This transcript was generated by whisper.ai. I want to welcome you to day three of our look through chapter three in the book of Colossians and daily drive time devotions. We're going to be looking at verses 12 to 15 today, and we're continuing to look at how do you live the new life that God has given you. It's just distilled for us in such an incredible way in this chapter. You have been given a new life to live. You didn't take it up. You didn't earn it. You have been given this new life to live because of what Jesus Christ has done for you. You're dead to sin and you're alive to God. But how do you live that out in a daily way? We're going to be focusing the next couple days on how heavenly minded people act. What does this new life really act like in everyday life? In fact, we're going to talk about four specific things in these next several verses. I love what these verses lay out for us. The four things that I do as I live out the new life is I put on the love of Christ, I am ruled by the peace of Christ, I'm indwelt by the word of Christ, and I do everything in the name of Christ. We're going to look at the first two of those four today. I put on the love of Christ and I'm ruled by the peace of Christ. That's how you live the new life. Colossians 3, 12 to 14, "Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive each other whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues, put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. " We put on the love of Christ. Yesterday we talked about putting off the old and putting on the new. The idea of trying to just resist all the temptations in my life without a new way to live is totally frustrating. To try to just resist temptation instead of living the new life means you're just trying to say no all your life to doing the wrong thing, and you'll eventually fall into doing it. Now, how do you live the new life in Christ? You say yes to doing the right thing. "Therefore, as God's chosen people, clothe yourselves with," and then he gives this list, "compassion, kindness, humility. " How do I put on the love of Christ? Well, let's just walk through what Paul teaches us here. If I'm going to clothe myself in a new way, if I'm going to--well, one person said it this way--put off the grave clothes and put on the grace clothes in my life, how do I do that every day, one piece at a time? How do I love people like Jesus did? Well, I begin by recognizing some foundational truths about myself. Look at what Paul says, "Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, you clothe yourselves with compassion. First, recognize who you are, chosen, holy, and dearly loved. " As God's chosen person, you want to love like Jesus loved? Recognize you are chosen by God for a purpose. That's where the strength comes from, the foundation. I am a holy person. People who love others aren't constantly trying to prove themselves to others. And if you've got to prove that you're holy, if your holiness is some kind of self-righteousness, then you'll never be able to love others. They're just a way to show others how self-righteous you really are. But when you recognize that God has given you the gift of a holiness, His holiness, as He's hidden you with Christ in God, it frees you to love others. I am a holy person based on God's gift to me, and I'm to live out that gift. And I'm also--you want to love others, you've got to recognize this third one--I'm also a dearly loved person. In order to love others, you have to know that you're dearly loved. A lot of people are trying to get love from others. There's not enough people giving love to others. And why is that? Because we all need love. And if I don't recognize that I am dearly loved, I'm going to be just trying to get love from other people. They're going to become my selfish pursuit. But once I recognize how deeply God loves me, again, I have freedom. I have freedom to love others. Chosen by God, dearly loved by God, holy before God. There's the foundation. That helps me to break through all the games, all the selfishness that keeps me from loving others. So I recognize who I am. That's how I put on the love of Christ. And then I make the daily choice to act, to act like Jesus acts. Now don't miss this, because this is the point. We know some of the things I'm going to say in just a moment. Some of these words are familiar words about how we should act. But the point is not knowing this. The point is doing it. So the point is not knowing I should be compassionate. The point is doing it. You may know you should be compassionate, but are you being compassionate right now towards the people in your life? Act with compassion. You want others' compassion. Or even if you don't, others need your compassion. So you reach out to other people that are around you instead of standing back. You care for people that are hurting. Act with kindness. Kindness is simply in your deepest and closest relationships, beginning there, is simply doing the little things in life to let somebody know that you love them. When I think about kindness, it's not just being kind to somebody you meet on the street. You're going to meet them one time. That's a good thing to do. But true kindness is found in being kind to your family and being kind to the people at work and being kind in the little everyday ways, being kind with the words that you speak, being kind by small actions of doing something for someone. Are you acting in kindness? Humility. How is humility working for you at work? At work, many times we need to get ahead. We need to get the job done. We need to get the next deal done. And so we begin to feel like, well, humility is not the way to get there. But if this is the way we're to be as believers in Christ, it's the way we're to be in every arena of life. So how could you humble yourself before God and allow God to be the Lord of what you're doing at work so that instead of using people, you could love the people there? Humility is a key to love. You want to love others, you need gentleness. Gentleness, this word in the Greek language has the idea of strength or power under control. It's like a horse that has a bit in its mouth and now it can be directed or like the horsepower in your engine in your car, but now you have a wheel and you can direct that power in a certain direction. I want to put the power, the emotional power, the relational power that God's put into my life under his control. So that instead of using it to ruin relationships and wreck people, I use it to love people. But that takes gentleness. And then he uses the word patience. Don't you hate that one? Because all of us are impatient. I mean, we get impatient in stores, we get impatient in restaurants, we get impatient in lines and we need patience there, but we also need patience with people. Patience to listen to a conversation that seems to be going a few paragraphs too long. Patience to help someone when it feels like they should have already figured out the answer to this. Patience to love someone when you feel like, "I don't know if I have the strength to love them one more time in this circumstance. " Now, the only way we're going to find that patience is as we talked about at the beginning by knowing that we are dearly loved and then expressing God's love through us to someone else. You want to express God's love to other people? He says it's all about bearing grievances against others. As I read what our research team had to say about this chapter, they really zeroed in on this one and honestly said, "This one's tough. This one's difficult. " I mean, I hear people say that I should bear with grievances, wrong things that people have done to me. That's fine until somebody really does something wrong to me. And then I want to stay up all night thinking about it. And then I can't stop focusing on it. I want to get back at them. I want to get revenge. To bear with it? How can I do that? The only way is by knowing how much God has loved you and knowing that in the end, God's justice is going to prevail. And so he says instead of going after revenge, you forgive those who have sinned against you. Now, forgiveness means that I don't bring up the matter with the person I've forgiven. I don't gossip to other people. I don't remind myself constantly of what has been forgiven. And I need God's strength to do that. That's the commitment to love. In fact, Paul says at the end of this passage, finally make an overall commitment to love. That's what binds all of these things we've just talked about together. Now, as I said, we could talk about them, but are you doing them? Who do you need to act in compassion or kindness or humility or gentleness or patience? Or whose grievance do you need to bear? Who do you need to forgive today? That's an expression of love. And if you and I are going to live out the new life that God has given us, it means that you and I exemplify, show the love of Christ in our daily life. It also means something else in Colossians 3. 15. It also means that we are ruled by the peace of Christ. Colossians 3. 15 says, "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace and be thankful. " Peace is one of the things that I need if I'm going to love others in this kind of way. It's interesting. Sometimes understanding a word helps you to know how to put it into practice. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. That word "rule," it's an athletic term. It means to umpire. Now you know the umpire is the one who has the final say in a situation. Umpires always have these philosophical debates about what's a strike or not. When is it a strike? And one guy says, "I call him as I see him," and another guy says, "I see him and then I call him. " But the wisest umpire says, "It's nothing until I call them," because the umpire is the one who has the final say. They're the one who makes the call. So here's the question. What has the final say in your life? In a hectic office, putting kids to bed at bedtime, an argument brewing between you and somebody that you love, what has the final say? Let the peace of Christ rule. Let the peace of Christ be the umpire. Now I don't know about you, but I need God's strength for that. I need to talk to God daily and say, "God, I pray that I would allow your peace to be the ruler, the umpire in this situation. Remind me that I need to do that, and then remind me again that I need to do that, because it's so easy to let my emotions rule or let my selfishness rule or let my feelings of justice rule. Let the peace of Christ rule. " Now as we pray today, let's pray that God would do just that. Just say, "Jesus Christ, I want your love to be exemplified through my life, and I want your peace to be at the center of my life, but I need you for that. I need you for that today. If I'm going to act in compassion and kindness, God, I need your strength. Jesus, if I'm going to have your peace at the core of my heart, I need your attitude. I need your perspective on life, and I pray right now that you would give it to me. Remind me that when it comes to peace, I have your calling. I can be thankful for what you've done in my life, and I pray that right now your peace would begin to rule in my heart as never before. Do something, Jesus, in me. Do something in me that I've not experienced. I pray that in the circumstance that I'm worrying about right now or the situation that I'm facing right now or the new opportunity that's in front of me right now that your peace would rule in my heart. Jesus, I pray this, I ask this, for your peace and your love. In your name, amen.