Assurance – Three Minute Bible

April 21, 2025April 21, 2025

Colossians 4:12 – Epaphras’s Prayer

Picture of the jailer in Acts 16 who is asking Paul, "What must I do to be saved?"

Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured.

Summary: Epaphras’s prayer is a wonderful model of what to pray for ourselves and each other.

In this passage, we learn a bit more about Epaphras.* Paul says he is “one of you” which I take to mean he is originally from Colossae. Somewhere along the line, Epaphras must have met up with Paul because Paul explains that Epaphras brought the Gospel to Colossae “on our behalf.”

February 26, 2019February 24, 2019

Assurance – John 11: 17 – 18a

On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.
Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem…

At the end of Chapter 10, John tells us that Jesus had gone back to where John the Baptist had been baptizing near the Jordan River. While we do not know with certainty where this was, it appears likely that the place was north of the Sea of Galilee, about twenty some miles from Jerusalem as the crow flies.

If Lazarus had died about the time the news reached Jesus and his disciples, and if the walk back to Bethany was about a two day walk, then the two days that Jesus waited after hearing the news that Lazarus was ill fits with Lazarus being in the tomb for four days.

Why would this be important?

February 13, 2019February 12, 2019

Assurance – John 10: 27 – 29

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.”

Life is a scary business. We are not always conscious of this truth, but in a moment something critical can change and suddenly we are no longer self-assured; instead, we are scared. And with good reason. There is so little we really know about this life. There is really very little we have control over.