LEARNING DAILY

 

Colossians 2:6, As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.

 

At the beginning of the weekend’s message, we were told to think back to when we gave our life to Jesus Christ, for Him to save us and change us. Do you remember the time when you did that? I remember the third week of June 1976 when I asked Jesus to come into my life to save and change me.  I had read a book about how everything ends up. It said God wins and whoever was not with Him loses. That’s all it took. Jesus saved me and He certainly changed me! Please know that the Holy Spirit had been working on me for a long time, drawing me to that decision. As Andre Couch sang, there were no bells and whistles, no jumping over pews or running down the aisle – just Jesus and me! 

 

What is your story? How has He changed you? Do you know that Jesus saved you when you placed your faith in Him, believing He had the power to do that. You did not have to do anything, do no special works and nothing special to please God in order for Jesus to save you. You only had to come to Jesus with “empty hands and nothing to offer” (David Jeremiah). False teachers of Paul’s day and teaching even today emphasize works and personal sacrifice for salvation. Yes works are important; they are the results of our salvation through Christ not the requirements for salvation.

 

Paul writes to the people of Colosse and to us today that since we accepted Christ in faith, we should be walking with Him by faith as well. We are to think and act like Him as well! If you have been reading this blog for long, you know the heart of these writings is to encourage me and each reader to walk with Jesus on the narrow way he said would be full of trials and difficulties. In order for us to do that, we need to have deep roots in Jesus, be built up in him, and we must be established in faith. That means our walk on the narrow way must be firmly centered on Jesus – not ourselves. If our walk is not centered in Jesus, it becomes centered on us and our performance, what we want others to see about us.

 

The walk we walk after asking Jesus to save and change us is a choice. We can choose to follow in the footsteps of our Savior, making Him our Lord also. Following in His footsteps is to choose to have Him be the motivating factor for our choices and the direction we walk. Or we can choose to walk after our own desires, trying to show others how good we are. If we choose to follow our own will, we are headed to hearing on the day of judgment that He never knew us (Matthew 7:21-23).

 

We are “established in the faith” by reading/studying/meditating on God’s Word. The pastor called it “God’s textbook”. How do you begin to walk and think as the Lord wants you to if you do not get into the textbook to see what it says? Hebrews 4:12 tells us the Bible is “living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword”. The Bible, the Word of God helps us to judge our inner life, helps the Believer to know the difference between what our flesh (our old life) is and what is of the Spirit (our new life in Christ). How important is this as we walk in these dark, evil days when deception abounds? We must know the Word of God so we can walk the narrow way into eternal life in God’s kingdom. Deception is all around us. But the Good News, the Best News ever (from a song) is that we can know the difference between good and evil because we walk on a narrow way led by Jesus Christ, the soon coming King of kings and Lord of lords!