Salty Zebra

  to the saints, the faithful brothers and sisters in Christ, at Colossae. Grace and peace to you from God our Father! Colossians 1:2  Saint. What does the word bring to mind? Do you see someone with a glowing halo about them? A disgusting picture of a person being tortured to death? An alcove in a cathedral dedicated to their story?   The book of Colossians is addressed to the, “saints, the faithful brothers and sisters in Christ, at Colossae.” Paul is clearly addressing the letter to all of the brothers and sisters in the congregation, not special people set apart by the church due to miracles or wonders. In our modern era, the idea of a “saint” has been influenced by the catholic church and its practices, but biblically, we are all saints that have found our righteousness in Christ Jesus.   This letter was written to the “saints,” our brothers and sisters in Colossae, but it was also written to us. Like them, we heard about the message of truth, the gospel ...

   It’s wild how people take a basic truth and start to shift and change it. We mold it to become more palatable, more in line with what we want or desire. It happens subconsciously. It happens intentionally at times. Someone brings in a new thought or idea and it sounds right, so it gets worked into our beliefs. Oftentimes, it’s just a matter of how we were raised or what we “understood” before coming to a saving belief in Christ that influences our thoughts and understandings of the gospel.  In our next study, Christ is All I Need, we’ll be focusing on the book of Colossians. This is a letter that Paul wrote to the church in Colossae while he was imprisoned in Rome. Paul had never been to Colossae before and did not plant this church, but rather someone he had preached to, Epaphras, went on to Colossae and planted a church there. Paul had heard about some of the teachings and influences that were going on there and he wanted to reach out and point them back to the basi...

   It's been an interesting season as I followed this study during the course of my brain radiation therapy. I stepped into my treatment in faith, believing strongly that God had pointed me to it. And this is a treatment of faith because there is no "proof" no markers that show whether it worked at all. Best case scenario? It doesn't grow anymore, or much more. You see, I don't have the type of tumor that gets "zapped" away by radiation. Mine just gets angrier (think inflammation and scar tissue) and then, hopefully, dies. Can it go wrong? Can worse things happen? Yep. But it was growing anyways, which was already worse, so this was worth a shot! Where He Leads I Will Follow  walks us through examples in the Bible of obedience. It gave me a chance to look at both good and bad things that people had done - don't you appreciate how God left all those in there? It also opened my eyes to areas in which I need to obey. Let's take a walk back through t...

  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”   Matthew 28:19-20  When you think of a mission field, what comes to mind? People who look very different from you and live very different lives from you in a very different place far, far away? For some people, that is very much the case. My dear friend, Kris, for example flies all over the world to the most remote and inaccessible regions to bring the hope and love of Christ to people. She’s one of my biggest heroes! But that’s not everyone’s calling. Not everybody is sent far away, some of us, most of us in fact, are tasked with a mission field at our very doorstep.   At the beginning of the book of Acts , just before Jesus ascends into heaven, He tasks the disciples – and us – with carrying the message of His lo...

  For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.   Romans 5:19  Adam. Poor guy got a bad rep. He made the biggest mistake any of us can, choosing to disbelieve and disobey God, and with it he brought us all down with him. You know he had no idea the breadth or consequences of his choice before he made it, but do we ever? Only God has the whole picture, knows all that will come from a given choice or action. But the point the scripture is making here is that it only took one guy, one sin from one guy really, to bring down the many – every person after him.   That’s a pretty dark, sad thought, but the verse goes on! Because this was all brought on by one man, it could also all be undone by one Man, but it had to be the right Man, a perfect Man. It had to be the One without sin. Since we were so far past that even being a possibility, God had to come down a...

  Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”   John 14:21  The order, the progression of things, matters. We love God because He first loved us ( 1 John 4:19 ). We obey God because we love God ( John 14:21 ). God loves us > We love God > We obey God. This is a very clear and important flow. When those arrows get moved around, when people try to put things in a different order, it goes poorly.   At times in my life, I mistakenly had the impression that God loved me only when and because I obeyed Him. Like His love was dependent on my actions. If I was obeying Him, I was in His favor or love and when I was making poor choices, I was out of it. The first fallacy of this thinking is it puts me in charge of God – how ridiculous! The idea that God’s choice to love me would be dependent on something as fallible and inconsistent as myself is so f...