Afterwords -- week 13
"Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving." (Colossians 2:6-7 ESV)
"The first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day is to have my soul happy in the Lord." (George Mueller)
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March 20, 2022
Dear friends,
I am enjoying my study of Colossians and learning again the truths about the sufficiency of Christ for all of my life. Through faith we are complete and filled with every blessing in him. There's no need for fruitless speculation, pointless legalism, or asceticism. The Christian life is to be marked by joyfulness and thanksgiving for all we have received in Christ. I was reminded of the George Mueller quote above. Here's a fuller statement:
"While I was staying at Nailsworth, it pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, irrespective of human instrumentality, as far as I know, the benefit of which I have not lost, though now . . . more than forty years have since passed away. The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. For I might seek to set the truth before the unconverted, I might seek to benefit believers, I might seek to relieve the distressed, I might in other ways seek to behave myself as it becomes a child of God in this world; and yet, not being happy in the Lord, and not being nourished and strengthened in my inner man day by day, all this might not be attended to in a right spirit." (From "Soul Nourishment First," 1841)
At the bottom of this newsletter is a graphic of seven prayer points from Colossians 1:9-12. Often, when we pray for one another, we pray only on a material or emotional level: "Lord, keep them safe... heal them... comfort them..." As valuable as these requests are, we should see from Paul's prayers (in this and his other epistles) how his prayer focuses on God's greater and higher work in the life of his children.
RECENT ARTICLES.
-- Be Like Zelensky. "Real character is carved in terrible or tumultuous times."
-- On the religious dimension of the war in Ukraine. Here we see the best and the worst of Christian involvement.
-- On the failure of evangelical elites, an assessment by Carl Trueman.
-- News sources I read. Getting news that you can trust has become quite a challenge these days! I regularly read The Dispatch, AXIOS, and 1440. I subscribe to the Dispatch but receive the free versions of the others. I also access Reuters service for world news.
-- Take time to enjoy simple humor, too. Check out the cartoons of John Atkinson.
FAVORITE MARRIAGE QUOTES. I was going through some of my notes and came upon the following quotes about marriage.
"You don't marry one person; you marry three: the person you think they are, the person they are, and the person they are going to become as a result of being married to you." (Richard Needham)
"My grandmother had three sayings on her kitchen wall: 'It could be worse.' 'It's a great life - if you don't weaken.' And... 'We get too soon oldt, and too late schmardt.'" (Diane Sollee)
"Marriage isn't supposed to make you happy - it's supposed to make you married." (Frank Pittman)
"William Morris wrote a poem called 'Love is Enough' and someone is said to have reviewed it briefly with the words 'It isn't.' To say this is not to belittle the natural loves but to indicate where their real glory lies. It is no disparagement to a garden to say that it will not fence and weed itself, nor prune its own fruit trees, nor roll and cut its own lawns. A garden is a good thing but that is not the sort of goodness it has. It will remain a garden, as distinct from a wilderness, only if someone does all these things to it." (C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves)
Well, that's it for week 13!
Sandy
Image credit: photo above is by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash.
