Established in the Faith

Established in the Faith

By M.T. Clark — P-2060 | 09/04/2026 – Today’s Audio Podcast

Today’s Message on YouTube:

Today’s photo of a paved country road stretching ahead through open farm fields, with silhouetted trees framing both sides of the horizon under a brilliant orange, gold, and pink sunset sky, comes to us from yours truly, as I captured this stunning view on High Bridge Road in Chatham, NY on September 15, 2023.

Well, it’s Friday, thank God, and I share this photo of a spectacular sunset sky over an open country road to remind us that some evenings are gifts to be received with both hands, and that the Lord is faithful to bring us safely to the end of another week.

I captured this photo on my drive home after the CCPR Memorial Recovery Walk, and I still get quiet every time I think about it. That walk was a hard and holy thing. It was a day for celebrating freedom from addiction for those of us who have it in Christ, and for remembering those who never made it out. By God’s grace, I was walking as a man who had been free from alcohol and drugs since 2015. And by God’s mercy, I was walking that day because I was still alive to walk.

There were names and photos displayed on that walk that belonged to people who died of overdose and didn’t get the chance that I got. The Lord reached into my life and pulled me out of the addictions that were killing me, and He didn’t have to. The longer I walk with Him, the more I see that my recovery is a miracle of God’s grace, and that the people I love who are still stuck in that bondage need the Lord to do the same thing for them.

That is why I ache when I see how few believers step out in faith and give Christian Recovery a real try. Support groups like our Celebrate Freedom support group exist because the Lord longs to set the captives free, and He is well able to do it, but stigma and fear are killers, and they keep people sitting in the dark rooms of their bondage long after Jesus has already opened the door. If you are carrying something you are ashamed to bring into the light, please hear me. The Lord isn’t ashamed of you. He is waiting to help you and to walk with you to a whole new life.

So, thank God it’s Friday. Thank God for another sunset over the fields. And if you are free tonight, thank Him for that most of all, and then tell others about the freedom that you have found in Him.

Speaking of finding our freedom through God,

Our series, “Rooted in Him,” continues today with being established in the faith.

Established in the Faith

The Apostle Paul wants us to grow, but he also wants us to grow into something that is settled, and he names it in the middle of his description of the healthy Christian life. He writes in Colossians 2:7 (NKJV) that we are to be “rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.”

Today the word to sit with is “established.” To be established is to be made firm, settled, and stable, where we are no longer moved with every new wind that blows. It’s the opposite of the shaky, up-and-down faith that so many believers assume is just the way things have to be.

Notice how Paul says we are to get there: “as you have been taught.” Being established in faith isn’t a mystical experience that drops on us out of nowhere. Faith comes through being taught the truth of what God has revealed in His word and taking it to heart over time.

There is a reason Paul ties stability to teaching. A believer who doesn’t know what they believe is easy to knock over, because they have nothing firm to stand on when a hard question or a smooth-talking error comes along. A believer who has been grounded in the truth has something under their feet. Becoming stable in our faith grows out of knowing, really knowing, what God has said.

This matters because an unestablished faith leaves us at the mercy of whatever we heard last. When our faith isn’t settled, a discouraging conversation can shake us, a new teaching can pull us off course, and a bad week can make us wonder whether any of it is true.

Paul’s whole concern in this letter is that the Colossians not be moved away from Christ by impressive-sounding ideas, and his remedy is to get them established, so grounded in the truth of Christ that the latest clever argument doesn’t send them looking for a new foundation. An established believer can hear a hard question and not panic, because their faith isn’t sitting on the surface. It is settled down deep.

I know what the unestablished life is like, because I lived it. Early on in my walk with the Lord, my faith moved with my feelings and with whatever I had heard most recently. After a good church service, I was flying high. After a hard day, I was sure it had all fallen apart. I was sincere, but I wasn’t settled, and the reason was simple. I hadn’t yet been grounded in the solid truth of God’s word.

What steadied me over time wasn’t a single dramatic moment. It was, by God’s grace, the slow work of being taught, sitting under the Scriptures, and learning the faith on purpose, until there was something firm beneath my feet that my moods couldn’t move. With God’s help, the stability I had wanted for years came as I got established in God’s truth and love and what it meant to live by faith.

And let’s notice how Paul closes the thought, the same way he always closes it in this passage: “abounding in it with thanksgiving.” A settled faith isn’t a cold, mental thing, where it’s all doctrine and no relationship. The believer who is truly established overflows with gratitude, because they have come to know and love the One their faith rests on. Knowing God produces thanks, not just knowledge.

Being established and being thankful aren’t opposites. They grow together. The more settled we are in the truth of who God is, the more we find ourselves giving thanks.

So, don’t settle for a faith that moves with every wind that blows, and don’t assume the up-and-down life is all any of us can hope for. God means for you to be established, firm, and settled in your relationship with Him.  When you are settled in your relationship with the Lord, you will be hard to knock over.

Give yourself to the process of being taught, get grounded in the solid truth of what you believe, and let the roots of God’s word go down deep in you. You will find yourself steadier than you used to be and more thankful for your faith the more you grow.

Every step we take toward the Lord is a step in the right direction. So, keep on walking and talking with God.

— M.T.

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“The views, opinions, and commentary of this publication are those of the author, M.T. Clark, only, and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of the photographers, artists, ministries, or other authors of the other works that may be included in this publication, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities the author may represent.”

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