In Colossians 2:6–12, Paul calls believers not just to receive Christ, but to walk in Him, firmly rooted and built up in faith. The life that flourishes in Christ must be grounded in Him, not in empty philosophies or self-sufficient thinking. This passage invites us to examine what shapes our minds and desires: does what we meditate on draw us closer to Jesus or pull us away? Remembering our baptism and the joy of salvation reorients us, reminding us that we are not the source of life but recipients of grace. To walk in Christ is to cultivate vigilance, humility, and direction, to set our faces toward Him and live a life worthy of His calling.

In this episode, guest podcaster Brian Seagraves joins us to explore the book of Esther. Together, we’ll consider the surprising moral ambiguity of its main characters, how the story is told with God’s name absent yet His sovereignty hidden in plain sight, and the dramatic reversals that shape the narrative. We’ll also reflect on why Esther retells history the way it does—not simply to record the past, but to shape how God’s people live in the present. This is Understanding Esther.

Check out the rest of our Understanding Series: https://www.fouroaksmidtown.com/teachings

Once we were alienated from God, hostile in mind, and marked by sin, but through Christ’s death we have been reconciled and now stand holy and blameless before Him. Paul reminds believers to remain steadfast in the gospel, thankful to live in the fullness of God’s revealed plan that prophets and angels longed to see. His aim is to see the church mature in Christ, knit together in love, firm in faith, and walking in the wisdom found only in Him.

The book of Ruth focuses on two things that reveal our dependence upon God: land and children. We typically think of land as just matter that we through technology impose our will upon, but in the ANE land meant life, provision, and security. Central to Israel’s conception of land is the idea of an inheritance — God himself apportions various plots to tribes and families. These are gifts to be received rather than objects to generate profit. God nourishes his people through the land. Similarly, God grants children as a gift. Land and children remind us not only of our dependence, but our place as one rung in a ladder of generations through time. Everything in our modern world drives us to focus on the here and now. But land and children gives us a broader perspective. But even these temporal things are not the final end, for as we learn in the NT, the great inheritance we possess as Christians is an eternal kingdom, a new creation. And that the extension of our life in time through children is only finally fulfilled in our resurrection. Ruth draws us into that fundamental reality of God as our ultimate provider, protector, and redeemer. This is Understanding Ruth. 

Check out the rest of our Understanding Series: https://www.fouroaksmidtown.com/teachings

In Colossians 1:15–20, Paul lifts our eyes to the wonder of who Jesus is as our Creator, Redeemer, and the One who holds all things together. All things were made by Him and for Him, and in Him all things hold together. From the firstborn over creation to the Lamb praised in Revelation, Scripture calls us to see Christ’s supremacy and respond in worship with thankful hearts.

Any author, playwright, or screenwriter worth his or her salt knows the golden rule of effective writing: show don’t tell. The narrative of Ruth shows the faithfulness of God unfolding through the ordinary lives of men and women through dialogue, action, and setting. The time of harvest symbolizes the fertility God grants to his people both in terms of bread and offspring. The shroud of darkness over the threshing floor highlights the hidden manner in which God works. The dawn of a new morning cues the audience into the rebirth of hope as Ruth returns to Naomi with a harvest of barley. Ruth offers a powerful corrective to our modern tendency to divorce God’s work from “real life”. God not only writes the stories of our lives, but calls us to live by faith as actors within his unfolding drama, submitting our will to his and playing our part with humility. We live within the same world as Ruth — a world in which God lifts up the humble and inclines his ear to the needy. A world where God acts in subtle and surprising ways. This is Understanding Ruth.

Check out the rest of our Understanding Series: https://www.fouroaksmidtown.com/teachings

In Colossians 1:3–14, Paul prays with thanksgiving, showing us that prayer is our first response to what God is doing in others. Prayer not only lifts our needs before the Lord, it stirs thanksgiving within us and strengthens faith, love, and hope. Paul’s pattern teaches us to pray for fellow believers: that they would grow in wisdom, walk worthy of the Lord, and wait with patience and joy.

Everyone wants to know God’s will for their life, but few want to conform their lives to God’s will. Deuteronomy 29:29 reminds us that “the secret things belong to the LORD... but the things that are revealed belong to us... that we may do all the words of this law.” God’s secret will—his providence—unfolds day by day, while his revealed will calls us to obey his commands. Our focus should not be on deciphering God’s secret plan but on living faithfully in light of what he has revealed. Ruth and Boaz model this, acting with courage and righteousness without knowing God’s plan, yet finding themselves woven into his redemptive story—far greater than anything they could have imagined. This is Understanding Ruth.

Check out the rest of our Understanding Series: https://www.fouroaksmidtown.com/teachings

We are kicking off a new sermon series through Colossians, a letter Paul wrote from prison to the church in Colossae. Though he hadn’t personally visited this small-town church in modern-day Turkey, we will read Paul’s encouragement for them to hold fast to Christ as the all-sufficient Lord and his warning against false teachings that threatened to add to the gospel.

Most of us in the world live as functional atheists. We live our day to day lives without reference to God almost by instinct. This way of conceiving of the world as a “closed system” detached from anything beyond the physical realm stands in contrast to the worldview we find in the book of Ruth. The three main characters in Ruth: Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz all speak in ways that acknowledge God’s hand in all things despite the fact that He never speaks nor performs a single miracle in this narrative. We often assume that God works only in extraordinary circumstances, but Ruth challenges this notion by showing how the purposes of God play out in the ordinary lives of two grieving widows searching for bread. This is Understanding Ruth.

Check out the rest of our Understanding Series: https://www.fouroaksmidtown.com/teachings