To Encourage You

Colossians 3:16 “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”

God often uses very interesting language to get His point across to us in His Word.  In the verse above He does this when He says “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.”  “To dwell” in this context means just what it says, i.e., to live in or inhabit.  But not just inhabit – He tells us to let His Word richly inhabit.  As I’ve meditated on what this means, a number of things come to mind.  One is that if someone is living inside a home, it should mean that it’s a welcoming place for them.  It’s a place where they are comfortable.  It’s a place where they have the run of the place, so to speak, to do as they please.  It’s their home, after all.  So, if we put the Word of God in that context, it would mean that it would be something that would be welcomed into our lives.  Its commands would be embraced by us. It would just seem right for us, because it would be consistent with who we are.  What it says we would do, for it would have its way with us.  By contrast, it wouldn’t be something that was resisted, avoided, or even worse, rejected.  

But then, if it were to dwell in us richly, wouldn’t that mean that it would fill our lives and be very evident in every room of the house, so to speak.  No matter when or where someone would enter our lives, the Word, if it’s living there richly, should quickly become evident to that other person.  It wouldn’t be hidden away somewhere, so that if someone were to look at our lives, they would have an extremely difficult time finding any evidence of it.  

And then the verse above describes what happens if the Word is indeed dwelling in us richly, and that is that it will fill our lives so much that it will spill out of us in how we talk – here called “teaching and admonishing” as well as how we sing.  Elsewhere Jesus had said that it is from the abundance of a person’s heart that a person speaks (Luke 6:45).  In other words, if someone were to hear us speak about the Bible, sharing its truth with a conviction that comes straight from the heart, would that person think that that is very strange language coming from us?  Or does our life reflect that the Word of God is influencing us greatly, so that to speak about it seems like the most natural thing in all the world for us to do. Furthermore, if someone were to hear us singing about God and His Word, as the verse above says that we should, would they be shocked, or would that, again, just seem like a natural thing, for it’s simply a reflection that the Word of God lives richly in our lives.   

Just some thoughts about a verse that, like so many others, is worded in such a way by our wise and loving heavenly Father that it challenges us to stop and really think about it, rather than just read it quickly and pass on by.