Psalm 133, Colossians 1:15-20, John 15, Romans 12:1,2 MSG

The Big Picture (Colossians 1:3-20)
Let’s dive right into our passage, written by Paul to the Christians in Colossae to counter false teaching and to encourage them to keep on the right path.

In verses 3-8, Paul is allowing the Colossians in on his prayer. His prayers are prayers of thanksgiving as he reflects on the fact that the gospel is bearing fruit all over the world, bringing blessings and transforming situations, just as it had in Colossae. So when Paul moves to praying for these Christians, what does he think is their greatest need? It is that they will be filled with the knowledge of God’s will (v9), so that they will live lives that are worthy of their calling and that they will bear fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, strengthened to keep going in their lives of faith (vv10-12).

Paul reminds them that they have been brought out of one way of life into a new way of life (vv13-14), and then he moves into the big picture of vv15-20. He does this because he feels that, in order to live lives that are worthy of their calling, in order that they will know what God’s will is for them in their situation at this time, they need to have confidence in all that God has done, is doing and will do. This is just as applicable to us here and now.

If we are to live whole lives, we need to see that God’s mission is about all things – not just some things. God has a desire to transform all things. The cross and resurrection are the realities that enable us to see that Jesus created all things in the beginning; he holds all things as the ruler of the universe, and God will reconcile all things through Christ at the end of time.

In the meantime, we live between the ages – part of the kingdom, but longing for the kingdom to fully come.

Whole-life engagement
The point is that all things matter to God – because the work of Jesus has changed things for everything and for everyone. There is nothing he didn’t create, nothing that he doesn’t hold together, nothing that will not be reconciled.

So people’s workplaces come into this: it’s always easy to see that the work that involves people is worthwhile – after all, God loves people. So ministry and medicine matter. But there’s more: there is creativity and beauty – so the work of painters and decorators and chefs matter to God; there is order – so IT consultants and mechanics find that their work matters; there is the work that allows others to thrive – accountants and therapists, and much more. Everything matters.

But for all of us there is a sense that for us to live with this big picture feeding our imagination, we need to offer our lives so that we live worthily of our calling – the calling that is embraced by the lordship of Jesus over every area of creation, the lordship that redeems, renews, recreates and reconciles.

Paul puts this very clearly in Romans 12:1,2 which we will read from The Message version because it brings the passage into sharp focus.
Place Your Life Before God
“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”

We can see it again in The Lord’s Payer. Remember the line that goes: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” It is very easy to gloss over this point but what does ‘on earth’ really mean? It means that we are praying for God’s will to be done in our families, in our schools, at our workplaces, in our church, where we shop, in Parliament and Councils, in our sports clubs, in our service clubs, on the internet and so on and so on all over the world. There is not a detail on this planet that this prayer does not cover. Your everyday, ordinary life – the whole works.

The Series
This series which we are beginning today is called Fruitfulness on the Frontline. It comes from the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity and was put together by Mark Greene. Last week I described fruitfulness. Let me say again that fruitfulness comes from being connected to Jesus.
John 15:5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Apart from me you can do nothing.
John 15:16 You did not choose me; I chose you and appointed you to go and bear much fruit, the kind of fruit that endures.

Fruit, in the Bible, variously refers to godly character (as in the fruits of the Spirit – see Galatians 5), the use of spiritual gifts, the result of using spiritual gifts and the people who turn and follow Jesus as the result of our influence.

Put another way, fruit is anything that brings glory to God, (eg.: 1 Peter 2:12). We live to glorify God. And God is glorified as his character, his priorities, his goodness and indeed his power are expressed through our everyday lives. The goal of fruitfulness is to bring glory to God. “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” John 15:8 (NIV)
Clearly Jesus expects us to produce these fruits, but what is our frontline?

Define Frontline
Your Frontline is the place where you spend significant time through the week in contact with non-Christians.
It is a place or a time where we meet fairly regularly with people who don’t know Jesus.

In different ways and in different seasons, all of us have a context where we meet people who don’t know Jesus. For some of us there may be several places and, of course, those places change over time. Yours may be a place where you spend a whole lot of time, or it might be a place you go only once a week, but you probably have a place where you engage with people who don’t know Jesus, even if you don’t think of it that way.

So, think for a moment: where are the places that you meet people who don’t know Jesus? And in which of those might God be calling you to minister? For one woman it turned out to be her local supermarket; for one mum it was the people she meets at the school gate; for one factory manager it was the factory he’d managed in for sixteen years; for one retiree it was simply seeing that group of old friends in a fresh way. What’s your frontline?

This series is intended to stir our imaginations about how we might be fruitful for God’s glory. To help us reflect on what God might have been doing already and to get us thinking about how we might be fruitful in the future we will consider how our way of being fruitful might fit into one or more of these 6 Ms. Here they are.

On your frontline, how might you:
M1: Model godly character?
M2: Make good work?
M3: Minister grace and love?
M4: Mould culture?
M5: Be a mouthpiece for truth and justice?
M6: Be a messenger of the gospel?

In the next 6 weeks we will highlight and describe each of the 6 Ms in turn. Indeed, before we explore the Ms and their implications for your frontline in more detail, it is vital to see that these 6Ms are all an intrinsic part of what it means to follow Jesus day by day and, amazing and sobering and humbling as it is, they all contribute to his glorious purposes in time and eternity.

Payer:
Father, give me eyes and heart to see where you would have me serve you, the desire and courage to ask what you would have me do, and the love and grace to do it. For your joy and glory may it be. Amen

Between now and next Sunday you could be thinking about hese questions:
Where is your frontline?
In what ways have you already seen God working in and through you there?
What are its particular challenges?

Close your eyes and prayerfully imagine Jesus meeting you on your frontline and walking around with you.
What does he point out to you?