1 Therefore I, the prisoner in the Lord, exhort you to walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 being diligent to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Ephesians 4:1-3 (LSB)
Our Pastor is preaching through Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians. I am really enjoying it. Today, his sermon focused on the fact that Paul wrote this Epistle along with his Epistle to the Colossians from prison in Rome. When I wrote the manuscript for my book Complete in Christ back in 2021, I was amazed at how often I ran into passages in Colossians that my source material referenced back to Ephesians.
It also became clear that the two Epistles were delivered by the same person from the Apostle Paul about the same time to the church at Colossae and the church at Ephesus. In any case, in today’s sermon our Pastor showed us how Paul considered all of his suffering such as his time in prison, his persecutions for the sake of the gospel, etc. all had a purpose according to the will of God. Because of that we should look at our own lives and what we are dealing with the same way.