Peace and Resurrection - Pt 6

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:24-27 ESV).

We come to the close of our look at “Peace and Resurrection” today. I want to give you a short illustrations and then one last note. The illustration comes out of the life of Oswald Chambers. He is one of the great Christian writes of the last 100 years. After reading his biography I discovered he didn’t start writing until he was 70. He wrote a book every year after until his death at 89. He said, “That’s better than golf, fishing, lollygagging around in some coral reef while you’re supposed to look cool and tanned at age 70.” My thought was “really?” At 68, I’m thinking I need less time spent in ministry so I can have more time to “lollygag”! I digress. Here’s the story Chambers told. I’ll paraphrase. There was an itinerant evangelist in India, very poor, walking from village to village, sharing the gospel. Sometimes received, sometimes spurned. It’s late in the day and he comes to one more village. He’s not sure if he has the energy, but he goes in, and he receives a terrible reception and they literally drive him out of the village. He’s frightened and he’s exhausted. He lies down under a tree and goes to sleep. Just at dusk, he’s startled wide awake and he’s surrounded by the villagers. The big man in the village said, “We wanted to come see what you were doing out here and now that we have seen your blistered and bleeding feet to bring us this news, we would like you to tell us again what you said in the village.” This is the perfect illustration of our reading today. I complete in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ. Now, those blistered and bleeding feet do not add one iota to your salvation. They simply display the value that you put upon Christ and the love that you have for people and thus, they become a kind of embodiment of Christ’s own afflictions, displaying the authenticity of the message so that people are willing to listen. This is the clear indication of both the “what” and the “why” of our suffering. You can know both that it has great purpose and that it has a glorious end. This is our hope! He has already forged ahead and made our eternal life an irrevocable part of our future!