Month: March 2021

Mom and Dad doubled the size of our house on Owen Avenue when I was in grade school.  Before that, the dining room was their bedroom.  We needed the space.  All the brick on the back wall were removed for the addition.  Construction debris lay all about the yard and provided for my serious attention for play.  For example, playing war, I busted sheet rock scraps with a claw hammer.  I remember swinging the hammer back so violently in my imaginary hand-to-head combat that I hit my own head on the back swing.  For real!  I immediately reached up with my bare hand to feel if there was a bump.  I took my hand down and it was covered with blood from the wound.  Frightening!  My head hurts right now from thinking about it.  Just now, I couldn’t resist putting my hand up there to see if it is mattie with thick wet vital fluid.  

The addon did not turn out to be all play for me.  Mom asked me to clean the brick so we might use them for a patio surface.  This produced my first callouses.  Chipping concrete off the old block with a chisel and hammer was hard work but I enjoyed it and threw myself into it with abandonment.  I had the ability as a child to become a part of what I was doing so there was no next thing in mind.  There was no tomorrow.  I would forget about meals and have to have the spell broken by parents nagging, “Dinner’s ready! I have called already!  Stop what you are doing!”  As a child I did not think about the next thing to do.  

There is a lot to do – self-imposed and expected by others and we create a list that can become like an army enlisted to charge toward us in waves of embattlement.  The regiments keep coming and we hang on by just doing all we can to stay in the battle.  This is anxiety.  This is a frightening wound to the head.  We can become overwrought with the things we know need doing and the tome becomes our tomb.  The repetitive nature of the suffering takes the life out of us and boxes us into a coffin of panic.  

Jesus taught that we should go about accomplishing our tasks in such a way that we still notice the pleasant and pleasurable things around us like flowers in the fields and birds casually scavenging for their food. When we hear their messages, then we find ourselves yielding to the beauties that surround and they take charge of our emotions (Matthew 6:25-34).  They provide context for living as opposed to those warriors coming at us in an endless line intent on draining life away.  Beautiful nature – sunrise, sunset, and everything in between – reminds us that we live not to complete checklists; but we check off items on our to-do list for higher purposes; and the highest purpose of all is to seek the kingdom of God and what is defined as right for us by God (Matthew 6:33).  Then like a little girl or a little boy we can abandon our busyness to the joy of each moment and each treasured day.  Then when we have reached those little goals of accomplishment, we can feel the reward that grows up out of the seed of achievement like a tree coming up out of its root first as a trig and then rising to its mighty fullness.  Then we move on to the next item of importance and experience the same pleasures all over again – one at the time all day long.  There are far less wounds left behind and very little blood spilt when we do it the way Jesus guides us with his great wisdom.  Take time to read this wise teaching (Matthew 6:25-34).  Your joy for life depends on it.  

Stephen Williams

My neighbor, Jimmy and I got into a disagreement over something or other and he catapulted a concrete chicken right at my head.  His yard was spiffed up with some concrete chickens that trailed the walk to his front door.  He almost crushed my head open with blood gushing out leading to the ambulance rushing me off to dying at the hospital – that is if he hadn’t missed by a mile.  I got fuming mad as an old mule would if he had been whipped by an angry master.  

Jimmy quickly retreated inside the house behind the skirt of his mommy.  I stalked that secluded scaredy-cat for nearly a week until the day of infamy finally dawned when Jimmy exited the carport door with his rifle aimed high.  I – bare-chested because of the blistering noon sun – pulled my shoulders back and stretched my chest out and shouted with red faced wrath, “Go ahead and shoot!”  

The projectile was propelled by squeezed trigger and the BB struck me dead center on the surface above the sternum.  I never would have thought he would have shot me!  I never would have though a BB could leave such a red welt.  I never would have thought there would be such lingering pain!  I started learning an important lesson that day.  It is better not to ask for what you really do not want.  If you act rashly in anger, you might end out with more than a rash in return.  

Last Summer, in the middle of the great frustration called Covid, I was in my truck taking a shortcut on the way home and came upon a couple workmen pouring a driveway.  A car was coming from the other direction and one of these guys was out in that narrow Kentucky lane.  The blue grass state has highways the size of small driveways.  I couldn’t get over, so I slowed to a stop right next to the guy.  He had something to say I am glad I could not hear as he raised a screwdriver over his head as if he were going to scrape my fender.  The oncoming traffic passed but this guy stubbornly stayed right against my side mirror barely not brushing my fender.  He refused to move one inch and his face reminded me or a yapping mad dog.  My blood pressure was creating steam and I just about blew my top like a boiler on an old locomotive.  I considered lowering the window to offer my contribution to the argument; but I took a grip and reigned in my ominous opinion.  I slowly backed up the truck so the mirror would not touch him, turned the wheel, and steered clear.  The emotions were powerful but I caste them off like an infectious pestilence.  

Anger can deceive you into believing that you will feel so good letting off the steam; but the wisdom of the Bible labels this kind of response as foolish.  “Control your temper, for anger labels you a fool” (Ecclesiastes 7:9 NLT).  Fools cannot hold their provocations back (Proverbs 12:16a NASB).  But if you express an insult to the wrong person, it can mean real trouble.  “The terror of a king is like the growling of a lion; whoever provokes him to anger forfeits his life” (Proverbs 20:2).  The last time I remember saying what I thought in a situation like this, I was soooooooo fortunate not to have provoked a response.  In hindsight I know how narrow an escape it was – by the skin of my teeth. 

The Bible offers a better response, “The wise are patient; they will be honored if they ignore insults” (Proverbs 19:11 NCV).  Jesus promises that he will give us wisdom to know what to say to our enemies; but sometimes He just wants us to quiet ourselves down (Luke 21:15; Proverbs 16:22).  God does not want us to provoke one another (Galatians 5:26; Proverbs 15:18).  If we speak at all we should speak softly and kindly.  “A gentle answer deflects anger, but harsh (unkind) words make tempers flare” (Proverbs 15:1).  It’s best not to act like children fusing over something or other when the stakes can be so high.  

Stephen Williams

I used to prefer to stand up when I did my homework.  There were no stand-up desks being sold on the marketplace when I was that age.  So, I decided to build one.  I spend a long time designing it on paper.  It would have two small drawers up top, be open to the inside with two bookcases facing each other underneath.  I negotiated the purchase of some three-quarter inch plywood from a friend.  The only electric saw I had used was a handheld jigsaw. I had so much respect for moving saw blades that I had not yet ventured to use anything scarier.  So, I mapped out all the cuts and got Dad to cut the pieces.  For practice, I built a small end table with curves down the legs from the wood that would be left-over.  Then I went to work assembling the project.  After it was finished and sanded smooth, Mom antiqued it a green about the color of our lawn.  Antiquing was a process where multiple coats of paint were put on in such a way that the end product looked textured.  Mom had been using it on furniture and a set of six orange plaques with antique cars she hung in the den.  It was the sixties.  When styles changed, Mom gave the plaques to me and Janine and I hung them on a wall in our first home.  I also had glass cut for the tops of my drums so we could use them for end tables.  We made do.  

I had saved my money so I could purchase a bar stool for when I was tired of standing while studying.  Fred P Gattas was a Memphis store in competition with the Service Merchandise chain, popular discount stores of the day.  I received both catalogues in the mail and had made my selection.  As long as I purchased it at Fred P Gattas I could afford it.  I did not drive a car yet so my older sister, Elaine, agreed to drive me 60 miles to downtown Memphis in her mustang.  She was still looking for reasons to drive somewhere new.  We had to take the stool out of the box to squeeze it into the car. 

Somehow, somewhere, I learned that if you cannot find what you need or want, you might just be able to create it.  Consequently, I have spent hours and hours of my life wandering hardware stores imagining what available parts would work to combine in order to invent what I needed.  Where there is a will there is a way. 

This saying, along with others like, “You can always pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” are not in the Bible and do not hold true all the time or with all things.  Human beings can get in a such a fix that there is no way out without help.  It could happen to you.  Where there is a will there is NOT always a way.  

On one occasion a man possessed with a demon was brought to Jesus.  He had been brought to the disciples, but they could not do anything about it.  Jesus said, “This kind does not go out except by prayer” (Mathew 17:21).  Many of the most important needs we have can only come out alright by prayer.  We cannot do anything about death without help.  We cannot solve the ultimate concerns of life without God’s help.  We cannot save ourselves.  It doesn’t matter how strong your will is.  This is why Jesus came.  

Stephen Williams

I started high school marching band when I was in grade school.  When I strapped on a marching sized drum it looked like the snare and sticks were going down the street without a player to accompany them.  There was this little curly head behind – just barely detectable to someone who stared intently enough.  

We band kids would leave Anderson Grammar School out the front door and cross US70 on pavement unadorned with white stiped paint – no little kid with a stop sign in hand at a cross walk – no blinking yellow warning lights.  We would often run across in-between moving cars.  We would then sashay the remainder of the way, a third of a mile, to what is now known as College Hill Museum.  It was Haywood High then.  Years before it had been a women’s college where my granddaddy took some classes. 

As a kid, I do not remember getting recognition for many achievements.  I never quite looked at report cards that way in the grade school and high school years.  It was before the “every kid gets a trophy” generation.  One time I did win two medals at a Quad-State Band competition.  I was so proud.  Unfortunately, the medals pulled away from the pinned-on ribbons when I was marching in a parade and were lost.  I kept the jewelry boxes they came in for years – badges of honor!

Sometimes the worst kind of thing that can happen to you can turn out to be a ribbon with a little medal token cased in a see-through jewelry box.  I am learning to wear the wounds, scares, and weaknesses that now decorate my body like they were adornments.  It struck me this morning that these signs of wear and disease are badges to be worn like a victor who returns from battle with a sling over his right arm and a crutch under his left.  In addition to the scrapes and scratches, over the years I have accrued a long surgery scar, the loss of the function of a couple organs, along with plenty of hidden and deep wounds of the heart.  

There are two ways to think about these skirmishes with the enemies of life.  I can give them the power to punish every new living hour or dampen every dawn-to-dark rotation of the earth; so that the remaining time becomes no more than a symptom of the sickness and hurt I have already sustained – like a lingering fever from flues long ago.  The other option is that I can put on my finest clothes and dress up with these icons.  I can cherish them as tokens of my endurance powered by the Spirit.  With these struggles I am learning to move from sorrow to solace and then on to conquering gratitude.  As my body becomes weaker with the passing of time, I can liken these badges to the crowns that I will cast at the feet of Jesus.  I can do this because through the exercising of my trust in Jesus; I have become stronger in my faith.  Jesus has raised me up out of the pits of weakness into the power of His overcoming grace.  

Perhaps Grandad’s having taken classes was part of the inspiration for it.  I have earned a Bachelor of Arts, Master of Divinity and a Doctor of Education in Leadership, but the sheepskins on my office wall do not compare to these badges of endurance through weaknesses.  Why?  With them, Jesus has forged my winding path into precious gold.

2 Corinthians 12:9-10 (NASB) And the Lord said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

Stephen Williams

One day when I was a student at Union University, I headed up the flight of stairs designated for men in one of the century-old crumbling classroom buildings where I listened to lectures for the first two years of my college learning, before Union moved into a new campus for my last two years.  When I got to the top of the stairs, my path intersected the art teacher’s path.  I knew who he was, but I hadn’t met him.  He immediately began talking to me as if we had been old friends.  He raised subjects I knew absolutely nothing about as if I were this person he obviously had me confused with.  I waited until I could get a word in edgewise; but I did not get the chance to introduce myself before he realized his mistake.  Then he said something which has redefined a word in my vocabulary.  For almost 50 years now, I remember this conversation whenever I use this word he was about to use.  It created for me this powerful image — this picture of what this word identifies.  He said, “You are very kind.”  I could have brushed him off.  I could have ignored him and just kept walking.  I could have told him that I had heard the art teacher was peculiar and now I knew it for myself.  I could have been rude; but without even knowing it, I had been kind.  I confess that it was really kindness by accident.  I would not have been rude; but I had no idea what I was going to say when I got a chance to say anything.  I didn’t say anything until after he blew me away with that wonderful and kind compliment. 

The word is out that kindness is taking a beating these days.  The rule of the day is, “If someone comes along and they do something you dislike, blow your horn loudly!”  If they do something that inconveniences you, do something ugly.  If they say something you disagree with, give them a piece of your mind!  Well!  I might as well write off everyone in the world for not being able to live up to my standards.  No kidding.  Everyone.  That might leave me alone in the world, but of course I can’t live up to my standards either (Matthew 7:1-5).

James writes that if the law is broken at one tiny point then everything is lost, we are a law breaker, the whole kit and kaboodle is out the door (James 2:10).  The law is broken and everyone is on the wrong side of the law, i.e. below standard.  This is the scale on which we are judged and therefore we need God’s kindness.  

In the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, God’s kindness is prevalent because God’s people are far from perfect (search for the word kindness especially in the Psalms).  The New Testament makes this its primary focus.  God’s kingdom is a kingdom of kindness.  God’s kindness is seen in the gift of grace he offers through Jesus (search for the word grace).  

If I then am so utterly dependent on kindness from God, perhaps then the order of the day just might be to offer kindness to others (see the book of Ruth).  After all I am surrounded by people who will not live up to my standards or expectations.  The world is a mighty lonely place without kindness.  If I relate to people with an “all or nothing” scale, then I will end out all alone with nothing.  But if I use a godlike kindness scale in the way I think and act toward strangers and even opponents then I will find that I can befriend some of the people who live in the world of in-between — between breaking every standard and breaking all standards.  I will be loving my friends and my enemies.  

“Love is kind” (1 Corinthians 13).  

Stephen Williams

I enjoy a lapping stream, but a stream is not quiet.  I enjoy a roaring water fall but a falls is not quiet.  I enjoy the rushing waves, but ocean waves are not quiet.  Quiet water is still water.  There is no stirring sound.  

In Psalm 23, solitude is not the need pictured by the quiet water.  Not at all!  I do need solitude.  I need to quiet everything down — usually by leaving behind all those sources of noise.   I need to open my eyes to the kind of hearing that ears are incapable of — when things are so still that hearing through the ear is no longer a distraction from hearing from God.  But the need that “quiet water” identifies in Psalm 23 is simply the need to drink water. Sheep are uncomfortable around water they can hear so they will not drink it.  Maybe it is because wool can get so heavy when it gets wet.  Instinctively they know better.  “Quiet water” is the need for that which sustains my physical life. 

I like still water’s reflectivity.  It settles me.  But the first need that God cares about according to the Shepherd Psalm is physical need.  That God cares for my physical need clearly pictures how God cares for me.  First of all, I am a body of flesh.  

When Janine and I raised our babies (Nathan and Joanna), our first order of business was that we cared for their little bodies with careful attention to feedings, attention to warmth, and cleanliness (including setting up an item in our meager budget for disposable diapers).  We did not neglect loving through baby talk, exaggerated expressions on our faces, and cuddling for the sake of cuddling; but the first order was attention to these other needs.   

God shows how much he cares for us by meeting physical needs.  He makes it possible for us to live.  He protects us from dangers to our life.  He uses parents and other sources of provision available to us and gives attention to the small things that impact our growing up.  He holds off the majority of threats we could face so that we will not be overcome with more than we can handle (1 Corinthians 10:13). 

“Surely goodness… will follow me.”  This is mostly the physical need.  “Surely… mercy will follow me.”  Here the psalmist leaps over an eternal threshold – beyond the physical need that shows God cares for us.  God steps over this threshold and through the door into a world of need that surpasses any physical need.  The need for mercy.  We are not worthy of the attention God pours over us; but God gives the mercy that cleans us up and makes us holy so that we can enter over the threshold into the door of his presence.  “And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”  

This “dwelling inside” is not for our warmth and protection from harsh cold snow, chilling winds, scorching heat or burning infrared radiation.  This dwelling is abiding.  Forever I have a need met and the need is not to live forever.  Forever I have a need met and the need is not to live in my body.  Forever I have a need met and the need is to be present with God.  When everything that threatens me is quieted, that is one very important matter of concern; but when I, in my inner self, am filled with peace and joy that is one mighty big healing.  It’s the fulfillment of what God created me to be like.  And it is not a temporary solution to the things that interfere with this perfection of maturity.  It is a permanent elixir making it possible for my metamorphosis from infancy to wholeness.  It is a kind of quietness with the quality of the perfect pleasure of being who I am meant to be.  It is possible because I was intended to be in unity with God and that is the only location where I can feel whole – where I can experience the quiet waters I need so much.  

Stephen Williams

Revelation is a disclosure of something not possible to know without that disclosure.  One man reveals to another a wish to travel to the mountains. The first man could not know of the wish without the spoken revelation.  God reveals his plans and the plans become known through revelation.  Words are revelations.  

As we utter a word, we open the gate to our thoughts.  Words as they function in languages are recipes of content nuanced by culture, time, and context.  This is why we debate the meaning of something said by a character in a novel or by a public figure making a statement.  We ask in literature classes in school, “What did she mean when she said that to her friend?”  Reporters debate what a politician meant in those public statements.  

Words are recipes.  Take the word, “love”, as it appears in 1 Corinthians 13.  In the Greek of the New Testament period, the word is agape.  Phileo is another word for love in that same Greek: Greek from the first century called Koine Greek.  First of all, Paul selected between these two words when he penned the letter.  He picked “agape” to convey the special meaning.  In the second place the translator determined that the English word “love” best captured the idea in English.  Words change meanings over time in living languages like English.  This is why dictionaries keep needing updates and new Bible translations are produced. “Charity” carries nuances of meaning now a days that it did not a few hundred years ago.  It now carries the idea of something given when one is in desperate need.   “Love” is the better choice even though it is a word with more variations in meaning than agape.  

The recipe in the word “agape” consists of a strong measure of responsibility and commitment. Sometimes the English word love carries this same freight.  Other times it does not.  Context helps us understand, but often paragraphs of explanations are necessary to clarify what is being revealed when a word is used in a translation.  Often metaphors are brought into the conversation in order to accomplish this.  “Love is being willing to die for someone.”  “Love is remaining loyal.”  Or as we find in 1 Corinthians 13, “Love is kind.”  “Love does not keep a record of wrongs.”

In the conversation between Jesus and Peter recorded in John 21, two Greek words for love are used in the conversation and only one English word is normally used in translation to carry the meanings.  To complicate matters Jesus was speaking a language other than Greek, a common dialect.  John, the inspired author, would have remembered that original word and translated it into Greek with the words agape and phileo to convey the original meaning.

In the Gospel of Mark, sometimes the actual word Jesus spoke in his common dialect is used and then followed by its translation into Greek (Mark 5:41; 15:34).  John does this for us a couple times (1:41-42); but not in John 21.  We do not know what the word sounded like that Jesus used on this occasion; but John chooses two words in Greek to represent what he remembers being said.  The choice is made with the benefit of hindsight.  It is likely that the two men are speaking to each other and until the end of the conversation are attaching different meanings to the word(s) they are using for similar ideas.  Ideas that are very close but different in an important way.  

One word for love is the word with the warmth of a close familial friendship or brotherhood.  The other word is weighing in more heavily on the aspect of commitment or loyalty to act on that friendship with sacrifices.  Each word is a unique recipe.  A measure of salt is different.  A measure of sugar is in a different proportion.  The meaning of the words vary accordingly.  

Jesus is asking Peter if he is committed, Peter is hearing Jesus ask if they are friends.  By the end of the conversation Peter realized that Jesus is calling on their friendship to demonstrate an ongoing commitment for him to follow Jesus as long as he lives.  The wonderful thing about the Bible is that there is enough dialog — enough context — to figure this out with nothing more than a careful reading and a good translation.  

Comparing translations is sometimes helpful.  That we can detect the recipe of meaning after so many hundreds of years of cultural differences, and through translation from spoken language to the language it is written down in the first time, through other translations over the centuries since then, is evidence of the Bible’s inspiration.  And so much has been unearthed to help us.  Just this week Greek translations from the Hebrew language of portions of two Old Testament prophetic books (Zechariah and Nahum) from the third century were newly unearthed at Qumran.  Qumran is were the Dead Sea Scrolls were first discovered in the 1940’s providing for us one of the oldest and complete scrolls of Isaiah that we have. 

Stephen Williams

I remember playing spaceship under an old picnic table in a neighbor’s yard up the hill, up Brownsville’s Owen Street, up on Margin Street.  A few of us were lost in our imaginations which took us to sights unseen even today by Mars’s rovers and moon landings.  No satellite images exist of what we assembled in our mind’s eye.  We were lost in our thoughts until I bumped my head against the underside of the table.  It was cushioned by a pillow of yellowjackets nesting.  

We got out of there faster than the brain can form a thought.  Pure fear!  The Saturday morning cartoons we watched could not have painted a better picture of kids scattering down a hilly street swatting at stinging varmints in pursuit of helpless victims.  The welts were numerous, and the stings penetrated my primeval memory so that I never sit at a picnic table in a park before taking a cautious peak underneath.  

But what concerns me more than what’s under the picnic tables I sit on and more than the wretchedness of yellowjackets in pursuit, is the prospect of managing my thoughts a dozen times each day.  This is especially true these days.  Our hours are challenged with the normal comings and goings of accidents, altercations, ailments, and ordinary exposures to anxiety; but then we have the unpredictable pandemic pilling on top like kids playing football in the park.  

I ask myself the question these dozen times a day, “How am I going to allow myself to feel about such and such?”  It certainly is up to me.  One can sub come to the flood of stinging notions of reactionary inner sensations and get washed away by the title wave of wasps swarming over: but what good reason do you have to do that to yourself?  What reason would you allow yourself the suffering of welts welling up on the skin of your mind allowing an anxiety based on artificial reality.  We really do suffer what is completely avoidable if we do not refuse the demons that seek to demolish our tranquility with their fictions.  For you see, these noxious notions of the way things just might happen – these imaginary things that others just might think, are no more real than mickey mouse.  They not only have not happened; but they are likely never to happen at all.  If you don’t ask the question we could be asking, then you get to suffer anyway.  

Jesus said, “Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6;34 CSB).

Stephen Williams

We played a game we called Freeze-tag on hot summer evenings.  There were a dozen or so of us kids in the neighborhood.  Someone was IT and if they could catch you, you had to pretend to be frozen and stop and stay in the exact position you were in when touched.  Someone else could free you so the person who was IT had quite a chore in getting everyone frozen.  

On one such evening I narrowly escaped the reaching arm of the one designated as IT; but the necessary quick jerking turn I maneuvered in order to slip by left me staring down on a large bicycle laying flat on the ground.  Not quite prepared to run up on it like that, I nevertheless attempted to leap over it.  I was barefoot so I made sure to keep my feet well out in front of me.  I fixated my expanding eye balls on the axel that protruded a good inch beyond the bolt that held the wheel on.  I came down right on that bolt as if it were a seat with a painted target on it and my bottom centered in on it like I planned to sit down.  Plunk! Ouch!

Well, I decided the best course of action was to ignore the pain and blood and continue the game.  I continued this plan of action by deciding I did not need to mention it to Mom.  After all I had a very poor view of the wound.  A couple days later it could no longer remain a secret and the medical prognosis was stitches.  

Some efforts toward secrecy are misguided.  Jeremiah, one of the Bible preachers, asked his mischievous audience a couple questions that God instructed him to convey, “Can a person hide in secret places where I cannot see him?” “Do I not fill the heavens and the earth? ” (23:24).  It is humorous in a tragic kind of way when the created try to keep secrets from the Creator.  This kind of foolish enterprise is as misguided as a child hiding a serious wound from his parents.  Blood stains on jeans, bloody wash cloths, or a peculiar kind of walking while favoring one hip over the other will always give your secret away.  When Jonah decided to take a trip on a ship to a location outside the jurisdiction of the heavenly council, he got into the same kind of conniption causing condition. 

Sometimes keeping a misguided secret hurts other people more that it hurts you.  Another Bible preacher, Paul, wrote this, “I know both how to make do with little, and I know how to make do with a lot. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being content — whether well fed or hungry, whether in abundance or in need. I am able to do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:12-13).  This is pretty good information to share with others.  I would not want to keep this a secret.  The source of true contentment is knowledge that many are seeking to know. Don’t keep it a secret.  

Paul spoke often of God’s plan to deliver people from death and the perilous acts people do to bring it on themselves.  He called this plan a mystery and referred to it as having been hidden for ages.  He saw himself as one of God’s spokesman to finally reveal this secret so the world could benefit from knowledge of it..  He wrote that, “God wanted to make known among the nations the glorious wealth of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:26-27) and he often asked for prayer that God would give him the right words with which to persuade people to believe it (Ephesians 6:19; Colossians 4:3).  Paul knew that it was misguided to keep this mystery a secret.  We are also ambassadors for Christ with the purpose of delivering the message that reveals the secret of the mystery of the Gospel so that everyone can profit from the hope of eternal life (2 Corinthians 5:19-21).  Don’t keep it a secret.

Stephen Williams