Christ PCA Temecula

In our journey though Colossians, Paul has shown us that to be in Christ is to be filled with the fullness of God. So why don’t we feel more full? In the second half of Colossians, Paul addresses this tension and shows how the reality of the supremacy and sufficiency of Christ is pressed into every aspect of our lives. We are encouraged to establish our Christian lives in remembering where Jesus is currently, reorienting our hearts there, and finally remembering where our lives even now are currently hidden.

In Colossians 2, Paul continues to address false teachings and beliefs. Yet even though issues of Old Testament ceremonial law sound unrelated to our struggles; we too live in a time of spiritual anxiety.. The world and its desires surround us and even solutions found in the church can drive us away from Christ instead of toward him. None of us or our churches are immune from this problem. Paul teaches that we must find our sustenance and strength in the fullness we already have in Christ.

This Sunday Paul shows us what it means to live out Christ-exalting and Christ-filled realities. A challenge to living out of our identities in Christ are the ever-present threats to the supremacy and sufficiency of Jesus that surround us. Paul unpacks these threats and helps us see the chief importance of our in-Christ reality and identity. To be in Christ is to be someone who lives already out of the fullness of Christ, sealed in baptism, and secure in the work of the cross and the hope of the resurrection.

This Sunday we’ll see what it means to live in light of these realities as the people of God and consider what it means to be those who bear faithful witness in our rapidly shifting culture. Paul reminds us of the shape of his ministry which is a pattern for all believers, the heart of the mystery that we proclaim and return to time and time again, and finally the goal for each of us; full maturity that arises out of our inheritance of the riches of the glory of Christ that is ours in the Gospel.

This week, Paul offers the prayer for this Colossians that he’s been praying since he’s heard reports of God’s work in their midst. This prayer contains the heart of what we need as followers of Christ in this world. Like this Colossian congregation, we need the kind of growth in knowledge that doesn’t just lead to learning more about God but the knowledge that leads to living rightly, faithfully, and in a Christ-like manner. We need God’s strength and power that is already ours in the Gospel to accomplish this.

Message from Rev. Robert Recio on

Last Sunday, we looked to a scene in John’s gospel where Jesus appeared in the middle of the storm on Galilee speaking words of comfort to the worried disciples. This week in Revelation 1:9-20, we will go to another moment in John’s when the risen King Jesus revealed himself to John in a powerful and reassuring way. Where Jesus is, who Jesus is, and what Jesus says in this revelation to John should encourage our hearts to trust in him no matter what we’re going through.

In John 6 we read about Jesus showing up as the disciples faced a fierce storm on the Sea of Galilee. The story is familiar, and so is the sense of fear that we often face in difficult times in our lives. This Sunday we will look at this story and see how it's connected to the bigger story in Scripture of God delivering his people, and how it gives us great comfort today.

We conclude our series in the Lord’s Prayer with the final petition. From the greatness of God’s glory, to the mundane, the prayer closes in the depths, the hardest realities of life in this world. Words like “save” and “trial” and “deliver” are words of crisis. They remind us that to pray this prayer means to be thrust into the middle of a cosmic struggle. The final petition reminds us how we live in full dependence upon our Heavenly Father to deliver us and bring about the fullness of his Kingdom.

To pray for forgiveness is perhaps the most foundational prayer of the Christian life. And while forgiveness is such a basic part of our walk, we often have an uncomfortable relationship with it; praying as the forgiven and yet also the unforgiving; as those who have been forgiven and loved by Christ, yet we struggle to forgive. In the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer we’ll see the profoundly humble posture of prayer and how through the wonderful promises of the Gospel we are empowered to be not only forgiven but forgiving.