Colossians 2 Today's TRC DB w/ Lena's Journalin'

Scripture selections are taken from the Rock Church Daily Bread Reading schedule for each month. “Lena’s Journalin’” are Lena’s comments on the specific passages from her Daily Journal.

If the e-mail text you receive is encrypted at all, just scroll down to the end of all of the text and click on Lena’s Journalin’ , which will take you directly to the web-page where you will be able to read the text quite clearly in it’s purposed form.

Colossians 2:1-23 -
1I want you to realize that I continue to work as hard as I know how for you, and also for the Christians over at Laodicea. Not many of you have met me face-to-face, but that doesn't make any difference. Know that I'm on your side, right alongside you. You're not in this alone.
2I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God's great mystery. 3All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in that mystery and nowhere else. And we've been shown the mystery! 4I'm telling you this because I don't want anyone leading you off on some wild-goose chase, after other so-called mysteries, or "the Secret."
5I'm a long way off, true, and you may never lay eyes on me, but believe me, I'm on your side, right beside you. I am delighted to hear of the careful and orderly ways you conduct your affairs, and impressed with the solid substance of your faith in Christ.
From the Shadows to the Substance
6My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you've been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. 7You're deeply rooted in him. You're well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you've been taught. School's out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving.
8Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk. They want to drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything. They spread their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions of spirit beings. But that's not the way of Christ. 9Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly. You don't need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him. 10When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything.
11Entering into this fullness is not something you figure out or achieve. It's not a matter of being circumcised or keeping a long list of laws. No, you're already in--insiders-not through some secretive initiation rite but rather through what Christ has already gone through for you, destroying the power of sin. 12If it's an initiation ritual you're after, you've already been through it by submitting to baptism. Going under the water was a burial of your old life; coming up out of it was a resurrection, God raising you from the dead as he did Christ. 13When you were stuck in your old sin-dead life, you were incapable of responding to God. God brought you alive--right along with Christ! Think of it! All sins forgiven, 14the slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant canceled and nailed to Christ's Cross. 15He stripped all the spiritual tyrants in the universe of their sham authority at the Cross and marched them naked through the streets.
16So don't put up with anyone pressuring you in details of diet, worship services, or holy days. 17All those things are mere shadows cast before what was to come; the substance is Christ.
18Don't tolerate people who try to run your life, ordering you to bow and scrape, insisting that you join their obsession with angels and that you seek out visions. They're a lot of hot air, that's all they are. 19They're completely out of touch with the source of life, Christ, who puts us together in one piece, whose very breath and blood flow through us. He is the Head and we are the body. We can grow up healthy in God only as he nourishes us.
20So, then, if with Christ you've put all that pretentious and infantile religion behind you, why do you let yourselves be bullied by it? 21"Don't touch this! Don't taste that! Don't go near this!" 22Do you think things that are here today and gone tomorrow are worth that kind of attention? 23Such things sound impressive if said in a deep enough voice. They even give the illusion of being pious and humble and ascetic. But they're just another way of showing off, making yourselves look important.

Copyright Statement: THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary LanguageThis edition issued by contractual arrangement with NavPress, a division of The Navigators, U.S.A.Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language Copyright © 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.

~Lena’s Journalin’ ~
The power of influence, how far reaching is it? Paul is speaking to people he’s never met and his Christian influence is reaching them in the deepest core of who they are. That same gospel message is impacting the world we live in, in our day. Now that’s one powerful influence.
Did you realize your influence is just as great, either for God or for other things?
I remember hearing a leadership principles teacher of our day, state a statistic on the power of influence and it made me think and also desire that the influence I have, be of the gospel nature. It caused me to want to be changed by God’s spirit inside of me and to show forth and demonstrate that change to as many people as God would desire to reach. The statistic was, that one introverted person will have influence of 10,000 people in their lifetime! Talk about stars of the sky and sand of the sea! Woo Abraham, maybe that isn’t such a far out there thought.
From yesterday and the day before continued….
Another difference between Pharisaical religion and inward Christianity. One is based on the exaltation of me, for my good and my good looks (haha), while Christianity is all about God, His will, His work, His purpose, His love. One is knowing of, the other is knowing.
Ever know of someone? Then know someone else? Is there a difference?
Religion tells us it’s ok to know of God and Jesus and somehow be sanctified in knowing a little bit about them, just like knowing where the bank is or the color of so and so’s car. That does not suffice with God who is relational and is calling human beings into and intimate and personal relationship with Him, and with His will.
How can one pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be accomplished on earth as it is in heaven”, if one does not know the will giver or the will? If we knew ahead of time we’d be the executors of a certain person’s will who was about to pass on, would we not get to know of their wishes that we may execute them with the greatest authority based upon personal knowledge to do so?
Guess what? With God, we are will executives. Executors of His will. He expects us to bring His will into the earth realm. All the years we’ve recited that prayer, God’s been waiting for us to do the prayer. The prayer is for us, that we’d get a revelation of why we’re here and what we’re to do, that we’d have a desire arise in us to know the will, by knowing the “man”.
Don’t you love this verse? Now do what you've been taught. School's out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving. Who is this verse for? Who is it speaking to? Me, that‘s who, not my neighbor, but yes my neighbor, through my demonstration of doing the will of God myself. As I lead others will follow the will.
The only way to increase is to grow, the only way to grow is to move forward, leave something behind to become something else. Diapers to panties, bottles to cups, fingers to forks…Aren’t you thankful you are no longer in diapers? But when your mom was trying to tell you you’d like it better you protested, threw fits, didn’t want change etc…Wow, huh? What about bottle weaning, mom’s? Is that easy or fun? How much crying happens?
By the way, when this passage protests others telling us what to do, or says don’t allow such and such, the protest and the rebellion, is against evil. It is pointing out how adamant against evil’s works and how adamant against anything that takes us away from our focal point of true unhindered growth in Christ we should be, keepers of the guard. It is not promoting rebellion or resistance to the things that are of God. Sometimes when we read we put everything in the thinking pot and don’t differentiate at all. The word of God must be rightly divided.
Our world has been infiltrated with an independent and rebellious spirit, because of that we just need to keep ourselves in check, making note that we’re not having the same worldly attitude against God, His words and those who present His words to us in our Christian walk.

Daily Repetitive Verses:

John 3:17
You know these things – now do them! That is the path of blessing.