Complete In Christ Series

Some time ago, the Marriage Partnership magazine listed the top 10 reasons people are too busy to pray today. Maybe some of these fit your situation: 1) You wake up feeling rested, then realize your alarm should’ve gone off an hour ago. 2) Your spouse is away on a two-day business trip that’s lasted all week. 3) None of the clean clothes you were able to find match. 4) Your teenager shaved… the left half of his head. 5) Your bills are due, and your toddler hid the checkbook. 6) A strange fluid is dripping from your car. 7) You accidentally delete your quarterly report ten minutes before a meeting with your boss. 8) You’re in charge of games for the church youth night tonight. 9) Your dog is throwing up. 10) Your toilet’s overflowing, but at least you found the checkbook. Ten reasons you really should pray today: See list above. (“The Top Ten Reasons You Are Too Busy to Pray Today,” Marriage Partnership, 1996, www.PreachingToday.com)

Life is like that. That’s why we need to pray. That’s why we need the Lord. That’s why we need to live in daily dependence upon Christ.

If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Colossians 2, Colossians 2, where we see the importance of living daily by faith in Christ.

Colossians 2:6-7 So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. (NIV)

We received Christ Jesus, the Lord, into our lives by faith. Now, we are directed to live in the same way – by faith. Literally, we are directed to “continue walking around” in the same way we started our journey with Christ.

To put it simply, we are to live in grateful dependence upon Christ from the beginning to the end of our lives with Him. The Christian life is constantly a life of faith in everything we do.

We have been rooted in Christ (vs.7) – an agricultural term. We are right now being built up in Christ – an architectural term; and as a result, we are being established, or strengthened, in the faith. You see, when Christ is the root and foundation of our lives, then we become strong by our dependence upon Him. Not only that, we overflow with thankfulness.

So from beginning to end, we live in grateful dependence upon Christ, not in our own efforts. Daily, we walk around, strengthened by our faith in Christ.

In his book, Rescuing Ambition, Dave Harvey talks about what has been called the greatest rescue mission of World War II. Late in that war, American bombers were sent on dangerous missions over southern Europe to cripple Nazi oil supplies. Hundreds of crews in flying tin cans soared through storms of anti-aircraft shells. Many American pilots were forced to bail from their shot-up planes. The injured airmen drifted by parachute into occupied Yugoslavia, expecting to be captured or killed.

Instead, on the ground remarkable rescue teams were already in place. Serbian peasants tracked the path of the floating flight crews. Their sole mission was to grab the flyboys and bring them to safety – before the Nazis arrived.

Risking their own lives, the peasants fed and sheltered the downed solders. These rescued men were in friendly hands but on enemy soil. They still needed to escape.

The story of what became known as Operation Haylard builds toward a daring mission, a secret landing strip, and a clandestine evacuation plan. Amazingly, those Serbian peasants rescued every single American airman – over 500 in all.

Yet, in order to travel to the evacuation site, the airmen had to spend weeks following the Serbian freedom fighters, who alone knew the path to the evacuation site. The direction, the pace, and the destination were in the hands of their rescuers. The men had been saved from their enemy, but the journey had just begun. They still had to walk to freedom. (Dave Harvey, Rescuing Ambition, Crossway, 2010, pp. 63-64; www.PreachingToday.com)

That’s the way it is for those of us who have been saved by faith in Christ. Our journey has just begun! We are now on a walk to ultimate freedom from the very presence of sin. The One who saved us by faith is now calling us to walk by faith in Him. It’s nonnegotiable. Dave Harvey put it this way: “Though snatched from spiritual death, we soon discover that the Christian life isn’t an arrival; it’s an adventure.”

We trusted Christ to rescue us from our sins. Now, He asks us to trust Him with the direction, the pace and the destination in our daily walk with Him. “Just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in Him.” Continue to walk around in grateful dependence upon Christ, trusting Him to lead you in the right way and at the right pace to the right destination.