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Walking with God

Category Archives: James “The Litmus Test for life”


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11 “Who’s the Boss?” – Part 2  

Colossians 1:15-22 

“15 Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see, such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him. 17 He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together. 18 Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body. He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead. So he is first in everything. 19 For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, 20 and through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross. 21 This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. 22 Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.”

Jesus has supremacy over:

  1. CREATION – Vs 15-17 He’s in Control

A. Start

He is the Creator of all things. The big question has always been: Who made who? Did God make man, or did man make God? Is man in the image of God, or is God in the imagination of man? This deals with the Evil of evolution the doctrine of the devil: “There is no God”  It’s a convincing lie because it makes us think that we are in control. We fight control we want to be in charge we are like the little kid who says “Your not the boss of me” Yet when we believe the lie and try to take control chaos follows because we become chained to chance, Evolution gives us control with no hope for change. If you want change you have to evolve and that takes more time than your life has to offer. It takes control from the creator and gives it to the creation, “Mother nature” is now in control so that becomes what we worship. What Paul is reminding us of is that Jesus wasn’t just there when life began it began because He was there. He is in control and we don’t have to live in the darkness and chaos. Genesis 1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep”

He made what we can and can’t see this is the totality of things, it includes both flowers of creation and the forces, radiation, magnetism, gravity. It encompasses every realm, every sphere, every bastion, border, dimension and domain. This is Good News for people obsessed with Fate and Superstition it means Jesus has liberated them having to follow any other ‘Powers’ accept Christ. We find a counterpart today, in the theory of reincarnation and in horoscopes and astrology—the idea of stars influencing and governing our lives. The claim that Transcendental Meditation is the means of getting in touch with invisible beings is another example. We are told that there are Astral Teachers, Spirit Guides and Divine Masters who appear from time to time to impart degrees of knowledge to the human race. All this is nothing new. It is an old dress with a new hat. This is what the apostle labors to correct. He is telling the Colossians, “Jesus is above all angels. You are freed from bondage to these lesser beings when you see the true authority and power of your risen Lord.”

B. Sustainer

Jesus is not Just the Starter he is the Sustainer. Scientist Stephen Hawking says, “The eventual goal of Science is to provide a single theory that describes the whole universe”. Jesus. Today there are those who don’t recognize Him as the creator and from the start they try to run their own lives and then there are those who start with Jesus but then steer off into self-sustainer.  Who is really holding it all together, who is rotating the earth keeping us at the right distance from the sun. Who provides the light and the rain? The single theory that describes the whole universe is Jesus, He is the sustaining force that holds all things together, the unifying principle, the cosmic cohesion. This is not just on a planetary perspective but also a personal one. You and I can rest and relax we don’t have to try to hold it together let Jesus be in control.  By Him everything came to be, and by Him everything continues to be.

C. Satisfaction

Jesus is not only the start and sustainer, He is the source of satisfaction, He gives purpose to life, we were not just created by Him but for Him. The goal of all creation is to glorify Christ. Revelation 4:11, puts it this way: “…For you created everything, and it is for your pleasure that they exist and were created.”


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20. Mentoring matters – Part 7

Titus 2:1-8

“As for you, Titus, promote the kind of living that reflects wholesome teaching. 2 Teach the older men to exercise self-control, to be worthy of respect, and to live wisely. They must have sound faith and be filled with love and patience. 3 Similarly, teach the older women to live in a way that honors God. They must not slander others or be heavy drinkers. Instead, they should teach others what is good. 4 These older women must train the younger women to love their husbands and their children, 5 to live wisely and be pure, to work in their homes, to do good, and to be submissive to their husbands. Then they will not bring shame on the word of God. 6 In the same way, encourage the young men to live wisely. 7 And you yourself must be an example to them by doing good works of every kind. Let everything you do reflect the integrity and seriousness of your teaching.8 Teach the truth so that your teaching can’t be criticized. Then those who oppose us will be ashamed and have nothing bad to say about us.”

So, what does the life of a mature woman look like? 

  1. LIFE – What kind of a life are you going to live”
  1. Careful with your walk Reverent – Honor God in the way that you live.

When it comes to women Paul tells Titus to teach the older women to walk in a way that honors God. Paul is telling you to stop listening to the lies of the culture and start listen to and live for the Lord. It frees you from being a people pleaser and lets you live from an audience of One. This one verse gives value to women because it reminds you not to get wrapped up in your looks but your life. Are you listening to the Lord or are you listening to the lies? The world says you are here for pleasure, but the Word says you are here for a purpose. When you make it about looks you end up competing with other women instead of coming alongside. You end up being mean instead of mentoring. Don’t believe me, then why do women respond so rudely when they show up to an event and there is another woman wearing the same dress? Why are your first thoughts, I can’t believe she wore that besides I look better just look at her butt it looks so big! Paul is telling you to living for the Lord not for an image. He is calling you to pursue purity not popularity. So let me ask you are listening to the voice of Christ or the critical and crushing peer pressure of this culture?  If I were to ask 10 different women WHAT IS BEAUTY? Would they all say the same thing? God loves variety. If I pulled out different kinds of flowers and said roses are beautiful but lilies are not or carnations are not you would disagree with me. If we really believed that we would try to get all flowers to become roses, we would force carnations to conform to our picture of pretty. You have a few too many pettles so we would pluck and preen them and try to force them into the shape we want. But what we are really doing in the name of beauty is butchering and killing God’s creation. In 2015 the beauty industry generated $56.2 billion in the United States alone. While we are busy trying to mold them into man’s definition of beauty we are missing the bigness of God’s beauty. We have reduced God’s beauty into something that’s small and shallow and evaluates and elevates women based on the sensual instead of the spiritual. Is it any wonder that most women suffer from self-esteem issues? Today the world is telling women to base their life on looks and then we wonder why women are stuck in slavery and being reduced to sexual objects. Basing life solely on looks leads to lust, but basing it on the Lord leads to love. Ladies are you basing your life on truth or on trash? Are you listening to the culture or Christ, ladies this isn’t truth its trash, and yet its what most of you are letting run and ruin your life. Pursuing the Lord frees you from worrying about what the world things. Rather than worrying about the wrinkles we should worry about our walk.