Christchurch Miami opens a brand-new series — GREATER THAN, a study through Colossians — with guest teacher Jay Reynardus, who led Bible Study Fellowship in Miami for over 20 years. He begins exactly where Paul begins: by taking our eyes off the little man or woman in the mirror and fixing them on Christ. Jay is refreshingly honest about himself — the longer he walks with the Lord, the more he sees his own faithlessness and misplaced hopes: 'Apart from God reaching in and pulling me out, I would be utterly lost.' From verses 3–8, Paul names the three marks of everyone God has claimed — faith, hope, and love — and every one of them is a gift. 'If we have faith, it's because of God. If we have love, it's because of God. If we have a living hope, it's because of God.' Then in verses 9–14 Paul prays, packing the whole rescue into a handful of past-tense verbs: God has qualified you, delivered you from the domain of darkness, transferred you into the kingdom of His Son, redeemed you, and forgiven you. When we finally see all He has done, the little loves and little hopes of this world are revealed for what they are. As Jay put it: 'He reached into the darkness where you lived and pulled you out when you were His enemy.' It's Him. It's always Him. It will always be Him.
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We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth.
And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
