Mission Faithwalk

                 This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord—a lasting ordinance. (Exodus 12:14) By the time you read this, it will be the day after Black Friday. You will have lived through three of the four major holidays of the fall: Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the aforementioned Black Friday. There’s only one left. Are you already exhausted? The only parallel I can think of is that we have Memorial Day in May, Flag Day in June, and Independence Day in July, but we can decorate once for all three, and we don’t tend to give presents. I’ll grant, however, that there are still people who decorate graves for or by Memorial Day, and that can create some stress. Maybe it’s just the former corporate retail employee in me. Of course, today’s verse is not about Christmas, but Christmas has become one of the festivals we feel obligated to celebrate. And ...

              Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. (Colossians 3:16)           My first thought on reading this is that Paul must have heard some of the singing of the Colossians. Or maybe Paul had heard his own singing. “Yes, sing in your heart .” Or maybe he knew some of the Colossians were embarrassed about their singing even if it wasn’t as bad as they thought. The problem with that is that he’d just gotten done saying “teach and admonish one another…through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit.           A better explanation is that there would likely be places where singing with their mouths could get them killed or (at the very least) be inappropriate. If singing with their mouths was...

                   Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, (Hebrews 12:28)           We’ve made it to the big day , the day on which we should be supremely thankful. And I’ll get back to the gratitude in a moment. First, the author of Hebrews tells us one reason we should be thankful: we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. Can you imagine? I don’t think I can remember a time, at least as an adult, when my kingdom or the “kingdoms” of my hometown, my county, my state, my nation, or the kingdom of man were unshakable. Even looking at God’s Kingdom, we can see what we think are symptoms of shakiness. Lucifer and his followers rebelled. Man sinned. Jesus had to die. There’s are wars and rumors of wars, and there are prophecies of an upcoming war. We have been told that He will win...

                 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)           “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything.” We’ve all heard some variation of this saying. I like the version that uses double negatives: “If you don’t have nothing good to say, don’t say nothing,” but that doesn’t mean what we want it to mean. Another somewhat similar instruction is “Be nice.” The problem with all these sorts of instructions, including, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, is definition. What constitutes something “good to say”? Or “Nice”? And what if what you would have others do to you is to leave you alone, but the person next door wants people to stop by and chat?             The greatest commandment, acco...

                     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)           “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything.” We’ve all heard some variation of this saying. I like the version that uses double negatives: “If you don’t have nothing good to say, don’t say nothing,” but that doesn’t mean what we want it to mean. Another somewhat similar instruction is “Be nice.” The problem with all these sorts of instructions, including, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, is definition. What constitutes something “good to say”? Or “Nice”? And what if what you would have others do to you is to leave you alone, but the person next door wants people to stop by and chat?             The greatest com...

                 So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. (Colossians 2:6-7) I wish I were really up on all the terminology for verb tenses and forms because this verse seems to bounce among them. I doubt the terminology would really help. What we need to understand from the verbs is that something happened in the past that should be continuing in the present with both present and future results. Some of it happened to us, and some of it is what we are to do. If we are going to continue to do something, we must do it as we were doing it before or as we were doing something before. How did we receive Christ Jesus as Lord? By faith. By the hearing of the Word. How are we to live our lives in him and be built up in him? By faith and by its strengthening. By hearing the Word. After a...