One of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love which you have to all the saints, for the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, where art ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel, which is coming to you as it is in all the world, and bring it forth through, as it doth also in you, since the day you heard of it, and you the grace of God in truth. as you also learned of Epaphras our dear fellow-servant who is for you a faithful minister of Christ, who also declared unto us your love in the Spirit. For this cause we also, since today we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. That you might walk worthy of the Lord under all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness, giving thanks unto the Father, which has made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in life, who has delivered us from the power of darkness, and has translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son, in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. Now, if we were given this message, in a place where we thought there were quite a number of unconverted people, we would spend most of our time in verses thirteen and fourteen. Because verses thirteen and fourteen tell us our four definite specific things that happen when we come to know and love the Lord Jesus Christ. Invariably these four things will happen in verse fourteen. we have the word redeemed. Also in verse fourteen we have the word forgiveness. And in verse thirteen we have the word rescued or delivered. And also we have the word settled in verse, or translated or settled in verse thirteen. You know, I feel that a lot of us who know and love the Lord Jesus Christ do not fully appreciate all that has been accomplished in our being redeemed to God. I think there are a lot of people who have been brought up in a rather sheltered environment. They have lived rather moral, clean lives according to the standards of the world, and because of the fact that they have never been libertines or whoremongers or drunkards or robbers or thieves or white-leaders, they have never fully comprehended how very, very far they were from God before they were saved. The problem here is that unconsciously man has a tendency, even when he is a Christian, I fear, to measure his goodness by the standards of the world and not by the word of God. Now this is a very, very common fault. with the human race. We gauge and compare our conduct and our standards and our actions by the standards of the world and not by the standards of the Word of God. And when you see yourself as God sees you, and when I see myself as God sees me, I must explain with Paul that I am a sinful man and that I fall far short of his glory. Now Paul, of course, has a lot to say about redemption and about forgiveness in his epistles. In this fourteen verse, he says, In whom we have redemption through his blood. In Titus two fourteen, that's one of my favorite texts, he gave himself for us that he might redeem us. And then we have another wonderful verse in First Peter, one, eighteen, about redemption and about how it's interruptible through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. So it's a wonderful, wonderful day when we recognize what a tremendous blessing and privilege we have in being redeemed to God. Now, of course, I hope that all of you have Schofield Bibles. I'm amazed sometimes. that I meet a lot of Christians and somehow another, it's never gotten across to them that they can be tremendously helped spiritually if they have a Schofield Bible. And in the Schofield Bible, you have some wonderful notes there about the different meanings of the Greek word that means redeemed. Incidentally, if you don't have divine dictionary of New Testament words, you ought to have that, because this will help you also in knowing what the different meanings of the Greek verbs and nouns are. You know, of course, I don't know much Greek. I know a little one. He runs a restaurant. But if you don't know the original language and you have these health, they can be a tremendous value to you. The Lord gave me a wonderful illustration of what it means to be redeemed one day. Some of you have heard me tell this, I'm sure. But it was probably fifteen years ago now. And I've been out to the Farmers Market. You know, if you live near a large city, you can go to the Farmers Market in the summertime. You can buy a lot of wonderful groceries a lot cheaper than you can in the regular grocery stores, and you know they are fresh. Some of them are even raised with non-organic, I mean, with non-chemical fertilizer and so forth. and they're better for you. Well, I went out to the market to buy some groceries, and there was a nice handsome young man standing on the street corner, tired of waiting on the bus, when I started back in towards Columbia, and I stopped and offered him a ride. He hopped in, and I began to get acquainted with him and ask him a few questions about himself. And finally I got around to ask him if he knew the Lord in his favor, and I was almost back the way he was going to get off. And he said, Yes, I do. I said, Well, how did you find the Lord? As I told you nine or two ago, I'm always interested in how people find the Lord. It's always interesting. He said, Well, in a very strange way, I found the Lord in jail. I said, Oh, that's interesting. I said, When? He said, A few weeks ago. I said, Well, this is where you're getting out. I said, Here's my card. Call me in twenty minutes. I'll be home. And he called me. And I made an appointment. I went back to see him. And this is his story. He was a salesman. And he was born and reared in Memphis, Tennessee, but he's represented in a certain company and he was selling in the Columbia area. And he had a commission check due in just any day. And he took a big chance and he wrote a check. You know how that works. I mean, it's supposed to work. And he deposited a check or rather he cashed the check because he knew this commission check was coming in. But the commission check was a few days late. And the man that cashed the thirty dollar check for him didn't like it. So he had him put in a cooler. And while he was in a cooler, the boys from the Columbia Bible College came and preached Jesus, and he was saved. And I said, well, Ray, if I were you, you've served your time there, and if I were you, I'd go back to Memphis and see my family, and I'd maybe get a job there and try to get on the right track again. And I encouraged him. He said, well, Mr. Judy said, I don't have any money. I said, well, I have some of the Lord's money. Tell me what I'll do, Ray. I'll loan you the money. I'll buy the ticket for you. And I'll give you a little spending money for some food. And when you get back to Memphis and get a job and so forth, I said, you can send me the money for the ticket and for the food. He said, well, I fairly well appreciate that. And so we went right ahead. And I took him to the bus station. And he got on the bus, and when he got on the bus, he handed me an envelope. He said, now look at a few. And this envelope are some pawn tickets. I said, he said, in order to keep going these last few days since I was out of jail, he said, I have pawned everything I had. He said, now you go to Mo Levi's and you can get a nice suitcase that I left there. And you go up to the Liberty Loan Shop and you can get a nice ring that I pawned there. And you go on up to so-and-so. And you can get a real nice sports coat to the farm there. And he said, man, when I send you the money back for the bus ticket and so forth, I'm going to send you enough money to get these things out of heart because I need them. I said, all right. And so I brought down a little back to my study and dropped it in file number two, which is my second best draw from the top. And I almost forgot about the young man. I prayed for him several times, I'm sure. And then one day he was a letter, air mail from Memphis. And that was his name. And that was a check for forty-eight dollars. And he thanked me for the help I'd been to him, and he said, May I include it in this money order? Rather, there's enough money to pick up these things if I'm home. And I think there's enough left over to pay for the postage to send back to me. Well, I made the mistake of going to the pawn shops on a Jewish holiday, and they were all closed. So I came back, and I just wiped that off. I said, Well, that's all right. I'll go back tomorrow. So I went back the next day, and For five dollars and seventy-two cents, I got a ring in one place. Then in Mo Levi's, for twelve dollars, I got a real nice, genuine leather suitcase. And then for some eight or ten dollars, I got a beautiful sport coat. And another place I got something else. Another place I got something else. And the first thing you know, my arms were loaded. And I was walking out towards the parking lot, and I remembered what I'd done. I said, I've redeemed this man's pledges. They were in heart, and I redeemed them. And that's exactly what God did for me on the cross of Calvary. He redeemed my soul. And here I was walking out towards the parking lot, and I was singing and crying all at the same time. As I thought of what Jesus Christ, God's wonderful, precious, Godless, Heavenly Son, did for me. He redeemed my soul on the cross of Calvary. Oh, beloved, has it ever really struck you and hit you real hard how fortunate you ought to be redeemed with the precious blood of Jesus? By right, everyone in this room this morning is overdue in hell. But by God's grace, we're on our way to heaven. He's redeemed us, and He's forgiven us. And I think maybe the first man I was here, I told you the illustration of how wild it was, how wild it was the night. His mother came in there when they'd done a little rifts and a misunderstanding, and she said, Son, you're forgiven. And before she got back to her bedroom, he said his little head had hit the pillow, and he was fast asleep while because he knew he'd been forgiven. Regained, forgiven, rescued, delivered. and settles or translated into the kingdom of whose His dear Son. Now, of course, if we were speaking to unconverted, we got here, we'd give the plan of salvation. But I don't believe that's necessary right here. Now, all right, go back to verse three. Now, two times already in two messages, we've already talked about the importance of intercessory prayer. Well, here it comes again right here. We give thanks to God and the Father, our Lord Jesus Christ. praying always for you. Verse nine. For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not seek to pray for you. Now, get this. Paul had never been to Colossia. Paul had never seen a Kodak picture of the Christians at Colossia. The only thing Paul knew about the church in Colossia was what a young man by the name of Epaphras had told. But Paul said, I want you to know this, Christians, ever since the first day Epaphras told me about you saints there in Colossia, I haven't ceased to pray for you. Someday, maybe soon, we're going to be with the Lord. And we're going to have perfect knowledge and we're going to know as we are known. And we're going to be able to understand a lot of things we can understand now. And I believe that we're going to be able to see the true importance of the ministry, not only of ourselves, but of everyone. And I just have an idea that when it's all said and done, that when we begin to see the true importance of Paul's ministry, that the outstanding thing about Paul's ministry is not going to be his evangelistic zeal or his missionary travels or his preaching, or his writing of these wonderful letters. I think the outstanding thing about Paul's ministry is going to be his daily incessant, unceasing intercessory prayer life. Oh, beloved, can't, no, I cannot over-emphasize the fact that one of the greatest things he'll ever do for me, a stand for it, a John Philip, a Halmer case, or a lesser will from anybody else is to pray for us. All of the joy of standing in a pulpit and ministering the word or preaching the gospel or seeking to exalt Christ and... exhaust the Christians, and to feel the power of the Holy Spirit of God in your ministry, and then sometime one week, two weeks, three weeks, five weeks, six months later, some of you, thanks of the Lord. Say, Shockley, you remember so and so when you went such and such a place? Yes, at such and such a time? Yes. I felt constrained to retire to my bedroom and get on my knees and hold you up before the throne of grace. And there it is that I know why God gave the liberty and God gave the freedom, and God gave the wisdom needed for that hour. God has not ordained that everyone have the wonderful responsibility and privilege of standing in the pulpit, but God has ordained that every believer and every Christian can be an intercessor. And you will not find one example anywhere in the world in the history of the church where God has blessed an unusual power in revival, for example, where there hasn't been men and women who have laid their hearts and lives to God in prayer. I don't know what God's plan and purpose is for this day necessarily, but I know one thing. I know that God's people who composed his body would have become real concerned and burdened about spiritual renewal and blessing in this day and hour. I believe God will do it. In verse nine, he prays that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will. Now if we were speaking to young people, I'm talking about either like ten or eight teenagers in college age, or at a Bible college or a Bible school. We spend perhaps quite a bit of time right here talking about knowing God's will. I've been reminded a number of times this week of a dear visit that Brother Bob Willie and I had with W.E. Vine, now in heaven. I must admit that I had heard a lot about this man and I felt so honored and so privileged that we could visit him just for a little while in Bath, England, that, frankly, I almost had to ask Brother Bob to pinch me to see if I was alive. I just couldn't hardly believe it because I felt unworthy to unlace this man, Sheila. Dear man of God, one of the most brilliant men God ever gave to church, W.E. Vine. And I remember I said, now, Brother Vine, God has given you many years in your service, and you've had the privilege, I'm sure, of counseling, many, many missionary volunteers. I said, I know you're busy, and we've got to go in a little bit, but could you tell us very, very briefly how you tell young people that God can lead them? And I cannot speak with the accent he did. But he said, Well, a few. There are three ways. First of all, the Scriptures. God will never lead you to do anything that he has already forebared in the Scriptures. And then he gave me several examples. Then he said, Circumstances are next. He said, if you believe that God wants you to go here or go there or do this or do that, and there's some obstacle in the way that's blocking you from doing that, he says, God will either remove the obstacle or he'll lead you another way. And he gave me an illustration or two of that. In fact, Brother Bob reminded me of one of them. He said that when he was invited to become the editor of Echoes of Service, he was teaching in a private Christian school. And he didn't want to just up and leave until they had a replacement. And so they kept after him and kept asking him to come on. Come on. He said, I can't come until someone is here to take my plate. And so it came right down to the wild. They said, we've got to know it by a certain date. And so he said, All right, Lord, if you want me to go to Echoes of Service, I want you to provide a replacement. So he was out walking on the ground of the school. And he met a nice young man, Christian, educated. prepared, had the right background and the credentials. He said, what's the name? He told him, well, what are you doing? He said, well, frankly, I'm looking for a job of a teacher. He said, well, that's good. You've already got it. And so the man took his job at this school and he went to become the editor of Echoes of Service. Then the last thing he said, he said, if you're willing to do God's will and to seek his will, He said, God will give you perfect freedom and peace in your own heart about this decision. And he gave several examples of this. He said, you'll have perfect liberty and you'll have perfect freedom in doing what you do because you know this is God's will. I'll never forget it as long as I live. I do think that one of the major secrets in knowing God's will, and I've told this thousands of times for young people, is being willing to do His will. And if you're willing to do God's will, and if you take one step at a time, he will lead you. And if you're about to take a wrong step, you won't have any peace whatsoever, that is, if you're in touch with the Lord. He'll lead you. Knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. Verse ten. Now this is, of course, Paul's prayer. By the way, you want a blessing sometimes. Just make a study of the prayers of Paul. Take it to twenty-five years, but go ahead and do it. That's tremendous. Got a lot of good preaching in the prayers of Paul. Can you praise that they might walk worthy of who? The Lord. Now that's a tremendous responsibility. What worthy of the Lord. When I was at the University of Georgia, my senior year I was the captain of the band. And we used to go down to Columbus, Georgia and play Auburn Polytechnic Institute from Alabama every year. And we'd go by chartered trains. And one night on the way back from Columbus, some of the smart elics, there's one or two in every crowd, you know. Most of us were trying to rest like normal individuals were supposed to do, on a day coach, no less. And we were curled up on these old velvet seats, you know. And some of these guys got happy, I reckon you call it. and they had a twist blade knife. And all they did was rip twenty-three velvet sheets. And when we got into Athens, Georgia the next morning, we had a wonderful reception. Police, university officials, and the one that really scared us was the ROTC Colonel. Because, you see, we were in the uniform of the ROTC. And we didn't even go to bed. We went straight to the bedroom, and they stood us up there and said, All right, men. He said, This thing cannot be taken lightly, because everything you do when you have on that uniform is a reserve officer training corps. And I learned a lesson that day. Everything you do is a Christian. speaks about your Lord. And you write on a gospel of chapter each day by deed that you do and by word that you say, men read what you write, whether faithless or true, say, what is the gospel? According to you. Oh, I know who, no one will ever be converted because of the way I live. He has to hear the word of God. I know that. But a lot of times, people who otherwise would have their hearts and their minds and their lives conditioned to receive the gospel are turned away. because of the way we live. And I know of numbers, numbers of people who have been invited, when they've been invited, for example, to go to a Bennegram crusade by individuals, they have gone purely because of what they've seen in the life and the demeanor of the person that invited them. And I also know people who said, listen, if that guy is a Christian, I don't want it. One of the greatest healers today to bring his million women to Jesus Christ are the idiosyncrasies and the inconsistencies in the lives of those who name the name of Christ. Now, some of you people that are from the New York, New Jersey area, you perhaps have met my wonderful brother in Christ that I'm going to tell about in closing right now. Jacob Stamps. He's the uncle of John and Betty Stamps. And he's an attorney. And he's on about twelve or fifteen different boards of Christian organizations, Moody, Youth for Christ, Gideon, name it. He's on it. In fact, he spent half of his time selling up of faith and wills for these organizations. Five or six years ago, when he was, he's either Vice President of the Gideons that year, I've forgotten which. But anyway, he'd come down to Columbia for the weekend to speak at their State Gideon Convention. Well, I've known Brother Jake rather well when I was active in Youth for Christ, and we had some great times together. Somebody gave me some tickets to the Gideon banquet, so Dottie and I went. It was on the side of the night, and I happened to speak to him after the banquet. I said, Brother Jake, when are you going back to New Jersey? He said, tomorrow. What time? Five in the afternoon. I said, fine. I said, could I pick you up, and maybe we'll drive you out to the new campus at the Bible College, and then take you in out to the airport. He said, that would be fine. Chocolate would be good to visit with you again. So... I picked him up along with another Christian businessman, and we rode out to the Columbia Bible College, and then we rode down below the airport to see some property that some businessmen were buying as a project, and we went on to the airport. His plane was to leave at five o'clock. He was to change planes in Charlotte, and we were going to get into Newark about seven-forty-five by eight o'clock, and to meet a man there, they were going on to Connecticut that night. because he had an early morning appointment in Connecticut Monday morning. This was on a Sunday. When we got to the Eastern Airlines ticket window, I noticed there was quite a commotion there. And Jake was talking to my friend that was with me, and my wife says I can hear three conversations at one time. I really think she's wrong. I only hear two. But I was listening to them, and I listened to the conversation at this ticket window. And I heard these people giving this ticket agent down the country, all because the flight that they would fly to Charlotte on had been canceled. And I checked my numbers, and yeah, that's right, that's the one brought the stamps on. And so I did a little mean thing. I said, now I'm just going to wait and see how he takes this. So we worked our way on up to the counter and It was time for him to hand his ticket to the agent, and the little ticket agent was just ready for another barrage. And he said, Flight number seven, forty-seven, oh, sir, I'm sorry. I hate to tell you, sir, but that flight's been canceled. And you'll have to take another flight out of here seven o'clock. You'll miss your connection, inshallah, and you won't get to New York and go eleven forty-five tonight. And he was all set for another barrage. And Brother Jacob says, well, young man, He said, you know, I'm on my way to heaven. And a little delay down here doesn't bother me a bit in the world. What time did you say I'm on the flight left? Oh, Mr. I'm certainly glad to see you take it like that. He said, here's your ticket, sir. He said, would you call Mr. So-and-so at Newark and tell him when I'll be in? Oh, by the way, young man. It's a little gospel track. You can read it. And I want to tell you, I believe when that man went home that night, I think he's read every word of that tract. Because he's seen a man that was living like a Christian ought to live. He's seen a man that was walking worthy of the Lord. And they're all pleading. You know, the way Christians, and I brought this out yesterday, but I think the Lord wants us to deal on this, the way you and I react when things don't go the way we plan them, really tells whether we've got what it takes enough. That's when you really get down to the nitty-gritty of it and find out whether or not Jesus Christ is a reality. And don't you think those unsaved people don't notice the way we react. They notice. Now the main part of the message, we didn't get to there, but it's in the latter part of verse ten. He says, Being fruitful in every good work. And I tell you, I didn't know much Greek, but I have a good friend that does. And he teaches Greek at the Bible College in Columbia. And I said, Brother Winslow, in that verse in Colossians, in verse ten, where it says, Being fruitful in every good work. What Greek word is that? I said, does that word in the Greek, does that mean being fruitful like the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians five, love, joy, peace, so forth and so on? Or does that mean the fruitful like winning souls to Christ? Which one of those does it mean? He said, but a few? I have something to tell you that's really interesting. He says, the word that's used there in the Greek can be translated either way. I said, praise the Lord. That gives me more to preach about. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, temperance, meekness, kindness. Yes. But the fruit of the Spirit also, or the fruit, Spirit's spoken of here, is fruitful bringing others to know the Savior. Being fruitful. And you notice what the Holy Spirit puts in there. I like that. I'm so glad. Being fruitful in all the brethren work. Being fruitful. in all this kind of work. No. Being fruitful in every good work. Increasing in the knowledge of God. Now you notice in verse nine, we're to be filled with the knowledge of His will. And in verse ten, we are to increase in the knowledge of God. And you know how you can do that? Look in the next verse. Strengthen with all might according to his gracious power. It's not our power, not of us. It's his gracious power. under all, what's that word? Patience. And long-suffering with complaints. No. With joyfulness. And when things don't go right, and they don't go where we planned them, and they don't go the way we thought the Lord wanted them to go, giving thanks unto the Father. which hath made us meet to be the capers of the inheritance of the saints in light. Our Father and our God, we thank you today that we're not talking about something that's unobtainable. We thank you that this new life in Christ Jesus is practical, down to earth, And it's a reality that those of us who have the person of Jesus Christ in our hearts. We thank thee that we're not talking about something that we're going to experience in heaven. That we're not talking about something we're going to experience when we have our glorified bodies. We're talking about a reality that is available, that's possible to many women and Christians right now in the twentieth century. And it's the outworking of a life that is indwelled and filled with your Spirit. And we look to thee to help us to meditate upon this today and come back tonight to receive further ministry along the lines of the Spirit-filled life. We thank you that you don't ever ask us to do one thing, but what you have already empowered us with the power to do, by your spirit. And we thank you that what you have accomplished in the lives of saints in bygone days, and what you are accomplishing in the lives of well-known saints today. that as we yield our hearts and lives to thee, that you long to accomplish the same thing in our lives. This is not a blessing that's available just to a select few, but this is a reality that's available to every Christian. If we are done appropriately and receive not only a gift of salvation, but the gift of freedom and power and love out of a sound mind. We thank you, Lord, for making this a reality to us today. Thank you, Lord, for the joy that you've given me in my own heart because of the preciousness and the reality of what we've been talking about. In Jesus' name, Amen. Thank you. Thank you.