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Overflowing With

             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 all that, we get a present tense result. This is the evidence that we are doing well in those other things, if we are overflowing with thankfulness.

Overflowing means it’s not drudgery. It fills us up so that it comes out in our words and deeds. I recently found a website that says that the same ways we express love (words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, touch, service) are the ways we express gratitude. That irritates me because I wanted a different list. I have no idea what I want on the list, but it’s a good list because if you love someone, you are likely to be grateful for them and/or to them.

My example of this is from church on Sunday. At the end of the service, the pastor gave an altar call. I wasn’t quick enough to get up and join the first woman who responded, but the second woman I saw, I joined and prayed with her and for her. And I’m thankful for the chance to do this ministry as an expression of my love for God and for her (even though I didn’t know her name until the end.) I got to give a blessing.

Go bless someone today.

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