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For this week’s sermon notes click here! https://churchlinkfeeds.blob.core.windows.net/notes/42364/note-162640.html
Somewhere in this world there’s a teenage girl who feels like nobody sees her. She feels like she has to wear the right clothes so someone will. She also feels like she has to walk down the hall plastering a smile on her face; say the right things; and run in the right circles. She feels like she has to do that so that people will love her, respect her, and make her feel like she matters – or at the very least blend in enough so people don’t do the exact opposite.
Somewhere else there’s an unhappy employee. You know the kind. He’s shown up to work. He’s been loyal. He’s done his job and put in the time. He’s even gone above and beyond to get the recognition of his peers and supervisors. But he’s been passed over for every promotion. He goes home and he tries to pretend like it’s ok with him – that life is ok and maybe even good, but he can’t shelve his disappointment. He wonders what he can do to move on.
Somewhere else there’s a hurting woman. She is going to the office with the best of intentions. She is telling herself, “Today will be the day that I’ll put on Teflon and my co-workers won’t be able to hurt me. Today will be that day.” And then it isn’t. She knows that if she confides this to her friends that they might be catty and her husband – well – he doesn’t seem to notice her like he used to. She’s looking. She’s searching. She’s wondering how she can put her life back together.
Paul wrote for people like that. Jesus died for people like that. People who are hurting. People who are searching. People who are despairing.
But then he was alive again. His limbs moved with power. His frame stood upright and words came from his lips. Life came where there was once only death. That’s power. Paul talked about that power in the text that we’ll look at this Sunday in Colossians 2: 7-15. It’s the same power that raised Jesus from the dead raised you from the dead. And it’s yours. You have abundant, spiritual power. You have power to live now. And I do mean live even in a world with sin and its effects.
That’s power for the teenage girl that’s out there – the same one walking down the hall trying to earn the respect and affirmation of her peers. It’s power that allows her to bury that old part of her that looks for the kind of affirmation and respect that comes from people. It’s power to rise with real spiritual light in her eyes and life in her limbs. It’s power that allows her to see that everything she is looking for is already hers. She has God’s respect, God’s love, and God’s affection. She has God’s fatherly eye, a refuge for her soul even as she walks down that hall.
It’s power for the unhappy employee. It’s power that is so great it allows him to slowly watch his hopes for status get crushed in the vice-grip of passing years and his career aspirations slip away even as others are promoted around and over him. It’s power to bury that lower spiritual plane and be resurrected to a higher one. It’s power to know what real status looks like and what a real promotion consists of. He believes that real status is what God considers him to be and that he already has the highest promotion anyone can get. He is a child of God.
That’s power for the hurting woman too. It’s power that actually bestows the coat of Teflon she’s always hoped for. She puts it on through the burial of her old self that was so interested in the notice and approval of people and the rising inside of her a person confident that she’s noticed by the one being that matters – her Savior. And not just noticed. Appreciated. Loved. Saved.
Colossians 2:7-15
7 rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught,and overflowing with thankfulness.
8 See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces[a] of this world rather than on Christ.
9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. 11 In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh[b] was put off when you were circumcised by[c] Christ, 12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you[d] alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
