Life in Jesus Christ

Living in Covenant

Giving One's All

Live in the light of God (Isaiah 2:5) 

Called to a New Life in Christ

Colossians 2:6-15 The Message

From the Shadows to the Substance

6-7 My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you’ve been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. You’re deeply rooted in him. You’re well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you’ve been taught. School’s out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving.
8-10 Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk. They want to drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything. They spread their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions of spirit beings. But that’s not the way of Christ. Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly. You don’t need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ and the emptiness of the universe without him. When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything.
11-15 Entering into this fullness is not something you figure out or achieve. It’s not a matter of being circumcised or keeping a long list of laws. No, you’re already in—insiders—not through some secretive initiation rite but rather through what Christ has already gone through for you, destroying the power of sin. If it’s an initiation ritual you’re after, you’ve already been through it by submitting to baptism. Going under the water was a burial of your old life; coming up out of it was a resurrection, God raising you from the dead as he did Christ. When you were stuck in your old sin-dead life, you were incapable of responding to God. God brought you alive—right along with Christ! Think about it! All sins are forgiven, the slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant canceled and nailed to Christ’s cross. He stripped all the spiritual tyrants in the universe of their sham authority at the Cross and marched them naked through the streets.

For Reflection

Only in giving all of your self to God can you receive all of God's self. Giving oneself over to God is not an abdication of your human responsibility to be kind to and forgive others or to seek and practice justice. On the contrary, God will not act in your stead but rather guide and inform your action in ways that allow you to see as God sees and love as God loves.


To let go of self-control and rely exclusively upon God-control is scary. Trust in God, and you will overcome your fear of flying with God.  In place of fear, you will find clarity, purpose, and fulfillment that will allow you to rest, to find peace.

Pray

Pray for the courage that can only come from reliance and trust in God.

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