Back to School

Pause

For lots of students, going back to school means trying on new or hand-me-down clothes, finding shoes that fit growing feet, or getting that required uniform for the dance or sports team.

In addition to the outfit you put on this morning, consider what it might look like to “put on” something else today — to clothe yourself with Christ.

Listen

The word of Christ must live in you richly. Teach and warn each other with all wisdom by singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Sing to God with gratitude in your hearts. Whatever you do, whether in speech or action, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus and give thanks to God the Father through him.

Colossians 3:16-17

Think

Whenever I used to get too caught up in my appearance as a teenager — standing in front of my full closet and still finding “nothing to wear” or changing my outfit five times in one morning until I was almost late for school — my dad would remind me that I wasn’t going to school to win a beauty contest, and my mom would say that, after all, it’s what’s on the inside that counts. True words.

And that’s a limitation of this biblical metaphor of “wearing Christ” as we wear clothes. If we’re just copying Jesus’ behaviors on the outside, then it remains a matter of mere appearance.

Wearing Christ — as Paul describes it — is about really walking around in the way of Christ. It’s about receiving Christ’s word in our hearts and living it from the inside out. It’s about letting all of our speech and actions be done in the name of Jesus and with a gratitude that goes deep.

It’s what’s on the inside that counts.

Meredith Forssman

Pray

Jesus, I want your word to live richly inside of me. Fill me and transform me from the inside out. I am grateful for all the ways you love and lead, carry and challenge me. Amen.

Go

You are always in God’s sight pleasing,
always in God’s sight lovely,
always in God’s sight as though you were perfect.

For you are complete in Christ Jesus, and perfect in Christ Jesus.

You stand fully clothed in Christ.

Always.

Based on words by the great 19th-century preacher, Charles Spurgeon