Feeding Our Souls Series

Feeding Our Souls

CCCAG, March 26th, 2022

Scripture: Colossians 2:6-8, 16-23

If you are one of the people who listen to us by podcast and never actually seen the person speaking, I have more than a few extra pounds. I started gaining weight after I left the military and started jobs that were less physically active, but carried the Army appetite.

Since the late 90’s, I’ve been on virtually every diet plan you can think of to lose weight. All of them helped get a little weight off, but I’d bounce back.

The best one I had was called the Omni plan, which used HcG to increase metabolism and curve cravings. I lost 80 pounds on that one, and was at my lowest weight in almost 20 years when I moved up here.

Then nursing school….stress eating, not sleeping, trying to keep up with working full time and being your pastor had its toll. A few weeks ago, I was the heaviest I’ve ever been, but I have lost about 12 pounds now by cutting out most snacking so we will see how this goes.

But, I didn’t prepare a message this morning around my chubbiness.

I wanted to open this way to get you thinking about an old saying-

“You are what you eat!”

What is true in the physical, is also true in the spiritual.

You are what you eat also applies to us spiritually.

What we consume comes out in how we live our lives, and in particular our spiritual lives. As we continue in our study on the book of Colossians, I want you to see this in relation to how we think about Jesus, how we can sometimes put things in his place that are not of him, and learn to recognize and discard things that are counterfeits to the Gospel.

Prayer

We are going to break up this section of Colossians into 3 parts.

In the first of the three sections, I want to talk about focus.

Since your focus determines your reality, it’s important that we have our focus on the right things.

In this case, our life focus should be on Thanksgiving-

I. Life focus- thanksgiving

Col 2:6-8

6 So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, 7 rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

8 See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

When I was in Kenosha I was a volunteer chaplain at all three of the hospitals. Oftentimes the chaplains were not called in by the patient but often by the family members of the patient because they thought a pastor could help with their family member who was going through either an end of life crisis or a serious diagnosis.

So most of the time I got called I went in cold meaning I had no prior relationship with this person and they were not the one who called me there.

I would sit down and have an opening conversation with them to kind of judge their needs and where they were spiritually. One of the questions I would ask is- “Apart from what is going on right now what do you have to be thankful for?”

Two reasons (and great ways to start off conversations with people you meet) to ask that- one I could judge their spiritual life by their answer. Two, I could judge there fear level or state of mind by their answer. It gave me a starting point to start having the serious conversations.

You can tell a lot about a person and their mental and spiritual condition by how they answer that question- “what are you most thankful for in life?”

I don't want you to answer out loud but I want you to answer that in your own mind

What are you most thankful for right now?

Some people might say their spouse.

Some people might say they're kids

Some people may say their house or property

Some people might even say their job.

Those aren't bad things to be thankful for. We should be thankful for all the blessings that God has given us in this life.

But, what happens when those things are taken away?

I don’t want to be a bummer on Sunday morning, but sooner or later, they will be.

Fortunately the Bible gives us an example of how to react when everything in your life is taken away.

Around the time of Abraham, there was a man named Job. Job was one of the richest men in the world at that time. He had flocks, servants, possessions, and HE was a Godly man.