Whatever you do, do it for Jesus. Point to Him.
As we study the book of Colossians, Colossians 317 is going to be our guide.
Whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,
giving thanks to God the Father through Him.
Whatever you do, do it for Jesus. Point to Him.
Paul wrote to the Colossians while in prison to a small Christian community in a small town,
and we covered the first eight verses of this book in the previous episode,
so we're going to pick up today in verse nine.
Colossians 1.9 says,
So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him,
bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God,
being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might,
for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you
to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us
to the kingdom of His beloved Son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
So Paul is continuing to open this letter to the church in Colossae,
talking specifically to them, telling them how he's been praying for them.
And through these verses that we just read, 9 through 14,
I think there's five key things in this passage that we can learn from Paul
about how we should be walking in our faith and how we can apply this to our lives.
And when we look at how Paul prayed for the church in Colossae,
he first asked that they would be filled with the knowledge of God's will
in all spiritual understanding and wisdom.
So, number one, first thing we can pull from this passage
to increase our faith, to walk in faith is,
number one, seek knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.
Seek knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.
This comes from verse nine.
We can ask the Lord for guidance.
Super simple, right?
Sometimes we need this reminder, though.
We get going through life.
We're trying.
Things get tough.
And we need to ask ourselves,
am I doing this in my own power, in my own might,
or am I asking God for help?
Am I asking God for guidance?
Am I asking the Lord for wisdom and understanding?
Because we want that, but often we get stuck and we get trapped in this,
I don't know how to figure this out.
And sometimes we need that reminder.
Pause and ask the Lord.
And verse nine says that,
ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will.
And this is something that most believers in Christ desire.
We want to walk in God's will.
And people pray in this direction, right?
Lord, if it's your will, right?
We hear people pray that.
But Paul's saying, pray that you get filled with the knowledge of his will.
How cool is that?
Then we don't have to guess, Lord, if this is your will.
No, just pray for the knowledge of his will.
And with that comes spiritual wisdom and understanding.
Now, I'm not saying that we'll have it all figured out,
that we can pray that we always know exactly what God's will is
and exactly what's going to happen, right?
The Christian journey is one where we often have to ask that prayer.
We often have to stop and ask God for clarity,
for direction, for wisdom and understanding.
But my point here is, ask for it.
My point is, ask for it.
Not so we can always have it figured out, but don't just sit in confusion.
Remember to ask the Lord for clarity and direction.
And then let his peace guide you.
Let his peace guide you.
His peace that surpasses understanding guide you.
There's been many points in my life where I'm at that spot,
wanting direction from God and having to ask for it, right?
And I remember being a senior in high school
and thinking about careers in college and what I'm going to do next.
And I was faced with kind of a big decision.
And I was trying to ask the Lord, what am I supposed to do here?
And I remembered a verse that my dad often quoted,
a very, very popular one, right?
Jeremiah 29, 11, which says,
for I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord plans for welfare,
not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
And that's a verse that you see all over the place, right?
In Christian circles, it's quoted a lot.
And it's a great verse.
It's a verse that brings hope and peace.
But most people stop after reading Jeremiah 29, 11.
And I think for the first time, I kept reading.
If you keep reading, it says,
Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you.
You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart,
and I will be found by you, declares the Lord.
Right?
So there's this promise of good plans for you, hope and a future, right?
And in this verse, God's talking specifically to the Israelites.
And there's hope here, but there's some.
on them too, right? You'll call upon me, you'll seek me, right? We got to be
calling upon the Lord, seeking Him to find out the knowledge of His will, right? We
need to be seeking and pursuing the Lord. So before you go anywhere else with a
tough decision, seek the Lord and ask for His knowledge, His wisdom, and His
understanding. So that's number one. Number two from this passage, this comes
from verses 10 and 11 of Colossians 1, is bearing fruit, bearing fruit. Paul prays
for the believers in Colossae to bear fruit in every good work. Throughout the
Bible, we see this analogy of a fruit tree, of bearing fruit. I love it because
we have a peach tree in our backyard, and it's a lot of fun, and we've spent four
summers with this peach tree in our backyard. We didn't plant it, it came with
the house, you could say. Four summers, only one of those summers has been
fruitful, right? We've spent the first three summers without getting a single,
we got one peach, but we really hadn't gotten any peaches from this tree. This
summer we got hundreds, and it was really exciting, and I learned something from
that. You know, trees are so much better when they produce something, right?
There's value in all trees, but man, the joy that we got from that peach
tree when we had this fruit that we could eat, and our kids are just pulling
peaches off the tree, the tree was more joyful to us. We got more out of
that tree this summer than the years before because it produced fruit, and the
same is true in our lives. We have the option to have a life that produces
something or one that doesn't, right? Our lives can produce fruit or they can't,
and Paul said produce fruit in every good work. Seize every moment of your
life for the gospel. Paul demonstrated this throughout his life, didn't miss an
opportunity to talk about the gospel. Produce fruit in every good work, but the
key to being a branch that produces fruit is you have to be connected to the
tree. John 15 5 Jesus said, I am the vine, you are the branches, whoever abides in
me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do
nothing. If I cut a branch off of that peach tree, which I've done before, if a branch
dies, or if I cut it, even if there's a branch that's full of fruit or full of
blossoms, and I cut that branch off, it's not gonna produce anything because it's
no longer connected to its source of everything. Its source of life, its source
of water, its source of food. Like you gotta be connected to the tree or to the
vine as Jesus says. The same is true in our lives. If we want to produce fruit, we
have to be connected to the Father. In Colossians 1 11 that we just read says,
be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for all endurance
and patience with joy. That is what we get when we're connected to the Father.
Strength, endurance, patience, and joy. God the Father is our source of those
things. We receive that by being connected to the Father through the word,
prayer, and worship. So number two is stay connected to the Father and bear fruit.
Number three is give thanks. This comes from verse 12. I'm always impressed every
time the Apostle Paul talked about gratitude and thanksgiving, right? His
life was completely flipped on its head during his conversion, right? He endured
plenty of suffering as a believer for Jesus. In fact, during that Acts 9, if you
read that that chapter, during that conversion God told Ananias that he
will show Paul how much he must suffer for the sake of my name. And Paul did. He
encountered all sorts of suffering. And he wrote a lot of his letters in the New
Testament from prison, but in those same letters he talks about thanksgiving from
prison. Same is true here, right? He's talking about thanksgiving even though
he's writing from a prison cell. So Paul understood the power of thanksgiving and
he also understood the sovereignty of God and that we can have joy in the
midst of suffering because we have God who is the creator of the world, who's
greater than whatever it is we're facing. God is good and there is power in being
thankful. And everything changes in our hearts and our minds when we're thankful
and grateful. Anxiety and gratitude can't exist in your brain at the same
time. Paul understood the freedom that's connected to having a grateful heart and
he deeply wanted the believers that he wrote his letters to understand this and
practice this because he knew the power and freedom that was in it. So number three
is be grateful. Be thankful. Number four comes from Colossians 113, transfer
from from dark to light. Let's reread this verse. He has delivered us from the
domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son. We have
been delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred to the kingdom
of his beloved son. Praise God, right? We've been transferred
from darkness to light.
So stop walking in darkness.
In fact, I would say reject, turn away
from the things of this world that are dark,
that distract us from Jesus, from the light.
In this translation I'm reading says domain of darkness.
Other translations say the power of darkness.
In darkness, the enemy can have power over people.
And the domain of darkness brings depression,
confusion, affliction.
And when those powers grab a hold of somebody,
that's exactly what they do.
They depress people, they confuse people,
they afflict people.
But if you look at this verse, it says,
Jesus came and plucked us out of the domain of darkness
and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son,
the kingdom of light.
And that brings us to our fifth and final point.
How can we turn away from the domain of darkness
to the kingdom of light?
Well, the last verse says, in whom we have redemption,
the forgiveness of sins, verse 14.
You are redeemed and forgiven is point number five.
And that's the gospel message, the good news.
Jesus came to redeem you.
He redeemed us by paying the ransom on the cross.
He paid the price and now we are redeemed and forgiven.
So if you wanna be plucked from the domain of darkness
and transferred to the kingdom of his beloved son,
the kingdom of light, all you have to do
is surrender to Jesus, confess the sin in your life,
repent and ask for his redemption and his forgiveness.
And if you've never done that,
there's an open invitation to you to do that today,
wherever you are.
Romans 10, nine says, if you confess with your mouth
that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart
that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
The first step in there is confession, right?
Confessing that you are a sinner
and confessing that Jesus is Lord.
And then comes belief, right?
Believing in your heart, with all of your heart,
believing wholeheartedly in the life, death
and resurrection of Jesus Christ,
believing that Jesus was a man who walked this earth,
that he was fully man and he was fully God,
that he was killed as an innocent man
to pay the ransom for our sin,
and that he didn't stay dead,
but three days later was resurrected to life
and lives today, right?
So believing that wholeheartedly
and then accepting the free gift
that he offers of salvation through his grace,
the grace of Jesus.
Accepting that, right?
Saying I need this,
I don't want to live this life alone anymore.
I don't want to do it in my own might, in my own power.
I want to surrender my life to Jesus,
accept his free gift of salvation,
put Jesus on the throne of your life,
and then we walk in that new life with Jesus.
We walk in that new life.
We walk in the kingdom of light
instead of the kingdom of darkness.
Walking in new life as a new creation.
And then whatever you do, right?
Back to Colossians 3.17.
Whatever you do, do it for Jesus.
Whatever you do, do it for Jesus,
and always remember to point to him.
So next episode, we'll be continuing,
finishing up Colossians 1.
One of my youth leaders, Sebastian,
he helps me lead the youth group at our church.
He's gonna bring the word here
with starting in verse 15 from Colossians 1.
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