Goals That Matter

This past Sunday, Pastor Isaac walked us through the three goals Paul lays out for the church at Colossae in chapter 2: encouraged in heart, united in love, and full understanding in Christ. Two of those I want to touch quickly. The third is where I want to sit with you for a while, because it's the one I'm still working out in my own life.

Encouraged in Heart
Isaac's right that this goes deeper than a pep talk. The encouragement Paul is after isn't a mood you talk yourself into or a compliment that makes you feel good for an afternoon. It's closer to what the Holy Spirit does when he "testifies with our spirit that we are God's children" (Romans 8:16): an actual work of grace, not a feeling you manufacture by trying harder to be positive. You can't will yourself into that kind of courage. You can only receive it.


I can say that from experience. Isaac has been generous with his encouragement of my writing for years now, and it's done exactly what he preached about Sunday: it gave me the courage to keep growing as a communicator and to try things I wouldn't have attempted otherwise. But God didn't design any of us to be a reservoir, holding what we're given just for our own benefit. He designed us to be a riverbed, something it's meant to flow through. So this post is, in a small way, an attempt to pass along what's been poured into me rather than just keep it.

Complete Understanding
Pastor Isaac made a good move separating wisdom from knowledge. Charles Wesley, John Wesley's brother and the movement's great hymn writer, once wrote that he wanted to "unite the pair so long disjoined, knowledge and vital piety." Wesley wasn't inventing a new idea; he was pressing Paul's vision into everyday church life. Knowing about Jesus was never supposed to just sit in your head. Paul isn't talking about accumulating more information. He's talking about a life shaped by the truth you already know. Some of the wisest people I know couldn't win a theology debate, and they don't need to.


United in Love
Both encouragement and understanding ultimately lead somewhere: into the way we love one another.

Paul's ambition for two small churches down the road from each other, Colossae and Laodicea, was that they would stay together in love without agreeing on everything. Isaac made that point Sunday, and he’s right. But it’s also an easy point to accept because it costs us so little. Of course we can love people we disagree with politically. We don’t actually have to do anything about that.

Here's the harder version, the one I've been sitting with.

John Wesley used to say there is no holiness but social holiness: your faith was never meant to be a private transaction between you and God. It's meant to get worked out inside real relationships, with real people, including the ones who are hard to be around. The class meetings that shaped Wesley's movement existed so people would actually watch over one another, not merely avoid conflict with one another. Unity, in his mind, wasn't the absence of a fight. It was people staying close enough to be changed by each other.

That's a much higher bar than "don't argue about the upcoming election." And I don't think I've cleared it.

I have a family member I worked closely with through the years. When that working relationship ended, it was a hard season for both of us, hard enough that I don't think we'll ever get back to what we had. These days, we see each other at family gatherings. I don't avoid her in town. We live close to each other, and I've made peace with the fact that I'm not part of her work anymore. But we aren't close, not the way we used to be. I've put up some boundaries around my heart, on purpose, because I needed to.

I wish we had real unity, not just the absence of conflict. Some days I genuinely don't know how that's possible.

Here's what I've had to learn to sit with: those might be two different things. Reconciliation of heart before God isn't the same as restoration of a relationship to its old shape. Paul's ask in Colossians is the first one: that we're united in loving God, loving what's true, and not carrying bitterness toward each other. It doesn't necessarily mean rebuilding every relationship back to what it used to be. Sometimes love looks like showing up, staying kind, and keeping the healthy boundaries that protect your heart from being wounded in the same ways again. That isn't necessarily a failure to love well. It may simply be what faithful love looks like in this season.


I don't have a bow to put on this one. I'd love to tell you it all got resolved and we're close again. It isn't, and we're not, at least not yet. But I've stopped believing that unresolved means unfaithful. Paul wasn't asking the Colossians to manufacture perfect relationships in their small town. He was calling them to remain rooted together in Christ, bearing with one another in love even when life together was complicated.

If there's someone in your life like that, someone you can't fully reconcile with but haven't walked away from either, I don't have a tidy answer for you. But I don't think you're failing at unity. I think you might be living it, even in the tension and unfinishedness of where things are right now.

This Week
Think of one relationship where full agreement, or full closeness, isn't there right now. Don't try to fix it this week. Instead, ask yourself honestly: Have I let go of bitterness? Am I loving this person as faithfully as I can in this season?


If you're still hoping for something to be repaired, don't rush past that hope this week. Bring it to God plainly, in the actual words you'd use with a friend. He already knows, and he isn't asking you to perform a peace you don't yet feel.

A Prayer
God, thank you for encouraging our hearts, not because we've earned it, but because that's who you are. Give us the courage to receive your encouragement and to pass it on to someone else this week.

Teach us to love beyond the absence of conflict. Where relationships remain unresolved, comfort us in the not-yet. Keep bitterness from taking root, give us wisdom to love well with healthy boundaries, and keep our hearts open to the work you're still doing.

Keep drawing us back to Jesus, so our understanding is never just information, but a life increasingly shaped by his love. Amen.