“We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ praying always for you”

Colossians 1:3

We enter into fellowship with God, into His presence with thanksgiving. Giving thanks is receiving by faith the sufficiency of God’s provision in Christ. It is receiving the victorious life of Christ declaring of our dependence on the life of another, and submitting to His ruling and reigning within, in each situation.

In everything our Lord commands that we give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning us, because His will in everything is to conform us to the image of His son. Hebrews 5:8-9 “Though he were a son, yet learned He obedience through the things that He suffered; And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto them that obey him, Called of God an high priest after the order of Melchizedek.”

The word obedience and obey in the Greek is the word “hupakouo” meaning, to listen up under. Jesus learned to listen up under his Father through the things he suffered. Who we yield our ear to listen to, that is who we will serve. Learning to listen up under the voice of our Master is learned. It is relationship. We learn the voice of anyone by setting aside time willfuly to listening to their word, keeping what they said and thinking upon it over and over. As we meditate upon God’s Word, Jesus Christ is being formed within us, his very listening up under the Father.

The purpose of abiding in Christ, dwelling in the presence of God through giving thanks in everything, is intercessory prayer. The life of Christ was that of unceasing dependence, looking to Father to do everything in him and through him. In everything by prayer, by listening to the Father, is the life of Christ that God is forming in us through learning to listen up under, meditate on His word.  Prayer is total dependence on God, by looking to Him in everything. This is how we were created to live, in total dependence on the Life of Christ every moment to be continually received that God might rule and reign in all His earth.

The Pot and the Potter
How can the pot say to the Potter,
“Why have you made me thus?!”
It is Your design O Father,
So in You alone I trust.
You were made to be filled with
another,
The union of God in man.
Rest little pot in the Father,
He is making The New Man.

-Ruth F