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Bible Reading Plans
Many Christians follow a Bible reading plan, in most cases to read the whole Bible through in one year, or to read the New Testament and Psalms in one year. The purpose is to give a birds-eye view of the scope of God's Word. Some go much further than this. I have one friend who has read the Bible through 300 times!
The balance to this is to take the old slogan "A verse a day keeps the devil away!" Read that one verse many times, memorize it, pray about it, and dig to find the nuggets of truth it contains. As the old hymn says,
Thy Word is like a deep, deep mine,
And jewels rich and rare
Are hidden in its mighty depths
For every searcher there. (Edwin Hodder, 1863)
You rarely find those nuggets skimming over the surface. You need to stop, and like Jeremiah of old, "Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart" (15:16).
We also know that the Bible was written as books, not as a collection of sayings (except Proverbs, of course). Each book has structure, often with an introduction and conclusion. So we need to study them as books--this is known as expository teaching. In contrast, the majority of teaching and preaching today is topical--bringing together scripture on one topic. There are times when this is helpful, but not all the time! For this reason, in the last newsletter and in this issue, we present some of the nuggets to be found when we take just one or two verses of Colossians and dig a little deeper!
What is a Christian? (The second in a series of articles on "Colossal Colossians")
In Colossians 1 verse 3, Paul says, "We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you." You do not give thanks to somebody whom you do not believe exists. A Christian is a person who knows that God is worthy to receive our thanks for everything. Then we find the phrase "God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ"--there's another whole study here as to how God describes himself. The one name that God delights in calling himself is the "Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (see Colossians 3:17, and also Romans 15:6, II Corinthians 1:3 and 11:31, I Peter 1:3). God is a very proud father. He loves to call Himself the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Another thing we find out about a Christian is given in verse 4, "since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus." A Christian is one who has faith in Christ. That is God's own definition. There is a relationship between a Christian and Christ. A lot of people talk about God but who or what are they talking about? Is it just the First Cause, the one who made the heavens and the earth? Many religions use the word "God". Allah is not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Buddha is not the God who saved us. A Christian by definition is one who has faith in, believes in, Christ. The central person of the Christian religion is Christ, the son of God. That is important to keep in your mind.
A Christian is a person who unreservedly believes in Christ. He doesn't go around saying, "Whenever I'm in trouble I talk to the man upstairs." Believing in Christ is a lot different from just talking to the man upstairs when you get into trouble. To believe means to lean your whole weight upon. He is the center of my life. In fact, later on in this chapter we will read that He's living in me (verse 27), and that He's living through me (3:4). The center of everything to do with the Christian life is Christ. And we come to have faith in Christ.
It is important to see how God works on a person so they become one who has faith in Christ. God first works on the mind. You see, everybody has a mind, and God works on that mind so that as we hear the good news, we take that seed of truth and think about it. We are told that there are 10,000 messages a day coming into our minds through our sight and through our hearing. God gets to people first through their mind. That's why we share the good news. That's why we give out leaflets. That's why we are on the web. That's why we say the right word at the right time, because God communicates to people first through their mind. He gets their attention and they hear and understand the good news. They learn that God has only the best for them.
Then there's another step that He takes. Emotion gets involved. I can take facts into my mind about my computer and how it works, but I don't get emotional--unless it doesn't work. Then I have been known to get emotional! But the fact itself is not an emotional thing. Sales people are taught to "sell the sizzle and not the steak"! When it comes to the good news, then I see there is a glorious future for me. God has done so much for me, and He drops a touch of the benefit into my mind and my emotions get stirred. I have a desire to get hold of this good life that God is talking about. There's a certain expectation that comes to me. As Elvis Presley said, he didn't understand his mother's faith but he wanted it! A lot of people go about witnessing as if they were prosecuting attorneys. They just want to tell people what miserable sinners they are and how they are on the road to Hell. However, the way to encourage people to join the family of God is to tell them how good God is. Hold out the carrot not the stick. Make them see that this life you are talking about is not a life of giving up something. It's a life of receiving something better than you have right now. And that starts desire happening in the emotions.
Then it goes one step further and we make an act of the will and commit our life to Christ. You might have noticed--the mind, the emotions, and the will. They comprise what we call the soul of a person. You have a mind; you have emotions; and you have a will. And it's your will that decides what you are going to do. Having taken in the good news, having the desire that you wanted what God was offering, then you will to have it. You say, "I will go God's way and I will surrender my life to Christ." When you do that you will receive God's spiritual gift package. That is how we get to faith in Christ. It always works this way. You go through the mind first. The emotions get involved, then there has to be an act of your will. You do not become a Christian by being born in a Christian country. You do not become a car by being born in a garage! You become a Christian by an act of the will, and from that moment on there is satisfaction for you.
Let's go back to verse 4 again. "Since we heard of your faith in Christ", so a Christian is one who believes in Christ. And then it says, "and of the love that you have for all the saints." Now it's getting difficult. You mean to say I've got to love all those Christians? Have you met some of the ones I've run across? Someone wrote this little poem:
To live above with saints we love, will certainly be glory.
To live below with saints we know, well that's another story!
Christians are people who love each other. That's another Bible definition of a Christian (John 13:35, Romans 13:8, etc.).
A Christian is one who is not thinking of themselves but is thinking of somebody else. That has to be the hallmark of Christianity. And that's the way that you get the solutions to your problems. When you quit thinking about what a miserable mess you're making of life and you start thinking about somebody else's problem, then you find you start getting answers to your own challenges. If you think your problem is more than you can bear, come visit with me and I'll take you around the hospital one time and I think we can solve that attitude fairly rapidly. A Christian is noted by being one who thinks about others before they think about themselves.
A Christian, it says in verse 4, is one who has love for all the "saints". That brings up another truth. In verse 2 and in verse 4 the word "saints" is used. A Christian is one who has a good self-image. What is a saint? A saint is not a person who is given sainthood by the church some years after they are dead. In Bible terms, a saint is one who belongs to the family of God. A saint is one who has Christ in them, the expectation of glory. A saint is a member of God's family That is why I get upset and express myself strongly at times when people say they are "just a sinner saved by grace". That is not what God says you are. Certainly you were a sinner. Certainly you were saved by grace. But what are you now? You are a saint. You are a son or daughter in God's family. Christian, you must have a good self-image. Those Christians who seem so spiritual saying that they are "just sinners saved by grace", are a disgrace to the Christian church. They are turning more people off the Christian message than probably many other things. We need to say, "I know who I am. I am a son of God with power." Let's have a good, healthy self-image. A Christian knows God. He believes in Christ. He has love to all the saints. He has a good self-image. -- Peter Wade.
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