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Do you see the reason why if any loses his or her Christ content as a result of sinfulness and sinful nature, being worldly or carnal, having being spiritually contaminated as a result of eating or drinking one thing or the other (injestion), he or she has lost his or her center of life and can no longer exist as a normal being (ndi nwuru anwu na aga ije; being empty) even though he or she appear normal, this is the truth and is the condition of many today on earth and such ones need to seriously keep seeking Christ to be drawn/restored/reconciled back to Him otherwise inheriting His Kingdom is far from such people. Centripetal is moving or tending to move towards a centre. These words clinch everything: ‘In Him all things consist (cohere, are held together’. We could also say, ‘Out of Him all things fly apart –they go to pieces.’ One commentator puts it like this: ‘Everything in Christ is bound together in perfect harmony, not simply by power or force but by love. Further on in Colossians we find these words: ‘And above all these [put on] love and enfold yourselves with the bond of perfectness [which binds everything together completely in ideal harmony].’ (3:14). One man and a woman known to me were disinherited by their family when he/she became a Christian, a phenomenon that is happening in many homes and family! However, they rose to become leading figures in society, and made efforts to relate to their family even though they were reluctant to have anything to do with them. Slowly their love for them won through. They held the family together because they were held together within –by being in Christ. So know that when you are in Christ, you are surely the bond through whom Christ holds your family together both near and extended, so no matter how apparent separation may look, know that with time all will be drawn/restored/reconciled back together again, this is the law and the principle! Many years ago, after I had written that the reason why all things in the universe cohere is because they are held together by Lord Jesus Christ, a nuclear scientist shut himself in his office for hours and refused to take any calls because the fact hit him as never before that what holds all creation together is not a force but a Person – Lord Jesus Christ. Do you know why? Because scientists postulated that the universe and all created things are held together by a Force! So hearing and knowing now that their postulation is wrong, rather that the universe and all created things are held together by Lord Jesus Christ, hit them like a bomb! Our Lord once said, in Matt. 12:30, “30 He who is not with Me [definitely [a]on My side] is against Me, and he who does not [definitely] gather with Me and for [b]My side scatters.” Everything outside of Christ scatters and this is why the world have not known Peace in spite of all the efforts of all the established organizations too numerous to mention. This is not merely theological opinion: it is working fact. Get among any group of Christians, talk about Christ, and you are together. Talk about our Church traditions and you are apart. Let this simple but solemn truth grip your soul with new force and renewed love today: ‘In Him all things hold together, out of Him all things fly apart and scatter’.

“For this reason we also, from the day we heard of it, have not ceased to pray and make [special] request for you, [asking] that you may be filled with the full (deep and clear) knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom [in comprehensive insight into the ways and purposes of God] and in understanding and discernment of spiritual things–“ (v9) The apostle Paul was not only a great preacher; he was also a great prayer. Many times when writing his letters he paused to break out in extempore prayer. Extempore is spoken or done without preparation, it is always a spontaneous action. And his prayers were not rambling petitions but always bore down on particular matters. One of the things I have noticed about those who seem to have a ministry in prayer is that they lose no time in getting to specifics. Though they are careful to worship and adore God, they don’t indulge themselves in flowery phrases such as ‘O thou who gidest the heavens and settest the stars in space’. Instead they quickly get down to details and specifics. Watch how Paul does this in the verses we have read. After telling the Colossians Christians that he had prayed ceaselessly for them since the day he had heard about them, he makes the first of his petitions by asking God to fill them ‘with the knowledge of his Will and Purposes through all spiritual wisdom and understanding’. Notice the word ‘fill’. It suggests that however much the Colossian Christians had received from the Lord, there was still room for more and they should keep asking. The same applies to us too! You see, no one can ever rest and say, ‘I am now completely Christian.’ For the Holy Spirit always has more to teach us about the will of God. Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet, said, ‘The eternal cry is –more.’ Whatever the Colossians and even us knew of God, there was and is still much more to discover, know and learn from God such that all our days in God becomes a school just as father Abraham said. Also significant is the phrase ‘bearing fruit in every good work’, Paul prayed that the life of God might flow through the Colossian Christians and produce substantial spiritual fruit; not fruitless suckers but fruit that the Master can enjoy –on the lowest branches the low –hanging fruit of humility and on the highest branches of the knowledge of God. These are the aims of our learning from the Colossian experience so that those of us of this generation on earth should work on our spiritual growth so that we too will be filled!

How encouraging for the Colossians to know they were remembered in Paul’s prayers. He had heard good things about them from Epaphras as seen in verse 7, “7 You so learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ in our stead and as our representative and [f]yours”, and so, whenever he prayed for them, he gave thanks to God for their faith in Christ and their love for all their fellow believers. Know that according to this verse, Epaphras is described as a faithful missionary who brought the gospel to Philemon and others in his city and he brought the news about the Church in Colossae to Paul and you can see that Colossians 4:12 suggests that Epaphras was from Colosae, he was known for his faithful prayers for his fellow Colossians believers, as Paul described him as ‘a servant of Christ Jesus’. These words link two important qualities: faith and love. The New Testament often joins these together words of faith and love; they could be ‘Scripture’s Conjoined Twins’. If you are to have an enduring selfless love for others you must first of all have faith in God because people will nearly want to throw you off balance in your God-man relationship if not for your strong faith in God knowing that it is God you look up to not man. Psychology teaches that love for other people is an integral part of good emotional health, but it has nothing to say on the need for a relationship with God. Without a relationship with God, however, love for others soon runs out of energy and all that initial emotions for the relationship all fades away and hate takes the place of love, which is why faith in God is always the glue that holds love for others firm so that when the realities of the human flaws, weak traits of character and attitude including weak behavioral patterns begins to surface, faith in God will make you to still endure! Some time ago I read about an African government agency which invested a large sum of money in a building programme designed to improve the lifestyle of a certain tribe living in grass huts on a hillside. To replace these flimsy dwellings the government built brick houses at the foot of the hill. The tribes people, however, felt uncomfortable in their new houses and, after they had lived in them for just a few days, they decided to move back into their old huts. An exasperated official said to missionaries who lived among them, ‘These ungrateful people need a lot of loving faith. I’m afraid the best we can do is to lift them; we leave it to you to love them.’ Exasperated is intensely irritated and frustrated impulses. Love that is not linked to God in faith quickly runs out of impetus and endurance, which many people are not aware of in going into relationship and that is why you see certain relationship don’t last because the love is not Conjoined with faith, as in faith and love that should always go together in other for it to last and pass the test of time. Governments can raise people’s standard of living but they can’t love them. Only when we have faith in God can we go on loving the unresponsive. No faith in God, no love like God’s. So people should be trained and taught how to love like God, Lord Jesus Christ with His Agape type of love otherwise all what humans call love is only a misuse of the word in reality! We need to be made whole with body, spirit and soul working perfecting together and hooked up with the Holy Spirit of God to be in harmony.

How encouraging for the Colossians to know they were remembered in Paul’s prayers. He had heard good things about them from Epaphras as seen in verse 7, “7 You so learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ in our stead and as our representative and [f]yours”, and so, whenever he prayed for them, he gave thanks to God for their faith in Christ and their love for all their fellow believers. Know that according to this verse, Epaphras is described as a faithful missionary who brought the gospel to Philemon and others in his city and he brought the news about the Church in Colossae to Paul and you can see that Colossians 4:12 suggests that Epaphras was from Colosae, he was known for his faithful prayers for his fellow Colossians believers, as Paul described him as ‘a servant of Christ Jesus’. These words link two important qualities: faith and love. The New Testament often joins these together words of faith and love; they could be ‘Scripture’s Conjoined Twins’. If you are to have an enduring selfless love for others you must first of all have faith in God because people will nearly want to throw you off balance in your God-man relationship if not for your strong faith in God knowing that it is God you look up to not man. Psychology teaches that love for other people is an integral part of good emotional health, but it has nothing to say on the need for a relationship with God. Without a relationship with God, however, love for others soon runs out of energy and all that initial emotions for the relationship all fades away and hate takes the place of love, which is why faith in God is always the glue that holds love for others firm so that when the realities of the human flaws, weak traits of character and attitude including weak behavioral patterns begins to surface, faith in God will make you to still endure! Some time ago I read about an African government agency which invested a large sum of money in a building programme designed to improve the lifestyle of a certain tribe living in grass huts on a hillside. To replace these flimsy dwellings the government built brick houses at the foot of the hill. The tribes people, however, felt uncomfortable in their new houses and, after they had lived in them for just a few days, they decided to move back into their old huts. An exasperated official said to missionaries who lived among them, ‘These ungrateful people need a lot of loving faith. I’m afraid the best we can do is to lift them; we leave it to you to love them.’ Exasperated is intensely irritated and frustrated impulses. Love that is not linked to God in faith quickly runs out of impetus and endurance, which many people are not aware of in going into relationship and that is why you see certain relationship don’t last because the love is not Conjoined with faith, as in faith and love that should always go together in other for it to last and pass the test of time. Governments can raise people’s standard of living but they can’t love them. Only when we have faith in God can we go on loving the unresponsive. No faith in God, no love like God’s. So people should be trained and taught how to love like God, Lord Jesus Christ with His Agape type of love otherwise all what humans call love is only a misuse of the word in reality! We need to be made whole with body, spirit and soul working perfecting together and hooked up with the Holy Spirit of God to be in harmony.

We come now to our final day together in meditating on the magnificent phrases of what someone has described as ‘the sweetest religious song ever written –the Twenty-third Psalm’. It began with a positive note of assurance: ‘The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want’, and it ends in the same exciting and exhilarating way: ‘I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.’ This Psalm, as we have seen, pictures sheep so fully satisfied, so utterly content and so much ‘at home’ with their shepherd that there is not the slightest desire for change. Conversely, of course, on the shepherd’s side, such a relationship has developed that he would never think of parting with one of his sheep. So strong are the bonds between the shepherd and his sheep that nothing can separate them –ever. As I conclude these meditations, there comes to mind a memory from the days when I first entered the ministry in the scenic farming country of Carmarthenshire in West Wales said a narrator. Many of the farmers in the area were deeply caring of their sheep, but there was one who was notorious for his neglect. When one looked at his thin and scraggy sheep, bunched together in the corner of the field, one could almost see in the eyes of these abused and neglected creatures a longing to find themselves under the care of a good and gracious shepherd. My dear friend –aren’t you glad you don’t belong to a shepherd like the one who was notorious for his neglect in the scenic farming country of Carmarthenshire in West Wales? You belong to the Good Shepherd –the one true God Lord Jesus Christ. Rest in that fact! His care for you is not just for now; it will last into eternity also. You will dwell forever … for ever …in the constant Care and Loving Presence of the Lord. This is the Assurance He promised us!