Colossians 1:24-2:5 Suffering and Toil

You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan.

And it actually is an acronym for our core values. So the R and the E stand for replicating, the C stands for community, the A for authenticity, the S for simplicity, and the T stands for truth. Last but not least, actually, I like to think of the last one as the one that holds it all together and is the main point, and that is truth.

And we believe that the word of God is truth, like capital T truth, like it has power for our lives. And so we spend some time each weekend listening to God's word. Hopefully, what you listen to, you actually believe.

You take it in, you wrestle with it, you come to a place where you believe it, and then you launch out into your week in order to live it. So that's kind of the pattern of what we would call here growing in faith, is taking in God's word, believing it as truth, and then going out and living according to it.

And I believe that the word of God has the power to transform us. Not by magic, not by osmosis, not by using the word of God as a pillow to sleep on and somehow it's going to rub off on you or something like that, but by faith.

Faith is the way that the word of God has power to transform us. When we really study it, when we really believe it, and not just believe it in our minds, but believe it enough to let it impact our actions, that is the place of growing in faith.

This morning our text is going to address two very popular subjects, subjects that we have to really kind of take what the word of God has to say about it, versus what our culture or what we would tend to think about it.

Popular subjects like suffering and toil, really popular subjects. Probably not so much. Maybe they're not the most popular things to talk about in our culture, but they are significant in that they are exactly what these 11 verses are about, exactly what the word of God is bringing to us as we march through the book of Colossians to talk through suffering and toil.

And yet even as Paul gives a report to the Colossians about his own suffering and his own toil on their behalf, the way that he served that church, the way that he worked for the church in Colossae, in the midst of talking about that, he weaves a really intricate theological tapestry that explains some of the ways that God works in his church to help us grow.

So in talking to the church in Colossae, he is in essence talking to a church, and it's something that we can take on and listen to as a church, as a gathering of God's people, and we can grow together as a result of the things that he has to say to that ancient church over 2 ,000 years ago.

And I want our church to continue to grow up. Do you guys want our church to continue to grow? And I mean grow internally, I don't just mean grow numerically, I mean both of those are I think essential for what it means to be a church, and a lot of times it's kind of unpopular, it's either one of two extremes, either you're like all about numbers or you're like not allowed to talk about numbers, but how many of you know that numbers matter when you're talking about souls of people who are going to spend eternity someplace?

So numbers do matter, right? Would you agree with me on that? But also we want to be growing deeper in our understanding, those that are here, that we would walk closer with Christ this week than we did last, next month more than we did this month, next year more closely and intimately with our Savior than we did this year.

And so that is what we're doing when we gather together, that's what we're focusing on. I want us all as individuals to keep expanding in faith, community, and service. I don't know if you thought about this, but continued growth is a sign of life within us.

And so my prayer for all of us is that we continue to grow. So let's open our Bibles to Colossians 1 to 24, and again we're going to carry it over past a chapter heading and you might go, whoa, wait a minute, aren't you supposed to stop at every chapter?

And an interesting thing is, the guys who sat down in the Middle Ages to actually kind of put together the chapters and verses didn't always get the theme right or didn't always connect it well. And so you'll even notice that even the people who translated the English Standard Version of the Bible have one big subheading that covers verse 24 of chapter 1 all the way down to verse 5.

They agree with me that this should be divided up a bit differently. Hey, how many of you would like that job though of like reading everything and trying to figure out where to break it down? So I'm not going to be critical.

That guy, I look forward to seeing him in heaven and thanking him for just making it more accessible to us. Colossians 1, 24 through chapter 2, verse 5, and if you don't have a Bible on your lap or a device to navigate to the Bible, just please raise your hand and Mike's going to bring you a Bible.

That's the only reason I would not have to call you out. And if you feel more comfortable during connection time getting up and grabbing one, but we want everybody to have a copy of the Word of God on their lap and we'd like you to be able to take one home with you if you need that.

And so you can grab a Bible off the table back there, get one from Mike and take it home with you. Follow along and read with me together. Colossians 1, 24 through 2, 5. Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ afflictions for the sake of his body.

That is the church of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you to make the Word of God fully known the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints.

To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those that lay out a sea and for all who have not seen me face to face that their hearts may be encouraged being knit together in love to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery which is Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments for though I am absent in body yet I am with you in spirit rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.

Let's pray as Dave and Rob come to lead us in worship this morning. Father I thank you for the opportunity that we have to gather together and we are people that are people I know we are people that are easily moved by emotions whether that's discouragement this week or excitement and enthusiasm or happiness or sorrow.

Father I pray that you would help us to turn all of those thoughts over to you. You are such a big God you are so capable of handling the things that we face day in and day out so Father I pray that wherever we find ourselves this morning that we would turn those thoughts over to you.

If it's been a rough week to just tell you it's been a rough week and to acknowledge that here in your presence. Father if we found ourselves just being cluttered and encrusted with sin this week if we find ourselves just kind of bogged down at the place that we're at in our lives that confession would be our work here this morning.

Father that if we find ourselves discouraged encouragement would be your work for us this morning. Father where there is error that correction would be your work in our hearts this morning. Father I pray that as we have an opportunity to enter your presence through worship and singing and praising really entering your presence in worship is kind of a silly thing to say because when it comes down to it my hope and prayer is that we are worshiping on the way here.

We are worshiping when we woke up and we will be worshiping when we leave here but to actually praise and sing songs as your body is a beautiful thing and an opportunity that we have to do this rarely and not throughout the entire week.

So Father I pray that this would be a meaningful time where our emotions would be engaged before you where we'd be able to let go of some of those things we've held on to this week and rejoice and delight in the salvation that we have through your son Jesus Christ and it's in his name that we pray.

Amen. Amen. Thanks a lot to Dave and Rob for leading us in worship this morning and make sure you keep your Bibles open to Colossians 1 24 through chapter 2 verse 5 and thank you everybody for the hugs and stares.

The stares were a little bit awkward but aside from that I appreciate the happy birthday. So Paul steps up to the mound right away in this text throwing us kind of a nasty curve ball if you think about it.

His pitch starts with rejoicing and then it breaks for the dirt real quick with the word suffering. Rejoice in sufferings. It's quite obvious that we don't start with fluff here, right? How many of you know that Paul can tend to be a pretty serious guy?

He can tend to get down to the point right away. If you've read the New Testament, if you've read his letters, sometimes he just starts off with a bang and he begins our text right away with now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake.

Wow. And to be clear verse 24 has been pretty hotly debated. It's been a hotly debated verse because it says some strange things about suffering. First to rejoice in sufferings for the sake of the church or really for any reason to rejoice in sufferings at all sounds a bit masochistic, right?

Does it sound a little bit strange and a little bit twisted and weird? Did Paul like pain? Was he glad to be shipwrecked? Was he glad to be pelted with rocks or caned with sticks as he was on multiple occasions?

In our text, Paul explains the rejoicing later in this same verse. He had a unique perspective on suffering that has an impact on his big picture view of the world and his big picture view of the church and a viewpoint that I think would be good for us to adopt as well.

Paul thinks of suffering for the kingdom like a bucket being filled, like when a bucket is being filled and when the bucket is filled then the suffering will be over is the viewpoint that he has. So he talks about filling the sufferings and completing the sufferings that were began.

Now the sufferings of Christ nearly filled the bucket but now whenever Christians in this church age suffer for the sake of the church or suffer for the sake of Christ or for his kingdom, they are participating in the filling of that same bucket as Paul sees it.

Paul's view of suffering is really not at all misguided. It's very accurate and of course he's saying these things by the revelation of the Spirit but in reality there is a time according to scripture when suffering will be no more.

Anybody excited about that day? Anybody look forward to that day? Now is it reality here and now? No but do we have hope that day will arrive? Yes we do. There is a time when Christ himself will return.

The bucket of suffering of his people will be completed. It will be filled. It will be done and all suffering will be finished for his children. There will be no more pain, no more sorrow, no more tears but until that day Paul rejoices.

Think about this. Think about this mindset. Paul rejoices that every time he suffers he recognizes that we are now one more day closer to that final end. One more day closer to that final rest when suffering will be no more.

Paul proves right off the bat that he has a perspective that all of us need to grab a hold of and need to let it transform us and that's a long term perspective of the scope of what God is doing in us and through us.

Suffering lasts for like a moment but God's love endures for a lifetime and ultimately for eternity. So he has that long term perspective and his hope was not found in a clean bill of health. His hope was not found in a promotion at work or the relief from pain that medication can provide.

His hope was consistently found in the return of his King. That was the place of his hope. So first of all Paul saw suffering as his service to the church and helping to do his part in completing the sufferings that were started by the Messiah, Jesus Christ himself.

But secondly he saw his suffering as a result of the stewardship that he had been given by God. A byproduct of service to the church. A byproduct of serving and ministering to others. Paul isn't just running around by the way looking for opportunities to suffer and I don't think he believes that you and I should either.

How many of you know that you don't have to drum up suffering? Sometimes suffering just finds you. You don't have to go out and look for it and Paul isn't suggesting that you go out and look for it but he is recommending that you fulfill your calling and in your calling he's suggesting and all of the New Testament suggests that in your calling you'll find enough suffering.

If you fulfill and discharge the gift, skills, abilities and calling that scripture places on your life you will help to fill the bucket. You'll be used in part to minister to the needs of others but help do your part to fill that bucket of suffering towards the end with that long-term mindset that every day, every moment certainly is a gift from God but certainly is one day closer to that final completion but his suffering came about because of his calling to serve the church very clearly in our text.

Paul doesn't mention any specifics of suffering. Did you notice that in the text? He doesn't talk anything about the specifics. What is suffering? What does that look like for him? But if you think of any time that someone endures hardship or difficulty in the cause of advancing God's kingdom, in the cause of serving other Christians, in the cause of reaching out for the kingdom and doing evangelism or whatever, then you're understanding the suffering that Paul is talking about because he's talking about suffering because you are serving Christ.

Suffering because you are serving his saints. He was a steward who knew what his role was in the kingdom. According to verse 25 he was given a stewardship from God for the church that involved for him personally, his specific calling was one of teaching the truth.

Now you have a variety of different callings and not necessarily the same as Paul but he says my suffering came about because of my calling, my very specific calling that was from God for the service of the church that involved the teaching of truth.

Now I love the way that Paul had a really keen understanding of his role, of his gifts, of his ability to serve others and what God had called him out to do. Now to be fair, because I mean some of you might be sitting here and you're kind of like well what is my calling, what is my place, what is my role?

Some of you have figured that out, some of you thought you had it figured out and then something crumbled and you're not quite sure what your role and responsibility is in life, in culture, in your family, in the church, you're kind of wrestling through that and figuring that out and I have to be fair because remember that Paul had a different experience than you and I probably have had.

Jesus himself appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus. How many of you would like that to happen to you and it hasn't happened yet? Like you just haven't had that light appear and Jesus say hey dude, stop being a jerk and follow me and here's what I want you to do and spell it out in detail like he did to Paul.

He said you are going to be my mouthpiece to the Gentiles. You are going to be the one who's going to bring the gospel to those who are not Jews and he was given a mission statement, a purpose statement for his life, right?

And so I want to be fair about that but Paul took that and ran with it in a sense that I mean you know God didn't tell him every single person to share the gospel with, every city to go to, every place to go but he still ran with that mission of understanding that to glorify Christ who he had met was his calling and I would say that at least start there Recast.

At least start in that place where you recognize that your calling has something to do with Jesus Christ. The reason you are sitting in seats, the reason you are breathing air, the reason you woke up again today is because Jesus has something to do with you.

He has a desire for you, he has a purpose for you, a mission for you to accomplish. Does that energize anybody? Does that get you excited to realize that you're here for a purpose and it's tied up in the divine plan of God Almighty on your life?

You have a reason to be here. And I can't tell you anything beyond the generalities of what scripture has to say about that but I can tell you it's a glorious thing, it's a beautiful thing that he has given to you.

Some of it's behind the scenes, some of it's not up front, some of it's not standing up and teaching God's word as it was for Paul. Some of it is evangelism outside of the church, some of it is inside the church, some of it is rocking babies in the nursery, some of it is setting up and tearing down chairs, some of it is a whole host of different things that you can conceive of that God is using you.

And by the way, just that simple thing of setting up and tearing down chairs on a Sunday morning is not the sum total of it, is it? I mean, I don't even know that there's a whole lot wrapped up in our lives from Monday through Sunday that is all wrapped up in what God desires of us.

So we have different functions and different roles in our workplace and in our families and in the church and all of that is tied in with this stewardship from God. But he identified specifically that teaching component.

So what about us? Do you know how you fit in with the church? With the church of Christ? I feel that many of us are happy to sit around the edges as spectators, kind of feeling our way along the edges of the church, kind of just taking it in or even conceiving of the church is like I come and I get filled on Sunday morning and then I leave or I come and I just take in a message and it's kind of like the cultural thing to do.

And by the way, I respect the fear that often comes with being involved in a church. I recognize that. Some of you have been burned by the church and I'm saying big C church, you know, you've attended a church and the pastor, even just relationships or you've, how many of you ever come up against hypocrisy?

Any of you hit that? It's a big common in our culture about the church and so you've encountered it, you've been bruised, you've been hurt. I've actually encouraged people to just sit back for a while and kind of take things in to, I mean, if you're wounded and you're hurt, come and talk with me and I'd love to help walk you through that and equally, there's a time to push ahead and engage and there's a time to just take just a moment to reconnect with Christ.

Have you ever, any of you ever had a season of life where you needed that? You needed to just take a moment to step back from that busy, frenetic pace of ministry to just say, I need to just get my bearings again.

I need to get reconnected with Christ or you've been wounded or you've been hurt. So I respect that fear that can come upon us about being involved in a church, but I also want us to consider this amazing thing.

Consider that Paul, that's writing to us today, went from enemy of the church, persecutor of the church, to builder and champion of the church in an afternoon, in an afternoon. He was on his way to arrest Christians, to pull wives away from husbands and husbands away from wives and dads away from children, to arrest them and carry them back to Jerusalem a couple hundred miles away where they were going to be tried, some of them executed.

And Jesus appears in the sky to him and says, stop it. Stop persecuting me. I'm going to use you to build my church. And he does. And in an afternoon, he turned around. Consider your pain, suffering, difficulty, how many of you recognize that it can be our tendency to keep our eyes on ourselves?

And I would say, man, you've got to be really careful with those seasons. You've got to be careful when there's hurt, when you've been frustrated, when you've come up against hypocrisy, when you've encountered the problems of the church, because there are problems in the church and there are problems with people.

And if we set our minds on people, how many of you know they're going to disappoint us? Pretty much all the time. Okay? So if we make them our standard, then of course we're going to be discouraged. But taking that time, and be really cautious, that's a dangerous time in life when you're taking that time off because that's the time where Satan wants to tell you it's all about you.

You recognize that in your own heart and in your own life? Those seasons of introspection, those times where you're kind of like, man, I am hurt and I do need a break. And then that break turns into my life is all about me.

So we need to be cautious. And I'd encourage you to have somebody else walk you through that to help keep an external perspective and some other eyes on that hurt and on that frustration that you're encountering to help gain some perspective.

And again, that doesn't have to be me. I'd be willing to walk through anybody who's going through that hurt, that suffering with you. Set up a time to meet with me. Haley's out there. She's got my schedule.

I'd love to see some of you on my calendar just to walk through that with you and work through it with you. It might be somebody else. Find somebody who you can kind of be accountable to if you're going through that pain and that suffering and kind of feeling like it's all here right now.

Consider that each one of us has a part to play. Now I would suggest to you that our role will involve some level of suffering. It requires sacrifice to get up early and set up the chairs. It requires a unique kind of hardship to change diapers in the nursery or to take time out of a crazy busy week to prepare a lesson for our middle schoolers that are out there upstairs learning right now.

All ministry to the church requires sacrifice. And Paul doesn't divine his suffering for us in the text, but we know that it was tied into his calling to make the word of God fully known. There's an element of suffering in his calling to teach.

And like Paul, any preacher should set it as their goal as he states clearly for us in the text, should set it as their goal to explain God's word. Now let me be clear that I recognize, I'm being genuine, I'm not trying to be falsely humble.

Let me be clear that I recognize I am not the best preacher out there. As a matter of fact, I have some preachers that I listen to regularly that I commend to you that I feel like really challenge me and they help sharpen me.

John Piper is one that I listen to regularly. Anybody ever heard of him or heard him? I, you know, I'm humbled by his ability to just break down the word. Or Matt Chandler with his connection kind of to culture and the word and bring those things together.

And so I'd recommend if you have some time during the week, if you've got a commute, listen to good preaching. Listen to what's going on. And the fact of the matter is, I recognize that my style isn't for everyone.

It's not for everybody. And it might not even be for you. But if God decides to transfer you out from this church for whatever reason, whether it's a job transfer or things just kind of aren't working for you or you're just visiting here for the first time and you're like, man, I didn't connect with that, then my encouragement to you and to all of us is to make sure that we are at a church where the pastor's goal is to make the word of God known, where the goal is that you would walk away from a gathering of God's people with more understanding of this, with more connection to God through the way that he has revealed himself to us.

That's what I hope happens as we gather together each week. I don't want to ridicule, but I think probably all of us have had this happen at times. And I'm not going to mention names at all. Man, that would be shameful for me to mention names.

But I've listened to messages in a church context where I walked away with more understanding about the preacher's athletic prowess and exploits on the football field than I walked away with an understanding of God's word.

Have you had that? Have you experienced that? I hope you haven't experienced that here. But if you ever feel, and I mean this sincerely, if you ever feel like I'm sliding away from the explanation of the word of God, if you feel that that's happening, then please let me know.

Please do it respectfully. But let me know if you feel like there's a slide, if you feel like things are moving away from an explanation of God's word. Be bold and let me know and I'd accept that correction, at least process it.

Paul has suffered in fulfilling his calling to proclaim the word. And in verse 26, he further identifies that his suffering has come about through the divine timing of God. It's all in God's timing. You see, for ages the Gentiles had been lost in darkness.

They'd lived in a place of darkness where there wasn't complete revelation. For ages and generations, there was a hidden mystery that has now been revealed to those who Paul in our text calls saints or holy ones, set apart ones.

And his suffering is in part due to bringing this message at the right time to those who were in darkness. And now, according to Paul, at his time, the mystery has been solved. And God chose to make known to the Gentiles the riches of the glory of this divine mystery.

And the mystery is simply this, profound and simple statement. The mystery that God was revealing that was hidden from the Gentiles in ancient times all the way down generations and ages without this knowledge and now it is revealed in you and me, Christ in you, the hope of glory.

What has Paul suffered for? What has he endured? Why endure hardship with joy? Because he had an eternal perspective. Because he had a stewardship from God. Because he had a message to bring to the people.

But also because he saw glorious results. Godless pagan Gentiles like you and me can now be called saints of God as we come to understand the great treasure, the great glory of Christ dwelling in us. What is our hope?

What is this mystery that's finally revealed after years of being unknown? That Christ would take up residence in his saints. That he would live through you and me. That he would live through us. Shine through us.

Walk with us. Guide us. And never leave us. This is the hope of glory. This is why I have hope that I will one day be glorified because I am in Christ and he in me. And where Christ is, I will be. Because he is in me.

Not just God with us. Not just Emmanuel. Not just the Christmas message of the baby born. But Christ in us shining through our lives all week long. The Old Testament saints seem to get quite a bit of what God had revealed.

They had quite a lot of revelation, quite a lot explained to them. But this close and intimate relationship that you and I experience is an incredible privilege. The age that we live in where the spirit lives in us and is alive in us.

It's an amazing privilege. And again, as I'm reading through Leviticus, it's such a potent reminder, a detailed reminder of how our approach to God needs to be if we come based on law. And it's detailed.

The way that the high priest would come into the most holy place only once a year into the presence of the glory of God himself to make sacrifice. Once a year. One man. Through a whole host of preparations and rituals and washings and sanctifying him through the sprinkling of blood and all kinds of stuff that gets gruesome and weird and strange and all of these details and hoops that had to be jumped through just to enter the presence of the Almighty spelled out clearly in the first five books of the Old Testament.

If we are going to approach God based on law, then that's what it looks like. But when grace was fully realized at the fullness of time, not only was the curtain torn in two in the most holy place, but now he resides in you if you are his child.

Now he takes up residence in you. And all of his saints, all of those who have given their lives to Christ by faith and trust in his sacrifice on their behalf, a sacrifice once for all sat down on the right hand of God Almighty.

Have you ever read the Old Testament? Have you read through Leviticus? Have you read through Deuteronomy? Have you read through Exodus and all of those Old Testament laws and all those things that had to be done to enter his presence?

And he's in you! He's in you if you are his child. The great mystery now revealed among the Gentiles. We're Gentiles. The great mystery revealed, Christ in you, the hope of glory. Paul wraps up the discussion of his suffering in verse 28 by reiterating the message for which he has suffered.

It says, Him we proclaim. Who? Christ. Christ is the content of the message that Paul brings. He warns everyone, teaching everyone with all wisdom that he may present each one. The word everyone there is each one.

It's like a corporate individual word, that I might present each one mature in Christ. It's great that Paul identifies for us. He was not a fly-by-night evangelist that showed up, stirred things up, set up a tent, got a bunch of people around, had a bunch of people raise their hands, come forward for salvation, and then split town.

He worked to help the saints grow in each one of these communities, suffering and toiling and working to see not just scalps, not just people raise their hands and give their lives to Christ, but mature Christians growing in the faith.

And I love that Paul's ministry was seen in the text as both warning and teaching. Warning and teaching. Warning and teaching. We're a culture that doesn't warn anymore because we don't like to talk about judgment.

We don't like to talk about condemnation. So what do we do? We teach a lot. And our expectation seems to be that, man, if we could just get more information to people, then they would come to faith. But there's room for warning.

How many of you are just honest that kind of the warning component was what brought you to faith in Christ? A little bit of fear there. Was there any fear involved in your conversion? Now I'm not gonna say, the problem is when that's the only thing, when there's only warning and there's no teaching.

How many of you know that that's a problem too, right? If it's just fear is the only thing that brings you, then do you really love? Because a real decision for Christ is ultimately motivated out of recognition for his great love for us, and man, I love Jesus so much because he paid the price for me, not just a get out of hell free pass, right?

Because that's the way that a lot, I mean, in all honesty, that's the way I kind of heard it as a child, and I'm not, I mean, I think there's a component of that that helped lead me to faith in Christ, but man, how many of you know that you've got to correct some things when you were saved that way?

There needs to be some corrections to bring you about to a place of love when fear was the motive that started the whole thing. Are you getting what I'm saying in that? If the reason, if the thing that brought you to faith in Christ was solely and only fear, then man, you've got to grow to the place where you recognize love and his great passion towards you, and his being with you and his presence with you is in a terrifying thing.

Because if you start with fear, how many of you know that, I mean, I personally lived for years thinking, man, whenever I read about God watching over me, I was like, oh, really? Do you know what I'm talking about?

I know it's God watching over you, and as I think it's Zephaniah, one of the minor prophets talks about him dancing over his people with joy, and I was like, man, don't look at me, God. Don't watch me, man, because I'm messing up all the time, he's like, he delights over his children with joy, that's, he's with us, he's guiding us, he's directing us, he loves you so much, and he is the one that Paul was proclaiming, he warned and he taught.

The fact of the matter is, getting back to the warning component just a little bit after I've kind of corrected that with love and recognized that there's got to be balance in it, the stakes are very high when it comes to Christ, the stakes are crazy high, and I fear that even I might not nail this ministry of warning enough.

Without Christ, condemnation is real, it's real. Hell is a real destiny for real people, people that you and I know, people that we eat turkey with at Thanksgiving, people who live in our neighborhoods, and people who we interact with at school and at work and at the gym and all around us, and there is growing in our culture and in our community and in our hearts a brand of nice that lets people around us go to hell, but at least doesn't offend them with the gospel, and I don't know about you, but to my ears, that doesn't sound very nice, you know what I mean?

A brand of nice that won't bring up the issue and will let them remain in condemnation. Okay, that was heavy, but Paul, Paul warned and taught with the goal of seeing each one. I think Paul genuinely had a heart for everybody he met and he wanted to see each person that he knew presented on that final day mature and complete in Jesus Christ.

And now Paul moves on from his suffering and speaks to another side of his ministry. It's been suffering, yes, but not just suffering. Now you expect the good, right? Now you expect the part where he says it hasn't just been suffering, but it's been a delight to serve.