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Colossians 1 Devotional – Day 4

By December 2, 2021Daily Devotional

ADORATION – Reflect on God’s Greatness

Jesus is the Ruler. Jesus is the supreme being in all the universe. He reigns over everything, visible and invisible. He is over all.

Colossians 1:15
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

Praise Jesus, the ruler of all.
Reflect on the reality that the ruler of all would humble himself by being born as a human. Reflect on the reality that He would be born into a lowly station as the son of a laborer. He is ruler but He did not hold onto His status. Praise Him for his authority over all things, seen and unseen. Praise Him for His authority. 

CONFESSION: Confess your sins to God and receive his continued mercy.

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9

THANKSGIVING: Giving thanks to God for his specific blessings in our lives.

“Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.” Psalm 100

SUPPLICATION: Bringing our requests to God.

    • Bring your personal prayer requests to God.
    • Pray for Christian Challenge as they have their winter formal tonight. Ask God to continue His work through Christian Challenge.

SCRIPTURE READING:

Colossians 1 The Message

1-2 I, Paul, have been sent on special assignment by Christ as part of God’s master plan. Together with my friend Timothy, I greet the Christians and stalwart followers of Christ who live in Colosse. May everything good from God our Father be yours!

Working in His Orchard
3-5 Our prayers for you are always spilling over into thanksgivings. We can’t quit thanking God our Father and Jesus our Messiah for you! We keep getting reports on your steady faith in Christ, our Jesus, and the love you continuously extend to all Christians. The lines of purpose in your lives never grow slack, tightly tied as they are to your future in heaven, kept taut by hope.

5-8 The Message is as true among you today as when you first heard it. It doesn’t diminish or weaken over time. It’s the same all over the world. The Message bears fruit and gets larger and stronger, just as it has in you. From the very first day you heard and recognized the truth of what God is doing, you’ve been hungry for more. It’s as vigorous in you now as when you learned it from our friend and close associate Epaphras. He is one reliable worker for Christ! I could always depend on him. He’s the one who told us how thoroughly love had been worked into your lives by the Spirit.

9-12 Be assured that from the first day we heard of you, we haven’t stopped praying for you, asking God to give you wise minds and spirits attuned to his will, and so acquire a thorough understanding of the ways in which God works. We pray that you’ll live well for the Master, making him proud of you as you work hard in his orchard. As you learn more and more how God works, you will learn how to do your work. We pray that you’ll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul—not the grim strength of gritting your teeth but the glory-strength God gives. It is strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy, thanking the Father who makes us strong enough to take part in everything bright and beautiful that he has for us.

13-14 God rescued us from dead-end alleys and dark dungeons. He’s set us up in the kingdom of the Son he loves so much, the Son who got us out of the pit we were in, got rid of the sins we were doomed to keep repeating.

Christ Holds It All Together
15-18 We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.

18-20 He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he’s there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so expansive, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross.

21-23 You yourselves are a case study of what he does. At one time you all had your backs turned to God, thinking rebellious thoughts of him, giving him trouble every chance you got. But now, by giving himself completely at the Cross, actually dying for you, Christ brought you over to God’s side and put your lives together, whole and holy in his presence. You don’t walk away from a gift like that! You stay grounded and steady in that bond of trust, constantly tuned in to the Message, careful not to be distracted or diverted. There is no other Message—just this one. Every creature under heaven gets this same Message. I, Paul, am a messenger of this Message.

* * *

24-25 I want you to know how glad I am that it’s me sitting here in this jail and not you. There’s a lot of suffering to be entered into in this world—the kind of suffering Christ takes on. I welcome the chance to take my share in the church’s part of that suffering. When I became a servant in this church, I experienced this suffering as a sheer gift, God’s way of helping me serve you, laying out the whole truth.

26-29 This mystery has been kept in the dark for a long time, but now it’s out in the open. God wanted everyone, not just Jews, to know this rich and glorious secret inside and out, regardless of their background, regardless of their religious standing. The mystery in a nutshell is just this: Christ is in you, so therefore you can look forward to sharing in God’s glory. It’s that simple. That is the substance of our Message. We preach Christ, warning people not to add to the Message. We teach in a spirit of profound common sense so that we can bring each person to maturity. To be mature is to be basic. Christ! No more, no less. That’s what I’m working so hard at day after day, year after year, doing my best with the energy God so generously gives me.

Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson

SCRIPTURE REFLECTION:

Jesus, the creator of the cosmos became the re-creator of humanity and ultimately he will recreate the cosmos as well. Cosmos is a word that stands in contrast to chaos. Cosmos is the “well-ordered” universe, chaos is disorder. The cosmos, is as we would expect, coming from a great and creative mind, a thing of order and beauty. It has, in part, become chaotic because of the rebellion of humans. It is being returned to order. For now, that return to order is seen primarily in the church, where disordered hearts are being restored through the salvation of Jesus. Order is also being restored in those places where humans use their God-given abilities and minds to reverse the curse in specific ways. The discovery of medical care, and food production, and many other ways in which people’s lives are blessed and improved. However, at the same time that people are working to reverse the impact of the curse, other people are working to increase the chaos. An ER doctor is applying God-given abilities to save the life of a man shot in a murderous rage. A counselor is using the discovery of truths and methods to help improve the life of a child abused by the sins of a parent. An ambassador is using wisdom and intellect and learning to bring peace to a region of the world torn in half by war. All over the world, the curse is raging. All over the world, God is bringing order through the efforts of his image bearers. In the end, the order that will matter will be the restoration of relationship between Creator and creature. Jesus, the creator of the cosmos is now the creator and Lord of the Church. In the church, the world’s greatest re-creative work is being done.

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