Gut issue in all of it

Paul writes in Colossians 2: [9] For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.

For some reason when you listen to preachers talk about that verse, they just go into a dither. Preachers who don’t know what a verse is about and yet they argue about things, says Richard Jordan.

I have to two commentaries on the Book of Ephesians written by seminary professors, and they have two pages each on the one part of that verse, telling you about what it is, and neither one of them have any idea what it ought to be. But they go on and on about it; they just can’t shut up.

You know what you do when you don’t know what something is? When I was ordained back in the ’60s, a man on the ordination committee came to me and said, “I want to give you a piece of advice that will never fail you. If somebody asks you a question and you don’t know the answer, say, ‘I don’t know.’ ”

It’s okay to say you don’t know. It’s better to say you don’t know than it is to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

That verse isn’t hard. Who are we? We’re the fulness of Him. There’s the Him. Listen, in Christ all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily.

The Father’s put all fulness in His Son. He doesn’t need you and me to complete Him. There’s nothing incomplete about Him. So, the fulness there is not Him. The fulness is the body, the church.

What’s He going to fill up? He’s going to fill up all those positions in the heavenly places and you’re the fulness that He’s going to fill all those places with. How hard is that? That’s exciting.

His goal is to fill the universe with the glory of His Son. That’s the reason for the head-and-body analogy. Because we’re in living union with the head; we share His life, and we’re the vehicle that demonstrates forth who He is.

Now, that’s His goal for us for eternity. Paul wants you to understand that that’s the reality now, too. It isn’t simply in the “ages to come”; it’s in this world also.

Paul’s praying that you and I would have that spirit of wisdom and revelation; that we’d have that demeanor. That working in our inner man this wisdom and revelation, given through Paul to us, is designed to produce in us, and we’d have it now and we’d walk by faith in the reality of who we are in Christ Jesus right now so that Christ could be manifest through us.

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Colossians 1:9 says, "For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding."

You know what God’s purpose with the Body of Christ is? It’s that man is going to take wisdom, understanding and knowledge out of His creation and harness it and subdue it and develop it so that it manifests the wisdom God put in His creation. You and I are going to do the same thing UP there.

You know what our reigning in the heavens is going to be? It’s not going to be telling those angels to go do that and those other angels go do that: "You do this because I said so."

In Mark 10, when two of Jesus Christ’s disciples come and say, "We want to sit on each side of you in the kingdom," He responds, "You guys don’t understand; you’re thinking like a bunch of elitist Gentiles. You think government is just telling people what to do. Government is to administer my heaven. It’s to administer my business.

“It’s to take the wisdom, understanding and knowledge that I have and go out there and figure out how to apply it to ever-increasingly new situations so you don’t need to run to the index every time; you’ve got some discernment to be able to deal with it based upon understanding my will, and hence you can manifest my thinking, my mind, my life."

Whoa! Do you grasp why wisdom, understanding and knowledge is really the gut issue in all of it?! Ephesians 2:7 says, "That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.”

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Quote to consider: "Relationship is a process of self-revelation, and, without knowing oneself, the ways of one's own mind and heart, merely to establish an outward order, a system, a cunning formula, has very little meaning. What is important is to understand oneself in relationship with another. Then relationship becomes not a process of isolation, but a movement in which you discover your own motives, your own thoughts, your own pursuits; and that very discovery is the beginning of liberation, the beginning of transformation."

Paul writes in Romans 12, [1] I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
[2] And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
[3] For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.