“overflowing with thankfulness” Colossians 2:7

This week’s newsletter is late. I have a good excuse. My daughter got married last week. Now, some of you are thinking, “I thought she got married two years ago”. In one sense yes, in another no. We had a big spectacular wonderful ceremony and banquet two years ago that was just like a wedding. But because of some technical complications, they were not able to complete the legal part of the process.

They had planned to go through with the legal ceremony last year, but you know what happened (lockdown!). Instead, on the same date as the ceremony two years ago, they went through the legal ceremony in the beautiful city of Bath. The picture you see is the celebration meal afterwards which we all enjoyed – for a very long time!

It reminded me that even in the midst of trials (health issues, uncertainty regarding Covid-19 and many other things) it’s important to take the time to celebrate whenever you can. When Paul wrote to the church in Colossae he had a vision for them that they would be “overflowing with thankfulness”.

That thankfulness had nothing to do with circumstances. After all, Paul was writing about overflowing with thankfulness whilst in prison.

Today’s newsletter will need to be a little shorter because of how much time the wedding took out last week, and also the fact that I’m off to Estonia on Thursday for the conference mentioned below.

In the meantime, I hope you find reasons to celebrate. 

Let’s review what has gone up on the site and my YouTube channel recently……

“Continue in him” | Quiet Time Coaching Episode 298 | Colossians 2v6
“Jesus and the Law in Matthew” | Class 1 | Chris Birtles
“Hollow or Filled?” | Colossians 2:8-12
“Joy in the mourning“: episode 15
QTC Episode 299 | “Fullness and Growth” | Col 2:9-10
“Jesus and the law in Matthew” | Class 2 | Chris Birtles
“Jesus and the law in Matthew” | Class 3 | Chris Birtles
“God made you alive” | Col 2vv13-15 | Malcolm Cox
“A new thing” Episode 12 | The need to re-gel | Post-COVID church

The near future 

Working on plans (together with Andy Boakye and Douglas Jacoby) for a UK & Ireland teaching programme based on the Athens Institute of Ministry. We hope to launch in January 2022.
Continuing work on a lesson on Colossians 2 for the Tallinn conference in August – flights and hotel are now booked in faith! 
Please come to the conference if you – at least virtually if not in person.

God bless, Malcolm