Welcome to The Safe Space!

Paul opens with gratitude and prayer, thanking God for the believers’ faith in Christ Jesus and their love for all God’s people. This faith and love spring from the confident hope of what God has reserved for them in heaven—a hope they first heard in the true message of the Good News. Across the world, this same Good News is bearing fruit and changing lives, just as it changed theirs from the day they first heard and understood the truth about God’s wonderful grace.

Paul prays that they will be filled with the knowledge of God’s will, with spiritual wisdom and understanding. Then they will live lives that honor the Lord, producing every kind of good fruit, growing in the knowledge of God, and being strengthened with his glorious power so they can endure with patience and joy.

He reminds them to always thank the Father, who has enabled them to share in the inheritance that belongs to his people, who live in the light. God has rescued them from the kingdom of darkness and transferred them into the Kingdom of his dear Son, who purchased their freedom and forgave their sins.

Then Paul lifts their eyes to the greatness of Christ himself. Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation. Through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth—everything visible and invisible. All things were created through him and for him, and he holds all creation together.

Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body. He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead, so he is first in everything. For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself through the blood of Christ shed on the cross.

Once, they were far away from God, enemies separated from him by evil thoughts and actions. But now Christ has brought them into right relationship with God through his physical body as he died for them, making them holy and blameless as they stand before him without a single fault.

Paul urges them to continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it, never drifting away from the hope of the Good News.

Finally, Paul speaks of his own calling. Though he suffers, he rejoices because he has been given the responsibility of proclaiming God’s mysterious plan—Christ living in them, the hope of glory. So everywhere he goes, Paul warns and teaches with all the wisdom God has given him, striving with Christ’s mighty power at work within him to present everyone mature and complete in Christ.

Verse of the Day: Psalm 47:6-7

Sing praises to God. Sing praises. Sing praises to our King. Sing praises. God is King of all the earth, so sing a song of praise to him.

Action of the Day:

Sing your own beautiful song to your Creator tonight.