It is very easy for the boundaries of our own thinking to be very restricted. In a church we can concentrate on our own needs and people who currently attend, making small sorties out into the wider world with little expectation of success. Our vision of God’s power and grace can be such that if just one person in a ten year period comes into relationship with Christ we are thrilled. It is right of course that the whole of heaven is thrilled as each one repents and believes. Paul’s perspective is vastly different, he even considers his own house arrest and upcoming trial as part of God’s plan for a vast global expansion of people who are following Jesus. For this reason, he says, I am a prisoner. He doesn’t even consider himself a Roman prisoner but a prisoner of Christ, placed in that position by Christ for the sake of all non-Jewish people. Paul had revealed to him that he was living at a unique time in history when all the world was enabled to enter into God’s kingdom through Christ Jesus. ‘This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel’ v6 He then carried with him every day this global perspective on his life and responsibility to be part of God’s global movement. Is our spiritual perspective limited by our immediate circumstances?