GraceCreates

By Jon Walker
 
To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Colossians 1:27 (NIV)
 
While moving through the line at a college cafeteria, one of my friends spotted a note stuck in a bowl of apples. It read, “Please take only one apple per student. Remember, God is watching!”
 
When my friend, one apple in hand, got to the end of the line, he spotted another note – this one hand-written – next to a bowl of cookies. It read, “Take all the cookies you want! God is watching the apples.”
 
It’s a comic absurdity, the way we behave as if God can be compartmentalized, believing there are parts of our lives that remain separated from God’s omnipresent Spirit.
 
And this belief, and the resulting behavior, is contrary to the Gospel. The brutal and bloody death of Jesus accomplished more than just paying the wages of our sin; his death also released the Holy Spirit to dwell within us, so we could be transformed into masterworks of Jesus.

You are united with Christ, he is in you – Jesus-in-you – allowing you to participate in the Divine nature (Colossians 1:27; 2 Peter 1:3-4). This doesn’t mean you become divine, or that you access some mythological inner divinity; rather, it means you’re now connected with the Divine nature through the work of Jesus Christ, who came that you can now have the life of God in you, so full it overflows into the lives of others (John 10:10; John 4:14).

If you’d like to receive these devotionals regularly, you can sign-up at www.gracecreates.com/subscribe/. Jon Walker writes from www.gracecreates.com. He is a Zondervan author, and the former writer/editor of the Purpose Driven Life On-Line Devotionals. This devotional is copyrighted 2008 by Jon Walker. Used by permission.

By Jon Walker

And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. Colossians 1:18 (NIV)

If our love for one another is not energized by Jesus, we’re doomed to slide from the promise of “All You Need is Love” into the push and shove of “I, Me, Mine.” Our love can’t stop at ‘let’s just get along’ because the deep and ancient God-love emerges, not from compromise, but from sacrifice.

And the first step of sacrifice is submission – not submission to one another, although that will often be required — but an uncompromising submission to the head of all us ‘one anothers’ – Jesus, our Lord, our brother, and our King.

Jesus is the “head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.” (Colossians 1:18, NIV)

The ancient wisdom demands there be only one ruling mind – a mind that was there from the beginning, firstborn among the ‘one anothers,’ and this one ruling mind now operates within, providing us with a wisdom that passes all human understanding and connecting us to a deep, fathomless, supernatural love.

Submit to the head of our body, and he’ll show you how to love others with a deep Jesus-love. It is his power and his strength that will energize you to love even those, especially those, you find impossible to love.

If you’d like to receive these devotionals regularly, you can sign-up at www.gracecreates.com/subscribe/. Jon Walker writes from www.gracecreates.com. He is a Zondervan author, and the former writer/editor of the Purpose Driven Life On-Line Devotionals. This devotional is copyrighted 2008 by Jon Walker. Used by permission.