Be Still And Know

Proverbs 25:25 Good news from far away is like cold water to the thirsty. This wonderful proverb doesn’t make much sense in our modern world where communications across the globe are instant. However, I remember the days before such impressively instant communications. When I lived in India, we had to communicate by post, and it could take a couple of weeks for letters to arrive from the UK. The highlight of my day was when the postman cycled onto our compound proudly ringing his bell. When I discovered that he had letters for me, it was just like being given a glass of cold water on a hot day. When the writer of Proverbs was putting together his wise words, it was incredibly difficult and dangerous to send news over a big distance. To receive any news was amazing, and to receive good news from a distant place was absolutely wonderful. The Bible is full of good news. It tells us that we are made in the image of God, and that we are loved by the creator of the world. At times we might feel unimportant and

Proverbs 25:20 Singing cheerful songs to a person with a heavy heart is like taking someone’s coat in cold weather or pouring vinegar in a wound. This is a painful proverb because we all have the capacity to be insensitive. Singing cheerful songs is obviously lovely, but to impose this on someone who is depressed is the very last thing that we should ever do. We can all do the wrong thing. We can all say things that are inappropriate and act in a way that we later realise was extremely unhelpful. The question we need to ask is: How can we avoid getting it so agonisingly wrong? Let’s begin with humility! We need to be aware of our capacity to get things wrong. We are always learners in the area of human relationships. Am I the only person who has called another person by the wrong name? Probably not! It’s horribly embarrassing, but while moments like these are humbling, they are thoroughly good for us. Secondly, we need to be quick to admit our mistakes and seek forgiveness. If we are living humbly, this wi

Proverbs 25:19 Putting confidence in an unreliable person in times of trouble is like chewing with a broken tooth or walking on a lame foot. Being able to trust reliable people is so important, especially when we are going through a tough time. I thank God for the privilege of working with people over the years who have been totally trustworthy. Their word was their bond. I knew that if they promised to do something, it would not only be done, but done well. However, I’m sure we’ve all encountered people who promised generously to help, but simply didn’t get round to it, or did it so half-heartedly that it would have been better for everyone if they hadn’t started. The powerful and painful imagery of chewing with a broken tooth and walking on a lame foot comes easily to mind. We all want to be reliable people. We don’t want to make others suffer through our unreliability. How are we going to ensure that we remain reliable? It is good to be determined, but not enough. We need God’s daily strength to help us

Proverbs 25:18 Telling lies about others is as harmful as hitting them with an axe, wounding them with a sword, or shooting them with a sharp arrow. Lying is a terrible business, and the writer of Proverbs captures its awful destructiveness. It is a very tempting route when the truth is hard to face. The temptation is to at least bend the truth so that its sharper edges aren’t obvious. However, when you start lying, it is very hard to stop. Washington Allston, the American artist and poet, wrote: “Nothing is rarer than a solitary lie; for lies breed like toads; you cannot tell one but out it comes with a hundred little ones on its back.” Lying becomes nothing less than a tragic way of life for those who choose its path. The writer of Proverbs wants his readers to understand that the only way of life worth living is one where the truth is treasured. Phillips Brooks, the hymn writer, wrote: “Truth is always strong, no matter how weak it looks, and falsehood is always weak, no matter how strong it looks.” Dur

Do you like honey? Don’t eat too much, or it will make you sick! We can always trust the writer of Proverbs to give us sound advice! His purpose is to help us live life to the full and avoid the many traps that lie in wait for us every single day. One of those traps is overeating. He draws attention to honey, which is undoubtedly good, but, like everything else, only in moderation. If we overdo it, the outcome is inevitable and well worth avoiding. Life is full of good things, but each of them will be spoilt if we give them the wrong prominence in our lives. Later in this chapter, the writer repeats the warning about overindulging on honey and adds “and it’s not good to seek honours for yourself” (v27). Once again, honours are inherently good. It is a blessing to be recognised, appreciated and honoured, but these things should be regarded simply as gifts and blessings rather than constantly sought. Keeping everything in proportion is crucial to the enjoyment of life and the writer of the Proverbs is clear

Colossians 4:7,9 Tychicus will give you a full report about how I am getting along. He is a beloved brother and faithful helper who serves with me in the Lord’s work. I am also sending Onesimus, a faithful and beloved brother, one of your own people. You learn a lot about people through the way they speak about others. I love how Paul speaks so warmly of his friends. Tychicus was clearly someone he trusted completely and who gave Paul wonderful support in his ministry. He is mentioned five times in the New Testament and always receives glowing praise from Paul. In his second letter to Timothy, we learn that the apostle sent Tychicus to take over from Timothy in Ephesus so that Timothy could be released to spend some time with Paul before his death. It’s vital that we all have people we can trust completely. That’s fundamental to the way in which the Church, the body of Christ, works. Like Paul, we need to celebrate those who stand shoulder to shoulder with us. I thank God for the trustworthy people who hav

Colossians 4:5-6 Live wisely among those who are not believers, and make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone. Whether we have a short or a long life, our opportunities are finite. Paul urges his readers to take every opportunity seriously, which means that we need to live wisely. Wisdom is always a deeply practical word in the Bible. The wise person takes God’s truth and applies it to everyday life. This is particularly crucial in our relationship with those who are not believers because, whether we like it or not, people are looking at our lives and learning about God from our example. When Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, he told them that they were ambassadors – they represented God and his kingdom to the non-Christian world. One of my sisters is an ambassador for the British government and her whole life is shaped by her responsibility to represent our nation well. Our task as Christians is the same.

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, peo

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 whateve

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

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 ea

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? Surel

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

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 ov

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, wor

Colossians 2:16-17 Don’t let anyone condemn you for what you eat or drink, or for not celebrating certain holy days or new moon ceremonies or Sabbaths. For these rules are only shadows of the reality yet to come. And Christ himself is that reality. Throughout history, religious people have been famous for their rules and regulations. We see it particularly clearly with the Pharisees of Jesus’ time. They lived meticulously according not only to the law of Moses but also to layers of other regulations which had been introduced by the rabbis. It isn’t surprising that in the early Church, one of the greatest challenges came from those who wanted to impose complicated regulations upon the new Christians. These came from many places, particularly from the Gnostics, whose religion was built upon complicated rules about eating and drinking and the observance of special days. Paul was not saying that all rules were bad. A well-ordered family, church or society will only work smoothly if there are rules. Paul’s conc

Colossians 2:14-15 [Christ] cancelled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross. The cross stood right at the centre of Paul’s understanding of the good news. Put simply, if you want to understand Jesus, you have to see him through the lens of the cross. John Stott, in his book [itals]The Cross of Christ[end itals], summed this up when he wrote: “There is then, it is safe to say, no Christianity without the cross. If the cross is not central to our religion, ours is not the religion of Jesus.” For this reason, Paul focused his preaching on the cross even though he was fully aware that the message didn’t always go down well. Jews found it a stumbling block because the law of Moses declared that anyone who hung from a tree was cursed. Meanwhile, non-Jews just found the idea of someone dying on a cross completely foolish. How could anyone find anyt

Colossians 2:8-9 Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ. For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. Paul didn’t believe in beating around the bush! He was so convinced that Christ was the complete answer to the human predicament that he saw every other philosophy as a waste of time. That didn’t mean he was unwilling to spend time listening to people with other beliefs. He simply didn’t believe that they had anything to offer when compared with Christ. When Paul visited Athens, he spent a great deal of time speaking with the philosophers and gladly accepted an invitation to address the Areopagus, which was the forum where the Greeks held debates. He sensitively referred to their own poets and thinkers, but his focus was always to proclaim Christ. It is the fact that Jesus was both fully man and fully God which marks him apart from other great teachers.

Colossians 1:22-23 You are holy and blameless as you stand before [Christ] without a single fault. But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don’t drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News. What Christ has done for us is absolutely amazing. Failed and sinful as we are, he has totally forgiven us and made us right with God. He has made it possible for us to stand before him, holy and blameless and without fault. But that doesn’t mean we can now take it easy and do what we want. We need to stand firm in our faith and ensure we don’t slip away from the truth. In my experience, very few people who drift away from Christian faith do so because they suddenly disbelieve it. What normally happens is that they become distracted and busy with other things. Gradually, their work, family, sport or hobby claims their attention and they find it inconvenient to attend worship. Sometimes they move house and find it difficult to find another church in which they feel

Colossians 1:15 Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation. Most people have good things to say about Jesus. They like that he welcomed every kind of person; they admire that he was willing to stand up to the religious rulers of his time; they enjoy that he told compelling, down-to-earth stories and went out of his way to get alongside people; and they value how full of love he was. The apostle Paul, however, goes far beyond these kind comments. For Paul, Jesus showed the world exactly what God was like. Just as we can look at a coin and see what the sovereign looks like, so too by looking at Jesus we can see precisely what God is like. We don’t know exactly what Paul’s opponents were teaching, but it seems to have been a combination of Jewish and Greek thought. Paul’s answer was to give them the most magnificent and clear description of Jesus: he is not only the one who existed before anything was created, but is now the one wh