PRAYING FOR WISDOM
Paul began the letter to the Colossians with a beautiful prayer, a supplication for the fulfillment of what God has started amongst the Colossian saints as they follow Jesus in their ordinary roles and relationships each day. It is this prayer of supplication that we will continue to pray 3xs. 1x for your GC, 1x for our faith family, and 1x for another faith family you know of whether here in Dallas or around the globe…
Father, will you fill ________ with the knowledge of your will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that women and men of ________ might walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Jesus, bearing fruit in every one of their good works and increasing in the knowledge of you, Father. May _______ be strengthened with all power, according to your glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, always giving thanks to your Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. Thank your Father for delivering the men and women of ________ from the domain of darkness and transferring us into the kingdom of your beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. Amen.
GETTING INTO COLOSSIANS
Read Colossians 2:1-23, then watch The Bible Project’s video “Intro to Spiritual Beings”, which you can access here.
Remember that Paul was not writing to convince the Jesus following Colossians of such realities, for this was their worldview. Rather, he is writing to demonstrate to them the dynamic shift in how these realities relate through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus.
REFLECTING ON TRUTH
Paul makes a statement in one of his opening prayers that helps the Colossians, and you and I, understand why he is writing to them,
“He [God the Father] has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.”
We are delivered out of the rebellion chronicled in the video, and transferred into a way of life initiated, sustained, and directed by Jesus; “who is the head of all rule and authority” (2:10). Yet, this transfer is not geographical. While they are able to live differently, they are to do so in the midst of the rebellion continuing around them, as the Father’s means for usurping the temporal rulers and authorities (2:15).
This has actually been God’s intention since Babel (Genesis 11), the “mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to the saints” (1:26). He would set apart his portion while the rebellious attempted to make the world in their image (Deut. 32:8-9). This portion, the people of Jacob, would be formed by God’s presence amongst them for the purpose of being a blessing to the nations (Genesis 12:2-3). And yet, this holy nation found themselves in the middle of the rebellion, internally through their own issues following God, and literally in Babylon, the very epicenter of spiritual and human collaboration. And, it is in Babylon, contrary to perceived logic and apparent wisdom, that God commands them not to fight or to flee, rather to,
“Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.
But seek the welfare of the city [Babylon] where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let the prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the LORD.” (Jeremiah 29:5-9)
Jesus understood the importance and weight of God’s intention to save and usurp by transferring kingdoms but not addresses. That is why, on the night before his execution, he prayed on behalf of his followers to his Father,
“I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.
They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them, set them apart for your holy service in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, I set myself apart for your service…I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.” (John 17:14-20)
The saints of Colossae and Laodicea, like you and I, found themselves in the presence of God, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (1:27) and yet nowhere new. Like our faith parents, we too will be formed, grow up and mature (1:28) in the midst of such pressures.
Pastor and author, Eugene Peterson (119), reminds us that we follow Jesus each day amidst, ““the ancient triple threat…the world—the society of proud and arrogant humankind that defies and tries to eliminate God’s rule and presence in history; the flesh—the corruption that sin has introduced into our very appetites and instincts; and the devil—the malignant will that tempts and seduces us away from the will of God.” How will we survive the pressure?
Do we fight culture? Do we flee from the world? How can we build houses, plant gardens, fall in love, raise children, cultivate a community of faith in the middle of a cosmic war? Well, Paul says that we start with what we have received, “Christ Jesus the Lord” and, “walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving” (2:6).
Can it be that simple, that straight forward? Does Jesus really give us the way to walk in “stopping the indulgences of the flesh”, and the truth to root us amid a multitude of “plausible arguments”, and the means to build an abundant life now and forever?
USE THESE QUESTIONS TO HELP YOU PRAYERFULLY REFLECT INDIVIDUALLY AND/OR DISCUSS AS A DNA GROUP.
Paul assumes that the solution to a persevering life for the Colossian saints is that they “reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” (2:3)
When you feel the pressures of the world, the flesh and “the devil”:
What wisdom and knowledge do you naturally—without thinking—look to or put into practice for help or for relief?
What philosophies (expectations for how life should work, what a good life looks like) do you subscribe to as a guide to make sense of difficult times?
What traditions or religious habits do you fall back on when under pressure?
Where is Jesus in these practices? Is he the starting point, the goal, a check-box along the path, assumed but absent, or the “Head” held fast too?
Describe what it might it look like practically to seek the treasures of wisdom and knowledge in Jesus.
Where would you start? What would you do? What questions might you ask? What resources would you employ? Who else would be involved?
Paul also assumes that reaching all the riches of full assurance of understanding and knowledge of God in Christ, is not something we can do on our own. He prays that we might be “knit together in love” (2:2) and that as the body holding fast to the Head, we might be “nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments” growing “with a growth that is from God.” (2:19).
In what ways, and in whose lives, might you knit this week?
BE ZEALOUS & REPENT
Repenting is one of the most ordinary and extraordinary practices of our faith heritage. The stories and letters that ground our faith are replete with the exhortation to and examples of repentance. In a nutshell, repentance is the turning away from one thing and grabbing hold of something different. It is not merely the ceasing of an action or attitude, but the replacement of what is let go with something completely other than what is released.
The things we let go, we repent of, could be our attitudes and ideas of God that differ from who he reveals himself to be in Jesus; or, they could be actions we take that have the “appearance of wisdom…but are of no value in stopping the indulgences of the flesh.” From attitudes to actions to ideas, there are a host of things we hold fast to other than Jesus whether we recognize our grip or not. So, prayerfully ask, answer, and share…
What are the Spirit, the scriptures, and your faith family encouraging you to turn from or release today?
And what about Jesus are you being compelled to grab hold of instead?