Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:09 — 26.2MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | TuneIn | RSS
Paul is talking about how people live. In very practical ways how they move, how they walk humbly and worthily. Paul says this is done as we do four things.
- Bearing fruit – walking worthy of the Lord
- Increasing in the knowledge of God – the knowledge of God is a source of truth as we know God, who He is, His character.
- Being empowered and strengthened – power and strength that equips us in the moment of testing so that we can stand.
- Giving thanks.
This is the way that we walk worthily.
Becoming the person he intended us to be, apart from sin, is Paul’s goal in his ministry. That they might be presented in the end as mature.
We do need to rest sometimes, but we are called here to work in the Kingdom.
In the way that we are not complete and whole, we cause agony and pain to other people. We are more than what is wrong with us, more than the brokenness that is agonizing to others because Christ lives in each of us.
Christ is with His people when they live from day today. Christ is with His people when they are together. Christ is with His people as they suffer and die to sin and seek His faith and arise with Him in the moment of temptation.
Paul talks about the methods that he uses.
– Preaching, teaching Christ.
– Warning, the idea of correcting through appeal.
– Teaching, instruction in the Word, and what is right to do
Paul says he strives for these things according to the energy that God was giving him. Paul doesn’t say here how to get this power, but it is rooted in prayer and the work of Christ in us.
What opportunities do we have in the life of our church to grow in the way that Paul and the New Testament church did? Relationships don’t happen unless we spend time together.
Scriptures used – Colossians 1, 1 Thessalonians 2:7-12, Acts 28