What happens when you trust yourself? Our culture preaches that trusting yourself, having self-confidence, is crucial. However, Jesus contrasts that view in Luke 18 with two parables. Both of them teach that trusting yourself is a terrible option.

As a Christian, when you isolate yourself from God's people, you wreck your usefulness to God. God has called His people to serve in community rather than to isolate themselves from others. In the conclusion of his letter to the Colossian believers, Paul teaches the Colossians to express sincere concern for others as a bridge to serving well in community.

When you misuse a tool, it loses its effectiveness. Often, Christians misuse prayer and destroy its effectiveness. It is easy to find ourselves using prayer merely to increase our own comfort in life, and we disconnect it from God's purposes. In Colossians 4, Paul reminds believers that prayer proves to be an invaluable weapon in our quest to spread the gospel.

Colossians 4:5 calls us to redeem the time. To be more effective in the way we "buy back" our time to use it to accomplish God's purposes, we need to ask ourselves questions about how we are using our time.

1) Am I bored?

2) Am I resting too much?

3) Am I pursuing the trivial?

Revelation 2:1-7

Paul wrote to the church in Colossae to instruct them on how new-creation character should impact their relationships. As Christians, they did not get to choose which relationships were impacted because all of them must be transformed by new-creation character. In Colossians 3:18-4:1, Paul targets the two most difficult arenas to manifest new-creation character, but he shows the beautiful ideal that God desires for His children.

Colossians 3 primarily consists of applications. The last few verses of the chapter place an emphasis on how new-creation character should transform your relationships, and Paull gives an interesting command to dads in verse 21. Dads, don't exasperate your kids so that they lose heart. Instead of exasperating them, show that you can listen to them, even when they reveal your character deficiencies.

Colossians 3:12-17 teaches that Christian is not only to put off the old man with its sin but also to put on new creation character. This call requires that the Christian let the Word dwell in their hearts and seek to bring glory to Christ with their entire being.

When Christ enters your life everything must change. In order to successfully live through this massive change from death to life, the Christian must put on two mindsets--the heavenly mindset and the militant mindset. Without these mindsets, sin will destroy you, and you will live your new life as if nothing has changed.