True joy from God comes from abiding in Him and producing His kind of fruit.

Often the events around us lead us to ask the question God why? Habakkuk does this in his inspired book. He has a dialogue with God and we see God’s willingness to engage with us, his creation, in these questions. Habakkuk gives us perspective and comfort.

Paul challenges his fellow worker in the gospel Philemon to accept back his runaway slave Onesimus. He asks him to receive Onesimus as he would receive himself. Bold words! God gives us in this short little letter a beautiful picture of the Gospel story: repentance, salvation, transformation, reconciliation.

Psalm 95 is a spiritual audit. It begins by focusing on worship and ends with a challenge from God himself that we be real in our faith believing and trusting in him not being like the former generations that went astray in their hearts not knowing his ways.

Pauls final exhortation to the Colossians focuses on prayer and walking in wisdom making the most of the time.He specifically challenges them to be gracious in their words

Paul gives crisp and insightful applications of living out the truths of Christ as it relates to families. He also gives instruction to slaves and masters which gives us insights today on how we should approach our daily jobs.

Since we have been transferred from the domain of darkness into the Kingdom of light we need to continue in our spiritual growth by making every effort to put on Christ, to put on his characteristics as we live together in his community, forgiving one another, and seeking to do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.

The Lord Jesus faced a daunting future filled with mocking, beating, scourging, and eventually the cross. He sought his Father asking if this could be bypassed. His prayer, in the face of all this suffering though was

We see different characters responding to circumstances in their own ways. Let's look at some of these and see if we can see ourselves in their responses.