Author: Scott

Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Colossians 3:18 My wife and I have slightly different memories of an event that happened a few months before we were married. While engaged, we lived several hundred miles apart and back then, we still used snail mail. I read something by some Christian…
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And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Colossians 3:17 I know from painful experience that a life of following me is miserable. I impulsively want that which tastes good, but which in the end is self-destructive. The…
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Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom . . . Colossians 3:16 Once, I daily filled myself with drugs, which painfully and radically consumed my life. My pills turned me into a walking disaster, but they didn’t stop there. My addiction erupted out of my…
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And be thankful. Colossians 3:15 Every February, at the end of the month, I begin to hope that March means Spring. I know from living in Minnesota for 20 years that it’s not Spring yet, but still, I hope. So, the other day, at the end of March, I found myself bitter and angry about…
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And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. Colossians 3:15 Addiction medicine invariably involves a lot of mental health care, with anxiety perhaps being the number one complaint. In jail or treatment, my patient’s lives are often in chaos and, in their angst, they’re…
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And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. Colossians 3:14 When my daughter was growing up, we had a once-a-week tradition of making special pancakes – a crepe-like, egg-based pancake. Home from college over Christmas, she asked me to make her special pancakes once again. Something went terribly wrong…
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Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Colossians 3:12-13 To recover from an addiction, we must do more than…
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Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. Colossians 3:11 I’ve previously discussed my evolving relationship with the Muslim population in our community, but I’ll outline it again for today’s blog. Briefly, we moved to West-central Minnesota in 2002, less than a…
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But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.…
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Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Colossians 3:5 Several times in the Bible, we’re instructed to kill our evil, sinful behavior. I’ve always wondered what they meant, and I’ve often wished those passages would be a little more detailed in their…
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