Encouraging Words (Colossians 1:1-8)

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A couple of the churches I served presented me a wonderful gift for Pastors’ Appreciation Month. They both gave me a collection of notes written by members of the congregation. Each of these letters told of ways that I touched their lives and expressed appreciation for my presence and my work. The encouraging words in these letters have been such a blessing that I still look at them from time to time.

Today’s reading works the other way around. This is a letter from Paul and Timothy to the people of the church in Colossae. Paul writes, “In our prayers for you we always thank God… for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven” (vv. 3-5). Notice how faith, love, and hope are woven together.

Paul hadn’t planted this church himself (Epaphras did). He had simply heard about them, and what he heard moved him to gratitude. Their faith was already bearing fruit, and word was getting around. Paul goes on to say that the gospel “is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world… just as it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God” (v. 6). Growth is not forced. It is a response to grace. When we truly grasp that God loves us and is for us, something begins to change. We become more patient, more compassionate, more willing to forgive. This is holiness, life being reshaped and formed by love.

The beautiful part is that this growth is both God’s work and ours. We do not manufacture fruit, but together we do tend the soil. Together we listen, we respond, we stay open. Epaphras, Paul says, is a “faithful minister of Christ” who helped them understand grace and live it out (vv. 7-8). We need people like that in our lives, and we are called to be that kind of presence for others.

Faith is rarely lived alone. Wesley said that there is no such thing as solitary religion (see notes below). God often uses ordinary people to help us recognize his extraordinary grace. Someone prayed for you, taught you, encouraged you, or walked beside you when faith felt fragile. And perhaps now, by God’s grace, you are becoming that person for someone else.

A Spiritual Practice for Today
Take a few minutes today to write a short note, text, or email to someone whose faith has encouraged yours. It doesn’t need to be long. Simply tell them what you’ve noticed in their life and how it has touched you. This is a Pauline practice: naming the grace we see in one another builds up the whole body.

Questions for Reflection and Action

  • Where have I noticed signs of God’s grace already at work in my life?
  • What fruit of faith or love might God be growing in me right now?
  • Who has encouraged my faith journey, and how can I thank them?
  • How might God be inviting me to encourage someone else today?

Journaling Prompt
Write about a person who helped you recognize God’s love or guided you closer to Christ. How did their faith shape your own?

Blessing
May the grace that found you continue to grow in you, and may your life become good news to everyone around you. Go in the freedom of a love that never stops moving.

Prayer
Lord, I am grateful today for the ways your grace has reached me through ordinary, faithful people. Thank you for those who carried the gospel before I ever knew I needed it. Help me to always remember that my own life is part of this larger, living movement of your love in the world. Renew in me a sense of wonder at what you are doing, not just in me, but through me and around me. Help me to bear fruit that lasts, to love generously, to live with hope, and to be present for someone today who needs to hear that grace is real. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Notes:

“Christianity is essentially a social religion; and that to turn it into a solitary one is to destroy it.” from Sermon 24 -- Upon Our Lord’s Sermon On The Mount: Discourse Four

“Directly opposite to this is the gospel of Christ. Solitary religion is not to be found there. ‘Holy solitaries’ is a phrase no more consistent with the gospel than ‘holy adulterers.’ The gospel of Christ knows of no religion but social; no holiness but social holiness. ‘Faith working by love’ is the length and breadth and depth and height of Christian perfection. ‘This commandment have we from Christ, that he who loveth God love his neighbour also’; and that we manifest our love by doing good unto all men, especially to them that are of the household of faith.”  John Wesley, Preface to Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739), paragraph 5.

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