Community Compass

In a small mid-western conservative town, a new bar/tavern started a building to open up their business. The local Baptist church started a campaign to block the bar from opening with petitions and prayers. Work progressed, however, right up till the week before opening, when a lightning strike hit the bar and it burned to the ground. The church folks were rather smug in their outlook after that, till the bar owner sued the church on the grounds that the church was ultimately responsible for the demise of his building, either through direct or indirect actions or means. The church vehemently denied all responsibility or any connection to the building’s demise in its reply to the court. As the case made its way in to court, the judge looked over the paperwork. At the hearing he commented, “I don’t know how I’m going to decide this, but as it appears from the paperwork, we have a bar owner that believes in the power of prayer, and an entire church congregation that doesn’t!”

And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. 4 Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.  Colossians 4:3-4

Verse 3 indicates that Paul was writing from prison.  The reason for his imprisonment was that he was preaching the Gospel.  This would have stopped most people from proclaiming Christ. But not Paul. He was asking for prayer so that he could find more opportunities to tell others about Christ.  He realized that it God who provided the opportunities.  Paul may have been bound, but God is not bound. He is, in no way, restricted from spreading His message of salvation.

Paul not only prayed for opportunities, he prayed for clarity in proclaiming the Gospel.  He wasn’t concerned about “dressing up” the message to make it acceptable or agreeable to sinful people. He wanted people to hear it straight.  He wasn’t ashamed of the message (Romans 1:16) even though people would think it to be foolish (1 Corinthians 1:18, 23).

Are we like Paul? Do we realize that only believing the Gospel will save a person from dreadful punishment and bring them to eternal life?    Don’t give up telling others.  Don’t stop praying for opportunities.  Don’t “water down” the message. Stick to it!

Act naturally
Found missing
Resident alien
Advanced BASIC
Genuine imitation
Airline Food
Good grief
Same difference
Almost exactly
Government organization

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. 3 And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. 4 Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. Colossians 4:2-4

One of the greatest ministries that a person can perform is that of prayer. It is the key element to anything we do for Christ. We cannot do anything without the power of Christ working in us and through us (John 1:1-5) and prayer is a vital part of the process.

1. Stick to Prayer

Here the apostle, tells the Colossians to “devote yourselves to prayer” (v.2). He commands them (through the Lord) to be diligent about prayer all the time. The Greek present tense of this word makes it urgent, signifying a habitual practice. There is no allowance for us to slack off in prayer.

This is something that requires personal effort. To devote “ourselves” is to say that no one else can do it for us. Our problem is that we find excuses for our lack of prayer. We put it off with all good intentions of doing it, but, all to often, we run out of time or we simply forget. My seminary Hebrew professor used to say something like “What can be done at any time and in any manner will likely be done in no time or in no manner.” With all due respect, doesn’t that sound a little — pessimistic? Not really. Compare the phrase with reality and, more times than not, you will find it to be true. So, we are to pray constantly.

1. What should be our constant habits in prayer? The text says that we should be watchful. The idea is that while we pray we are to be alert to the “dangers, toils and snares” around us.

We should be aware of our sins that would prevent us from an effective prayer life.

We should be aware of the needs and struggles of others, so that we may effectively pray for them.

We should be aware of the opportunities that lie before us and others ( v.3)

In every sense, we should pray constantly with our eyes wide open. Be informed.

2. Next, we are instructed to be thankful. This is stressed in other verses on prayer as well (1 Tim 2:1, Philippians 4:6) What does thanksgiving do — for us? Some suggestions:

We are doing God’s will when we are thankful (1 Thessalonians 5:18)

We are glorifying God and depending on Him when we are thankful

We are reminded of God’s power when we acknowledge His greatness. What a way to be encouraged to pray constantly!

Prayer. The devil would love for you to quit! He knows where our power lies. If he could wedge anything between us and our God, he will have been successful Our walk with God is what we, as Christians, are all about.

“…prayer is not some small thing. It is not some marginal thing. It is not some incidental thing in the Christian life. Prayer is at the heart of why God created the universe. You may have the modern, secular notion that the universe is really about great galactic events and supernovas and remarkable expanses of time and space and energy. But in reality the center of the created universe is man created in the image of God. And the meaning of man in the image of God is to display God’s glory. And the way God delights to display His glory in man is by being depended on through prayer.”

– John Piper (Devote Yourselves to Prayer, a Sermon by John Piper)

Did you hear of the little boy who came home from kindergarten with a blue ribbon. When his mommy asked him “What is the blue ribbon for?” he proudly announced, “I won!”

When pressed for details he simply said, “The teacher asked all of us to guess how many legs a cow has. When my turn came, I guessed FIVE.”

“Five???” his mother gasped, “but a cow only has FOUR legs.”

“I won because my guess was the closest.”

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, 24 since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. 25 Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for his wrong, and there is no favoritism. Colossians 3:23-25

No job was more thankless and under appreciated than being a bond slave. They had absolutely no rights and, mostly, no future. They were considered the personal property of their owners. And, no doubt, they were, as a class, treated roughly and unfairly by their “owners.”

Paul’s focus was not to free all the slaves.  Bond slaves numbered 60 million in Paul’s day.  The Gospel was still new and Paul’s objective was to make disciples of Jesus Christ.  When he addressed Christian slaves, he was concerned about the larger issue of their testimony before God than their status as slaves.  How should a Christian slave work?  How could he be able to keep going? What would motivate them to do their best?

1.  Their manner – whatever they were to do, they were to consistently put their soul       into it.  The Greek literally states “from the soul, be working.”  There were to be no half-hearted efforts at any time.

2.  Their motive – was to please God, not man. They were to labor for the Lord no matter what.   God must be the first and foremost reason for anything that is done.

3.  Their Master – Was to be God, not man.  The capricious and sinful nature of their masters would naturally cause them to chafe and rebel.  Yet, now that they had a new Master, they would be able to consistently serve well by doing their best. It was the Lord with Whom they would ultimately deal (v. 24) and He would be the One Who would make all the wrongs right.

What can be said of slaves should be true for us all. Do you have a hard time doing your best knowing all the politics and inequities at work?  You have a choice. Since you are not a bond slave, you can quit and find a new job or you stay and remember what Paul taught in this passage.  Whether  you stay or quit is up to you. But, at all times, we should remember that our manner of work should be whole-hearted.  Our  motive for work should always be to do our work for God.  Our Master (boss) is none other than God alone.

When we operate out of these three principles,  those around us should see a great difference in us, and give glory to God (Matthew 5:14-16).

There was a man who loved to make up puns. One day a local magazine sponsored a pun-contest. The man entered the contest ten different times in the hope that at least one of his puns would win. Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.

A man rushed into the doctor’s office and shouted, “Doctor! I think I’m shrinking!”
The doctor calmly responded, “Now, settle down. You’ll just have to be a little patient.”

And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Colossians 3:17

The Christian life is much more than just adherence to correct teachings. It is the everyday practical application of God’s truth to how we live. Your “talk” must match your “walk.” The Apostle Paul was telling the Colossian believers to do whatever they due in recognition of Christ’s authority in their lives. Whatever they would do should be met with the approval of Jesus Christ.

The same is true for us today. If a U.S. ambassador to another country is acting in the “name” of the president, his choices of what he can do and how he should do it, are limited to the wishes of the president.

The same is true of our allegiance to Christ. Whatever we do and however we perform it, must be governed by the wishes of our Savior. Keeping that in mind will help us choose what to do and how to do it wisely.

H.A. Ironsides, a great Bible expositor and preacher of yesteryear recounts a story from his childhood that illustrates Colossians 3:17

“When I was a boy, I felt it was both a duty and a privilege to help my widowed mother make ends meet by finding employment in vacation time, on Saturdays and other times when I did not have to be in school. For quite a while I worked for a Scottish shoemaker, or “cobbler,” as he preferred to be called, an Orkney man, named Dan Mackay. He was a forthright Christian and his little shop was a real testimony for CHRIST in the neighborhood. The walls were literally covered with Bible texts and pictures, generally taken from old-fashioned Scripture Sheet Almanacs, so that look where one would, he found the Word of GOD staring him in the face. There were John 3:16 and John 5:24, Romans 10:9, and many more.

On the little counter in front of the bench on which the owner of the shop sat, was a Bible, generally open, and a pile of gospel tracts. No package went out of that shop without a printed message wrapped inside. And whenever opportunity offered, the customers were spoken to kindly and tactfully about the importance of being born again and the blessedness of knowing that the soul is saved through faith in CHRIST. Many came back to ask for more literature or to inquire more particularly as to how they might find peace with GOD, with the blessed results that men and women were saved, frequently right in the shoe-shop.

It was my chief responsibility to pound leather for shoe soles. A piece of cowhide would be cut to suit, then soaked in water. I had a flat piece of iron over my knees and, with a flat-headed hammer, I pounded these soles until they were hard and dry. It seemed an endless operation to me, and I wearied of it many times.

What made my task worse was the fact that, a block away, there was another shop that I passed going and coming to or from my home, and in it sat a jolly, godless cobber who gathered the boys of the neighborhood about him and regaled them with lewd tales that made him dreaded by respectable parents as a menace to the community. Yet, somehow, he seemed to thrive and that perhaps to a greater extent than my employer, Mackay. As I looked in his window, I often noticed that he never pounded the soles at all, but took them from the water, nailed them on, damp as they were, and with the water splashing from them as he drove each nail in.

One day I ventured inside, something I had been warned never to do. Timidly, I said, “I notice you put the soles on while still wet. Are they just as good as if they were pounded?” He gave me a wicked leer as he answered, “They come back all the quicker this way, my boy!”

Feeling I had learned something, I related the instance to my boss and suggest that I was perhaps wasting time in drying out the leather so carefully. Mr. Mackay stopped his work and opened his Bible to the passage that reads,

“Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”

“Harry,” he said, “I do not cobble shoes just for the four bits or six bits (50 cents or 75 cents) that I get from my customers. I am doing this for the glory of GOD. I expect to see every shoe I have ever repaired in a big pile at the judgment seat of CHRIST, and I do not want the LORD to say to me in that day, ‘Dan, this was a poor job. You did not do your best here.’ I want Him to be able to say, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’”

Then he went on to explain that just as some men are called to preach, so he was called to fix shoes, and that only as he did this well would his testimony count for GOD. It was a lesson I have never been able to forget. Often when I have been tempted to carelessness, or to slipshod effort, I have thought of dear, devoted Dan Mackay, and it has stirred me up to seek to do all as for Him who died to redeem me. Beloved, how are you doing your work, whatever and wherever it may be? As unto the Lord and for His glory? Or just to get by? Don’t waste your life for every deed done in the Spirit to glorify our Father will be repaid at the Judgment Seat of Christ!” (Precept Austin)

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. Colossians 3:16

The dominant theme of Paul’s epistle to people at Colosse was the Person of Jesus Christ.  The Open Study Bible’s introduction to Colossians  points out that Christ is“the head of all prinicipality and power (2:10), the Lord of Creation (1:16,17) and the Author of reconciliation (1:20-22; 2:13-15). He is the basis for the believer’s hope (1:5,23,27), the source of the believer’s power for  a new life (1:11.29), the believer’s Redeemer and Reconciler (1:14,20-22; 2:11-15), the embodiment of full deity (1:15,19; 2:9), the Creator and sustainer of all things (1:16,17), the Head of the Church (1:18), the resurrected God-Man (1:18; 3:1), and the all-sufficient Savior”‘ (pp. 1207-08).

No wonder the Apostle Paul exhorted the believers of Colosse to “let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly!”  Two great points of application to us today are   1)  We ought to learn as much about Christ as we can — He is the focal point of all reality (John 14:6). He is the greatest object of contemplation.  He is the guiding light in a world of perversion and error.  2)  We ought to learn as much as we can  from Christ.  Do we know His words?  Are we prepared to accomplish His mission?

The knowledge of His Word is not merely a passing or cursory knowledge.  It is to dwell  richly in us.  It is to take up residence in our minds in an extravagant or abundant way. If that is true, it would affect all of our thinking and profoundly affect our actions.

Take a good look at yourself today.  What is the most pressing thing affecting your thinking?  Is it Christ?  Take time out today to reorient your mind today if necessary.

On Monday a call came in to the School Receptionist. “Hello, please mark William absent today,” said the man.

“Why?” asked the receptionist.

“He is sick,” said the man.

“Ok, may I ask who is speaking?” said the receptionist.

“My uncle.” said William.