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Colossians 1:11–12a: A Prayer for Strength and Endurance for the Journey

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11May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully 12giving thanks to the Father, . . . Paul’s prayer for the good folks at the Colossae church continues with a run-on sentence we are unpacking phrase by phrase. Just a little textual note here: Early New Testament manuscripts carry few punctuation marks, so sometimes we can’t really tell where one sentence ends and another begins. I have personally seen the Codex Sinaiticus at the British Museum; not only is there no punctuation […]

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Colossians 1:9b-10: Knowing in Order to Act Wisely

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9. . . asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. Today in our continuing study of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, we are tarrying a bit around verses 1:9-10 in order to unpack one of the apostle’s cascading sentences. Yesterday I mentioned that the church so easily falls into a pattern that yields bitterness and stagnates growth. This

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Colossians 1:9-11: A Productive Prayer for the Sojourner

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9. . . asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. Parents encourage their emerging adult children with “You’ll know what to do,” but those young adults never grow old enough to know precisely what course to take any given moment. I have been a legal adult now for 43.5 years, and sometimes I still feel like I’m a

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Colossians 1:9–14: A Prayer Everyone Needs

4 Comments / Church, Colossians, Sermon on the Mount, Spiritual Disciplines, The Church in Exile / By /

9For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. 11May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully 12giving thanks to the Father, who has

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Colossians 1:3-8: The Gospel Finds Us

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3In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 4for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel 6that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God.

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A Letter from a Sojourner to Sojourners

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Today we begin our Bible study on a book of the Bible near and dear to my heart. I confess that Colossians is one of my favorite letters because I learned it from Dallas Willard, who required me and my Doctor of Ministry class to memorize its entire chapter 3 in two weeks time. So while we organize ourselves and get the hang of studying Scripture together, as a spiritual discipline of sojourners, I decided to start in a familiar and warm place. Why I Picked Bible Study as the Means for Healing of Sojourners Assuming that you have been

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A New Dietary Discipline for Sojourners

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There are lots of reasons why Christian believers stop going to church. Sin may be at the root of some migration out of fellowship, but people may simply feel they no longer belong or they have sustained an injury of spirit that makes it impossible to stay. My goal here is not to cast blame or to be judgmental, but to find out what is true and see if there is anything we together can do to help. It does not seem a stretch to assert that most people want to feel at home somewhere. A sense of belonging is

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When Church Has Betrayed You

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My studies of “the missional church” in the last seven years have heightened my awareness of those the church-growth movement used to call the unchurched. Sixty years ago, the people in this category were less likely to have ever gone to church to be exposed to the basic claims of the Christian gospel. They were probably in the minority in post WWII American culture, which in the 1950s was seeing the filling and exponential growth of church congregations nationwide. Consequently, attention to the unchurched was largely a ministry of evangelism. During this era, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Campus Crusade for Christ

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