Pastor Preston Hancock
Colossians 1:13-14

A God-honoring life begins when we realize and respond to the work God has already done in us, for us. He has:

1. rescued us from lives governed by ignorance, lies, and rebelliousness. (vs. 13a)
• We are no longer prisoners of our past ways of thinking and reacting.
• We do not always feel free, so we must bring truth to bear. (Luke 22:53; 24:36-49)
• We embrace our freedom because it brings Him glory!
2. relocated us under Jesus’ personal and loving influence, protection, and leadership. (vs. 13b)
• We have a new identity as citizens of His Kingdom! (vs. 12; 2 Cor. 5:17)
• We have a new purpose – seeing His Kingdom come. This is both what we seek now and wait for.
• Our new Leader paid the ultimate price to set us free. The forgiveness He offers is complete! (vs. 14)

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Pastor Bob Fox
Colossians 1:9-12

The All-important Premise—My most rewarding achievement would be to stand in front of Jesus and have accomplished His plan for me.

The Way of Life—to have my life shaped by a moment by moment understanding of God’s will.

The Critical Life Process—A continuous, Holy Spirit guided, acquisition of truth through mental processes and life experience.

The Real-life Results—what you’ll look back and see.

1. Christ-like action even in areas of natural weakness.
2. An ever-increasing commonality with God.
3. Super-human patience and longsuffering.
4. An all-invasive gratitude for your share in His Kingdom and its primary treasure, truth.

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Pastor Bob Fox
Colossians 1:3-8

When you believed the gospel, you entered into something that will forever shape you.

1. The Gospel is about changing you at the precise point of your weakness.
• Your instinct is self-protection. It brings about trust in God.
• Your instinct is self-obsession. It brings about love.
2. The Gospel changes you by inducing hope in you of a different kind of life waiting for you with God. People with hope let go and move on.
3. The Gospel is good news, and it is the truth about:
• Our falleness.
• God’s grace toward us.
• God’s action toward us. It is the true story of Yahweh becoming a man to:
1. Model a way of life to us.
2. Die in our place so we could access that life.
3. Justly join Himself to us to produce that life.
4. Justly place us one day in His new creation.

THEREFORE: Believing it changes you and so opens up a whole new world of change for you.

4. The Gospel is bigger than life, working in all people in all places, giving them hope, changing them and uniting them into one family.

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Pastor Bob Fox
Colossians 1:1-2

God, known to us by His personal name Yahweh, longs to bring two things to any and all who will listen to Him.

But First . . . spiritual ideas that the Apostles wrote against.

1. That the sensory world is neither real nor particularly relevant.
2. That knowledge of God is so veiled that only a few, the “initiated,” have it.
3. That Christ is only one of a number of good spiritual sources.
4. That wholeness is obtained through certain external routines/rites.

Yahweh wants to bless your life with:

1. Grace
• He acts favorably towards all humanity, apart from what is deserved.
• He joins Himself to all who believe the resurrection’s statement, that Yahweh became a man and died for humanity.
• He acts in/for us to enable us for each moment in an evil-warped world.
• He acts toward evil so as to bring good to us through it.

IT IS God’s unmerited gift of Himself and His to us.

2. Peace
• He imparts to us spiritual fitness—peace with Him.
• He reveals who He is, so that we can find rest with what is.
• He leads us to action that produces peace with others.
• He partners with us in life’s undertakings.

IT IS composure, because God is your companion.

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