Colossians...Christ is All in All

Pin It When an artist decides to paint a picture he must first decide on his perspective or focal point for his painting.  The human eye captures a million things in one blink and as we look at the world around us our eyes tend to focus on different things in different circumstances.  Just think of all of the attention a newborn baby receives as Grandma walks into the room.  She may have entered that room a hundred times before.  Maybe then her focus was always on the picture of her daughter on the far wall, but now her focus is on the bundle of joy set before her.  Maybe before she saw the room with the sad eyes of a mother missing her daughter.  Now she sees the room with the pleasure filled eyes of a Grandma in seventh heaven!

We often allow our surroundings and circumstances to dictate the way we see life.

To look at Paul's life an unbeliever might see it as a waste.  An educated, well respected citizen with a lucrative and promising future before him gives up everything to make tents and give lectures about someone people have never heard of?

O, but to see his life as Paul saw it.

"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." Galatians 2:20

 In Colossians 1:24-25, Paul is rejoicing in suffering!  That definitely seem crazy to one who knows not Christ!  He rejoices because his suffering is for their good.  His suffering is for the body of Christ.  His suffering brought the gospel, the Good News, to the Gentiles.  His joy was in fulfilling the task that God had given him.  The same mandate given to the disciples by Jesus was his mandate:

Matthew 28:18-20  And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. 19  Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: 20  Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

When the goal, MY goal, is completing the task that Christ has given me for the good of His church, I can rejoice - even in the midst of trying circumstances.  When my perspective is God's perspective, I can see the world around me in the light of eternity.  I will experience hardships, I won't deny that.  Yet in the midst of my hardships, my prayer is that I will rejoice in my Savior, I will rejoice that the Gospel is being proclaimed, I will rejoice that this world is not my home.

I have Christ - the HOPE OF GLORY!