“Let your daily actions witness: Christ will come again” - Day 6

Colossians 3:16

 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.

 “The word of Christ” – the gospels tell us enough about what Jesus said, to keep us busy for a lifetime. We are to take those words into our lives so that they shape our everyday lives. So that the words of Jesus become the core of the patterns and practices of our lives. Jesus knew that those who chose to follow his words would live differently than those who chose to live another pattern to follow. We hear that when Jesus says, “turn the other cheek” and “love your enemy” and “blessed are the meek” – all of which run counter to the values of the culture around us.

 How do these patterns, and the others that Jesus taught, become rooted in our lives? The rest of the verse helps.

 A.   “Teach and admonish one another” the church is to be place of mutual accountability. A place where we together commit to growing together in become more like Jesus. All of us have parts of our lives that are not the way they should be. Often, we do not recognize the problem those areas have become. We need other people to challenge us – to speak to us the truth in love. And the rest of the community needs us to hold others to account as well. Recently a number of situations involving church leaders in the North American church have been brought into the open, situations where mutual accountability did not take place, and the results have been tragic.

 B.    What we sing often becomes deeply rooted in our lives. As we sing the stories of Jesus, the words of Jesus, the truths he taught, they become part of our identity, part of the way we think and act. As we sing, we are reminded of the joy that Christ will come again.      

 PRAYER:

Lord God, bring into our lives people who will teach us and even admonish us so that our daily lives bear witness to the truth that your Son, Jesus Christ, will come again. Bring into our lives people who will sing with us the joy and hope of his coming again. In Jesus’ name. Amen.