668 The Mystery and the Hope - Colossians 1:27

Would you consider yourself a person of hope? Hi, I'm Mike Henry Sr. with Follower of One. Thank you for joining me again today on the Follower of One Podcast. This is our 668 episode, and we're in the middle of a Marketplace Mission Trip right now, and our challenge on the first day of the second week of the Marketplace Mission Trip is to go. Is to be ready to go into the world.

The point of us going into the world is to be the presence of God in our world, to show people the answer to this problem that we've all struggled with since the beginning of time. Today's passage is Colossians 1:27 and I'm reading from the 1995 New American Standard "to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of mystery, among the Gentiles which is Christ in you, the hope of glory" this is the end of a pretty long sentence that Paul has strung together, but I want to focus on "Christ in us, the hope of glory."

You see, that's the mystery. The Jews spent centuries trying to figure out how to follow God, how, how to do what He wants. And it was all to make the point that we can't, we all fall short. It says in Romans 3:23. None of us will measure up to God's standard. However, God has made this way, this mystery that we wrestled with, that the Jews wrestled with and human beings have wrestled with since the fall, since the beginning of time.

This mystery is how in the world we can be part of the restoration of our relationship with God once we messed it up. And that mystery is the answer God had to our problem, which isn't us following rules. I think I mentioned before several times that up until I was 30 years old, I thought the way you got into heaven was you did enough good things. And good things were miserable and bad things were fun. And so I didn't want to do any more good things than I had to do.

But this mystery that Paul's talking about here is that it isn't what we do. It's what we have in us. It's Christ in us because we follow him. We get Christ in us when we follow him and he becomes the answer. He's the answer to our problems. And that is the hope of our glory. When you look at the movies in our world today, and you look at TV shows and things that are going on, much of our world doesn't have much hope. But Christ in us is God's answer for that problem.

Our job is to be the distribution system. Our job is to carry this mystery in the world. The mystery is Christ in us. When we live following Jesus, the world has no other explanation. We want our lives to be something that can only be explained when you factor in Jesus. That's our challenge today as believers in Jesus Christ, are we going into our world today to live in such a way that you can't explain it unless you factor in Jesus?

That's Christ in us. And it's the hope of glory. It's the hope of surviving this grand colossal screw up that we've all made by breaking our world, by not obeying God. I'm so excited. I love the fact that God saved me. And that God called me to do something about it.

And he called you to do something about it too. And so I want to ask you today, as we go into our workplaces, as we go into our world, remember Christ is in you. And he's the hope of glory for the whole world. Our job is to take him wherever we go so that the world might see him. And they must discover him.

It's harder for the world to recognize him when we're talking about him all the time. It's much easier for the world to see him when they discover him, because our behavior doesn't line up with theirs. That's what the Marketplace Mission Trip is all about. In fact, if you'd like to live a life that can't be explained any other way than when you factor in Jesus, join us at Follower of One.

Our job is to practice living life following Jesus on a daily basis. We would love to have you. Go to https://community.followerofone.org and create a profile and you can join us on the next Marketplace Mission Trip. Thanks very much for being a marketplace minister and for taking Christ in you to the world.

Thanks very much.