Steadfast, Immovable, Abounding

“Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

Colossians 3:2-3

Many of us are probably familiar with these two verses quoted above. But one of the last times I read it, the phrase “your life is hidden” caught my attention in a way it hadn’t before. Instead of absently moving on, I began to actually consider what it means for God to hide our life with Christ. We are told in other passages to be the light of the world, the salt of the earth, a city on a hill…how can we follow that calling while our life is hidden from the world?

Paul writes in Ephesians 2:4-7, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us up with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.” Notice he says God “raised us” and “seated us”—past tense, not future tense. At the moment of our salvation and adoption, our soul is safe with God. This is easy to forget when the troubles of a fallen world start to rub us raw, and we feel stuck in a life that is not meant for us. Yet through it all, we are held close by a Father who knows us and loves us to the depths of our soul.

Our home is in the presence of God; this truth declares that nothing can remove us from that presence. Romans 8:31 says, “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?” and later in verses 38-39, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” These comforting verses could not be possible had not Christ’s work on the cross declared “It is finished.” With His blood, Jesus purchased our souls for eternity, hiding them from the grasp of the world and the devil. He cares for our hurts, our pains, our worries, our hopes, our joys, our prayers, and our passions—He will make all things complete at just the right time.

The knowledge that our life is hidden with Christ should strengthen us daily as we fight the good fight of faith. But how does it change the way we live and the actions we take? Remember, just before Paul tells us our lives our hidden with Christ, he gives us a command: “set your mind on the things above.” If our soul is with Christ, our minds should be with Him as well. Yet over and over again, we let the pleasures, distractions, and troubles of this life divert our attention from the voice of the Father who gives every breath as an undeserved gift. I love what 2 Corinthians 10:5 tells us: “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every loft thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” Everything about our lives, even our thoughts, should be subject to Christ’s authority.

It’s easy for us to say our minds are set on things above. But when we really think about it, how much of our time is spent dwelling on passing earthly things? Are the words we read in Hebrews at six-thirty on a Thursday morning still in our head at four that afternoon?  Do the commitments we make to the Lord during that extra convicting sermon change the actions we take the rest of the week? When we see the homeless drug addict stumbling down the street, is our first thought to pray for Jesus to turn his life around? Or instead, do we allow our minds to be captivated by the stress and strain of living in a world that is not our soul’s home?

While we work and worry and think about everything that will never matter in eternity, all the time our lives are hidden with Christ. Paul writes in Philippians 3:20-21, “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.” God has hidden our lives, not to barricade us from reaching the world, but to keep us at home in His presence. If your soul is safe with the Lord, don’t allow your mind to wander somewhere else.

A wonderful savior is Jesus my Lord,

A wonderful Savior to me.

He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock,

Where rivers of pleasure I see.

He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock

That shadows a dry, thirsty land.

He hideth my life in the depths of His love,

And covers me there with His hand.

Fanny Crosby