Amen. Amen. Welcome. If you have your Bibles, you're going to open those up to Colossians

Chapter 4. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you, and we would love

for you to take that. And you can actually take that home with you. That'll be our gift to you.

We'd love for you to have access to the scriptures and use them as much as humanly possible.

Today, we're going to continue in this before all things journey where we for the last

12 weeks have been asking and answering the question, God, what does it look like to put you

before all things in our lives? What does it look like to put you before all things in our

relationships, in our jobs, in our marriages as a parent, in our finances, in all stages, in our marriages, as a parent, in our finances,

in all stages of life. God, what does it mean to have you set before all things? And we've been

studying the book of Colossians verse by verse by verse. And this book was written by the

apostle Paul, who at one point was a religious terrorist. and he has radically, he has this radical encounter with God on a road to a town called Damascus, where

he meets Jesus face to face and is forever changed, and he stops persecuting Christians, and he

begins to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, telling people about how good God is, what God has for us and for his

children, and he gets arrested for doing so, and he gets thrown into prison.

And in prison, he pins this letter to a small church in a town called Colossae.

And that is where we pick up in Colossus chapter 4. So let's read it together.

Colossius 4 starting in verse 2. It says, continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it

with Thanksgiving. And at the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the

word to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which

I am in prison, that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak. When you first read those

three verses, if you just took them at face value, they just sound like encouraging verses. They just

sound like a nice little, you know,

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