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THAT WE MIGHT BE FILLED

3/9/2021

March 9, 2021 THAT WE MIGHT BE FILLED
Colossians 1:9-12 “For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and ask that you may be filled with the knowledge in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.”
There are times when we read a certain scriptures, we may feel that what we read is just too good to be true. Such it is with the verses above. The message of the gospel is radical. If and when we find ourselves living a ‘ho-hum’ life, a life void of passion and pure excitement and joy, something is missing. I understand that life has its routines and every day is not a mountain-top experience, but even in the routines of life, even in the difficult times, God wants us to experience His power, His joy, and His wisdom. Perhaps our demise, or the thing that causes us to not experience all that God has for us is that we lose sight of, or not even know that we have been joined to God; being joined to Him means that we get to share His life. Another potential stumbling block for us is that we get focused on this temporal life and we form our views and allow our emotions and thoughts, the tone of our lives, to be determined by what goes on around us-the ways of the world. The prayer Paul prayed above for the believers in Colossae is also a prayer for us, and what an awesome prayer it is; the same heart God had for the early believers is the same heart He has for us today. It is possible, and it is God’s will that we “be filled with the knowledge in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.” We do not have to live not knowing-not knowing God and His power and wisdom; and we do not have to be de-motivated by questions and doubts about life and why things happen as they do. We may not fully understand everything in the natural or physical realm, but we can be filled with knowledge in spiritual wisdom, and we can have understanding in the spiritual-it is difficult or impossible to explain this, but it can nonetheless be experienced. When we are filled in this manner, then “we can walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work.” Also, our knowledge of God can be increasing, and we can be strengthened with all power; we do not have to live in spiritual weakness and with a lack of zeal. We can attain to “all steadfastness and patience”-we do not have to be impatient and we can be steadfast-not driven about with circumstances, not wavering. As we experience these realities and these truths, we will be filled with joy and we will give thanks to our Father who makes all these things possible. It is good news indeed that we do not have to live according to the standards and the ways of the world; we have been made new and we can now live life as an overcomer and experience the life of God. I pray that we do not just read these and other scriptures just as good ideas and suggestions, but we allow the words we read to penetrate the core of our being, to see that they are life and they are for us personally-they are not just theory, and they are not out of our reach; they are the doorways that lead to life.
1 John 5:12 “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”
Blessings,
Buddy

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HELP IS ON THE WAY

3/6/2021

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March 6, 2021 HELP IS ON THE WAY
2 Thessalonians 1:7 “and to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His angles in flaming fire,”
Isaiah 40:28-31, 41:18 “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth does not become weary or tired, His understanding is inscrutable, He gives strength to the weary, and to him who lacks might He increases power. Though youths grow weary and tired, and vigorous young men stumble badly, yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary.” “I will open rivers on the bare heights, and springs in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land fountains of water.”
Most of us, if not all, long for the day when all things will be made right. We are well acquainted with grief, sorrow, disappointment, unfulfilled dreams, political unrest, wars and rumors of wars-and the list goes on. Whether one believes in Jesus are not, all will say ‘amen’ to what He said concerning troubles in John 16:33: “I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” Even though troubles and trials are a sure thing, we do not have to live in despair, but can experience the peace and even the joy of the Lord in the most difficult times. We can be assured that ultimately, everything will be made right, but in the mean- time, we have to endure with His strength; God does not always give us immediate deliverance from our trials-but sometimes He does. Either He delivers us from our trials, or He sustains us in the trial. Isaiah 46:4. The key point for us is to not focus totally on the trial or the difficulty, but to focus on the facts that God uses the difficulties for our good and that He will rescue us in His own time and in His own way. As a bedrock of our faith, we must have ‘set in stone’ the fact that God is ruling and nothing or no one can hinder His plans and His purposes. God’s plan is the complete redemption of all who believe in Him and at His chosen time, gather all of His followers to be with Him in heaven for all eternity. The trials we face here are not a result of God being out of control or unable to do anything about the trials. Trials are ‘part and parcel’ of life on earth; but that is only one half of the story. We can triumph in trials, we can overcome in the midst of the trials, and we can experience God doing a good work in us as we go through the trials….that is our victory! So, yes-let us own our trials, but know that we serve a God who comforts us and gives us strength, and who has plans for our ultimate deliverance from all trials and troubles!
Isaiah 43:1-3 “Do not be afraid-I will save you. I have called you by name-you are mine. When you pass through deep waters, I will be with you; your troubles will not overwhelm you. When you pass through fire, you will not be burned; the hard trials that come will not hurt you. For I am the Lord your God, the holy God of Israel, who saves you.”
Blessings,
Buddy

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SEATED WITH CHRIST

3/3/2021

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March 3, 2021 SEATED WITH CHRIST
Ephesians 2:4-6 “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the boundless riches if His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
Recently, I have come to have a better understanding of what it means to be ‘seated with Christ in heavenly places.’ For some time I have understood that we are in Christ and that He is in us and that we have the Holy Spirit to empower us for life and that we are to live as unto the Lord. To be seated with Christ certainly sounded good, but I did not have a clear picture of what that meant in a practical way. Let me share what I now believe to be one of the implications of being seated with Christ in heavenly places. First, we are seated with Christ; this is a picture of rest and completeness-Jesus’ work has been done and we are complete in Him. Being seated with in the heavenly places is to be our base, or the position from which we operate from in this temporary earthly life. The things we do here should be flowing out of our ‘base’ in the heavenlies where we sit with Christ. In a very real sense we are to be ruling over our affairs, over life, from our position with Christ in heavenly places. No doubt, we have to be about life here on earth, but we must see that we are already complete, we are already equipped, to live the life that comes from being seated with Christ. We do not have to live in doubt, defeat, frustration, a sense of incompleteness, selfishness, or in any way that is unbecoming of Christ. I think it is helpful for us to see ourselves sitting down with Christ in heaven, ruling, and over-seeing our physical life here on earth. We share the life of Christ, and the scriptures reveal to us what His life is like. It is a life-long pursuit, but an amazing pursuit, to learn more and more of our identity in Christ and what it means to be sons and daughters of God-the creator of all things, AND to learn of our inheritance we have in Him. So, let us not become narrow in focus, or shortsighted concerning our life on earth; we are seated with Christ in heaven, and from that position we rule over our lives in the nitty-gritty of life here on earth. The most critical issue for us is that we live and move in our true identity in Him; there is no other way that leads to abundant life.
1 Corinthians 6:17 “But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one with Him.”
Colossians 2:9-10 “For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over every ruler and authority;”
Blessings,
Buddy

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THAT WE MIGHT BE FILLED

HELP IS ON THE WAY

SEATED WITH CHRIST

Buddy Fitzgerald

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