Today's Meditation - Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Today's Meditation

Read Colossians 1:3-14

³In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, ⁴for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, ⁵because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel ⁶that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God. ⁷This you learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, ⁸and he has made known to us your love in the Spirit.

⁹For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, ¹⁰so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. ¹¹May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully

¹²giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. ¹³He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, ¹⁴in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

     The apostle Paul sends a letter to the new believers in Colossae, having heard about their faithfulness to Jesus Christ and the love that they have shown one another in their progress as Christians.  The letter he writes to them is complete with admiration for their beliefs.  In addition, he adds some instructions to help them in their daily living out of their Christian faith which they learned about through Epaphras, "a beloved fellow servant", as Paul calls him.

     Verses 10-12 offer Paul's blessing and admonition for these new believers.  

• Bear fruit in every good work as you grow in the knowledge of God.
• Be made strong with all the strength that comes from His glorious power.
• Be prepared to endure everything with patience.
• Be joyful in giving thanks to God.

My prayer for today is that we, too, continue to receive these same blessings and that we continue to work at being made strong, enduring hardship while still being thankful.  It is difficult when we are not physically together to continue to see God at work in our lives.  But He is there giving us the strength we need every day.

Blessed Assurance by Alan Jackson