DAY 5 — Friday
Day Five: Friday
Read Colossians 2:20-23
"These rules may seem wise... but they provide no help in conquering a person's evil desires." (2:23)
We're going to end the week on the most freeing verse in the chapter, and one of the most overlooked in the whole Bible.
Paul lists the rules people were living under. Listen to how they sound.
"Don't handle. Don't taste. Don't touch."
Short. Clean. Serious. They sound like exactly what a person who wants to grow should be doing.
And Paul admits that. He says these rules "may seem wise because they require strong devotion, pious self-denial, and severe bodily discipline."
He's granting the point. They look impressive. They're demanding. Nobody would accuse you of taking your faith lightly.
And then he drops the sentence.
"But they provide no help in conquering a person's evil desires."
Read that again.
Not less help. Not some help, but you need more.
No help.
I don't know a verse that has done more for me than that one.
Because I have made rules for myself every January of my adult life. I have built systems. I have set limits. And I have watched the same desires walk right through every one of them like a screen door.
For years I assumed that meant something was wrong with me. That I was weak, or not spiritual enough, or that I just hadn't found the right system yet.
Paul says something far kinder and far more useful. The rules were never going to work. Not because I'm broken. Because that's not what rules do.
Rules operate on the outside of a person. Desire lives on the inside. A rule can change what I do. It has never once changed what I want.
Now look at how Paul opens this section, in verse twenty. "You have died with Christ, and he has set you free from the spiritual powers of this world. So why do you keep on following the rules of the world?"
Now let's be careful here, because this is exactly where people go off the road.
Paul is not saying obedience doesn't matter. He is not saying it makes no difference how we live. He spends the entire next chapter telling us specifically how to live, and it is not vague.
What he's saying is that rules are the wrong engine. You're free, and you keep behaving like you're not.
It's a bird sitting in an open cage.
And if you're thinking, so does what I do actually matter?, hold that question. Paul answers it in the very next chapter... and that's exactly where we're going on Sunday.
So if rules don't change what I want... what does?
Go back to where the chapter started, back to Monday. "Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him."
Roots. Not rules.
Because when I stay close to Jesus over time, something happens that no system has ever produced in me. My wants start to move. Slowly. Unevenly. But they move. And I find myself no longer wanting things I used to have to fight.
That's the whole week in one sentence. Connection changes desire. Rules only manage behavior.
So here's the challenge, and it isn't a program.
Name the one thing you've been white-knuckling. The habit, the temper, the phone, the bitterness, the thing you've promised God about a dozen times.
Stop bringing him the behavior. Bring him the want underneath it.
Tell him honestly what you actually desire, even when it's the wrong thing. That conversation is the beginning of roots.
And then do one more thing, because this week we said out loud that nobody grows alone.
Tell one person. Not the whole story. Not a confession in front of a group. One trustworthy human being, this week, gets one honest sentence about the thing you named.
Because what stays in the dark stays in charge. And Paul has spent this entire chapter telling us that growth happens when we're connected... to Jesus, and to each other.
He is not waiting for you to get it right. He is waiting for you to get close.
Sit with this: What have I been managing that I've never actually handed over?
Pray: Jesus, I'm done pretending willpower is working. You said I'm already complete in you. So I'm bringing you what I actually want, not just what I've been doing. Change my desires from the root. Let me grow down into you this week.
Jesus above all. Jesus, period.
Read Colossians 2:20-23
"These rules may seem wise... but they provide no help in conquering a person's evil desires." (2:23)
We're going to end the week on the most freeing verse in the chapter, and one of the most overlooked in the whole Bible.
Paul lists the rules people were living under. Listen to how they sound.
"Don't handle. Don't taste. Don't touch."
Short. Clean. Serious. They sound like exactly what a person who wants to grow should be doing.
And Paul admits that. He says these rules "may seem wise because they require strong devotion, pious self-denial, and severe bodily discipline."
He's granting the point. They look impressive. They're demanding. Nobody would accuse you of taking your faith lightly.
And then he drops the sentence.
"But they provide no help in conquering a person's evil desires."
Read that again.
Not less help. Not some help, but you need more.
No help.
I don't know a verse that has done more for me than that one.
Because I have made rules for myself every January of my adult life. I have built systems. I have set limits. And I have watched the same desires walk right through every one of them like a screen door.
For years I assumed that meant something was wrong with me. That I was weak, or not spiritual enough, or that I just hadn't found the right system yet.
Paul says something far kinder and far more useful. The rules were never going to work. Not because I'm broken. Because that's not what rules do.
Rules operate on the outside of a person. Desire lives on the inside. A rule can change what I do. It has never once changed what I want.
Now look at how Paul opens this section, in verse twenty. "You have died with Christ, and he has set you free from the spiritual powers of this world. So why do you keep on following the rules of the world?"
Now let's be careful here, because this is exactly where people go off the road.
Paul is not saying obedience doesn't matter. He is not saying it makes no difference how we live. He spends the entire next chapter telling us specifically how to live, and it is not vague.
What he's saying is that rules are the wrong engine. You're free, and you keep behaving like you're not.
It's a bird sitting in an open cage.
And if you're thinking, so does what I do actually matter?, hold that question. Paul answers it in the very next chapter... and that's exactly where we're going on Sunday.
So if rules don't change what I want... what does?
Go back to where the chapter started, back to Monday. "Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him."
Roots. Not rules.
Because when I stay close to Jesus over time, something happens that no system has ever produced in me. My wants start to move. Slowly. Unevenly. But they move. And I find myself no longer wanting things I used to have to fight.
That's the whole week in one sentence. Connection changes desire. Rules only manage behavior.
So here's the challenge, and it isn't a program.
Name the one thing you've been white-knuckling. The habit, the temper, the phone, the bitterness, the thing you've promised God about a dozen times.
Stop bringing him the behavior. Bring him the want underneath it.
Tell him honestly what you actually desire, even when it's the wrong thing. That conversation is the beginning of roots.
And then do one more thing, because this week we said out loud that nobody grows alone.
Tell one person. Not the whole story. Not a confession in front of a group. One trustworthy human being, this week, gets one honest sentence about the thing you named.
Because what stays in the dark stays in charge. And Paul has spent this entire chapter telling us that growth happens when we're connected... to Jesus, and to each other.
He is not waiting for you to get it right. He is waiting for you to get close.
Sit with this: What have I been managing that I've never actually handed over?
Pray: Jesus, I'm done pretending willpower is working. You said I'm already complete in you. So I'm bringing you what I actually want, not just what I've been doing. Change my desires from the root. Let me grow down into you this week.
Jesus above all. Jesus, period.
Posted in Daily Devotional