Skip to main content

Being Rich in the Word of Christ by Pastor Charlie Handren

By Anonymous
In three days from now, 2019 will give way to 2020 and the first year of a new decade will begin. As those who have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ and eternally adopted into his family, let’s choose to aim our lives in the right direction by resolving to be rich in the word of Christ!

As the Apostle Paul wrote, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:16-17).

The word here for “dwell” means “to establish a house or a residency,” so that Paul is urging all believers to allow the word of Christ to establish a residency in our souls and therefore in our way of life. In order to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly, we’ll have to commit ourselves to hearing it, reading it, studying it, memorizing it, meditating on it, applying it, and teaching it. Of course, none of us can focus on all these things at once, but all of us should focus on one or two of them and spend much energy establishing them in our lives by the grace of Christ and for the glory of Christ.

With regard to reading, Pastor Kevin and I are encouraging all of you to download the YouVersion app and use it to choose and work through some Bible reading plan this year. When you get the app, select Plans > Find Plans > Through the Bible, and then browse and choose from there. We encourage you to choose and work through a plan with one or more others, and to take advantage of the social features in the app that can be used to encourage one another and provide some friendly accountability.

Kim and I are planning to read through the Chronological Plan and Pastor Kevin plans to read through the Discipleship Journal Reading Plan. You’re free to join either of us, but you must first “friend” us on the app and then begin the plan on January 1.

With regard to Bible memory, Pastor Kevin and I encourage you to commit to the Fighter Verse program in 2020 which will be on Set 5. The Fighter Verses cover a variety of topics, and are relatively brief and easy to remember. On their website, you’ll find a number of tools to help you develop or grow in this crucial discipline. 

However the Lord leads you in 2020, let’s commit together to being a people who are lavishly rich in the word of Christ! 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

To Have My Soul Happy in the Lord, by George Muller

By Anonymous
To Have My Soul Happy in the Lord By George Muller “It has pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, the benefit of which I have not lost for more than fourteen years. The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not how much I might serve the Lord, or how I might glorify the Lord, but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. “I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God—not prayer, but the Word of God. And here again, not the simple reading of the Word of God so that it only passes through my mind just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what I read, pondering over it, and applying it to my heart. To meditate on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed. And that thus,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reflective Glory: How the Moon Displays the Mercy of God

By
Our sun is a fitting metaphor for the glory of God. In the context of our solar system, it is massive, bright, beautiful, powerful, self-sufficient, heat-producing, life-giving, and dangerous. It is, by far, the dominant feature of our solar system and without it the system would fling apart and all living things therein would die.  On the other hand, our moon is a fitting metaphor for human beings, especially for those who believe in Jesus Christ. First, compared to the sun, the moon is tiny and dim. The sun is 400 times larger than the moon, its mass is 27 million times greater than the mass of the moon, and from our perspective its light shines 450,000 times brighter than that of the moon. The sun is so much greater than the moon that it’s difficult to quantify and express the difference. Likewise, the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, is so much great than each and all of us that it’s impossible to quantify or express the difference. Indeed, the Lord is very great and greatly...
Post a Comment
Read more

When Children Say "I'm Bored" By Julie Lowe

By
This Article is written by Julie Lowe and was originally posted on the CCEF blog.  I highlighted the areas of particular interest. I had already prepared a blogpost on dealing with boredom from a Christian worldview and then came across this. There is much overlap between the two, perhaps this one is more concise while my work attempts to explain the connection between the ability to think and the ability to be happy. You can visit the original blogpost in the link provided below.  https://www.ccef.org/resources/blog/children-say-im-bored   We have a common crisis in our home; it is the calamity of boredom. Our children might even consider it a catastrophe. “I’m bored” is repeated so often it would not be an overstatement to say that these words echo continuously throughout our home especially during any break from school. These are children with limited media time but still children with a Wii and Xbox system, a pool outside our door, multiple games, toy...
Post a Comment
Read more