Christocentric 2 – Life in Focus

We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all the saints; because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven... 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 1:3–14)

When our faith is fixed on Christ, life comes into focus—balanced, centered, and full of joy.

The Season of Thanksgiving

Does it amaze anyone else that it's already November? The year seems to go by faster every year, and that's a little unsettling, because it can't go on like that forever—there's going to come a sudden stop. My dad was an iron worker for forty-five years, and in 1971 he fell eight stories, more than a hundred feet, and miraculously walked away unhurt. He always tells me, "The fall's not that bad. It's the sudden stop that'll kill you."

Halloween is behind us, fifty-four days until Christmas—but before Christmas comes one of my favorite holidays, the one November is known for: Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is rooted in religious tradition, especially the Christian tradition, and it acknowledges that there is One to whom we are to be thankful. All the good things we have—life, family, friends, a place to live, food to eat—came from Someone who gave them to us. It's an opportunity to thank God for His divine providence in our lives.

Thanksgiving, not just the holiday but the attitude and the act, is an essential ingredient to a fulfilling life. A few years ago I taught a series called The Key to Unlocking Joy, and one of the keys was gratitude. When you find someone whose life is animated by joy, you find someone whose life is characterized by gratitude. You cannot have continual joy without being a person who gives thanks.

Paul's Circumstance and His Joy

A couple of weeks ago we began a series called Christocentric, studying the book of Colossians. It was written nearly 2,000 years ago by the apostle Paul to a group of Christians in the city of Colossae. When Paul wrote it, he was in difficult circumstances—a prisoner in Rome, awaiting trial before Caesar Nero, with a very uncertain future. He hoped to be released to keep preaching the gospel, but ultimately he would suffer a martyr's death for his faith in Christ.

During this house arrest he wrote four letters we've studied this year: Ephesians, Philippians, Philemon, and now Colossians. Philippians has been called the New Testament letter of joy. In it Paul speaks of overflowing joy and says he has no lack, that he is full—yet his situation seems like the last place you would find joy. Many people in our own abundant nation could not say those words. What enabled Paul to have joy and to say, "I have no lack, I am full," in dire circumstances? One of the answers, I believe, is found in this passage.

A Centered Life Maintains Balance by Thanksgiving

Paul was a prolific writer, penning thirteen of the twenty-seven New Testament books. Eight of them—nearly two-thirds—begin with these very similar words: "I give thanks to God." Romans, 1 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, and Philemon all open the same way. This is more than words; it's a pattern of life, and it's essential for us to come into the fullness of life. A centered life maintains balance by thanksgiving to God.

How many of you played with a spinning top as a kid? A top done right—centered and balanced—spins so smoothly it almost looks like it's standing still. My friend Terry has one that spins for four minutes. Oh, to have a life with that kind of balance! People are looking for that. There's a sense in our nation that we are out of balance, always trying to prioritize life and feeling like we're wobbling, not centered.

God wants to bring us to a place where our life is centered and balanced. That's why I've titled this series Christocentric. The only way to maintain balance and have a truly centered life is to have a life centered on Christ. But that centered life maintains its balance through giving thanks to God. The attitude of gratitude matters, but the focus matters more. Someone told me recently they were "just thankful to the universe." The universe doesn't do anything; it just is. But God created the universe. If you're going to be thankful, the focus must be correct.

Faith, Hope, and Love

Why was Paul thankful? Why did he pray continually for believers a thousand miles away whom he had never met? He gives us insight in verse 4: "since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, your love for all the saints, because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven." Faith, hope, and love—these have long been called the essential Christian virtues. Paul speaks of them in 1 Corinthians 13: "Now abide these three, faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love."

Someone had told Paul about the church growing in Colossae, a fruit of his ministry, and that these believers were manifesting faith, hope, and love. His heart was lifted and he began to pray for them. These three are essential to the abundant life Jesus spoke of in John 10:10: "I have come that you may have life, and that you may have it more abundantly."

But the sad reality is that often our faith is lacking, our love is misplaced, and many people are characterized more by hopelessness than hope. People long for hope—that's why it was so championed in the 2008 election. Core to this drift is having the wrong focus to our faith.

A Balanced Life Begins with Focused Faith

In 21st-century America we're taught from a young age to trust in ourselves. "I've got to believe in me." But every one of us falls short of our own expectations. The older we get, the more fragile we realize we are; we let ourselves down and we let others down. If the focus of your faith is yourself, there's a reason you might feel hopeless over time.

And if your faith isn't in yourself but in your spouse, you don't have to be married twenty-four hours to realize that's misplaced faith too. They will let you down. In premarital counseling we tell couples this, and they look at us and say, "No, never." That's dumb love. If your faith is in your career, your 401k, or your health, it will let you down—if it's not Christ. Notice what Paul commended: they had faith in Christ. Their faith had the right focus. A balanced life begins with focused faith.

A Christ-Focused Faith Shifts the Focus of Your Love

Paul praised the Colossians not only for faith in Christ but for love—a love "for all the saints." If your faith is in yourself, you'll have an inordinate self-love. Some self-love is normal and even important; if you hated yourself, you wouldn't take care of yourself. But excessive self-love can be harmful. It can grow so protective that you never step out into anything new, afraid of how others might perceive you, afraid to share the gospel because of what people might think.

When your faith is focused on Christ, it brings these things into alignment. A Christ-focused faith will shift the focus of your love from self-focused to saint-focused. That's a good move, and it leads us into the experience of fulfillment and joy. I know it sounds odd—it's the outgrowth of 20th-century American Christianity that we feel weird hearing this—but God wants us to experience happiness. Some of you want to insist there's a difference between joy and happiness, and I get it. But the point is this: happiness is only found in Him. Happiness apart from Him leads to idolatry, which ultimately leads to unhappiness. God wants us to experience joy and fulfillment, but it cannot happen without Christ as the centerpiece of our trust.

You Cannot Have Hope of Heaven Without Christ-Focused Faith

This Christ-centered focus also changes our hope. The Colossians had hope "laid up for them in heaven." You cannot have hope of heaven without Christ-focused faith. All kinds of things bombard us each week and threaten our hopefulness, and if your confidence is not centered on Christ, you will lose your hope and your peace. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick," say the Proverbs—and we may be one of the most heart-sick nations in the world despite our abundance, because our confidence is on the wrong things.

As Jesus faced the most pressing circumstance imaginable, He told His troubled disciples in John 14, "Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions... I go to prepare a place for you... that where I am, there you may be also." That's hope. But if your confidence is in your own good works to get you to heaven, you have very little hope. I've asked people for years, "If you died tonight, would you go to heaven?" and they say, "Well, I hope so"—like wishful thinking about winning the lottery. "What's your hope based on?" "I'm a pretty good person." No wonder you're hopeless.

My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.

The Christian's confidence is in the finished work of Jesus—what He accomplished on the cross when He bore our sin and the punishment for it, and said, "It is finished." Paid in full. "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast."

So these believers had faith in Jesus, love for others, and therefore hope for heaven—an interesting equation. If you've served in children's ministry, you've seen the acronym for JOY: Jesus, Others, You. Faith in Jesus, love for others, and you receive hope for heaven. That's a joyful place to be. We all orbit Christ; He's the gravitational pull that keeps life in alignment. The earth doesn't careen off into space because it has something strong as its center—and that needs to be Christ for your life and mine.

Where It All Came From: The Gospel and Epaphras

Where did all this faith, love, and hope come from? Verse 5: "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." Where the gospel goes, it produces fruit—since the day they "heard and knew the grace of God in truth," that it wasn't about their good works but about Christ alone.

They learned this from Epaphras, "our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf." Epaphras very likely became a disciple under Paul's ministry in Ephesus (Acts 19), then went back to Colossae and shared the gospel, and a church was born. When that church began to manifest faith, love, and hope, Epaphras traveled to Rome and told Paul, who—having never met them—was overjoyed to hear their testimony. "He declared to us your love in the Spirit." Their love in the Spirit was the identifying mark that they were followers of Jesus.

Paul's Prayer for the Colossians

Paul's response to this news was prayer. Verse 9: "For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you." He asks four things. Paul is the master of the run-on sentence—if anyone transcribed our prayers, we'd probably all run on too.

First, that they would be "filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding." This is my prayer for you as well. The number one question people bring me is, "What does God want me to do?" and they give me a blank stare when I say, "I don't know." Knowledge and wisdom are different. Knowledge is knowing things; wisdom is knowing what to do with what you know. As my friend Randy Broberg says, knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in the fruit salad. The scary thing is you can come to church and read your Bible daily, know all kinds of truth, and never apply it.

Second, "that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work." Paul prays that they would know God's will, know how to apply it, and then actually do it. I've known people who could argue all day about Reformed theology, the end times, or supralapsarianism—and yet their lives are in shambles, living in an adulterous relationship. They become the worst kind of witness, because the non-Christians they know say, "Your life is crap." So Paul prays they'd live it out and be fully pleasing to Him.

Third, that they'd be "strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power." We hear "power and might" and imagine casting out demons and healing the sick. But notice the application: power "for all patience and longsuffering with joy." That's where Paul takes it—patience and longsuffering with joy in the midst of trying circumstances. Now that's a witness for Jesus.

Finally, that they'd give "thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light." Their position was not because of anything they had done, but because God by His grace made them saints. Christ-focused faith compels prayer—prayer for others.

Something to Be Thankful For

Paul wraps it up: God "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." You want something to be thankful for? He has saved you, taken you out of darkness and into light, and made you a child of His kingdom. If you say you don't have anything to be thankful for today, that's something to be thankful for. You've got twenty-five days to get ready for Thanksgiving to thank God for that. If for nothing else, that's worthy of thanksgiving. Amen?

Closing Prayer

Father God, I pray for my brothers and sisters here today, that You would fill us with all knowledge and wisdom of Your will. Lord, we are not sufficient of ourselves and have no power of our own; enable us by Your power to walk worthy, in a way that shows You are glorious and true and awesome in our lives. Make us pleasing to You—not only in our actions and words, but in our thought life—and help us bear fruit as we increase in the knowledge of You.

Strengthen us this week, for every one of us will face difficulties that tempt us to be impatient and unkind. Give us, by Your Holy Spirit, patience and longsuffering with joy. Work these fruits of the Spirit into our lives—love, joy, peace, kindness, gentleness, self-control—for we cannot make this happen on our own.

Help us to be a thankful people. You spoke words of judgment over Israel because they were unthankful, and You warned that in the last days people would be unthankful. May it not be said of us. Help us to acknowledge that every good and perfect gift comes from You, and to live lives that glorify You through our gratitude. Lord, bring our lives into focus—a balanced and focused faith, a love for others, and an absolute certainty that we will be with You forever. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.