March 4 Carpe Diem - Seize The Day Colossians 1:1-14
**This is the longest devotion in a year! Please read carefully! The message is about Hope, Faith and Attitude!**
Good morning from Pastor Glen Brock, Baptist Tabernacle Church, Wendell, North Carolina…“Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are in Colosse: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of your love for all the saints; because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel, which has come to you, as it has also in all the world, and is bringing forth fruit, as it is also among you since the day you heard and knew the grace of God in truth; as you also learned from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, who also declared to us your love in the Spirit. For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.” (Colossians 1:1-14)
Paul shares this hope in Christ to the Colossians and to all that call themselves followers of the Christ. Listen to Paul's prayer: "that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might…" A life bearing fruit in every good work is truly Living life to the fullest. A little girl asks her mother, "Mommy, why do you cut off the ends of the meat before you cook it?" The girl's mother went on to tell her that she thought that cutting off the ends of the meat added flavor by allowing the meat to better absorb the spices. But perhaps she had better ask her grandma since she had learned it from her. So the little girl found her grandmother and asks; "Grandma, why do you and mommy chop off the ends of the meat before you cook it?" Her grandmother thinks for a moment and says, "I think it allows the meat to stay tender because it soaks up the juices, but why don't you ask your Nana because after all, I learned from her and she's always done it that way." The little girl is getting a little frustrated, but climbs up in her great-grandmother's lap and asks, "Nana, why do you and Mommy and Grandma cut the ends off of the meat before you cook it?" Nana answers, "I don't know why your Mom and Grandma do it, but I did it because my pot wasn't big enough." How many times do we walk through life blindly, without knowing the purpose for what we do? How many people have much activity in their lives yet little or no progress? For all the busyness in each of our lives, "Are you getting anywhere?" "Are you going anywhere?" "Is there a purpose for it all?" One of my Daddy’s favorite lessons was when he would ask me, “What are you trying to do?” I would be extremely busy, and didn’t mind letting you know that I was busy, yet, he would ask, “What are you trying to do?” The follow-up to this question was the life’s lesson: “You can be busy, digging a ditch with a spoon. Lot’s of activity, yet little results!” Folks, we must have a purpose! Purpose gives meaning to our lives. It gives us the ability to say, "I know why I'm doing what I'm doing!" The Question needs to be asked: Are you living or are you just existing? There is a difference; there is a tremendous difference. Living has been defined as "vigorous, alive & full of life." Existing is defined as "to have being." To just being there. How many of us are just existing and not truly living life? So many of us wake up, and follow a routine every day. We go about our business, but we have no real sense of purpose in our lives. Our happiness and our fulfillment of life, depends largely on others, on circumstances. If we were completely honest, we would admit that inside, we are empty and we are not filled to the brim with life. Now I am not saying that we all have to live lives of liberality, with a new, wild change every day. However, we can learn to live lives that are full of vigor and livelihood, rather than being content with just "being" or just existing. Friends: Carpe (Car-pa) Diem... Seize the day. Seize each day. If you surveyed the entire country and ask the question: “Do you want to live a life that takes advantage of every minute?” probably most people would say that they want to "Seize the Day.” No one wants life to be mediocre. We want our lives to be full. We want everything we can get out of every day. Yet we are wrapped up in deadlines, and commitments, problems and priorities, and it just doesn't always happen. And, we do not "Seize the Day". Yet, There are ways to "Seize the Day", to seize every day of your life. And the apostle Paul had this down to an art and wrote of the way to seize the day to seize life in his epistle. Paul knows his sure-fire purpose for life. Do you know the purpose of your life on this earth? Well...What is the primary purpose of an ink pen? To write! Paul proclaims his (and our) reason for living with these words: "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship in sharing in his suffering, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow to attain resurrection from the dead." Simply put, Paul's reason for living was to be like Jesus. Shouldn’t this be our reason, our purpose, to be more like Jesus? To be conformed to his image. Also in order, to seize each and every day, Paul tells us, to forget the past and press on to our heavenly goal. Hear his beautiful words: "One thing I do: forgetting what is behind & 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." Now, we all have issues and we all have failures and disappointments, yet God has promised the victory and has promised to keep us in His Love. God proclaims in Isaiah, "I am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more." Praise God, if the Lord God can forget our transgressions, then we should do the same? Live in love, and love to live! Live in God's Love; live in his Agape love! We have all heard, numerous times, the words from 1 Corinthians 13 concerning the love we should portray. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. Do we put this love to practice? Do we allow this love to permeate our very being? Do we really consider it a thriving aspect of living. Well....God does. The time we stop loving is the time we stop living. And the time we stop living, well, then we will only be existing and we will not .... Seize the Day. We have all heard the phrase, "love isn't something you feel, It is something that you do." Love is an attribute of God himself; it is the essence of who God Is. And John's first epistle states it with these words: “Beloved let us Love One another. For Love is of God and everyone who loves is Born of God and knoweth God. He who loveth not knoweth not God for God is Love. Beloved let us love one another.” (1 John 4:7,8). "God is not like Love," "God Is Love". The Scriptures state: "These three remain: faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love." Faith is the foundation of God's message. Hope is the attitude and the focus, But love; Love is the action. When faith and hope are in line, you are free to love completely and through this we can truly "Seize the Day." And To fully Seize the Day, We must stop worrying and give our burdens to the Lord. I recently read that a dense fog covering a seven-block area of a city is composed of less than one normal eight-ounce glass of water. It is divided into billions of droplets. Such a small amount of water can create so much gloom, and can even cripple an entire city. Worry and anxiety are like that. Fear deteriorates the quality of our lives and can even destroy us physically. Faith breathes life and joy into our bodies and in this we find complete wholeness. Jesus tried to change our focus from fear to faithfulness when he says: "Look at the birds of the air: they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?" So how do we change our focus from worry to faith? Give them all, Give them all to Jesus. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. Seize the Day. The life you live is not your own, but is a gift from God. Make the most out of this one life he has given you. It is time to stop telling God how big my problems are and to start telling my problems how big my God is. We can learn and must learn to stop existing and to start living. Let us fight the good fight.... let us finish the race. Let us finish well. Beloved ....Carpe Diem... Let us "Seize the day" Stay Strong, Stay Focused…THE BEST IS YET TO BE!