We’re beginning a new series today on "Reaching Your Full Potential For God." This is not just a series on advancing your personal goals. There’s nothing wrong with that, I just want you to know that this is not going to be a Tony Robbins seminar.
It’s good to want to be a better student, a better worker, a better spouse, or a better parent. It’s good to want to live up to your vocational potential, your educational potential, or your financial potential. But we’re going to be talking about what you can do to live up to your spiritual potential.
We’re going to be talking about what you can do to be more for God, what you can do to become more like the person God wants you to become, because, as you become more of the person God wants you to become you will not only have more peace and joy because you will be fulfilling the purpose for which you were created, but you will also be able to give God the glory He deserves.
When you live up to your spiritual potential it will impact every other area of your life in a positive way. When you get the core spiritual part of your life straight you are able to focus more effectively on the spokes of the wheel that radiate from the center. Your spiritual life is the center. Everything else flows out from there. So you can see this is a very important topic.
To satisfy the thirst for reaching your spiritual potential we’re going to be drinking from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Colossae in this series.
The Colossian letter was written from a Roman prison. Paul was incarcerated because he was spreading the Good News about Jesus and anti-Christians had him put in jail on trumped up charges.
He didn’t start the church in Colossae, as he had so many others, but the pastor of the church, Epaphras, had come to visit him in the Roman prison to tell him about this church. After their meeting Paul wrote a letter to the people of this church to give them further instructions and encouragement. What he says to the Colossian Christians is amazingly relevant to the 21st Century!
Our world today is wrapped up in a myriad of conflicting religions and philosophies about how to live and what’s really important - just as it was in the 1st Century.
Many people believe that you can pick whatever ideas you want to live by and that will be fine with God. But the truth is – if you want to live up to your spiritual potential it must be done God’s way. The truth must be that which is revealed in God’s written Word, the Bible, and in His Living Word, His Son, and the Lord Jesus Christ. You have to follow the manufacturer’s instructions.
The information from the Word of God in Colossians helps you to see that God has a definitive and distinctive plan for you to reach your full spiritual potential.
We’re going to begin today with the pre-requisites.
What kind of preparation is necessary for you to reach your full potential for God? What kind of groundwork needs to be laid? Paul gives us several ideas on how to get started here in Colossians chapter one.
1. The first pre-requisite for reaching your spiritual potential is wanting more from your Christian experience than just a ticket to heaven.
When Paul opened his letter to the church at Colossae, after his introduction, he said this:
Colossians 1:9 (CEV) We have not stopped praying for you since the first day we heard about you. In fact, we always pray that God will show you everything he wants you to do and that you may have all the wisdom and understanding that his Spirit gives.
Circle the words "everything" and "all." Paul had heard of the people coming to Christ in the city of Colossae, but he knew that coming to Christ is only the beginning of reaching your full potential for God. He prayed that God would show them "everything" he wanted them to do and that they may have "all" the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives.
There’s more to being a Christ follower than being able to say, "I’m on my way to heaven." Becoming a Christ follower is not only about having eternal life in heaven forever - it’s also about realizing your full potential for God here on earth. It’s about enjoying the trip while investing for eternity!
Skit #1: Ticket to Heaven
Setting: two people sitting side by side in an airport or train station.
#1: Got your ticket?
#2: Oh yeah! (Holds ticket up and reads from it.) Says here, "This ticket to heaven purchased by the blood of Jesus." I got it years ago when I asked Jesus into my heart.
#1: (Sighs) So what have you been doing for God and for others all these years?
#2: Doing for God? (Pauses) For others? What do you mean?
#1: Well, when you became a follower of Christ didn’t you want to do things to show Him your appreciation? Didn’t you want to help others like God had helped you?
#2: Well I thought about it. But you know I had so many of my own problems. And sometimes I was disappointed with God because He didn’t do things the way I thought He would. And at other times I was angry with other people because they didn’t act the way I wanted them to. (Holds his ticket up and smiles.) But I always had my ticket!
#1: (Frowning and holds his head down.)
#2: What’s wrong with you?
#1: Well…I never got my ticket. (Pause – both are sad-faced now.) I guess a lot of Christ followers were like you. They were glad they had their ticket to heaven but they didn’t want to go to the trouble and expense to help me get mine.
#2: I guess being a Christian was more than just having my ticket to heaven.
It’s easy to stop progressing as a Christ follower. It’s easy to become satisfied and let your spiritual life stand still. It’s possible to become discouraged and give up. You can get sidetracked by distractions. But God wants you to have more. He wants you to reach your full potential for Him!
Paul specifically lists the attitudes and attributes you should want more of:
a. Good deeds and knowing God better.
Colossians 1:10 (CEV)Then you will live a life that honors the Lord, and you will always please him by doing good deeds. You will come to know God even better.
If you’ve gotten to the place in your Christian experience that you want more - then here is where it begins! If your Christian life has gotten somewhat stagnant – and that can certainly happen, a refreshing and refilling begins by getting to know God even better and by doing more good deeds for Him.
Good deeds don’t earn you God’s favor but you do them because you love God and you love others.
Knowing God better requires spending more time with Him. He’s a person, and like any other person you have to spend time with Him to get to know Him better. That’s your daily worship – your daily quiet time, or personal devotions or whatever you choose to call it.
Your life will not become dull and boring if you fill up on God every day. Your life will be full of fresh enthusiasm. The word enthusiasm comes from the Greek words for "in God." The more of God you have in you the more enthusiastic you will become! The more enthusiastic you are about the life the more you will live up to your potential!
b. And then Paul says in verse 11 you need more patience and endurance. This is the second attitude/attribute of a believer intent on reaching their full potential for God.
Colossians 1:11 (CEV) His glorious power will make you patient and strong enough to endure anything, and you will be truly happy.
And look at the wonderful by-product of patience and endurance.
Circle, "You will be truly happy." Not faking being happy, truly happy. There is a lot of fake happiness in our culture. A lot of people are pretending to have it all together on the outside but on the inside they are empty. What will make you truly happy? As you spend more time getting to know God and doing things for Him, the good deeds Paul talked about in verse 10, then you are fulfilling the purpose for which you were created and that’s where not only patience and endurance come from – but also true happiness!
The Bible spells out precisely what it takes to be happy but when you read words like patience and endurance your human nature doesn’t want any part of it. I know mine doesn’t! I struggle with being patient every day of my life. That’s why I need God every day of my life. That’s why I need to plug into His plan and not my own.
You won’t reach your full potential until you let His power "make you patient and strong enough to endure anything."
And then, you need this third attitude:
c. Gratefulness for what God has done for you through Jesus.
Colossians 1:12 (CEV) I pray that you will be grateful to God for letting you have part in what he has promised his people in the kingdom of light.
13 God rescued us from the dark power of Satan and brought us into the kingdom of his dear Son,
14 who forgives our sins and sets us free.
Once again, these verses show you that there is more to becoming a Christ follower than simply inheriting eternal life.
You certainly inherit eternal life when you make a faith commitment to Jesus. Salvation is free to you. Christ paid for your eternal life when He died on Skull Hill. All you have to do is ask in faith and you will be saved! No wonder they call it Good News!
But what were you asking for? Were you asking for God to send His only Son to suffer your eternal hell for you on the cross so you could live a self-centered, indulgent life until you get to heaven? Where is the love in that?
Being a follower of Christ is having a personal relationship with Jesus, one where He has become your closest friend and ally. Do you want to treat your closest friend and ally as if He were someone you could pay attention to or ignore depending upon your own whims and desires? Or will you practice being grateful to God for His great gift by letting what matters to God matter to you?
The Bible teaches you that if would reach your full potential for God that you would want more from your Christian experience than just a ticket to heaven. Your life should begin taking on certain attitudes and attributes.
2. The second pre-requisite for reaching your full potential for God is worshipping more than just a good man and a great teacher.
False teaching about Jesus was floating around Colossae. This is one of the things that Pastor Epaphras communicated to Paul when he visited him. The false teaching was most likely a hybrid form of Jewish legalism and Greek philosophy.
- It denied that the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily in Christ (Colossians 2:9).
- It denied that the Christian was complete in Christ (Colossians 2:10).
- It tried to supplement the freedom in Christ by introducing ways of heightening Christian spirituality. They were saying that Christians needed more for their salvation than what Jesus Christ had to offer.
The word that theologians use for this kind of false teaching is "heresy." It’s a Greek word that basically means "disunion." False teaching disunites the church because it deviates from God’s message.
You can please people with false teaching by telling them what they want to hear but you can’t please God with it.
The amazing thing about the false teaching in Colossae is that it so closely mirrors the same empty ideas spewed forth by postmodernists today! Satan is still trying to deceive people about Jesus, who He is and what He can do for you! The devil does not want you to realize how fantastic Jesus is. He wants you to think Jesus was just a good man and a maybe even a great teacher, but surely not the Son of God.
Skit #2: More than Just a Good Man
Setting: two people sitting in class together
#1: Well I hope the professor really gives it to those Christians again today like he did last Friday. He showed how ignorant it is to believe in all of that faith stuff.
#2: I don’t know. I’ve been thinking over the weekend. In fact, I even went to church with a few of my friends from that Christian organization on campus.
#1: You’re kidding! You’re not going to start carrying a big Bible to class and singing hymns are you?
#2: I’m just saying everyone has faith. It’s just that we all have faith in different things. The professor obviously has faith in scientific theories, theories that can’t even be proven in a laboratory. But then he makes fun of Christians for believing in creation and miracles and stuff.
#1: Man what could Christians possibly have faith in that is better than science?
#2: See, there it is, the presupposition that Christians don’t believe in science and history and the laws of evidence. I heard this pastor say Sunday that he used to be an atheist until he studied the evidence for Christianity. He said it took more faith to be an atheist than to be a follower of Christ.
#1: You’re really confusing me man.
#2: Think about it. Jesus was said to be a good man and a great teacher, but He also rose from the dead, there were eyewitnesses and everything. He performed miracles. He claimed to be God. If He wasn’t God then He wasn’t good. The preacher said that if Jesus wasn’t God - then He was a liar or a lunatic. I think maybe Jesus was Lord
#1: Well you’d better not tell the professor this wacky stuff.
#2: I don’t know…the pastor said the Bible says that we should tell everyone!
The core truth is, Jesus is the heart and soul of our worship. Paul knew this and he knew that what the false teachers were trying to do was cut the heart out of Christianity – rendering it lifeless.
He responds to the bogus beliefs of the counterfeit spiritual leaders by lifting Jesus up! Colossians chapter one contains one of the greatest biblical hymns of praise to Jesus! Just listen to it!
Colossians 1:15 (CEV) Christ is exactly like God, who cannot be seen. He is the first-born Son, superior to all creation.
16 Everything was created by him, everything in heaven and on earth, everything seen and unseen, including all forces and powers, and all rulers and authorities. All things were created by God’s Son, and everything was made for him.
17 God’s Son was before all else, and by him everything is held together.
18 He is the head of his body, which is the church. He is the very beginning, the first to be raised from death, so that he would be above all others.
19 God himself was pleased to live fully in his Son.
20 And God was pleased for him to make peace by sacrificing his blood on the cross, so that all beings in heaven and on earth would be brought back to God.
You can tell by this inspired song that Jesus is more than just a good man and a good teacher! If you want to reach your full potential for God you can’t minimize Jesus to the spiritual dwarfism by which many godless philosophies and religions see Him!
Why should we believe what the Bible is saying here? Aren’t there other religions that teach just as vehemently that Jesus isn’t God, that He’s just another in a long line of good moral and religious teachers and philosophers? Aren’t all religions equally valid? Can one really determine spiritual truth? Does man even need God? Don’t Buddha, Mohammed and Jesus all merely represent different paths to the same God?
Ravi Zacharias, a modern Christian apologist and teacher put the dilemma of the 21st Century atmosphere this way:
"Philosophically, you can believe anything, so long as you do not claim it to be true. Morally, you can practice anything, so long as you do not claim it to be a ’better’ way. Religiously, you can hold to anything, so long as you do not bring Jesus Christ into it. How does one, to a mood such as this, communicate the message of Jesus Christ, in which Truth and absoluteness are not only assumed, but sustained?"
There’s only one way to communicate it, only one way to sustain it – and that’s by lifting Jesus up, by getting people to look at how wonderful Jesus is!
Look at the reasons Paul gives in this song (which may have even been a hymn of the early church) for believing that Jesus is not just a good man and a great teacher, but the exclusive way to God.
a. The superiority of Christ as the mirrored image of God.
Colossians 1:15 (CEV) Christ is exactly like God, who cannot be seen. He is the first-born Son, superior to all creation.
No other religious leader or philosophical guru can support their claims to be God. Jesus is everything you would expect God to be. He is perfect. He is loving. He is all-wise. He is impartial. His timing is impeccable. His teachings are incomparable. His death was sacrificial and His resurrection was unsurpassable!
Jesus was not only in a class all His own when it came to His person but another reason for believing He is the exclusive way to God is
b. The creativity of Christ.
Colossians 1:16 (CEV) Everything was created by him, everything in heaven and on earth, everything seen and unseen, including all forces and powers, and all rulers and authorities. All things were created by God’s Son, and everything was made for him.
17 God’s Son was before all else, and by him everything is held together.
Can you imagine Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel or Galileo inventing the telescope and everyone shrugging their shoulders and saying, "anybody can do that!"
No, not just anybody can. Very, very few can. And this universe is not the result of chance occurrences. It takes more faith to believe this universe came to be through evolutionistic chance than to believe the scientific basis for creationism.
Everyone has faith. But everyone doesn’t have faith in Jesus. Christ has the best and only solid basis for your faith, no only because of His superiority and creativity, but also because of...
c. The resurrection of Christ.
Colossians 1:18 (CEV) He is the head of his body, which is the church. He is the very beginning, the first to be raised from death, so that he would be above all others.
If you didn’t have any other evidence for the exclusivity of Christ – this alone is enough. Christ in a class all His own by conquering death.
d. The substitutionary death of Christ, God dying for man to bring man back to God.
Colossians 1:19 (CEV) God himself was pleased to live fully in his Son.
20 And God was pleased for him to make peace by sacrificing his blood on the cross, so that all beings in heaven and on earth would be brought back to God.
Add this tremendous factor to the equation of Christ being the only way to God. In addition to His superiority, creativity, and resurrection He died to bring you back to God. No one else could have done that for you.
One more attribute or attitude for reaching your full potential for God. In addition to:
1. Wanting more from your Christian experience than just a ticket to heaven.
2. Worshipping more than just a good man and a great teacher.
3. Withstanding more faulty philosophies.
Colossians 1:21 (CEV) You used to be far from God. Your thoughts made you his enemies, and you did evil things.
22 But his Son became a human and died. So God made peace with you, and now he lets you stand in his presence as people who are holy and faultless and innocent.
23 But you must stay deeply rooted and firm in your faith. You must not give up the hope you received when you heard the good news. It was preached to everyone on earth, and I myself have become a servant of this message.
What were the believers at Colossae told to do in order to withstand the attacks on their faith from errant teachings? What can you do to withstand?
a. Grow your roots deep.
Verse 23 says, "Stay deeply rooted and firm in your faith."
Growth for the Christ follower is a process but it is an intentional one. You must make choices.
The first choice is where are you going to plant yourself.
Psalm 1:3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
Choose to plant yourself in a good location for growth - by the rivers of water. Water in the Bible is symbolic of the Word of God (Ephesians 5:26) and the Spirit of God. (John 7:38) So if you’re going to grow you need to plant yourself in the Word of God and be filled with the Spirit of God.
The second thing you’re going to have to do to withstand attacks on your faith from false teaching is to maintain your hope.
b. Don’t lose hope.
You must not give up the hope you received when you heard the good news.
The Christ followers at Colossae were being encouraged by Paul to not give up the hope they received when they heard the good news. Satan was waging war against them with the false messages of empty religions and dead philosophies. Yet not one of those other religions or philosophies could do for them what the good news about Jesus had!
They used to be far from God. They thought wrongly and they lived dissolutely. But God made peace with them by sending His Son to die! Now, because they had faith in Christ, they could stand in God’s presence as people who are holy and faultless and innocent!
Why turn anywhere else?
