A few years ago no one had even heard of iCloud. Now the word is in everybody’s mouths, including the ones who have no idea what it means.
My understanding is that the iCloud is where you keep things stored outside of a physical place in one of your many mobile devices. Since it’s always there “on the cloud” the idea is you can access it without any trouble at any time — as long as you have Internet.
And iCloud has already saved me on more than one occasion. Once I managed to lose all my contacts on my phone; when I upgraded my phone recently I found out that all my apps had been transferred to my new phone effortlessly.
But there is a catch. First, as I already indicated, you gotta have Internet. Then, and this is even more important: You gotta sign up for it — it doesn’t happen automatically.
And that’s where Colossians 1:5, 6 come in. Ages before the Internet, God revealed to us that when we cross that BC/AD line, an iCloud account is immediately available to us. You think I’m kidding, right? No, I’m not. Here is what the text says:
… the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel that has come to you.”
Did you catch that concept? “Stored up for you in heaven.” That’s God’s iCloud for you, replete with faith, love, and hope, always available as an inexhaustible fountain of divine blessings that only one who had experienced a new birth can get.
Now, why is this so significant? Because for people like myself who grew up with a certain type of evangelicalism where guilt was brandished as a sort of a knight’s shinning armor, when we think about the idea of God storing things up in heaven, we normally think of God storing our sins. We think of a long book where all of the places, times, and nature of our offenses are registered just so God can slam us with it one day when we get to haven just in case we get any illusions that we may be there based on our own merit…
Now, I hope you don’t hear me saying that we shouldn’t worry about giving an account to God someday about our actions. That’s not what I am saying at all. But it is refreshing for me to know that the things God stores up in His iCloud for us are good, positive things, like love, faith, and hope. That’s the kind of stuff I want to have in reserve in a “savings account” somewhere as I seek to live my life below the AD line. And that is exactly what God provides for me in Jesus Christ.
But even though this iCloud exists, like the one in cyber space, you gotta sign up for it, by crossing that BC/AD line, and you gotta keep connected to the “Internet” (in this case, God Himself) to enjoy its benefits.
This is only the first of several messages I will be preaching through the book of Colossians in the next several weeks. Here is what I have stored up for you:
- April 12: God’s iCloud: What Happens When BC/AD Meet (1:1-14).
- April 19: No Match For the “D” in AD (1:15-23).
- April 26: Mystery of AD Living (1:24-2:5).
- May 3: BC Tries to Fight Back (2:6-23).
- May 10: AD Operator’s Manual Part 1 (3:1-9).
- May 17: AD Operator’s Manual Part 2 (3:10-17).
- May 24: AD Living in 3D (3:18-4:5).
Thank you for your prayers!
Pastor Ivanildo C. Trindade
Lead Pastor, Grace Church, Lititz, PA
pastor ivanildo 