Rags to Riches

…being knit together in love, to reach all the riches…
(Colossians 2:2 – ESV)

What we allow to be woven into the fabric of our lives determines what our spiritual wardrobe will be like. Whose “designer label” are you wearing these days? I mean this spiritually, of course. Is Christ sewing you with His thread? Are we being knit together with one another, bound and stitched together into Him, and with each other, and therefore strengthened in our walk with Christ, and strengthening others in their walk? Or are we allowing foreign fabric to be stitched into our clothes? If so then the pattern of our lives make our garments look as though we do not belong to Christ, but we look more and more like the world.

What does your covering look like, are your clothes representing Christ, or are you just claiming the name but wearing another brand? Are you cheering for one team all the while wearing the uniform of another? When we insist on wearing a certain type or brand of clothing then we show what we value and where our treasure is. Spiritually Christ demands that we find our value, our wisdom, our treasure and our worth and wealth in Him.

For the Christian this is the only way to come to full assurance, and a more full understanding of God’s will and God’s ways. Because of the surpassing worth of Christ (Philippians 3:9) we have been woven into spiritual wisdom and wealth. We dare not try by ourselves and by means outside of God to patch ourselves up, but instead we must be wearing the garments of grace, adorning the gospel of God. We are all but filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6) but when Christ sews us together in His love we become a beautiful garment of grace, we go from rags to riches.

We have said this before regarding marriage, but it applies to church life and all relationships as well; you can’t be knit together without having to be twisted and turned and united. You have to get all bent out of shape to be conformed to the image of Christ. The scarlet thread is the blood of our Lord Jesus. That is what is binding us together with Him, and with it we must be bound together with each other. You could have an individual life that is like a beautiful quilt, but if you are not being woven together into the larger tapestry then you will just be different cloth, and eventually one cloth will be jealous of the other, and the split will happen because their was no common fabric in the first place. It will be about individuals and not about Christ, and that fabric will wear thin on others and wear out all by itself.

Part of this life is about the struggle itself, not just the victory or the supposed defeats we have, but the times when we feel the tensions of this life, the twists and turns and tests and things that weave us into Christ and with one another, or they separate us; like a loose thread, ready to be cut off. We should praise God that we are even able to struggle, as we can see Him with us in the midst of the storms of life. It was about Him being there and struggling with us, to show us He is there, not always about getting through to the other side.

All who are woven into the fabric of Christ will make it though eventually, and even if you fall down He will still bring you through, but we must always remember it isn’t where we are but where we are headed. We may not get healed today, but we will be tomorrow. We may not survive today, but we will be in glory tomorrow. We may not like our brothers and sisters in Christ too much today, but we will rejoice with them as we see Christ tomorrow. Yes we want things to work out sooner than later, but if they don’t remember that Jesus was with us all the while, and He will deliver us safely home, home to heaven, where we have an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled and reserved for us who have been woven into the fabric of faith.

Jesus is where it’s at, and if you stay stitched you stay enriched. Apart we are tattered and torn, but together in Christ we can understand that we have gone from rags to riches.

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©