We get duped by the big promises of the lottery tickets or by investments too good to be true.” You read in the news about people who have invested all their life savings with a certain investor only to find out later that the investor was a fraud and all their money is gone. They were duped and now they have nothing.

And while its certainly painful to get deceived out of your hard-earned cash, it’s tragic when people get duped in areas of life that are far more serious.

We live in a world where many people have been duped about God – about who He is and what He’s like – About the meaning of life and realities after death. Our world is full of counterfeit religions and counterfeit beliefs. And getting duped by those are far more serious than getting duped by a used-car salesman. I mean, we’re talking about life-changing, eternal consequences here. So it is absolutely imperative that we can sort out what is true and real and what is counterfeit when it comes to our beliefs about God.

And what makes it increasingly difficult is that many of these counterfeits are very convincing. I mean, that’s the nature of a counterfeit – it looks like the real thing. If it wasn’t convincing, no one would fall for it.

So with so many convincing, yet different beliefs about God and life and death out there, how do we make sure that we know what is really true and real? How do we keep from being duped? Well, the people that lived in the city of Colossae had the very same dilemma. Now, if you’re not familiar with the city of Colossae, that’s understandable. It’s one of those ancient cities that have long since disappeared from the map. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true. You can still find Colossae today (it’s in modern day Turkey) – but it’s not a really a thriving city anymore.

I found just a couple of pictures on the internet of what Colossae looks like today.  It’s pretty much just a grassy hill. Well at one time, around 60 AD, Colossae was a grand city and was home to a newly planted church. Now in your Bibles you find a book called Colossians. This is a letter written by Paul to the church in Colossae – to the Colossians.

Now it’s interesting to note that Paul didn’t start this church. He started a lot of churches in a lot of cities, but the church in Colossae wasn’t one of them. In fact, this church was started by a man named Epaphras. And as far as we know, Paul had never even been to Colossae. So why did He write this letter to the Colossians?

Well, it seems that the church in Colossae was having a hard time with counterfeits. Not counterfeit money – but counterfeit beliefs about God and Christianity – specifically about the person of Jesus. There were these false teachings going around and people were getting duped. They were being deceived. And so Paul wrote this letter to the Colossians to set the record straight – to give them the truth about Jesus Christ and about Christianity.

And so basically, these four short chapters in the book of Colossians are Paul’s summary of the Good News. They explain who Jesus really is and what He’s really done – and how we are really supposed to live because of that. It’s Christianity in a nutshell.

And so that’s what we want to look at for the next several Sundays. Paul’s Christianity in a nutshell – the book of Colossians. And our aim is to learn the truths of the Gospel so that we don’t get duped. To understand the truth of who Jesus is, what He has done for us, and how we are to respond to Him because of that.

I want to begin by giving you a quick overview of the first 14 verses. This is pretty much all introduction, but even in this introduction, there are some good nutshell truths about Christianity. This is what we are going to look at today. So if you have your Bible with you, you can follow along in Colossians chapter 1, verses 1 through 14.

“This letter is from Paul, chosen by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and from our brother Timothy.

 2 We are writing to God’s holy people in the city of Colosse, who are faithful brothers and sisters in Christ. May God our Father give you grace and peace.

 3 We always pray for you, and we give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 4 For we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all of God’s people, 5 which come from your confident hope of what God has reserved for you in heaven. You have had this expectation ever since you first heard the truth of the Good News.  6 This same Good News that came to you is going out all over the world. It is bearing fruit everywhere by changing lives, just as it changed your lives from the day you first heard and understood the truth about God’s wonderful grace.  7 You learned about the Good News from Epaphras, our beloved co-worker. He is Christ’s faithful servant, and he is helping us on your behalf. 8 He has told us about the love for others that the Holy Spirit has given you.

 9 So we have not stopped praying for you since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding. 10 Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit. All the while, you will grow as you learn to know God better and better.

 11 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, 12 always thanking the Father. He has enabled you to share in the inheritance that belongs to his people, who live in the light. 13 For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, 14 who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins.”

Colossians 1:1-14

Wow, and that’s just the introduction! Paul hasn’t even gotten into the meat of his message and we’ll get into that next week, But in just these first fourteen introductory verses, we find all kinds of ‘nutshells truths’ about Christianity. And if we were to try to dig them all out, I’d probably be preaching on Colossians for the next several months. That’s not my intention. I’m just going to pull out a few of the main ones, and I’ll leave the rest for you to dig out in your own study over the next few weeks. And by the way, I would encourage you to do just that. Take some time this week to re-read through this passage and see what other truths you can dig out of there and apply to your life.

But for now, let’s start with this one: In a nutshell, Christianity is about changed lives. Look back at verse 6.

“This same Good News that came to you is going out all over the world. It is bearing fruit everywhere by changing lives, just as it changed your lives from the day you first heard and understood the truth about God’s wonderful grace.”

Colossians 1:6 & 13-14

Christianity is about changed lives. It’s not about going to church. Or doing good things. Or being a good person. It’s not about following all the rules. It’s about God changing your life.

We talked back in December about how, when Adam & Eve rebelled against God in the Garden of Eden, everything got messed up. God’s perfect plan for a perfect life got turned on it’s head and life became difficult, painful, empty. Well, Jesus came to change all that. He came to change people’s lives.

“For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, 14 who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins.”

Colossians 1:13-14

What a change! Your sins were forgiven. Your guilt was removed. Your eternal destination was changed from death to life. You went from being an enemy of God to having all the rights and privileges of His Son. You were rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred into the Kingdom of God. And what’s more, everyone one of us who have accepted Christ as our Saviour have experienced those same spectacular changes!

Christianity is about changed lives. If I were to take this microphone and walk around this room, we could spend the rest of the morning (and the afternoon too) listening to the stories of how God has changed your lives, because that’s what Christianity is all about.

“This same Good News that came to you is going out all over the world. It is bearing fruit everywhere by changing lives, just as it changed your lives from the day you first heard and understood the truth about God’s wonderful grace.”

“For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, 14 who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins.”

Colossians 1:6 & 13-14

So that’s our first ‘nutshell truth’ that we find in this introduction – Christianity is about changed lives. And actually that verse 14 leads us to the second ‘nutshell truth’ that we want to look at – Christianity is about freedom and forgiveness.

“For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, 14 who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins.”

Colossians 1:13-14

This is the truth that changes our lives. When Jesus died on the cross in our place, He took our sins upon Himself so that we could be forgiven. He purchased our freedom with His life. If you spend any time reading the New Testament, you’ll find this theme pop up again and again. Let me show you just a few quick verses.

 For there is only one God and one Mediator who can reconcile God and humanity—the man Christ Jesus. 6 He gave his life to purchase freedom for everyone.

1 Timothy 2:5-6

God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children. 7 Now you are no longer a slave but God’s own child. And since you are his child, God has made you his heir.

Galatians 4:5 & 7

 So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. 7 He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins.

Ephesians 1:6-7

Christianity is all about true freedom and forgiveness. And they go hand in hand. Because God has forgiven us, we have freedom from death. The Bible tell us in Romans 6:23, that the wages of sin is death – eternal separation from God. But because God has forgiven our sins, we have the gift of life and are free from death. John 3:16 says that whosoever believes in Him, shall not perish but have everlasting life. We’re free from death.

We are also free from sin. Romans chapter 6 tells us that that before Christ, we were slaves to sin. Sin was our master. And you know, Satan has done a great job of convincing people otherwise. So many people in the world believe that becoming a Christian will cost them their freedom. They believe that Christians have to follow all these rules, but as ‘sinners’ they are free to do whatever they want. But they don’t realize that they are slaves to sin.

They are slaves to their own sinful desires. Slaves to their addictions. Slaves to bitterness and anger. Slaves to selfishness. And these things that they consider to be ‘their freedoms’ now, will slowly but surely destroy them from the inside out.

But Christianity is about true freedom. Freedom from death. Freedom from sin. Freedom from guilt. Freedom to be the people God created us to be. Freedom to live the way God created us to live. Freedom to experience the joy and peace that only comes from God. That’s the kind’s of freedom we have – and it’s all made possible because God has forgiven our sins.

If you forget every other ‘nutshell truth’ that I talk about in this series I want you to remember this one so that when someone asks you what Christianity is all about, you can tell them it’s about freedom and forgiveness.

And the last nutshell truth that we want to look at this morning out of these introductory verses is this:  Look at Paul’s prayer for the Colossians in verses 9 & 10:

So we have not stopped praying for you since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding. 10 Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit. All the while, you will grow as you learn to know God better and better.

Colossians 1:9-10

This is pretty much the best summary that I can think of that describes God’s purpose for your life. This is, in a nutshell, what God desires for you.

God wants you to have complete knowledge of His will. That’s not just knowing about God – that’s actually KNOWING God. Getting to know God’s heart. Knowing what He loves and what He hates. Knowing what He wants to do in the world, what He wants to do in your community, what He wants to do in your life. That’s knowing God’s will.

And with that, God wants you to have spiritual wisdom and understanding. That means, along with knowing God’s will, you can see how you fit in to God’s will. How you can live in such a way that reflects God’s will. How you can carry out God’s will in your words and actions. That’s spiritual wisdom and understanding.

And when those things are present in our lives, the result is that we will live lives that please and honor God. Lives that produce every kind of good fruit. And through it all, we will grow as learn to know God better and better.

Isn’t that what you desire for your life? That’s sure what I desire for mine.

I want to know God’s will. I want to understand how I can be a part of what God’s doing. I want to honor and please God with how I live my life. I want to produce all kinds of good fruit through my life. And I want to grow and learn and get to know my Creator.

And what’s cool, is that’s exactly what God wants too. And not just for me. He wants that for you too. That’s His desire. That’s His purpose for you.

Last week we looked at the example of the paralyzed man and his four friends. And how God used those four friends to bring about a radical change in that man’s life. God did the changing, but He brought it about through those four friends.

And originally, the plan for today was to look at another example of how God uses people to bring about change in people’s lives – however… This week, God brought about a change in my message. I was going to talk about David’s Mighty Men – a group of 37 men that gathered around the leadership of King David and did mighty and amazing things. But by Wednesday this week, I came to the conclusion that this was not the direction that God wanted me to go with the message, so I had to figure out what the right direction was. So as I was thinking and trying to discern what God wanted me to preach about this morning, I realized that there was a key part of our 2012 Discipleship Action Plan that I had just sorta taken for granted. I just presumed it was in place and so I hadn’t talked much about it.

In fact, if you remember back to January 1st, we started this whole series by looking at what Jesus said was the greatest commandments. It was Mark chapter 12 – verse 29-31.

 29 Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. 30 And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ 31 The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.” Mark 12:29-31

And because we were launching into our growth groups, we naturally focused on the second part – loving our neighbors as ourselves – Building relationships with the people around us. But I don’t want to neglect the first part. After all, Jesus said the most important commandment is to love God with everything you’ve got. So we’ve kinda gone about this in a backwards fashion, but that’s ok. We’ve talked about loving our neighbors and building relationships with them, but now we want to talk about loving God and building our relationship with Him.

So that’s the direction I want to go this morning. How can we build our relationship with God? Now that might seem like pretty basic Christianity 101, but I think it’s something that all of us struggle with to some extent. I think all of us want to grow deeper in our relationship with God. We want God to be more real in our lives – we don’t just want to know about Him – we want to KNOW Him. We want to be able to say, “Yeah, Jesus is my friend – I talk with Him every day – I love hanging out with him.”

But for many of us, that’s not the case. It’s more like – “I’m down here – and He’s up there. I pray to Him, and I think He hears – but I’m not really sure. I know lots of stuff about Him – but it doesn’t really feel like we’re close friends.” Do any of you guys relate to that?

I think many Christians do. Because after all, our relationship with God is way different than our relationships with anybody else. We can’t physically see him. We can’t hear him with our ears usually. We don’t go out for lunch with Him or watch a hockey game with Him. He doesn’t send us text messages or leave funny comments on our facebook page. So our relationship with God is unlike any other relationship we have, and because of that, it can be difficult to figure out how to cultivate that relationship. So the question I want to try to answer this morning is, How can we build our relationship with God?

This morning I want to base our discussion on the verses in Mark that we’ve already read. I think Mark 12:30 gives us the principles we need to build our relationship with God. So let’s take another look at that verse.

‘And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ Mark 12:30

There are four categories – four parts of our person – that we are to love God with. Our heart – our soul – our mind – and our strength.

Let’s take a look at the first part – our heart. What does it mean to love God with all our heart? Well, to help us understand what exactly “our heart” is, I looked up how the Bible describes our heart in different verses.

• 5 times =  happy
• 3 times = heavy
• 3 times = compassionate
• 41 times = hard

Now isn’t that interesting – A hard heart. Let’s look at a few of those verses:

“They made their hearts as hard as stone, so they could not hear the instructions or the messages that the LORD of Heaven’s Armies had sent them.” Zachariah 7:12

For the hearts of these people are hardened, and their ears cannot hear, and they have closed their eyes— so their eyes cannot see, and their ears cannot hear, and their hearts cannot understand, and they cannot turn to me and let me heal them.’ Matthew 13:15

 Their minds are full of darkness; they wander far from the life God gives because they have closed their minds and hardened their hearts against him. Ephesians 4:18

So in reading these verses, it really sounds to me like our heart can be described as our attitude towards God. If we have a hard heart, we don’t want to listen to God. We don’t want a relationship with Him. I think sometimes even as Christians we harden our hearts. We resist God. We want to do things our way. But I tell ya, nothing will squash our relationship with God faster than having that hard-hearted attitude. But on the flip side of that, a soft heart is an attitude that wants to hear from God – that wants a relationship with Him. Let me show you one more verse:

And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. Ezekiel 36:26

So I think the first principle in building our relationship with God is to have a soft heart – a heart that wants to hear from God – a heart that wants to have a relationship with Him. And the Bible tells us that went we seek after God – we will find Him. King David, when He was passing his throne down to his Son Solomon, He gives him this advice…

And Solomon, my son, learn to know the God of your ancestors intimately. Worship and serve him with your whole heart and a willing mind. For the LORD sees every heart and knows every plan and thought. If you seek him, you will find him. 1 Chronicles 28:9

God isn’t far away. He’s not hard to find. But we have to want to find Him. We have to have a soft heart that is willing to hear from Him.

So the first thing we need to do if we find that we’re struggling with our relationship with God – if God isn’t seeming very real or very close – the first thing we have to do is to check the condition of our hearts. Is your heart hard towards God? Do you really want to hear from Him? Maybe you don’t want to go through the work of getting to know Him? Maybe your afraid of the changes He might ask you to make in your life? Is your heart hard?

So that’s principle #1 – Love the Lord your God with all your heart – a soft hard – that wants to respond to Him.

The second of those four parts of our person is our soul. “Love the Lord your God will all your heart and with all your soul.

So what exactly is your soul? Now this is where it gets a little tricky, because heart and soul and mind and strength are all very intertwined with each other. It’s difficult to look at one of them completely separate from the others. In fact, where ever the Bible talks about the soul, about one third of the time it includes mention of the heart too. It talks about the “heart and soul”. They’re a package deal.

But for the sake of our discussion this morning, let me try to define our soul this way.

Look way back in your Bibles to Genesis 1:26.

Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.”

 27 So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:26-27

So drawing from those verses, I think a good definition of our soul is “the part of us that is created in the image of God”. It’s the part of us that makes us different from the animals. It is quite literally, our God-like attributes. Now don’t misunderstand me when I say God-like attributes… We are not little gods – there is still a vast difference between us and God, but He has given us some of his characteristics.

For example, we are made to be eternal like Him. Our current bodies will one day die, but our souls will continue to exist. In fact, one thing we look forward to as Christians is the new eternal bodies that we’ll get for our souls when Christ returns.

That’s just one example of our God-like characteristics. But the one I want to focus on for our purposes this morning is our consciousness. Let me see if I can explain what I mean. I’m not a deep theologian or a psychologist, or a biologist or any of those other -ologist, so my explanation might be a little rough – But hopefully, it’ll be sufficient.

I want us to do a little experiment. I want you to think a thought in your head. Say something in your mind – not out loud – just say it in your mind.

Those words that you just spoke in your mind – that’s your consciousness – that’s (if I may) that’s your soul speaking. Some of your souls probably said “Well, this is dumb – I’m not going to do this.” Well by thinking that, you just did. Your soul expressed itself by thinking that thought. This ability to think thoughts like this is one of our God-like attributes.

You see plants and animals don’t think thoughts like we do. Our kids have a movie called “Cloudy with a chance of meatballs” and the main character is an inventor.  And so one of the things He invents is a monkey thought translator. You put this thing on the monkey’s head and it tells you what the monkey is thinking. But in the movie, when the inventor puts the monkey thought translator on his pet monkey named Steve – the only thoughts He gets out of the monkey is “Hungry Hungry Hungry Hungry!” Its not exactly deep, profound thought, is it? It’s more instinct than conscious thought, because conscious thought comes from having a soul.

And what’s interesting is that our soul is constantly expressing itself. If you pay attention throughout your day, you’ll find that you’re always thinking thoughts. Sometimes they come out in words that you speak, but most often they remain in your mind. Thoughts run through your head all day long. That’s your soul.

And right now, I’m guessing your soul is either saying “This guy is crazy” or “Where’s he going with this?”

Let me tell you. If we are supposed to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul…. what does you suppose that means? Well, I think part of it means to love the Lord our God with all our thoughts. Well, how do you love God with all your thoughts?

I think Paul gives us the key in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. It simply says this:

“Never stop praying.” 1 Thessalonians 5:17 NLT

“Pray continually.” 1 Thessalonians 5:17 NIV

Now obviously Paul doesn’t want us to be down on our knees with folded hands 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That’s just not possible. So what does he mean? What Paul is saying is that we need to continually be in communication with God. And what’s cool is that we don’t have to use words. God know our thoughts.

“You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.” Psalm 139:2

So if God knows our thoughts, and if we’re thinking thoughts all day long anyway, how easy would it be to pray continually? All we’d have to do is turn our thoughts into prayers by directing them towards God. Let me show you want I mean…

Let’s say you’re having a great day – your soul is thinking “Man this is great! I’m having a wonderful day!” Just direct that thought towards God and it becomes a prayer – “God, I have having a great day! Thanks for all your blessings today!”

Or when you’re having a lousy day and you’ve got big problems and your thoughts are just stressing out -  just direct your thoughts towards God “God, I’m having a lousy day. I’ve got these problems I can’t figure out. I need your help.”

And as you turn all your thoughts into prayers, you find that you’re praying continually. And what’s cool about that, is that God can respond to your prayers continually. It becomes a conversation. You’re always praying and God’s always responding. And seeing God continually respond to your prayers is exactly what will help see how real God is in your life. You’ll know He’s there because He’s responding to your prayers. It’s actually pretty cool!

And that leads us into our third category. We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and now with all our mind.

Now our mind is a little bit different from our heart and soul in that our mind like our inner computer. We use our minds to understand, to learn, to problem solve, and to store information. So how do we love God with our mind? Well, I think Philippians 4:8 points us in the right direction.

 “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Philippians 4:8

In other words, we need to fill our minds with things that would please God. If we are going to love God with all our mind, we have to have the knowledge and understanding of God.

And of course, the best way to do that is to fill our minds with God’s Word.

This is an absolute MUST if you want to grow deeper in your relationship with God. If we are serious about really getting to know God personally, the Bible is got to be the first place we go. And It’s more than just facts about God that we get out of the Bible, although those are important too.

“For the word of God is alive and powerful.” Hebrews 4:12

It’s not just another book of information. God speaks to us through his Word. In fact, quite often God responds to our prayers through Scripture. As we spend time reading and memorizing and getting God’s Word planted in our mind, the Holy Spirit can use that knowledge and bring to mind just the right verse at the right time.

Say for example, perhaps you’re going through a really painful time in your life and you pray to God, “God why are letting this painful stuff happen to me?” God might bring to mind right then that verse that you were reading earlier -  Romans 8:28 that says “we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God.” We might not understand it – but we can have confidence that God is working for our good.

The more Scripture you plant in your head – the more God can use it to speak to you.

Are you seeing how all these things work together? Heart, soul, mind?  As we seek God with a soft heart, and as we continually direct our thoughts towards God in prayer, and as we fill our minds with the truths of Scripture – God become very real to us. We realize that God is right there. He hears us when we pray. And He answers when we pray. Imagine that!

But there’s one more thing that we need to do. And that’s to love God with all our strength. And I would sum up the principle behind this one with just one word. Obedience. Loving God with all of our strength means living in obedience to Him – even when it’s difficult.

Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them. And I will love them and reveal myself to each of them.” John 14:21

Our obedience to God is key to a close relationship with Him. It would be quite foolish of us to expect a close relationship with God while we’re living in disobedience to Him. It just doesn’t work that way.

So one of the things we need to check – if we find that we’re feeling distant from God – is, have we been disobeying God? Are there sins in our life that we haven’t dealt with? Stuff that we’ve just kinda let slide? If there is, that sin is going to be a barrier between you and God until you make it right. King David writes about this in Psalm 66:18.

“18 If I had not confessed the sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.” Psalm 66:18

When we have unconfessed sin in our heart, that sin keeps us distant from God. It’s as simple as that. But the solution is equally simple. All we need to do is to confess our sin to God. Stop hiding it or ignoring it. Deal with it. Make it right.

“But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.” 1 John 1:9

When we confess and repent, God both forgives and forgets. He removes all barriers between you and Himself, and you’re free to enjoy a closeness with Him again.

Now I don’t know where each of you are in your walk with God this morning. I don’t know if you have a hard heart or a soft heart – whether you feel distance from God because of some sin – or whether you feel close to Him and can enjoy those soul conversations that we talked about.

But where ever you are, I want to encourage you – God isn’t far away. He wants to be close to you. He created you. He loves you. He wants to have a relationship with you. That’s what this life is all about. It’s your opportunity to build a relationship with your Creator. So I encourage you, make the most of that opportunity.

Soften your heart. Seek out a relationship with God.

Turn your thoughts into prayers and spent time in conversation with God.

Fill your mind with things that would please God – especially His Word.

And live in obedience to Him with all your strength.

Build a relationship your Creator!