Leawood, Kansas, United States - The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection Daily Guide grow. pray. study. for Friday, 27 June 2014 " God's grace 'bearing fruit and growing in the whole world'"

Leawood, Kansas, United States - The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection Daily Guide grow. pray. study. for Friday, 27 June 2014 " God's grace 'bearing fruit and growing in the whole world'"
Daily Scripture:  Colossians 1:3 We give thanks to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, 4 having heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love which you have toward all the saints, 5 because of the hope which is laid up for you in the heavens, of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the Good News, 6 which has come to you; even as it is in all the world and is bearing fruit and growing, as it does in you also, since the day you heard and knew the grace of God in truth; 7 even as you learned of Epaphras our beloved fellow servant, who is a faithful servant of Christ on our behalf, 8 who also declared to us your love in the Spirit. 9 For this cause, we also, since the day we heard this, don’t cease praying and making requests for you, that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 that you may walk worthily of the Lord, to please him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God;
Reflection Questions:
God's work, God's mission, has always been global in its scope. But God's wisdom has always gone about this global work in local, personal ways. The letter to the Colossian Christians said God's grace was "bearing fruit and growing in the whole world," and then immediately shifted gears to say, "You learned it from Epaphras" (a seldom-named associate of the apostle Paul). God's "secret:" bearing fruit in the whole world, one person at a time.
Sometimes we're tempted to see the good news of Jesus as ethereal, something we talk about in church, away from the "real world." Colossians didn't see it that way at all; it was "bearing fruit," changing individual lives and the whole world for the better. In what ways have you seen the good news bear fruit in your own life, and the lives of people you know well? How have you seen it bear fruit in justice or reconciliation in larger settings?
What person or persons played the role of Epaphras, teaching you the life-changing message of God's grace through Jesus? In what ways are you growing in your ability to "live a life that is worthy of the Lord"? Who are the people with whom you can share that growth, becoming an Epaphras to them?
Today's Prayer:
God, the plants in the world around me grow a little bit more every day. So I pray that your grace will continue to grow a little bit more every day within me, remaking me into a person worthy of your call. Amen.
Insight from Chris Folmsbee
Chris Folmsbee is Resurrection’s Director of Discipleship Ministries.  He is the author of several books, with an extensive background in applying principles of spiritual growth to real life. He, his wife Gina and their family have been attending Resurrection since 2008.
I love coffee and so, according to recent statistics, do 54% of Americans over the age of 18. In the US there are 100 million coffee drinkers, of which 24% drink more than 13 cups of coffee (9oz) a week. I confess that I am one of the 68 million people who have a cup of coffee within an hour of waking up, and I drink way more than 13 cups a week. Here is a staggering thought—Americans spend $18 billion on specialty coffee yearly. I also recently learned on a tour of a local coffee factory that 9 out of 10 coffee drinkers don’t know that coffee is a red berry (called a “coffee cherry”) before it is a bean, which is actually not a bean at all. That’s right, a coffee bean is only called a coffee bean because of the way it looks, not for what it actually is. It is actually a seed from a fruit that merely looks like a bean!
Like any other tree that bears fruit, the coffee tree is most productive when the climate conditions are best for the health of the tree. When the altitude, soil, water amounts, sunshine, and all the other variables are spot on, a coffee tree bears the best and most fruit. For this reason, the best coffee comes from the equatorial zone, between latitudes 25 degrees North and 30 degrees South.
Enough about coffee—let’s talk about bearing fruit. In our reading today we see that Paul, the author of Colossians, along with Timothy, prays for the people of Colossae that they might “…live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way; bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God.” What does it mean to bear fruit in every good work? It means you and I are called to get practical with our faith by reproducing the life and ministry of Jesus within us. We do this in order that we might develop a set of practices that glorify God and make an enduring difference in the world, beginning with our neighbor. We might call these the “little things” that happen on the local level, but when lived out in a community (church) within an even greater community (Christianity), these Christian practices e.g. hospitality, generosity, faithfulness, care, etc.) can make a global impact. The fruit, therefore, that we bear or make real in the world around us is an opportunity for the people that we interact with to encounter Jesus—the real Jesus.
Using the coffee statistics from above to illustrate a point, do 9 out of the 10 people in our lives know that Jesus is a seed and not a bean? In other words, do the people we interact with on a regular and sometimes daily basis know the real Jesus and not the popular concept of Jesus? Does the fruit of the good work in our lives point people to the real Jesus? It is when we stand as trees of righteousness, and bear fruit from our good work (which is really Jesus’ work in us) that local efforts can create global change.
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