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¹ Howdy, boys!

This letter is written by Paul, chosen by God to ride for his outfit, and our pard, Timothy. ² To all the cowboys riding for the Lord around Colossae, we pray your grass is green, your cattle are fat, and that all the great things of God surround you.

A Word of Thanks and Prayer

³ Y'all are always in our thoughts and prayers. Y'all give us reason upon reason to be thankful. ⁴ We've heard about your faith and love for all of God's herd. ⁵ This faith and love is being passed on through you from the hope y'all have in God. Y'all know heaven's gates will be opened to y'all when you come riding in. This is the good news y'all heard us preach about.

⁶ But y'all aren't keeping the good news secret—and you shouldn't! It's changing lives and hearts all across the world every single day. It did the same for y'all when you first heard about God's amazing grace. ⁷ Y'all heard the message from the cowboy, Epaphras, who went out for Christ in search of strays. He found y'all and you listened. ⁸ He came back and told me of the great love and purpose that had been awakened in y'all.

⁹ This is the reason we always pray for y'all. We never stop praying for y'all. We ask that God fill your hearts with knowledge, your life with wisdom, and your heads with understanding. ¹⁰ Only through these will you find your purpose and worth. The Lord himself will be pleased when you do good works, grow in the knowledge of him, ¹¹ and by becoming strong through his mighty power resulting in great endurance and plenty of patience. ¹² You will also please the Lord by being thankful for being able to ride for his outfit, to share in the inheritance of his glorious kingdom that is a ranch of a thousand hills. You are his cowboys. You are his beloved children. ¹³ For he has rescued us from a life of worthlessness and deemed us worthy and honorable. He did this through his Son. ¹⁴ It is through him we have found purpose for life and forgiveness for sin.

God's Son Is Now the Boss

¹⁵ Jesus is the visible image of our invisible God. Jesus is the firstborn, the heir, of all creation. ¹⁶ All things were created through him. The things of heaven and earth; the visible and invisible; no one takes a step or utters a command that wasn't first made through Him. ¹⁷ We were made with his hand and still he holds all things together. ¹⁸ And he is the boss over our outfit, which others know as the church. He is the beginning, and the first to rise from the dead. He has conquered everything—even death. ¹⁹ God was glad to hand the reins to his son and ride with him and in him. ²⁰ It was God's plan all along to gather the strays back home through his Son. He brought us all home, not through hooves and horses, but through the blood that ran down the cross. Peace has been returned to all who wish to receive it.

²¹ There was a time we were all enemies of God through the evil things we did. ²² But now, God has brought you home through the only cowboy who could change our hearts. Jesus's death now presents us pure and holy, not by the things we do, but by the blood he shed. We are free from blemish and wart. But we are also free from accusation and condemnation—²³ if you stay tied on to faith, both feet in the stirrups of hope that have been delivered through the good news. This is the story of Jesus you've heard me tell around campfires and in the midst of congregations. I, Paul, am a servant to his story and slave to his name.

Paul's Long, Hard Ride

²⁴ I do not look at my suffering as part of something terrible, but as something wonderful. Jesus suffered to bring y'all back and now I get to experience that as well. ²⁵ God has given me the job and the responsibility of giving y'all the truth—the entire truth that has been hidden. ²⁶ This truth had been kept hidden since the beginning, but now it has been revealed to cowboys and cowgirls who ride for the brand. ²⁷ No longer are God's riches reserved for those who are well-papered. These wonderful riches are now available to those who are grade (unregistered, thought worthless, without pedigree). Here is the secret in black and white, Christ lives in you. And you get to share in his glory.

²⁸ So we spread the good news. We warn people about the box canyon of sin and self-dependence as well as teach with wisdom that can only come from God. We want to present all people perfect before God. The only way this happens is through Christ. ²⁹ That's why I've ridden ten thousand miles and worked so hard. I did it by depending on Christ's mighty strength that dwells within me.