I have become the servant of the gospel by the commission God gave me," Paul wrote,

to present to you the word of God in its fullness, the mystery, actually, that has been kept hidden

for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord's people. To them, God has chosen to make

known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you.

Friends, welcome back to the Wild at Heart podcast here in the week of February 21st,

Alan and John in the studio here this week. Picking up on, in many ways, what we've been

riffing on here in the early part of the year, the conversation about our need for oil, our need

for strength, our need for resilience for the presence of God in us, cultivating that,

and then the particular focus on the Holy Spirit in our lives and allowing him a richer role,

needing the help of the Holy Spirit to tap into the things of God and the things that he

has for us. And so this week, we're going to come at this from another angle, and I have been

fascinated with that passage in Colossians that I just read. The Paul takes the entire story of God

and his intention to rescue humanity, to restore the human race. Like here it is, this is the

Old Testament, the New Testament, the plan, you know, from Eden to the return of Christ. Here it

is, folks, this, I'm going to sum it up in three words, says Paul. I'm just, I'm blown away by that.

The three words are Christ in you, which is of course, you know, another way of expressing

the presence of God in you, the oil in you, that the, this mystery, this plan, this

card that God had up his sleeve. I love it. It's that it's been hidden. It was cloak. They didn't

know this was the next move. It is so stunning. So let me read for us a little bit more of Colossians

in the NIV, and then I want to read a passage out of the NLT. But let me back up to what Paul was

writing in Colossians chapter one. He says, once you were alienated from God and were enemies

in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical

...