Heard of this Hope

In today’s Spiritual Foundation Episode, I talk about Colossians 1: 1-14. I share how we are called to call upon the power of God but not in force but instead to endure in patience. I also share how that is the call to the Christian Walk.

 

Show Notes and Resources.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Thanks for joining me on episode 1558 of the Inspired Stewardship
Podcast. I'm Pat Cummings.
If you've been listening today,
you listen to Scott's podcast.
I'd encourage you to invest in yourself,
invest in other people around you.
There's a lot of young men out there,
a lot of young families out there that need your help.
Develop your influence,

(00:20):
impact the world by using your time,
your talent,
some of your resources,
and live out your calling.
And one of the things that I like to say is
life by design.
Live the life that you want to design for yourself and
help other people do that.
Having the ability to find a life with harmony so you
can live that life with no regrets.
There's always regrets,
right? But tomorrow's the first day of the rest of your

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life. What can we do to mitigate those regrets moving forward
and be inspired.
And if you listen to this podcast today,
the Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend Scott Nader,
I'd encourage you to listen to it more,
share it with your friends and.
And let's get this message out there that we can all
do better.

(01:05):
Lifting up your eyes and seeing that God is with us,
remembering that presence through the community of faith,
through others,
through the inheritance of the saints that came before us,
recognizing that that is the walk that God is calling for

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us to walk.
Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship
podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God
wants you to be,
then you must learn to use your time,
your talent and your treasures for your true calling.
In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast,
you will learn to invest in yourself,

(01:48):
invest in others,
and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.
In today's spiritual foundation episode I talk about Colossians,
chapter 1,
verses 1 through 14.
I share how we are called to call upon the power

(02:10):
of God,
but not in force,
but instead to endure in patience and also share how that
is the call to the Christian walk.
Colossians 1:1 14 says Paul,
an apostle of Christ Jesus,
by the will of God and Timothy,
our brother to the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in

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Christ in Colossia,
grace to you and peace from God our Father.
In our prayers for you,
we always thank God,
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and
the love that that you have for all the saints because
of the hope laid up for you in heaven.
You have heard of this hope before in the word of

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truth, the gospel that 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.
This you learn from Epaphras,
our beloved fellow servant.
He is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf and
and he has made known to us your love in the

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Spirit. For this reason,
since the days 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,
so that you may walk 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,

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may you be made strong with all the strength that comes
from his glorious power,
so that you may have all endurance and patience.
Joyfully giving thanks to the Father who has enabled you to
share in the inheritance of the saints and the light.
He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred
us into the kingdom of his beloved Son,
in whom we have redemption the forgiveness of sins.

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Just a few weeks ago,
I was working through the Acts.
This is again a letter or an epistle that many people
think is from Paul,
though there is some debate about that.
But it was written to a particular church.
It starts with that Dear children of God,
it's a letter.
It's a communication tool.

(04:20):
Just like today we use email and text messaging and voice
apps and all of these things to communicate.
And I would like to believe that if Paul was alive
today, he would use all those same modes of communication to
try to send out a message to that is needed today.

(04:42):
And just like email now seems regular,
I'm old enough to remember when email was cutting edge and
considered amazing.
And so we have these 14 verses from this letter that
was written to the Colossians.
This letter is the beginning of a series that we're going
to talk about that has to do with the Dear children

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of God.
And this message from Paul or whoever wrote it begins with
a greeting and all of those normal things that a letter
might start with.
And then it promises and begins to talk about prayer and
prayers for the call to live a life of fruitfulness,
presence and hope in Christ.

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He seems to be saying,
this is part of who you are.
You know this already.
You've walked in this and this hope.
This is what motivates you and defines you.
It is part of who you are.
And then there's a reference to a minister who's a pastor
who's leading there and caring and helping the community.

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There's some debate that perhaps this is Even who actually wrote
the letter.
But then he transitions and begins to lay out the purpose
behind the letter.
It starts from,
for this reason.
It's the beginning of the journey or the start of an
adventure. It's the beginning of the message,

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of the communication.
It's also the continuing of that message.
It's calling out that this has come before and this will
continue to keep going.
For this reason means this is what Paul had heard about
them. It says,
I heard that you loved one another and that you loved

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him in the Spirit.
He heard that they were bearing fruit,
that they had served and helped and healed and taught.
He heard that they were living lives worthy of the gospel.
And because of that,
because of the love that lived in them and was observable
from them.

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Paul then praises God for them and said,
please God,
continue to pour into them all that they need to live.
Paul prays for wisdom and understanding and the knowledge of God's
will so that they would continue to keep growing and moving
forward. And right there in the middle there's a verse that

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says, may you be made strong with all the strength that
comes from his glorious power.
And may you be prepared to endure everything with patience,
with, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father.
Think about that.
This is an encapsulation of the message,
of what it means to be an ordinary Christian.

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These words seem to put hope into action.
They say,
this is what hope is.
First it starts,
Paul prays for them to be strong.
May you be made strong with all the strength that comes
from his glorious power.
And imagine that for a minute he's calling upon the power
of God,

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all of that power.
That power is made with the ability to change the world.
That power is made for mighty deeds,
feats of faithfulness,
things that miracles that take away your breath,
things that no person can do.
And he's saying,
we can be strong with that strength.

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But then it takes a little pivot.
So many messages in the Bible do see immediately when you
think about strength and think about the ability to change the
world, you think about reaching out and telling people what they
should do,
telling people who they are,
telling people what it is that they should do.
It comes across as something to do with control and power

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and being on top.
But then it says,
may you have the strength to endure with patience.
That's the left hand turn.
Wait. What?
Not change,
not do something with it,
not force it on others,
but to endure.
I've got all the glorious power of God,

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all that strength,
and you want me to endure?
Endure sounds like a surrender,
endure sounds put up with it,
outlast, tolerate,
wade through stomach.
I've got the ability to endure this sickness or this medicine
or this pain.
But then Paul makes it even worse and says not just
to endure,

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but to endure with patience.
Don't even grumble and gripe about it.
Instead, find joy in it and give thanks.
Because it says endure with patience while joyfully giving thanks.
Endure, but do it with joy.

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That sounds.
I don't know about you,
but that sounds impossible.
That sounds like something that would take the strength of God
because I don't know if I have it in me.
When I look out at the world and I see suffering
and I see pain and I see mistakes and I see
things going wrong,
I want to fix it.
I don't want to endure it.

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And this isn't about enduring so that you get sympathy or
look at woe is me or poor me.
No, it's supposed to endure but find joy.
Not to dwell on the burden,
but rather give thanks for life and give thanks for joy
and give thanks for those moments.
Give thanks when everything is going well and to give thanks

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when everything is not.
And you have to do that by remembering whose you are,
by remembering who is with us.
Joyfully giving thanks to God means being aware of God and
God presence.
It means remembering that there is always hope.

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It means knowing that we are not alone,
not forgotten,
not abandoned.
And it also means making sure that we reach out to
others, not with strength of fear and pain and anger and
heart, but letting them know they're not alone,
not forgotten,
not abandoned,
no matter what they have done or not done done.

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Joyfully giving thanks to God means relationship means reaching out to
everyone, lifting up your eyes and seeing that God is with
us, remembering that presence through the community of faith,
through others,
through the inheritance of the saints that came before us.

(11:40):
Recognizing that is the walk that God is calling for us
to walk.
Thanks for listening.
Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.
As a subscriber and listener,

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we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen,
but act on what you've heard and find a way to
to live your calling.
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(12:25):
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Until next time,
invest your time,
your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the

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world.