Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. Our reading titled The Sunflower Battle

was written by Dave Brannon. The deer in our neighborhood and I have two different opinions about

sunflowers. When I plant sunflowers each spring, I'm looking

forward to the beauty of their blooms. My dear friends, however, don't care about the finished

product. They simply want to chew the stems and leaves until there's nothing left. It's an annual

summertime battle, as I try to see the sunflowers to maturity before my forehood

neighbors devour them. Sometimes I win. Sometimes they win. When we think about our lives as

believers in Jesus, it's easy to see a similar battle being waged between us and our enemy, Satan.

Our goal is continual growth, leading to spiritual maturity that

helps our lives stand out for God's honor. The devil wants to devour our faith and keep us from

growing. But Colossians chapter 2 assures us that Jesus has dominion over every power and can

bring us to fullness, which means he

makes us complete. Christ's victory on the cross allows us to stand out in the world, like

those beautiful sunflowers. When Jesus nailed the record of the charges against us, the

penalty for our sins, to the cross, he destroyed the powers that

controlled us. We became rooted and built up and made alive with Christ. In him, we have the power

to resist the enemy's spiritual attacks and to flourish in Jesus, displaying a life of true beauty.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Colossians chapter 2, verses 6 through 13.

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him,

rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught and overflowing with thankfulness.

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy,

which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual

...