Category: Pastor Tim’s Blog

Though we claim to believe in it, prayer sometimes falls to the list of “the last thing we do” when we are facing a crisis or problem in life. That was not Paul’s practice or belief. For Paul, prayer was the first, middle, and final thing to do!

We have already looked in detail at the prayer that Paul prayed for the Colossians in Chapter One. It would be a life-transforming event for us if we began praying for the spiritual issues of life with the same fervor that we pray for physical ones.

When a child has gone missing, or a young person needs a heart transplant, or a financial crisis or a hurricane is looming on someone’s horizon, calls for urgent prayer abound in our mailboxes and on our social media pages. It becomes a matter of desperation for us when we are seeing the problem and feeling the potential impact of an impending disaster.

But when will we learn to pray with that same zeal and devotion and desperation over the spiritual condition of neighbors and the nations? When will our hearts burn and our internet accounts flood with requests of desperation for what we are feeling for a lost sheep in God’s fold? Or a people group without the Gospel or even a Bible in their language?

Now we’re human, I can hear some say. Of course we are. But that doesn’t mean we should pray limited to our humanity! We are human, and frail, and weak and broken. Yet we have been given a “limitless reach” in prayer.

But listening to our prayer requests I wonder if we really believe that. When our prayer lists go no deeper than Aunt Gertie’s upcoming appendectomy, our prayers may as well be written by the folks who write Hallmark get well cards!

What if we began to see our requests for prayer differently? I wonder if you really believed that, when you pray for a missionary in another country or for an unreached people group that your prayers literally shake the ground spiritually.

When we see the world in the grip of the evil one, have you seen your prayers as ICBMs dropped behind enemy lines? What if numbers of Christians gathered together in a meeting to pray for the persecuted believers in China, sending “weapons of mass intercession” against the persecutor seeking to keep the Chinese people from the Gospel?

Does Satan dread your prayer life? Or does it really just give him a good laugh? Now don’t misunderstand me. I believe all of life is to be brought under the concern and attention of God in prayer. Nothing is too big, or too small. The problem is, we tend to get stuck on “the small stuff.” We can’t pray beyond Uncle Bob’s hangnail because our faith is small and won’t let us. We can’t imagine the global impact we could have from little Fruit Cove, Florida! Pray large, dangerous, world-changing prayers. Paul did.

And his world was changed for eternity!

What’s keeping you from beginning… today?

Philosophers and ethicists have offered the theory that every person is affected by “anomie, anonymity, alienation” (Waldo Beach, Christian Ethics).  Cut off from any moral basis, people are “anomie;” they have no “norm” of behavior or moral ground.  They act primarily for themselves and look out for and fight for their own best interests.  Our culture has largely cut itself adrift from moral grounding as we have denied the existence of any being bigger than we are (namely, God).

Secondly, they suggest that we struggle with “anonymity.”  We are not known.  We have no identity, no purpose, no direction.  We are lonely specs in the cosmos.

When I was a little boy and dinosaurs still roamed the earth, we used to go to a stream of runoff water near our house and we’d catch “pollywogs;” baby frogs that still had tails and hadn’t grown legs.  We would keep them in a metal bucket and wait for them to turn into frogs.  They were just specs in that large metal bucket, and they’d squirm back and forth, but everywhere they would swim ended the same.  That’s the way many people feel.  They are aimless, insignificant, meaningless, accidental specs.

And finally, people are alienated.  When you have disconnected yourself by sin from the most fundamental life relationship… with God… you find you can’t really get along with anybody.   The problems of life, everything from sibling rivalry to world-shaking wars, come back to the reality that we are cut off, not only from God, but from each other.

When you come to Christ, you are no longer “without law” but now you have a moral compass and moral code that constrains you.  Living without a moral direction feels like freedom, in the same way escaping the confines of the goldfish bowl feels like freedom to the fish.  But we know that ends in death.

And now that you have been raised with Christ, you have meaning, and a purpose, and a new identity:  you are God’s child, and an heir with Jesus Christ.  You are no longer “anonymous” and unknown.  You are known and beloved by God.

Then the third thing, you are no longer alienated.  “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  And because we have a reconciled relationship with God, we can begin to see this reality working its way out in our relationships with others as we being to experience the power of “living risen!”

Salvation begins at the initiative of God. We don’t just wake up one morning, decide we are terrible people because of our sin, and set out to knock on God’s door. The Holy Spirit “quickens” us (old English word for “make sensitive,” like the “quick” of your fingernail). As we are “quickened” or “made spiritually sensitive” to God we are awakened to the possibility of new life in Jesus.

We were dead… now we have been made alive in Christ! And as we are alive, and know the fullness of God through Christ, we find we are also being set free from the guilt that burdens us.

Being set free from our guilt is like being set free from the pull of gravity! It is elating to know our sin and guilt has been taken out of the way. “He forgave us all our sins….”

While “forgave” is past tense (already done) in English translation, the Greek is more definitive. It says, “God has done something in the past (He forgave you) that is continuing to affect and work itself out in the present (we continue to be forgiven).

Some have mistakenly understood that this verse is teaching that all the sins forgiven at the cross that we had committed up until that time. If you continue to mess up after that, then it’s your problem to fix! Those who believe this way find themselves entering a non-stop treadmill of trying to work for salvation, believing they have “lost” their salvation and need to “find” it again!

That is not what Paul is teaching, and it is not what God is doing. When Jesus died for you, remember, ALL of your sins were future. ALL of your guilt was future.

But when the Bible says, “He forgave us all our sins,” this is a proclamation that the penalty due for every sin we have ever committed or ever WILL commit in the future has already been paid for.

I’ve heard it explained this way. It is as though someone placed a $100,000 check in your bank account. It is there. It is good. But until you start writing checks or using your debit card, you will never receive the benefit of the gift.

We are to continue, if you would, “writing checks” on the forgiveness that God has deposited in our “account.” “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just (righteous) to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)

There is something wonderful about putting on new clothes, a new shirt or coat or dress or pair of shoes. It makes you FEEL new, at least for a little while. But what we are dealing with in this text is not a temporary feeling, but a new creation from the inside… out!

Paul said in 1 Thessalonians, “this is the will of God, even your sanctification”. Sanctification, you remember, is the ongoing “dirt road” process of “working out” our salvation. It is the process and progress of our salvation between justification and glorification. While we have nothing we can do to add to our justification or glorification, we have much to do with our sanctification.

It is through sanctification that we begin to look like Jesus in reality. Sadly this aspect of our salvation is the most neglected by many. We so lean into the reality that we are saved by grace (and we are) and that our salvation is secure (it is) that we can almost ask the question, “Why go to the effort?” (We do). However we are reminded also of a promise that “He Who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it.” (Philippians 1:6) We are not made new by our own strength any more than we are saved or glorified or resurrected by our own strength.

In this section, Paul defines for us what sanctification looks like. It is a process of “taking off” or putting to death actions, attitudes, and behaviors that are part of our life before Christ. And then, it has to do with “putting on” those things that are like Christ.

In our testimony to a dying, lost and confused world, we must send a clear message that “if anyone is in Christ they are a new creation; old things have passed away and all things become new.”

In addition to being new, let’s LOOK new as well!

Some Christians designate themselves as the “religious police” whose role is to punish those who get “out of line” in their opinion. Much of legalistic belief today comes not from those things taken from Scripture, but from the opinions and “traditions of man.”

“Therefore do not let anyone judge you…” Paul warns in 2:16. He specifically addresses issues of eating and drinking, religious festivals, New Moon celebrations, or Sabbath observances. Basically, his warning addresses “diet and days.”

This clearly contains an obvious reference to the diet taught in the Old Testament and codified by the Jews as “kosher” foods. While few Protestant believers seek to follow Jewish dietary laws, we have our own “legalistic diets” that we’ve created.

If you are serving your family anything but organic, whole grain, farm-fed, free-range, single-origin foods, you are in the eyes of some, poisoning them. Now I agree there are health benefits to food not polluted by antibiotics and hormone fed. I can even get a little misty-eyed over chickens kept and fattened up in cages in which they can barely move! And I like single-origin coffee that can be traced to the point of growth and knowing the coffee farmer is getting paid well for his or her work.

But while that is true, I have never been judgmental about people who don’t pay the exorbitant costs of organic or farm-raised food. And I have been more than a little miffed over fruits and vegetables that go bad before I even have a chance to eat them, since they contain no preservatives.

So I don’t judge you for eating non-specific sourced foods or drinking coffee from a fast food restaurant. More power to you! Enjoy! But please don’t judge me when I occasionally slip in to a burger joint for a preservative-filled hamburger from a hormone-fattened cow on not-quite whole grain bread. Sometimes, you just need a good French fry!

But I visit the fresh food and farm-to-table stores enough to have encountered those who would very quickly look down on me (judge me) for doing what I just confessed to you. And they will judge you as a parent for not feeding your children the very best and healthiest foods possible.

But RIGHT HERE IN THE BIBLE it clearly states you have Paul’s permission NOT to be judged and to reject their judgmental glances or opinions regarding your dietary choices.

And I’ll try really hard not to judge you either!

“Now I rejoice in my suffering for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His body, that is, the church…” (Colossians 1:24)

Last week in our study through the Book of Colossians, we encountered a phrase that has been somewhat controversial in our efforts to interpret it through the years. There is no commonly agreed upon understanding of Paul’s words.

Through the years, the Catholic Church has used this as a springboard for understanding the teaching of purgatory. The doctrine of a “place” where Christians go after death to “complete their sufferings” before being suited for Heaven is one that Protestant scholars and pastors have long rejected.

So if that’s not what Paul was saying, what did he mean by “filling up Christ’s afflictions?” And what does this say about the reasons we suffer?

1. It could be a direct reference to the prophecy spoken over Paul at his conversion when Ananias told him that he would suffer many things because of the name of Christ. This was certainly true as we read some of Paul’s more personal sections of testimony and the difficulties he encountered.
2. Some believe this is a reference to a teaching championed by the Jews that God would only permit so much persecution and suffering by His chosen people before the end (apocalypse) came. The more suffering, the sooner God would bring judgement to the world. This teaching is spelled out more fully in the apocryphal books (the intertestamental) books that we do not accept as authoritative parts of the Bible.
3. It is certainly possible that this is a reference to the fact that our suffering in our bodies has a direct connection to Christ suffering with us. Jesus is seen as connected intimately to His body on earth, so that every slight, every pain suffered, every effort of persecution was felt by Jesus as well. As His people suffer, so Christ suffered.
4. It is not a reference to somehow completing something lacking in Christ’s sacrifice and atonement for us. Christ suffered completely, and alone on the cross. We cannot add to the pain inflicted on Jesus on the cross by our sufferings in the present. We are not assisting in the atonement by suffering.
   Paul’s use of the word “affliction” is never tied to any reference to Christ’s atoning work at the cross.
5. It is absolutely true that the sufferings endured by believers “fill up, complete or round out” the reflection of Jesus in the Christian’s life. Every portrait ever drawn or painted has areas of light and areas of darkness. Both are necessary for a complete picture to be seen. Both sorrow and joy are necessary for the “portrait” of Jesus to be seen in our lives.

Maybe more than any other interpretation #5 seems to make the most sense to me. Our suffering as believers is necessary for the image of Christ to be etched into our lives. Christ is seen fully in our joy and in our tears. We can rejoice in our suffering knowing that, even then, Christ is more fully seen in us and through us as the Body of Christ, the visible representation of Christ, on earth.

And so, with Paul, we can rejoice even in our suffering, knowing that none is in vain; none of wasted, and nothing is random. God always sees to that!

“…that He might have first place in everything.” (Colossians 1:18)

Jesus is to have “first place” or “supremacy” in everything! “Everything” extends the supremacy of Christ far beyond any conceivable scope. He deserves to have first place in everything!

First place in our family

First place in our marriage

First place in our profession

First place in our missions and ministry

First place in our thinking

First place in time

First place in love

First place in conversation

First place in pleasure

First place in eating

First place in play

First place in athletics

First place in our entertainment

First place in art

First place in music

First place in worship

First place in living

First place in dying

First place in His body, the church!

“It’s crazy if you think about it. The God of the universe—the God Who created nitrogen and pine needles and E-minor, loves us with a radical, unconditional, and self-sacrificing love. And what is our response? We go to church, sing a couple of tunes, and try not to cuss.” —Francis Chan

What should our response be? We give Him the supremacy in everything!

SEPTEMBER IS SUICIDE AWARENESS MONTH. THE FOLLOWING POST IS DIRECTED TOWARD THIS PROBLEM AND DEALS DIRECTLY WITH A VERY PAINFUL REALITY. PLEASE BE ADVISED THERE IS STRONG CONTENT INCLUDED.

Without Jesus, LIFE MEANS NOTHING. It is “just a vapor.” A puff of smoke. A cloud that vanishes in the heat of day. And no, this is not an article about “vaping.”

We teach our children that life has no eternal destiny or purpose. We’re not sure why we’re here or where we’re going when life ends. We have literally been made complicit in the death of an untold number of young people by feeding them this lie that is in our culture, our media, our universities and our textbooks.

If Jesus is the “firstborn over all creation” (Colossians 1:15 b) then we have a Creator and we have a destiny and this means we also have a purpose! Without this understanding (which, by the way, is ridiculed in most circles that claim to be populated by the intelligentsia), our life is futile and suicide actually offers an out to a boring, difficult, or hopeless experience.

Do we have anything, as Christians, that offers an alternative to such a despairing view of life? Can we push back against a culture that tells our children that suicide is romantic and even heroic?

If you are a Christian parent still raising your children (they are still under your roof and care), when do you plan to talk to them about why they would not want to end their life by their own hand?

Hopefully your son or daughter doesn’t, but you can rest assured their friends are talking about it. Social media is talking about it. The celebrity culture they follow is immersed in it. And if you do feel the need to talk to them about why it’s important that they do not pursue this option, what do you plan to say?

An answer is in the paragraph below. Try this as a conversation starter:

“Jesus is the One Who made you. You are not a random accident. Jesus has a plan and purpose for your life that’s bigger and better than you could dream. Since Jesus made you, He also owns you. Your life is not your own. It’s HIS property that He has loaned you and one day you will give an account to Him for what you did with it. And what’s more, you are PRECIOUS to Him; so precious in fact that He died on the cross and went to the grave to buy you back so you could be with Him forever!”

Have a serious conversation between yourselves, Mom and Dad. It’s time for us to stand up and defend our children from this demonic onslaught for which the teaching of false philosophies in our culture has paved the way. And then think about having that conversation with your children. If nothing else, your offering the conversation opens the door for them to talk to you if they find themselves deeply troubled and thinking about it.

It is past time for the church to step up and acknowledge the reality that is now part, not only of our culture’s experience, but even of the church. There are those among us who are hurting and who see ending their life as the only way to end their pain. And church people are not immune.

Show them there’s a better way. Show them life is worth living. Show them Jesus. Is. Better.

If you know of someone struggling with thoughts of taking their life, or you are having those thoughts, please use the Suicide Hotline Number below. God loves you. We care about you, and stand available to help and counsel in your distress.

Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1 (800) 273-8255

Paul was addressing some very specific issues in the church at Colossae, as he did with all the letters we know he wrote. His theological training was the finest of his day, but his writing normally stayed very connected to the earth.

As far as we know, Paul never set foot in the city of Colossae. (Colossians 2:9). Located some eighty miles inland from the city of Ephesus, Colossae as a city was overshadowed by Laodicea and Hierapolis. This would place the city in the western part of modern day Turkey.

Though it was what we would today refer to as a “small town,” Colossae was located at an important point geographically. A well-traveled trade route went through the city and brought with it travelers and ideas primarily from areas to the East. These ideas imported by those coming from different parts of the world had begun to impact the thinking of believers in Colossae.

As a young church (probably less than five years old), their teaching and preaching about Jesus and the Scriptures was not well developed. The conflicting ideas, religious systems, philosophies of the travelers as well as the presence of a Jewish synagogue began to threaten the spiritual health and vitality of the young believers.

Two men, Epaphras and Philemon, traveled to meet with Paul about the problems they were seeing arise among the Christians in Colossae. Paul sent them back with his response and authority, and with instructions that they were to share with the other churches in the Lycus Valley. The letter to the Colossians came later with Tychicus.

The danger, as those who have been long in the faith or the church world know, is far more insidious when it comes from inside the church. Outside threats have always existed. Even the most immature believers know what to avoid when it comes to threats from those outside the community of faith.

Far more dangerous are teachings that come from inside the church; a little grace mixed with legalism, grace pressed to the limit and beyond toward license and immorality; a belief that Jesus is not enough-that our efforts and work must somehow be added to assure salvation. A little truth mixed with malignant and devastating lies.

We are also victims of attacks from inside the church. High profile pastors and leaders fall prey to the seduction of immorality. Young leaders, given influential platforms but sometimes with little grounding in the faith, draw many after them and then abandon the faith. The foundation begins to be eroded as though by acid from within. Charlatans and phony religious leaders lead multitudes astray with charming and winsome public persona. We buy the packaging but never read the contents!

Today’s church is not the first to confront these problems. They have been a part of the attacks on the church since its earliest days of existence. And the solution was given in God’s Word over two millennia ago:

Jesus. Is. Enough.