STAYING THE COURSE: CONSTANT DISSONANCE

Don’t forget to “spring forward” this Saturday evening and set your clocks forward one hour for Daylight Saving Time!  If you happen to be an hour early for church and you have not started the Colossians study it would be a great time to get started!  We continue our sermon series Staying the Course based on this study.   We are seeking to guide our lives deeper into God’s resurrection power found in Jesus Christ.  It is hard to stay on course!  There are numerous pressures and forces that conspire to guide us in the wrong direction.  This week’s sermon is Constant Dissonance.  Dissonance is the gap between what we believe and what we actually do.  It is those places in us that seem to be “out of character” or “disconnected” from our other commitments.   These places are filled with temptation, diversion, and potentially, destructiveness.   We are not different from the believers of the Colossian church.  They faced the same temptations, pressures, and problems that we do today.  Through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit the Apostle Paul writes this letter to help them (and us) to find the power of the new life and encourage them to leave “old person” behind them.   How does this happen?  This week we turn to Colossians 3:1-11.  These words help us to realize that dissonance is a continuing battle in which we must be vigilant.   The language is direct and strong: we must “put to the death the “old person” so we may experience the power of new life in Christ.    This is not done in one grand decision but it accomplished through many smaller choices: to forgive rather than hate, to serve rather than be selfish, or to be grateful rather than entitled.  This may sound exhausting but as we make these choices the same power that resurrected Jesus is made stronger in our lives!  This is our prayer for you that you will experience the power of Christ transforming your heart and lifting you into his presence as you read Colossians 3:1-11:

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. ² Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. ³ For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. ⁴ When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. ⁵ Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. ⁶ Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. ⁷ You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. ⁸ But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. ⁹ Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices ¹⁰ and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. ¹¹ Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. (NIV)