Let Christ's Words Dwell in You

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     The Psalms are full of beautiful, lyrical praise to our God.  I know I am guilty of glancing over a Psalm in my Bible reading and saying, "Aw, isn't that nice?" and glibly moving on to my next reading.  Digging into my Bible recently, I rediscovered Colossians 3:16. I started looking into it just a little bit. 

 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.

    "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly..."  Is that the desire of your heart? Is this a reality for you? Paul gave this as a directive to the church. This means it is an attainable goal for each of us, if we choose.   For the "word of Christ" to dwell in us, this tells us we need to be spending a lot of time there.  We need to be reading, memorizing and meditating on this frequently, even constantly! When you dwell with someone or something, you get to know it extremely well, don't you?  The imagery is that God's word has a home inside you.  It dwells in us!

    "Teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom..." This assumes we are accountable to each other for teaching, correcting and encouraging those around us.  This assumes that we have a close relationship with our church family.  We can't do any of those things with people we don't even know, or barely know!  "In all wisdom" keeps us from doing these things from outside of Christ's directives. The Bible tells us that Christ is wisdom in Colossians 2:2-3:

That they may be encouraged in heart, knit together in love, and filled with the full riches of complete understanding, so that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

    If we are to carry out Paul's instructions, "in all wisdom," we absolutely must be immersed in Christ and His Word! It must dwell in us!

    "Singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs..."  Something that I learned is that all three of these terms are referring to the same thing!  The church in Colosse would have understood that Paul meant the Psalms of Scripture.  Hymns  was used to describe the "hymns of praise," or the Hallel section, Psalms 113-118.  Psalm 145 is actually called a "hymn" as well!  In fact, Jesus and His disciples sang one of these in Matthew 26:30 when it says, "And when they had sung an hymn, they went out to the mount of Olives."  Spiritual songs refers to songs that originated with the Holy Spirit, which are primarily in the Book of Psalms, although there are a few other songs in Scripture that are not included in the Book of Psalms.  Interesting?  I thought so!

    Circling back, we see that Paul was instructing us to be so immersed in the "word of Christ" that we can teach "in all wisdom" (we saw that Christ is the embodiment of wisdom), which are all found in Psalms! So, we can find Christ in the Psalms? Paul says we can!  This tells me is that I need to be spending more time in God's Word in general, but I need to spend a lot of time in the Book of Psalms! This also tells me that our singing, while full of praise to our Lord, also serves to teach and admonish! Wow, that is powerful! 

    "With all thankfulness in our heart to God."  Paul tells us the attitude we should have as we allow Christ's words to dwell in us and teach each other through the singing of Psalms:  thankfulness to God.  

    I pray that God will continue to grow our knowledge and faith as we dig into the Bible and find His Words to direct our daily lives.  His Word is alive and powerful! It will continue to guide us, if we choose to dwell there. 

💓 Heather Sparks💓


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