Episodes

  • May 8th - Colossians 4:2-3

    May 8th - Colossians 4:2-3
    May 8 2025
    Colossians 4:2-3 Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart. Pray for us, too, that God will give us many opportunities to speak about his mysterious plan concerning Christ. That is why I am here in chains. The importance of prayer cannot be exaggerated. It has been wisely said that we are as strong as our prayer lives, and no stronger. That applies just as much to us as individuals as it does to our churches. It is through prayer that we deliberately open up our lives to God, so without it we will soon be struggling. It’s for that reason that Paul encouraged his readers to devote themselves to prayer. Paul was more than aware of the spiritual battle that they were fighting every day, and they needed prayer to keep them spiritually alert. We must never forget that Paul was in prison when he wrote these words. No one knew better than he did how important it was to stay close to God in prayer. I love the fact that prayer and action belonged together in Paul’s thinking. So often, people talk about prayer as if it is a form of opting out. Some people speak about prayer as if it is a last resort when you’ve exhausted all other possibilities. For Paul, prayer was so woven into the fabric of his life that he saw it as the way in which his actions were shaped and directed. It is not surprising that he reminds his readers both that he is in prison and that he is seeking more opportunities for sharing the good news of Jesus. There was no holding Paul back! Wherever he was, he was busily engaged in doing God’s work. As you live for God today, I encourage you to pray specifically. Pray for God to bless all your activities and relationships, and to strengthen and inspire all the people you meet. Whatever you do, remember that God wants to be at the heart of all of your activity. Question What specific blessing are you asking God for today? Prayer Loving Father, thank you for the privilege of prayer. Help me to open more of my life to your blessing. Amen
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    3 mins
  • May 7th - Colossians 3:22-23

    May 7th - Colossians 3:22-23
    May 7 2025
    Colossians 3:22-23 Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything you do. Try to please them all the time, not just when they are watching you. Serve them sincerely because of your reverent fear of the Lord. Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. There was a jazz song that became very popular during the second world war which went: “Tain’t what you do. It’s the way that you do it.” Paul would have agreed with that. There were probably many slaves in the congregation at Colossae, and he knew that the way they did their work was a fundamental part of their Christian testimony. They obviously needed to do the right things, but it was important that they did them in the right way, whether or not their master was watching them. They needed to give their best because the service they were giving flowed from their relationship of reverent fear for the Lord. He would always be watching, even if their master wasn’t. They needed to work willingly at whatever they were doing, as if everything was being done directly for the Lord. These words might be 2,000 years old, but they are just as important today. It’s very easy for us to focus on the people around us. We want to give a good impression and please them. We want to be liked. Paul would encourage us to recognise that the audience that really matters is God himself. He sees the way in which we work for our employer or help in our local church or assist a neighbour, and he is looking to us to give our best. A key word in these verses is “willingly”. The way we work springs from a deep place. The Greek literally means ‘from the soul’ – it arises from our relationship with the Lord. There is all the difference in the world between the person who does a job grudgingly and the person who does it willingly. God wants us to be the kind of person who does their work gladly and joyfully because we know that, before anyone else, we are doing it for him. Question To what extent are your actions moulded by the fact that God is seeing everything you do? Prayer Lord God, help me to always give my best in everything I do. Amen
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    3 mins
  • May 6th - Colossians 3:15

    May 6th - Colossians 3:15
    May 6 2025
    Colossians 3:15 Let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful. The world is full of conflict. Whether you look at international relations, national politics or even the life of your local community, conflict is never far away – but that isn’t what God wants for us. He has made it possible for us to live at peace through Christ. Paul speaks about Christ acting like an umpire who oversees our lives and continually works to ensure that peace occurs. However, the first word of that sentence is the crucial one – ‘Let’. Peace won’t just happen. We have to give our ‘yes’ to the peace of Christ. We need to welcome him into the centre of our lives and allow him to bring his peace to every situation that we face. Peace is our calling as part of the body of Christ, the Church. We cannot sit idly by when we see strained relationships within the Church. As in every other human community, people fall out with one another, and this should disappoint us but never surprise us. Our calling is to live so close to Christ that we will be continually looking for ways to resolve tensions and to promote warm and trusting relationships. This is often extremely hard work, but the outcome is well worth the effort. Paul often encourages his readers to be thankful, usually towards God. Here, he speaks more generally of the need for thankfulness. We certainly always need to be thankful to God, but an attitude of thankfulness towards others will create an atmosphere of peace. When we are grateful to those around us for who they are and what they have done, it will strengthen relationships and promote peace. Living at peace is the most desirable way to live. Everyone will agree with that. We need to not only worship Jesus, the umpire, but to [itals]let[end itals] him take control. Question In what specific situations do you need to work for peace at the moment? Prayer Lord God, thank you for sending Jesus to give us peace. Help me to welcome his peace today and to share it generously with others. Amen
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    3 mins
  • May 5th - Colossians 3:14

    May 5th - Colossians 3:14
    May 5 2025
    Colossians 3:14 Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. Robert Browning, the poet, wrote: “Take away love and our earth is a tomb.” It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of love. It isn’t merely one more excellent virtue which we need to acquire – it’s essential because without it no family, organisation or church can thrive. Paul encouraged his readers to put on the clothing of love, and just like any other clothing, we need to head into each day ensuring that it is in place. The Greek word for love in this verse is ‘agape’. This is the love you have for people regardless of how they feel about you. It’s the kind of love which just can’t stop loving. It’s so committed to loving that it doesn’t give up when the going gets tough and the opposition is fierce. It is, of course, the kind of love that God first showed to us. When John wrote his first letter, he pointed to Jesus as being the supreme expression of God’s love. Unfortunately, the word love easily gets confused with other words, such as [itals]like[end itals]. But the truth is that we are called to love people whether we like them or not. To love is our God-given duty. The Bible makes it plain that the way of love is always God’s way and is a path of incredible blessing. At times, it will be agonisingly difficult to love, but as we do so, we are displaying the nature of God. The only way to truly understand agape love is to look at the cross of Jesus. The only possible explanation of Jesus’ death is love. He didn’t have to go that way, but he chose to. If love was that costly for him, we shouldn’t be surprised that we will often have a price to pay as well. Love isn’t ever an easy path, but it is always the right one and the best one, so let’s clothe ourselves in God’s love today. Question What will it mean for you to show agape love to people today? Prayer Lord God, thank you that you have shown me what love really means. Fill me with your Spirit so that I may share your love with others today. Amen
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    4 mins
  • May 4th - Colossians 3:13

    May 4th - Colossians 3:13
    May 4 2025
    Colossians 3:13 Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. Any happy and harmonious community relies upon forgiveness. It isn’t an optional extra but an absolute necessity. However, it is also incredibly hard work, so we need to reflect very carefully upon it. We step on one another’s toes very easily. We often do it without meaning to, in complete innocence. We say or do things that we think are obviously right, but which cause hurt and unhappiness to others. And, by the same token, people step on our toes and hurt us unintentionally. The only way of coping with this inevitable part of community life is to forgive. God calls us to live with an attitude of forgiveness that graciously and lovingly moves on from the hurt without drawing attention to it. It is relatively easy to forgive those who unintentionally hurt you, but what do you do when someone has deliberately gone out of their way to cause you harm? Surely justice demands that you settle the score with them and get your own back. However, God calls us to forgive them, and that’s incredibly tough. Indeed, it’s so tough that the only way we will be able to do it is by recalling that this is exactly how God has treated us. Through our thoughts, words and actions, we have sinned against God. There is absolutely no reason why he should forgive us, but that is what he has chosen to do. Jesus made it plain that God loves to give his forgiveness to us, but it is conditional: we must be willing to pass it on to others. This sounds easy enough until we need to forgive someone who has wronged us. That can be a difficult journey, but it is God’s loving way for all of us. Question When did you last need to forgive someone, and what did you learn from the experience? Prayer Loving God, thank you for your gift of forgiveness to me. Help me to be more generous in sharing your forgiveness with those who offend me. Amen
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    3 mins
  • May 3rd - Colossians 3:11

    May 3rd - Colossians 3:11
    May 3 2025
    Colossians 3:11 In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us. Every society is full of divisions, but Paul’s world was sharply and deeply divided far beyond anything we know today. The biggest divide of all was between Jew and Gentile. Jews were the chosen people and Gentiles were the outsiders. The Jews would pray a daily prayer thanking God that they were not Gentiles. There was deep suspicion, and even hatred, between Jews and Gentiles and it focused on male circumcision, which was the physical evidence of the distinction. Meanwhile, Greeks looked down on anyone who didn’t speak Greek, and there was a massive difference between those who were slaves and those who were free. In ancient law, slaves were not even classified as human beings. They were simply possessions or living tools with no rights of their own. A master could thrash, maim or even kill his slaves as he chose. However, in Christ, a revolution had taken place, and all of those human divisions had come crashing to the ground. Of course, deep human divisions still exist. Our education, wealth, age, ethnicity and many other factors make us very different from one another, and that will always be the case, but the walls of separation fall down the moment we commit ourselves to Christ. Our identity in him is far more important than any human distinction. I always enjoy worshipping God in church and looking around me at the diverse people who have gathered together. I often reflect that there is nothing that would ever bring these people together in one place, other than Christ. Humanly speaking, we are very different from one another, but in Christ, all of that has changed. He is alive in each of us, and that is the closest bond that you could ever have with another person. Question In what ways have you seen human divisions crumble between Christians? Prayer Loving God, I praise you for the unity that you have given us in Christ. Help me never to allow human distinctions to get in the way of Christian fellowship. Amen
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    4 mins
  • May 2nd - Colossians 3:10

    May 2nd - Colossians 3:10
    May 2 2025
    Colossians 3:10 Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. I wonder what your goals are for your life. Perhaps they focus on your family, your job or your sport. You may want to become better at what you do and more fulfilled in your life. In this verse we hear what God’s aim is for our lives, and isn’t it amazing? His aim is that we should become like him. Wow! He, the creator of the world, wants us to resemble him. In Genesis 1:27, we read that God made us in his image. From the very beginning, humankind had a resemblance to God, but sadly, through sin, that image became distorted. However, through our relationship with Christ, God wants to restore his image in us. I am sure we are all aware of our shortcomings, so the thought of resembling God sounds incredible, but that is precisely what God wants for our lives. Clearly, we are never going to resemble God through our own effort. The only way it can happen is through us letting the Holy Spirit take over. We are totally dependent on him renewing us day by day. It is as we allow his Spirit to renew us that we will be able to put on our new nature and look more and more like God. Renewal is the basis of our human lives. Our bodies are in a constant state of regeneration – our skin renews itself every 28 to 42 days. The older we get, the slower the process, but renewal is the basis of our physical health. Our red blood cells only last about four months, and every second our bodies produce two million new ones. Just as we trust God to renew our bodies, we can be confident that, when we let him, he will renew our spiritual lives as well. Question In what ways is God renewing your spiritual life at present? Prayer Loving God, thank you that today you are seeking to renew me in body, mind and spirit. Amen
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    3 mins
  • May 1st - Colossians 3:2-3

    May 1st - Colossians 3:2-3
    May 1 2025
    Colossians 3:2-3 Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. Paul’s message was a matter of life and death. In the previous chapter, he referred to baptism as being an act of burial (Colossians 2:12). Through baptism, one life comes to an end and another one, focused on Christ, begins. That’s why Paul encouraged his readers to make sure their primary focus was on heaven and not on the things of earth. Many of us know the description of someone being ‘so heavenly-minded that they are of no earthly use’. Paul would absolutely disagree with that, believing that the person who was focused on heaven would be of the greatest possible use on earth. Paul had a very clear idea of the dangers of allowing our earthly, sinful nature to be in the driving seat. He told his readers to put to death sexual immorality, impurity, lust and evil desires, and warned them against greed. He observed that a greedy person was an idolater, worshipping the things of this world. He knew that a life that was totally focused on earthly things was bound to end in disaster and told his readers to strip off their old sinful nature. They needed to put on new clothing, the things that flowed from a life that was renewed in Christ. Paul specified the new clothing that Christians need to put on. They are the qualities which flow from the heart of God: tender-hearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience (Colossians 3:12). When we live that kind of life, the world around us will be blessed. Indeed, people will be touched by heaven itself. Question Would you describe yourself as heavenly-minded or earthly-minded? Prayer Loving God, thank you that you have made it possible for me to live a new life in Christ. Amen
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    3 mins