Ephesians 1:15-23

Monday, September 30, 2013               Ephesians 1:15-23

This passage is one of the richest, most glorious passages of scripture ever written.  I hope and pray three blessings for you as you take the time to meditate on this passage. First, if there is even the slightest doubt in your mind about how God feels about you, carefully plumb the depths of verse 18: “I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called—his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance.” In the previous passage Paul discussed your inheritance from God. Here Paul proclaims that you are God’s rich and glorious inheritance! Go ahead and get your tissue box, and then I’ll point you to the other two blessings I pray for you.

This passage points to the surpassing abundance of our new life in Christ. I am reminded of the story of Mr. Yates. In the 1930’s, during the Great Depression, Mr. Yates owned some land in Texas. However, because of the depression he was very poor – living in poverty and struggling just to feed his family. He was about to lose his land because he was unable to pay the taxes on it. Then an oil company approached him and said they believed there might be oil under his land. The oil company offered Mr. Yates a contract to allow them to drill for oil. He signed the contract and in a short time the company struck the biggest oil deposit discovered up until that time in North America. Overnight Mr. Yates became a billionaire. Or did he? The oil was there all the time; Mr. Yates just didn’t know it was there. Like Mr. Yates, many Christians just do not understand what God has done for them, and thus they live in spiritual poverty. Now take your plumb line, and explore the entire passage and allow God to open your mind to His grand and glorious hope in Christ for you, His rich and glorious inheritance.

The third blessing will be your prayers for yourself, your friends and family. Take the time to contemplate exactly what Paul is praying for his friends in Ephesus. Make a list of each prayer subject and then shape these petitions into your own personal prayer. I dare say you will be much closer to living the life in Christ, to living as God’s own rich and glorious inheritance, if you allow these petitions to shape your prayer life.

Sē’lah

 <><  <><  <><  <><

(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  In addition to this BLOG they are distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Ephesians 1:11-14

Friday, September 27, 2013                 Ephesians 1:11-14

As Paul affirmed God’s nature to make everything work out according to his plan (v.11), he drew his inspiration from the Exodus. The Israelites had been held in captivity and slavery in Egypt. As they struggled just to exist they remembered that God had promised their forefather, Abraham, the land of Canaan. They cried out to God for deliverance and to receive their promised inheritance. God heard their cries and sent Moses to lead them to the Promised Land. God’s presence was with the Israelites as they journeyed, experienced as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Against this backdrop, Paul affirms to the Gentiles in Ephesus that they are now God’s people through their faith in Christ Jesus. God has purchased them out of slavery to sin and death and has given them an inheritance. The Holy Spirit, God’s presence with them, is their guarantee that one day they will, in fact, receive their inheritance. Some people think that their inheritance is a heavenly home when they die, but this was never in Paul’s mind. Paul teaches us that our inheritance is the new world totally redeemed by God. God’s promise is that all of his children will receive this inheritance. The spirits of those who die before God completes His task of fully establishing His Kingdom on earth will be reunited with their resurrected bodies to inhabit Gods’ new Creation.

Paul says that God “did this so we would praise and glorify him” (Ephesians 1:14). God does so much in our lives and every day is indeed a day of Thanksgiving for the Christian. However, all of those other temporal blessings pale in comparison to Paul’s affirmations in today’s passage: we are united with Christ; we have received an inheritance from God; he makes everything work out according to his plan; God saves you; when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit; he has purchased us to be his own people.

Heavenly Father, how do I praise and glorify you? Let me count the ways . . .

Sē’lah

<><  <><  <><  <><

(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  In addition to this BLOG they are distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Ephesians 1:4-10

Thursday, September 26, 2013            Ephesians 1:4-10

Paul uses the phrase, in Christ more than fifty times in his letters. For Paul, to be in Christ, means that what is true for Jesus is true for us, the People of Christ. Jesus won a decisive victory over sin and death. Because we are in Christ, we too have won that victory. Paul writes, “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes” (Ephesians 1:4). Ponder that thought for a while. In Christ, you are holy and without fault in God’s eyes. How often do you meditate on this truth?

As I read today’s passage, I get a sense that writing this letter was an act of worship for Paul. Worship is the core of the Christian life. A fully-devoted follower of Jesus cannot stop telling, and retelling, with joy and wonder, the amazing story of what God has done in Christ Jesus, the Messiah. Paul relished the truth of what God has done for us in Christ, and was so enmeshed in his new life in Christ, he described his existence as, “For in Christ we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

Garrison Keillor, the well-known writer and entertainer from A Prairie Home Companion and News from Lake Wobegon tells an autobiographical story about his extended family gathered for a Thanksgiving feast. He recalls the “hostess make the mistake of calling on Uncle John to pray. Everybody in the family knew that Uncle John couldn't pray without talking about the cross and crying. And if there is one thing that makes people nervous, it's listening to a grown man cry. Sure enough, Uncle John prayed, talked about the cross, and cried. Meanwhile, the rest of us shifted nervously from one foot to the other and longed for the prayer to end. All of us knew that Jesus died on the cross for us, but Uncle John had never gotten over it."

Like Uncle John, the Apostle Paul never got over the wonder that “God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes” Have you gotten over it?"

Sē’lah

<><  <><  <><  <><

(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  In addition to this BLOG they are distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Ephesians 1:1-3

Wednesday, September 25, 2013         Ephesians 1:1-3

The Letter to the Ephesians has been rightly called the Queen of the Epistles. With flowing prose, Paul worships and glorifies Jesus. He presents the core doctrines of what it means to be a Christian, and what it means for Christians to come together as the church. This letter is some of Paul’s last correspondence, and was written while Paul was a prisoner in Rome. (The prison letters are: Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians and Philemon.)

The letter is deep theologically, and it will seem overwhelming at times. To help us grasp the wonder of Paul’s teaching about God in Ephesians, I have divided the six chapters into twenty-one meditations.

The opening lines are fairly typical of Paul’s correspondence by stating by whom the letter is written and to whom it is addressed, and then pronouncing a blessing on the people. From there Paul immediately jumps into the deep end of the pool with a brief summary statement of our right standing with God: “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ” (Ephesians 1:3). In the next passage he elaborates on the wonder of our being in Christ.

This is a good place to pause and ask yourself how your life reflects the truth Paul just affirmed. Do you truly have a sense that God has blessed you with EVERY spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms? If so, how does this truth shape your life and your interactions with other people each day? If not, then focus only on the last words in that statement: because we are united with Christ. Our blessings from God are a gift of His amazing grace. We are not blessed because we’re smarter and work harder than others. We’re blessed because God has united us with Christ through grace, by faith in our resurrected Lord. Reach out and lay hold of that for which you were laid hold of by Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:12), and allow Paul’s letter to the Ephesians to baptize you in every spiritual blessing God has prepared for you.

Sē’lah

<><  <><  <><  <><

(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  In addition to this BLOG they are distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Galatians 6:11-18

Tuesday, September 24, 2012    Galatians 6:11-18

In this closing passage, Paul takes the letter from his scribe, who had been writing the letter as Paul dictated it, and he adds his own postscript. Paul’s passion for his friends in the Galatian churches is still clearly evident, and I suspect they were warmed with Paul’s affection for them as they saw Paul’s own handwriting at the end of the letter.

Paul makes one final appeal for his friends to not get caught up in the rule keeping ways of the Judaizers. For Paul, it doesn’t matter how well we are doing in rule keeping. “What counts is whether we have been transformed into a new creation” (Galatians 6:15b). Those who have thus been set apart as the new people of God will carry the scars of faith not circumcision. Paul’s closing words are very reminiscent of his words in Romans 8 and Philippians 3 where he teaches us that “together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering” (Romans 8:17b Emphasis mine) and “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10 NRSV Emphasis mine).

Paul’s carried the scars of the persecution he suffered for the cause of Christ. He also carried scars from his daily affirming in his own life not his will, but God’s will be done. So it is for all the fully devoted followers of Jesus seeking the life in Christ as their way of life.

“May God’s peace and mercy be upon all who live by this principle; they are the new people of God” (6:16).

Sē’lah

<><  <><  <><  <><

(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  In addition to this BLOG they are distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.