21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because ofyour evil behavior. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— 23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel.

Paul reminds us Christians that because of our sinful nature we were all alienated from God.

Rom 8:7 the sinful mindis hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.

I think that we all need to be reminded that Christ is our redeemer and our old life has been replaced by Christ’s perfect life. Christ’s resume as holy without blemish and free from accusation has been substituted for our old sinful resume. I love how this is qualified by our continuance in the faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. Our lives have been reconciled by the blood of Jesus Christ thru the forgiveness of every sin that you and I as Christians have committed.

Eph 2:12-13 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.

Our lives have to be worth of him, he is not worthy of us. If we are christians, we will see fruit in our lives and we will become more knowledgable…if thats a word.
God is where we get all our strength and we need to learn to rely on him. When we thank God for things, we should be joyfull not just thanking him because we feel like we have to. I like the last part…how it says that he qualified us to share in the inheritance!! Thats cool because i got chosen, and i was qualified…..so awesome.

15He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
Just pretty much a cool verse and is pretty amazing to think about!

16…… powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.
Sometimes i think we get so caught up in the world and we forget the last part of this verse. We always remember that God created the earth, of coarse, but sometimes loose sight of the fact that it was FOR HIM! The earth was made to make know the glory of God and we need to constantly being sharing the gospel and letting people know about him so that the FOR HIM part can be worked out.

God is the creator of the universe and like this passage says, everything was created by and for Him!!! This verse says to put Christ before all things and he will hold it together–he will make it work…When i see things start to get hard and go bad i look at my life and usaully the problem is i am putting myself or friends ect before Christ..as soon as i change that and put God directly in the center he helps direct me back to were i need to be:)

It’s in him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
He is the image of the invisible God.
He is the head of the body, the church.
We have been reconciled through him.
We proclaim him.

Just like this chapter is all about Christ, our lives need to be all about Christ. That includes what we think, what we do, and what we say.

To live is Christ… (Phil. 1:21)

People all over the world, everywhere, will be hearing the Gospel and people will respond to it with repentance. The only thing is, there might be some people who aren’t hearing the Gospel and we should change that. We should be talking to everyone; we want to be known as ‘jesus freaks’ or some people might ‘crazy christians’ but we should make it known to the world for what Christ has done for us and all the wonderful things God does for us, which in the process, changing peoples views of us or our reputation and should set towards God so that soon, everyone will have heard the good news (the Gospel) and hopefully everyone will respond to it and be ready for the returning of Christ. But we need to do immanently because we don’t know when He will return but we want to make sure that everyone is ready, whether they are with Him or against. MARANATHA! Come soon O Lord!

The cross was a terrible thing… I can’t imagine what Jesus went through for me. But we should rejoice in what he did for us! Christ’s sacrifice was necessary for us to spend eternity with God, and I just can’t get over that he would do that for me, I’m so unworthy… Jesus is truly so amazing!

We need to pray constantly NONSTOP!! And we should pray for everyone to pray and bear fruit

6that has come to you. All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth.

Since we have heard the gospel we need to go spread it and go make more disciples like it says in Matthew 28:19. Lets evangalize as much as we can while we still have time! Could you imagine where you would be if no one told you the gospel? Lets not leave any one out.

Right now paul is remembering our reward in heaven for suffering. We need to remember this whenever we are persecuted.

Paul figured it out… Thank God That the sufferings we endure for Christ, others have also faced. We should comprehend and apply the wisdom of such people.

I loved how Paul shows his love for his fellow people in Christ!! He never mentions anything of selfish ambition, which is truly amazing!! Plus, he mentions that they have not stop praying for the people of Colosse, which gives us an example of how we should pray! We have to keep knocking on God’s door until he answers, expecting God to carry out his plans. God gives spiritual wisdom and understanding for those who know he can and will. So keep praying for the saints! :D

This passage is so great! This verse was so cool to read because its telling us God chose us to “share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.” Thats so awesome! God chose to share his home with all of us. The most amazing place that there ever could be!

We can’t bear fruit without the Holy Spirit in us. John 15 goes perfectly with this. He is the true vine and we are the branches! Annnnd if we’re not doing our daily bible reading how will we be able to grow? We can’t! We can’t do anything without the Holy Spirit and His Word.

I was also talking to them about how God gives us salvation and we need to be praising God for that and how we don’t end up in the pit of darkness. We also need to be praying for our friends and family that are not saved, so that they don’t end up there.

17He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

THANK YOU BRICE BARKER! He sent me a verse the other day that go along with this verse: Proverbs 21:30 There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the LORD. Since the Lord is before all things and He’s created us, don’t you think that He’s got everything under control? No evil plan can escape the eyes of the Lord. It reminds me of how all my sins are seen and laid before Him so nothing is kept secret, like Bobby said in one of his messages. It reminds me to praise Him for the love He shows me, even though I am a sinful person. :)

Living a life worthy of the Lord… pleasing Him in every way… is this possible for us? Can we ever do anything (let alone live our entire lives) worthy of God? Not on our own, no. But like we read in Philippians 4 yesterday, we can do all things through Him who gives us strength! It is impossible for us to live lives worthy of God and pleasing to Him… we just can’t do it. But fortunately it’s up to us to do that. God will use us! Can He strengthen us to live a life pleasing to Him? Absolutely! And He will! Our part is to rely totally on Him, and He will use us for His glory. Paul really understands this…

28 “We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.
29 To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.”

… and really drives it home here. It’s to that end (to present everyone perfect in Christ) that he is laboring. But is it possible for him? No! Paul is struggling with all of “His [Christ's] energy, which so powerfully works in” Paul. And God’s power can do amazing things through *us* too; we just need to follow Christ and trust in Him alone!

This was a really comforting chapter, and something I needed to hear right now!
God is in control. Period. As verse 17 says, “He is before all things”… He knows everything and is in control it BEFORE it happens. Wow. Why do we continue to worry and doubt?! “In Him all things hold together”… this reminded me of a song I used to sing in Sunday School with the words “He’s got the whole world in His hands.” Nothing is a surpise for God and He’s got a perfect plan for each of our lives. In Him, all things hold together! That is sooooo comforting to know and trust in. We serve a mighty and gracious God!

19For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,
20and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

This is so amazing! That the fullness of God was in Jesus and dwelled here on earth blows my mind. It is only because Jesus was fully God and Fully man that His sacrafice was acceptable. If He was only half one or half of the other than He would have been inadiquate to atone for our sin. His divine nature is eternaly praise worthy!

God created everything. We are here not by random chance or mutation as the evolutionists would teach us, but by design. Everything in the universe has order. Atoms, molecules, cells, our bodies, ecosytems, galaxies, etc. What keeps everything from falling apart? This verse tells us that it is God who holds all things together. He keeps all the chemicals that make up our bodies together in the right amounts and working (at least for today). What a miracle it is that you and I can live another day, without our bodies falling apart. Let’s give God the credit for His wonderful creation!

I pray this same prayer for all of us today and for True North. I pray that True North will continue to grow and become closer to God. When we are in our Bible and worshipping God, His will is revealed to us. Once we understand God’s will we can set out to grow the church body and expand the followers of Christ.

11being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully

12giving thanks to the Father,

This is my prayer for each of you and myself and all the saints, that we would live lives WORTHY of what we have been called to which is as we read later on an inheritance eternally with the Father, that we would please the Father in all things, that we would bear GOOD fruit in all of our works proving our faith daily, that we would grow in our knowledge of Him and that that would spur us on in love and good deeds. And may we always ALWAYS ALWAYS give thanks to the Father!

We seperated ourselves from God because we sin, we were his enemies. We were the ones that had to make His son suffer on the cross because we rebelled against Him. We need to realize that we are not good, we are evil. But as verse 22 says that God reconciled by sending His Son down to die for us. Because Christ did this verse says that through Christ we can be free from accusation.

These verses are a powerful statement as to what God has done for us! Pastor Mike preasched a sermon on these three verses the first year of Compass Bible Church and the three points from his sermon still resonate with me. We have three things to be eternally grateful for that are revealed here: 1. God secured heaven for us (v.12). 2. God cancelled hell for us (v.13). 3. God has given us complete forgiveness through Christ (v.14). No matter what is going in our lives on earth we have SO much to be grateful for. Let’s praise God today for saving us from death and bringing us into His eternal kingdom!

9 For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

This made me think back to our series on prayer. How many of us have been keeping up daily on our prayer, and setting goals for ourselves to continue praying? We should all be praying for one another at True North, and hopefully we’ve all been doing that!

The free gift of salvation what an amazing gift that we have undeservingly received from God. But is it enough? Living in America we always tend to want more. We want the car, the big home with a pool, a successful career, an easy life with no major trials or tribulations. Those things would be great, but the American dream is not a biblical concept. Being saved and not having to spend an enternity hell for our sins is the best gift we could ever get. If God were to take everything away like what happened in the book of Job, would we still be able to still worship God? Hopefully we would, because that is the attitude we need to have. Love for God should not be based on our circumstances or our health. Dear Lord please give me the strength to finish the race strong.

God chose us to be a part of his family it was not something we did! As these two verses say HE qualified us to share in the kingdom HE rescued us from the dominion of darkness It was nothing we did. God already had a plan for our lives before we were even a idea in our parents head! God is so amazing in so many aspects and we should be excited and want to tell people about how amazing He is! It may be scary but God had a plan for our entire lives since the beginning of time. That also includes talking to people about him and evangalizing, he planned that too!! So take a leap of faith and go do it!

11being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully

Here it tells us that God can strengthen us with all power by His glorious might. He does this so that we can have great endurance and patience. Now to be honest, i’m not a very patient person. I don’t enjoy waiting, especially for a long time. And the thing is, i’ll never be patient, unless God gives me the strength to be. That’s why Paul prays this verse for the Colossians. So we need to be praying the same thing. Because we’re just humans, selfish and impatient. But God is God, He is the Creator of the whole universe. His glorious might is the fact that He is perfect and can do anything. He can strengthen us and help us to grow to be more like Him, in all aspects of our life, including endurance and patience.

Evangelism is so important, and we need to be sharing the gospel with everyone! I want to take the opportunity to share the word with my Non-Christian friends who aren’t saved, because I don’t want to see them go to hell. We are commanded to spread the gospel, but we need to fear The Lord and not men! Being fearless is the key!

Verse 10!

Pleasing God and serving him is what we are here on earth to do, not to mention making disciples of Christ. I know that I want to make God number one in my life, I want to live a life pleasing to God and not making anything higher than him!