Enriching The Color of Your Faith

Go beyond the basic color scheme of faith.

² My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, ³ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.(Colossians 2:1-3, NIV 2011 Edition)

When I was a kid, I used to draw sketches with my friends and find great pleasure in coloring different shapes and figures. We only had the small 8 count Crayola (or Rose Art - lol!) Colored Pencil kit but we made do with what we had. Of course you'd have your basic black, white, red, purple, brown, blue, green, yellow, and orange, the color scheme that let you color at least distinguish between people of different races but the complexity of the pieces were always limited because brown was brown and not mahogany... red was always red and not crimson... and purple was always purple, never lilac. We were pretty smart kids back then, and so it wasn't so much that we didn't know what we wanted to communicate, we just didn't have the complex tools to sketch and color what was in our minds and communicate it directly onto paper.

As I grew older, I stopped sketching as much but when I went back to the art back in college, I went for the large 50 count box of Crayolas. The greater selection of colors helped to create a picture that was very intentional and showed that I understood the message that I wanted to get across.

Studying God's word works the same way.

8-Count Christianity. When we're fresh in Christ or before we really dig into our word faithfully, we know a few key scriptures here and there to minister to ourselves and to others. We recite the same go-to scriptures that we've heard in church all along because we believe that it's a one sized fits all approach to any situation someone might face. These can get us by to some extent, and no doubt they are good scriptures to hold onto, but the Bible can relate to us - and we to it- in so many more ways.

50-Count Christianity. For the sake of illustration, some of the basic emotions in life are fear (black), anger (purple), peace (blue) and love (red) - among others. When you read the scriptures and read about the different men and women of the Bible, you see that they all experienced different levels of these emotions and communicated it to God and His people in different ways. Love as expressed by Solomon was very different than love as expressed by Jesus Christ. Peace for David looked different compared to the peace that Paul found in troubled times.

The beautiful thing about God's Word is that it is a living word and it was created to relate to YOU! The more you search, you'll find an answer to any problem that you might have. The scriptures go beyond the usual Sunday School verses that you've heard all along and reveal hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Are you living in a 50-count world with an 8-count pencil set?