Whatever it is you had in mind, Jesus, when you just as surely as you did the Apostle Paul,

reached down and grabbed me. In effect, he's saying, you chased me down, and I will spend

every breath I have chasing you down. That is what I want.

One of the things I just love about studying, especially like the prison epistles, especially the books that have a lot of commonalities, I love to think about when you see a lot of

similarities in some of the wording and Colossians and Ephesians, for instance, and then

you see some things in Philippians.

I love to look at what's similar between them, and then I love to look at what's similar between them,

and then I love to look at what's very different between them.

And why is it?

Why is it here?

This is the terminology he would use.

And there's a way he says it, and I memorized it in the ESV,

and I still just prefer it in these two verses over any other translation. So I've got this down

for you. So this is ESV. So I want you to think about Philippians 3, 12 through 14, but I want to set

them beside Colossians 1, 28, and 29. So the very end of Colossians chapter 1,

Him we proclaim. I don't even have to tell you. You know who Him is.

Jesus, 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.

When you're in a task that you're doing to the glory of God, to the best of your understanding,

and it's taking everything you can do, and you get on the other side of it, and you still

know you couldn't have done it.

...