3 posts tagged “power”

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Read Colossians 1

“We give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of your love for all the saints;” Colossians 1:3-4 NKJV

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The apostle Paul is writing to the Colossian church expressing his thankfulness for the love they are showing to other believers. This church, Paul declares, “is bringing forth fruit, as it is also among you since the day you heard and knew the grace of God in truth.” (1:6) Now he urges them to go on to even greater spiritual growth in the things of Christ: “ For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding... (1:9)

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There is nothing more exciting than to watch the enthusiasm of new believers and their desire to grow in love and acts of service. They must also grow in the knowledge of God’s Word so that they will understand His will for their lives.

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Lord, I pray that my love for you and other Christians will not grow cold. I accept Paul’s prayer as my own; that I would “walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy.” (1:10-11)

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Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus Colossians 1:27b-28 NKJV

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In this letter Paul encourages the Corinthian church to endure in their trials. He said of himself and his companions, “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death.” (2 Corinthians 1:8b-9a)

Though they themselves were “jars of clay”, he said, they endured because of the all surpassing power of God. “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day...” (2 Corinthians 4:16)

In view of eternity and what Christ accomplished for us on the cross, Paul reminds them, “...he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” ( 2 Corinthians 5:15)

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Lord, I will probably never face the kind of opposition that Paul and the early church had to face, but I know that there are Christians throughout the world who are being persecuted. Lord, show your all-surpassing power to them, and help me to remember that I too have access to this power in my life through your Holy Spirit.

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But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us... 2 Corinthians 4:7 NIV