Review:
A “Whatever it Takes” Commitment:
1. Does not hold to convention
2. Is not hemmed in by circumstances
3. Does not heed convenience
4. Is not hampered by criticism
5. Does bring honor to Christ
Read Colossians 2:1-7
Purpose (v. 2):
My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ,
“How to” (vv. 6,7):
So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
Five strategies for knowing God:
1. Decide to accept Christ’s priorities
…just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord…
The process of knowing God begins with the decision to make Jesus Christ the Lord of my life. In his letter to the Roman church, Paul made it clear that in order to begin a relationship with God, we have to receive Jesus as both Savior and Lord:
That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Romans 10:9
Unfortunately, it seems like there is a tendency in today’s culture to stress Jesus as Savior, but to kind of conveniently forget the part about also making him our Lord. Maybe, it’s because we don’t really use the word “Lord” a lot. When we think of the word “lord”, it seems that we associate it with the “Lord of the Rings” or the Sith lords in the Star Wars movies, or maybe even with the House of Lords in England. But the word simply means the one who is in charge – the master or the boss.
When we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord, it means that we accept his authority over our lives. We make a decision to let him determine the priorities for our lives. We agree to submit our own desires to his desires for us. The readers of Paul’s letter had made such a decision and Paul is commending them for that decision. But as we’ll see in just a moment, making such a decision is just the starting point in our journey to know God; it’s not all there is to knowing God.
It’s kind of like what happens when we accept a job. When we go to work for someone else, we agree to work under their policies and procedures. Our boss gets to decide what our priorities are going to be in that job. We don’t get to tell our boss how we’re going to do our job. But it takes more than just a one time decision to be a good employee. If I really want to get to know my boss so I can serve him effectively, I have to reinforce my decision to follow him or her on a daily basis.
So the first step in doing whatever it takes to know God is to decide to accept Christ’ priorities for my life.
2. Depend on Christ’s power
… continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him…
Paul recognizes our own human weaknesses. He knows that left to our strength, we are just not capable of knowing God. So we have to humble ourselves and depend on the work of Jesus Christ in our life if we really want to know God. Notice here that Paul uses the phrase “in him” twice to reinforce the idea that we are dependent on Jesus Christ. If you really want to see how Paul emphasizes that principle even more, read Ephesians Chapter 1 this week. There you will find that Paul uses the phrase “in Christ” or “in him” time after time in that chapter.
Paul also uses two pictures here to describe the necessity of depending on Christ’s power.
First, he says that we are to be rooted in Jesus. In Greek the word “rooted” is what is known as a perfect participle. That means that it is an action that was completed in the past, but has continuing results. Wuest translates the word like this:
“having been rooted with the present result that you are firmly anchored”
I’m sure that most of you have planted a tree at one time or another. When you first plant the tree, it is important to dig a hole large enough so that the roots are all underground. The tree is rooted in the soil. Hopefully, that is something I only have to do once. But when that tree is first planted, it can be knocked over pretty easily. But as I water the tree and it grows, it becomes more firmly anchored. That’s what Paul wants us to do with Jesus. We put our roots into him and then as he nourishes us and supplies us with his power we become more and more firmly anchored in him. And in the process, we get to know God better and better.
The second picture Paul uses is the picture of a building. We are to be “built up” in Jesus. Here Paul uses a present participle, which indicates a present and continuing action. It could accurately be translated:
“being continuously built up”
When our new house was being built, I can remember when they finally built the foundation. And then it just sat there for a month. It didn’t look much like a house. But gradually over time, the various contractors came and began to work, and little by little it began to look more and more like a house. And then we were finally able to move into that house. But even today the house isn’t totally finished. We’re still waiting for the builder to complete some work. And even when that is done, as all of you that own a house know, there is always some more work to do on the house.
When I accept Jesus as Savior and Lord, he becomes the foundation for my life. And as I learn to depend on his power, he continues the work of building on that foundation.
…he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 1:6 (NIV)
Notice that it is God who laid the foundation, God who started that work in me, and God who will carry out his work in my life until it is one day completed when I go to spend eternity with him. And as God builds on his foundation, I get to know him better and better each day.
So how what practical steps can I take to depend on Christ’s power? I need to look no further than to the life of Jesus. Every time he got in a tight spot, every time he needed strength, he went to his Father in prayer. And that’s how I rely on Christ’s power. I go to God in prayer and I admit my weakness and I ask God to pour his power into my life. I ask him to deepen my roots and to build upon the foundation he has already laid in my life.
The first strategy to follow in doing whatever it takes to know God is to decide to accept Christ’ priorities for my life.
The second strategy is that I must depend on Christ’s power as I spend time in prayer with him.
3. Dedicate myself to a continuous process
…continue to live in him…
If it wasn’t already clear from the first two strategies, getting to know God is not a one time effort. It is a continuous process that will continue for all of our lives. That’s why Paul writes that we must continue to live in Jesus if we want to get to know him better.
I think that a lot of us struggle with that idea some times because it runs counter to the standard educational process in our country. We go to school for 12 or 13 years and then what happens? We get a high school diploma that indicates that we have mastered certain knowledge and skills. And for many people that becomes the end of their formal educational process. After all, with that diploma, you can get a job and be a contributing member of society.
However some people go on to college and earn an associate’s or bachelor’s degree. And a portion of those people will go on to get an advanced degree – a master’s or doctor’s degree. But for everyone there is a final goal and once we reach it, we conclude at least the formal part of our education.
But the process of getting to know God never ends. We never graduate with a degree in knowing God. In fact, for most Christians that I know, the more they get to know God they realize just how far they have to go in their understanding of God.
If there was ever anyone who could claim they had completed the process of knowing God, it would have to be the apostle Paul. But in his letter to the Philippian church, here’s what Paul had to say about his own spiritual journey:
What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ - the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things…
Philippians 3:8-15 (NIV)
Illustration:
Knowing God is a lot more like a marriage than it is like school.
The first strategy to follow in doing whatever it takes to know God is to decide to accept Christ’ priorities for my life.
The second strategy is that I must depend on Christ’s power as I spend time in prayer with him.
The third strategy is that I must dedicate myself to a continuous process of getting to know God that will last for the rest of my life.
4. Deepen my understanding of crucial principles
... strengthened in the faith as you were taught…
Again Paul uses a present participle which indicates that we are to be continually strengthened in the faith. Based on the context and the grammatical construction, the faith that Paul is writing about here is body of revealed truth which had been taught to Paul’s readers rather than their own personal faith and trust.
Here Paul is addressing a problem that faced the Colossian church. If you go back to the beginning of Colossians 2, it is obvious that there were some false teachers who were trying to deceive the Colossian believers. And although Paul had commended those believers for remaining strong in their faith, he also wanted to make sure that they remained firm.
There is a great lesson for us to learn here, too. We need to consistently go back to those basic truths that we were once taught as the basis for accepting Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord and to be constantly strengthened in our understanding of those crucial principles. And the way that I do that is very simple and practical – I spend time in God’s word on a daily basis. That is the only place I can go to find the truth that is the basis for my faith and where my faith can be constantly and consistently strengthened.
That’s exactly what the Bereans did:
Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
Acts 17:11 (NIV)
Even though Paul was a godly man, the Bereans constantly compared everything he said to the Word of God to evaluated the truth of his words. And if we really want to do whatever it takes to know God, then we must do the very same thing.
The first strategy to follow in doing whatever it takes to know God is to decide to accept Christ’ priorities for my life.
The second strategy is that I must depend on Christ’s power as I spend time in prayer with him.
The third strategy is that I must dedicate myself to a continuous process of getting to know God that will last for the rest of my life.
The fourth strategy is that I must deepen my understanding of crucial principles.
5. Develop my connections with other people
This last strategy is not quite as obvious as the first four. In English, it’s not quite as obvious that every time the word “you” is used in this passage it is plural. In addition, every verb is also in the form that all you grammarians would call the 2nd person plural. Sometimes, I find it helpful to just substitute the word y’all for you when the plural is used. So here’s the Pat Damiani translation of Colossians 2:6,7:
So then, just as y’all received Christ Jesus as Lord, y’all continue to live in him, y’all rooted and y’all built up in him, y’all strengthened in the faith as y’all were taught, and y’all overflowing with thankfulness.
I know that’s a little over the top, but that’s exactly the way Paul wrote it. And I’m convinced he did it for a reason. As I’ve said before, God never intended for there to be Lone Ranger Christians. We were created to live in community with other believers, and God intended for us to grow in our knowledge of him in within that community.
We can get to know God better as we read the Bible and pray on our own – in fact, we need to do that. But if we really want to do whatever it takes to know God, that’s not enough by itself. We need the insight, encouragement and accountability that can only come from interacting with other believers. That’s why God created local bodies of believers and that’s why Thornydale Family Church exists.
so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.
Romans 12:5 (NIV)
Every week, we offer a number of opportunities for you to come together with other believers and to grow in your knowledge of God.
On Sunday mornings we have Bible Study classes for everyone in your family. And in those classes we read and study God’s Word, we pray, and we interact with others in a way that helps us to know God better.
We’ll talk more about corporate worship next week, but this time we’re spending together right now will help all of us to know God better.
Men, we have two Bible studies just for you – one on Tuesday morning at 6:30 a.m. and another on Wednesday nights at 7:00 p.m. I know that means you may have to give up a extra hour of sleep on Tuesday morning or your favorite TV shows on Wednesday night, but I can guarantee that you’ll get to know God better as you spend time with other men searching out the truths from God’s Word.
Ladies, we have a Tuesday afternoon Bible study and an active Women’s ministry.
The first strategy to follow in doing whatever it takes to know God is to decide to accept Christ’ priorities for my life.
The second strategy is that I must depend on Christ’s power as I spend time in prayer with him.
The third strategy is that I must dedicate myself to a continuous process of getting to know God that will last for the rest of my life.
The fourth strategy is that I must deepen my understanding of crucial principles.
The fifth strategy is that I need to develop my connections with other people.
