ephesians

I read the book of Ephesians tonight at guess where? Starbucks. Mmm that grande 2 pump no water chai was delicious... oh yea back to the blog. I'm just going to throw up some notes I have here and let you sort through them how you see fit. Oh, and for you who care tonight I am reading out of the New Living Translation.

Ephesians 1:3-4 speaks plainly of God's soverignty in our lives. If you skip ahead to 1:13 you see it says "And now you have heard the truth, and the Good News that God saves you. And when you believe in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago." A proof of receiving adoption by God through His son Jesus is by recieving the Holy Spirit in our lives. I also find it interesting that the three; Father, Son and Holy Spirit show up here in form of the trinity, being together yet completely seperate. But you notice you do not have one without the other.

One of my favorite verses in the bible that I have read thus far is found in Ephesians 3:12; "Because of Christ and our faith in Him, we can now come fearlessly into God's presence assured of His glad welcome." I don't know why I love it so much. It's just great to know that I can through reconciliation by Christ with the power of the Holy Spirit meet with God and experiance a taste of His presence. It astonishes and bewilders me to think of this privledge. A Kevin Prosch song says it best. "A father who loves me, a Son who forgives me, a Spirit who guides me, that's who You are." Because of the trinity and the power of God in each part of that we can come to know Him more, and that is one of the great mysteries of the trinity revealed to me.

Ephesians 4:14-16a,17-27 talks about growing in maturity; to be no longer like a child who is wishy-washy and believes lies as truthes, but rather to be mature and knowledgable as we have recieved the fullness of God through Jesus.

"Then we will no longer be like children, forever changing our minds about what we believe someone has told us something different or because someone has cleverly lied to us and made the lie sound like truth. Instead, we will hold to the truth in love, becoming more and more in every way like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. Under his direction the whole body is fitted together prefectly...."

"With the Lord's authority let me say this: Live no longer as the ungodly do, for they are hopelessly confused. Their closed minds are full of darknessl they are far away from the life of God because they have shut their minds and hardened their hearts against Him. They dont care anymore about right and wrong, and they have given themselves over to immoral ways. Their lives are filled with all kinds of impurity and greed. But this isn't what you were taught when you learned about Christ. Since you have heard all about him and have learned the truth that is in Jesus, throw off your old evil nature and your former way of life, which is rotten through and throu, full of lust and deception. Instead, there must be a spiritual renewal of your thoughts and attitudes. You must display a new nature becausee you are a new person, created in God's likeness--righteous, holy and true. So put away falsehood and "tell your neighbor the truth" because we belong to eachother. And "don't sin by letting anger gain control over you." Dont let the sun go down while you are still angry..."

It's a lot to read, right? And there sure is a lot of meat in there. But these verses really struck me tonight. There is a point when we meet Jesus and are like children being very immature in our walk with God. But there comes a time when we must "throw off our evil nature" and choose what is God and we can do this through the saving grace of Jesus dying on that cross and by the Power of the Holy Spirit. We are growing in maturity through Christ so we must start making those concious decisions to choose what is good and what is right, and that is God and what He commands for our lives. We also must learn what it is to be transparent with one another--in love. To be truthful and not get angry because of it. These are some things that a lot of christians miss, myself included. There comes a point when the grace card doesn't seem so easy to play. Yes, we will always need grace but we must start acting like mature christians because God does call us to be "not like children" or "living like the ungodly do" but to step it up a notch. Like Paul is doing in this letter--holding the church of Ephuses accountable, we as mature christians must model this to eachother. And what a good model Paul provides for us.

Lastly, a verse that stuck out to me is Ephesians 6:23, "May God give you peace, dear brothers and sisters, and love with Faith, from God the father and the Lord Jesus Christ."

May not seem like a big deal, right? But wait... back it up. Love with faith? Love with faith from God and Jesus? Love requires faith? God grants us love, but it goes hand in hand with faith? And faith is interchangable with trust. So swap those two out... "and love with trust, from our God the father and the Lord Jesus Christ." We are to have trust/faith with out love. It is a command. Love with faith. It takes faith to love. It takes trust to love. And we must do it. It just blew me away for some reason.

and with that... I go to bed.

: )