Faith in Jesus and Love for the Saints

When we read the first chapter of Colossians, we learn that Apostle Paul heard of the Colossians church from a man named Epaphras, whom Paul calls a beloved fellow servant and a faithful minister of Christ.

It's interesting that Epaphras's report of the success of his ministry among the Colossians does not talk about the number of people they gathered every Sunday, the amount of money they raised, the size and quality of their temple or the ministries that were established. No, he talks about their faith in Jesus Christ and their love in the Spirit for the saints.

We all want to succeed in the things we give our lives to. So, the question before us is, what does success look like?

The world has its own standards of success, but the Bible gives us a very different perspective.

The world will tell you you are successful if you make enough money, if people like you and you are influential, if you have enough comfort and if you have the freedom to do whatever you want.

The Bible teaches us that God is our provider, to pursue the Kingdom of God first, that the last will be the first, that the one who serves is the greatest, that the power of God is made perfect in our weaknesses and that true freedom is the freedom to obey God without any constraints.

We ought to have our minds renewed by the words of Scripture to think biblically about how a successful marriage looks like, how a successful career looks like; for those who have kids or will have kids, how successful parenting looks like; and for us individually, how a successful life before God looks like; and then for us collectively how a successful church looks like.

As I once heard a pastor say: "Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter."

May God grant us our faith in Jesus Christ and our love for the saints be the marks of our success. Amen!

Nino Marques