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Positive Words Newsletter
#151 / 13th March 2008 Expanding your awareness of "the simplicity that is in Christ" (II Corinthians 11:3) ----- http://www.peterwade.com/ ----- As a reminder, this email is only sent to 100% opt-in subscribers. Or a friend may have sent their copy to you. To unsubscribe, see the links at the end of the newsletter. DO NOT reply to this email, as your email will not be seen. You can write to Peter Wade at http://peterwade.com/go/contact . DO YOU HAVE YOUR COPIES YET?
THE POSITIVE POWER OF CHRISTIAN FRIENDS
[Colossians 4 -- continued from issue 150]
Here we are in the last nine verses of Colossians chapter 4, from verse 10 onward. We have learned that one of the great keys to living positively in a negative world in chapter one was that we must put Christ first in everything. And the secret is out. It's Christ who is in us, the expectation of glory. Every one of us is a container of Christ Jesus. Every one of us is an expresser of Christ Jesus. That is a great key. We learned to get our basics right in chapter one. Put Christ first in everything. Then in chapter two we learned to get our heads straight. We've not only got to get the basics straight you've got to get the head straight to agree with the basics. And we were told in chapter two that there were certain things that we have to beware of. You see, there are restrictions if you're going to live a positive Christian life. These are not legislation that we lay down but there are things that you don't want to have in your life, because if you do they make it difficult for you to enjoy God's blessing. We were told to beware of philosophy and certain other matters that are Satan's tools to drag us down. And then in chapter three and four we've been learning how to get our lives straight and there's been several suggestions there—the clothes we should put off, the clothes we should put on, the way we should talk and walk. Verses 10 to 18 of chapter 4 we'll look at it under the heading of "The Positive Power of Christian Friends" because there's a lot of power in having a bank of friends that you can draw on when you need it. John Donne said that "no man is an island unto himself". That means we do rub shoulders with other people. Other people's input can encourage or discourage us, and of course our comments our actions can help their lives or drag them down. Our family gave us relatives but God gave us friends. Would you like to change your relatives? Don't put your hands up! Our relatives are the "in-laws and the outlaws", as I call them. But we have friends, and there's nothing better than brothers and sisters in God's family that help give us a lift just when we need it. Throughout Paul's fourteen letters he names well over a hundred people. These were his friends, fellow believers, or people he had met. Most were people he could count on. It's the same when I travelled overseas and would write to people in these terms, "If I came past your way would you like me to stay with you for a couple of days?" So many of them write back to say anytime you want to come just say the word and you can always stay with us. That's good. It's good to have friends like that, isn't it? It ensures you don't feel lonely in a big land or a big city. So Paul had well over a hundred friends and as we come to this list of names in Colossians we find that there are eight specific people that get a mention, and two more earlier in the chapter. I want to really look at just six of them quite carefully to see the power of Christian friends. The first group that I want to look at are the four men who stayed with Paul. The first one has that beautiful name Aristarchus. What a lovely name! It's almost as good as Peter John. "Aristarchus my fellow prisoner greets you" (verse 10a). That's all it says about him in Colossians. The word means "the best ruler" and tradition makes him bishop of Apamea in Syria. Here he gets just a brief mention, but it is quite interesting. Paul calls him a fellow prisoner. Now, we're not sure whether he was actually a convicted person or awaiting trial like Paul was, or whether he simply decided to share Paul's imprisonment. He stayed with Paul because he knew Paul needed help. We understand that by the time the book of Colossians was written Paul was not languishing in a prison, but was detained in his own hired house (Acts 28:30). He was chained to two soldiers every day so he had what you call a captive audience. Some of his friends would come to look after him and stay to take care of his needs. And our friend Aristarchus was one of those. Aristarchus gets a mention in Acts chapter 19. He was on a missionary journey with the apostle Paul and they came to the city of Ephesus. In that city was the great goddess Diana and there was also a trade union. You ought to read this chapter. You think we've got problems today. They had trade unions back in this time and the trade unions were even more violent than they are today, because this united group of workers wanted to kill Paul and all his companions because their teaching about the God of love was affecting the worker's employment. Can you relate to that situation? In verse 29, "So the city was filled with the confusion, and they rushed together into the theater, dragging with them Gaius and Aristarchus, Macedonians who were Paul's companions in travel." So we learn that Aristarchus, from Macedonia, was traveling with Paul and he was quite willing to get into the front line of the activities. He was arrested. Verse 30, "But when Paul wished to go in among the crowd, the disciples would not let him." Later on, in the next chapter, the party came to Greece and ministered for three months, and then Paul and a companion left for Macedonia while others including Aristarchus " went on ahead and were waiting for us at Troas" (Acts 20:4). Much later in the book of Acts we come to chapter 27, where Paul is now on his fourth journey which we call the voyage to Rome. It was on this voyage that he suffered a shipwreck on the island of Malta. Paul and Luke "put to sea, accompanied by Aristarchus, a Macedonian from Thessalonica" (Acts 27:2). So Aristarchus went through riots with Paul. He went through shipwrecks with Paul, and when they finally got to Rome he decided to stay in the hired house with Paul and look after him. That's a good friend, isn't it? Aren't you glad there are people around like that who think enough of you that they support you through thick and thin. It's great to have friends who can be with you in the good times and be there when you really need them, when things are not going so well. Aristarchus was one who stayed. I appreciate people who've got some staying power about them because they believe what we're teaching. They believe the positive approach to the Word of God and we need a lot more Aristarchus' who will bless us in that way.
IN OUR NEXT ISSUE... We celebrate 50 YEARS OF MINISTRY! Yes, Peter and Vivien Wade have been teaching the positive Word of God as pastors and teachers for the past 50 years. On Sunday 30th March 1958 they led their first service as pastors of the Gospel Lighthouse Church in Fremantle, Western Australia. Get ready to rejoice with us for God's goodness and the tens of thousands who have been blessed over the years as they faithfully proclaimed the Word of God. The next person mentioned is "Mark the cousin of Barnabas (concerning whom you have received instructions--if he comes to you, welcome him)" (Colossians 4:10b). In other parts of the Bible he is called John Mark, and was the person who wrote the Gospel according to Mark. He was perhaps only a child when Jesus walked on the earth and the common view about his Gospel was that he spent a lot of time with Peter and obtained much information from him about the activities of Jesus. That's one viewpoint. I accept the viewpoint that God gave Mark the words to write and he did not need Peter's help. However, "if he comes to you, welcome him". The interesting thing about John Mark is that he went on the first missionary journey with Paul and Barnabas recorded in Acts 13 and 14. We don't know what part he played but "they had John [Mark] to assist them" (Acts 13:5). Now in Acts 15 we read of the humanity of the ministers of God, because Paul and Barnabas had an argument. Preachers are just as human as anybody else. "And after some days Paul said to Barnabas, ‘Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are.' Now Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark. But Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work. And there arose a sharp disagreement, so that they separated from each other. Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus" (Acts 15:37-39). It appears that on that first missionary journey John Mark only went part of the way and then he quit and went back to Jerusalem. Have you ever started something and you've quit? "Quitters never win and winners never quit"—the motto of my athletic club, which is very true. But sometimes we do quit doing things, don't we? Sometimes we just feel that we can't continue with that. Well, John Mark quit. It doesn't tell us why he quit, just that he did. When they were getting ready to go out on the second missionary journey Paul made it clear there was no way he wanted a quitter on his team and he wouldn't take him. And Barnabas said if my cousin John Mark doesn't go, I'm not going either. That's the kind of situation. And so they had an argument and John Mark went with Barnabas to Cyprus. We don't read a lot more about him after this until we come here to Colossians and we find that he gets a mention. He's now one of the stayers. So even though there's been a relationship problem, now Paul and Mark get on well, and Mark sends his greetings to the Christians at Colossae. Paul commends him again in his second letter to Timothy, after Paul is released for a little while and then gets put back into prison again for the final time. Paul writes to Timothy, "Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry" (II Timothy 4:11). So Mark goes from being a quitter to being "very useful [very helpful, profitable] to me for ministry". And that really tells us something. There's somebody in the Bible just like you and there's someone just like me, and we can learn from their victories and we can learn from their failures too. John Mark quit but he came back. John Mark failed but he was not a failure. Does that encourage you? Some of you perhaps at times have decided that your faith in God doesn't work. It's a lot of trouble. You might be tempted to quit your faith for a little while. You might be tempted to throw it all away. What's the good? I read my Bible every day. I've done this and that and it's not working. People, you may quit for a time but the Bible says that "if we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself" (II Timothy 2:13). That's good isn't it? You may fail but you're not a failure. You may quit and say I've had enough for awhile but God says He remains faithful. He loves you just the same as he loved you before. So can you learn something from John Mark? Yes, you certainly can. There are times when we quit but what we have to do is to pick up the pieces and get going again. John Mark was another stayer.
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