Colossenses 2:1-9 Nvt

For Reading and Meditation:     Romans 8:28-39

What is God's great goal in the universe to which His energies are devoted? We have it in our text for today.The Living Bible puts this best and I have no hesitation in saying that although it is not regarded as a true translation (it is rather a paraphrase), its rendering of

For Reading and Meditation:     Colossians 2:1-15

We are seeing the suffering and persecution we experience can be due to our own tactlessness and folly. Today I want to go a stage further, and suggest that in relation to this matter of suffering and persecution, some Christians have developed a "martyr complex". A "martyr complex" is an attitude of mind that finds...

For Reading and Meditation:     John 2:12-25

Yesterday we touched on the statement of a psychiatrist, Dr James Fisher, who said that when searching for the positive attitudes which made for good mental health, he came across the Beatitudes and realised that he need search no longer. After nearly fifty years' experience of helping people with mental, emotional and...

If we have received Christ himself in our inmost hearts, our new life will manifest its intimate acquaintance with him by a walk of faith in him. Walking implies action. Our religion is not to be confined to our closet; we must carry out into practical effect that which we believe. If a man walks in Christ, then he so acts as Christ would act; for Christ being in him, his hope, his love, his joy, his life, he is the reflex of the image of Jesus; and men say of that man, "He is like his...

The life of faith is represented as receiving-an act which implies the very opposite of anything like merit. It is simply the acceptance of a gift. As the earth drinks in the rain, as the sea receives the streams, as night accepts light from the stars, so we, giving nothing, partake freely of the grace of God. The saints are not, by nature, wells, or streams, they are but cisterns into which the living water flows; they are empty vessels into which God pours his salvation. The idea of...

All the attributes of Christ, as God and man, are at our disposal. All the fulness of the Godhead, whatever that marvellous term may comprehend, is ours to make us complete. He cannot endow us with the attributes of Deity; but he has done all that can be done, for he has made even his divine power and Godhead subservient to our salvation. His omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, immutability and infallibility, are all combined for our defence. Arise, believer, and behold the Lord Jesus...

The word which Phillips translates "intellectualism" here is the one from which we get the word "philosophy." Basically it means the love of wisdom, but then it has acquired a further meaning, namely, the search for reality and the purpose of life.

Most human philosophies are expressed in complicated, highsounding language. They are above the head of the common man. They appeal to those who like to use their intellectual powers in clothing human speculations with words that are...