The Everyday Prayer

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 5:8-14(day five)  The NIV translates verse 11, “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.”  I like that picture and imagery. NOTHING!!  Not acting. Not thinking. Not looking. Not questioning. Not wondering.  When we even consider or dabble in those deeds of darkness, in a sense we “face” toward them.  Our attention moves to them.  Paul’s solution face the opposite direction. Towards God and His light and love. What compels us to do that?  The priority and passion of pleasing Him. Notice all our attention and affection move from those deeds of darkness to pleasing the Lord. We move from nothing to all. All our time. All our thoughts. All our actions. All our questions and concerns. We mentally, emotionally, and spiritually shift to learning about the Lord and His character and nature, so that we might please Him.

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 5:8-14 (day four)

In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis beautifully depicts God’s light. When the narrator steps into the heavenly realm and into the light, he experiences it’s warmth and freedom, but it also makes him feel exposed. This tension of freedom and exposure runs throughout the book, and it is exactly the tension that many of us feel as we wrestle with sin.

When we get things out in the light, confessing and repenting of our sin before God and others, the truth is that we are exposed. We are vulnerable and we feel the tension of taking what was once hidden and putting it in the light. But the good news is that our vulnerability is met with the kindness of Jesus. He meets us where we are, removes our sin and shame, and replaces it with freedom.

Exposing our sin to the light is uncomfortable, the light might hurt our eyes at first. But it is the only path to freedom.

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 5:8-14 (day three)

“It is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret.”

One might read this passage and conclude that it’s giving Pharisee. As in, “God, I thank you that I’m not like this person here because I don’t stoop to the level of acknowledging those shameful things.” The sense of these remarks by Paul is not the policing or surveillance of conversations people have, though, but rather the beauty and elegance of people whom God has made and who bear his image. Paul isn’t saying, “Watch your language,” but instead, “As we necessarily speak of horrific things, we remember with sorrow that with each deed of darkness the glory of a living, breathing human being is abused and disrespected.”

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 5:8-14 (day two) 

for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light  v. 8

The people who walk in darkness
Will see a great light;
Those who live in a dark land,
The light will shine on them. Isaiah 9:2

This passage from Isaiah is one used every year during Advent, so you can imagine how quickly I made the connection to it. We have been neck deep in preparations for the season for quite a while now. The idea of being ‘children of light’ has always resonated with me. Paul has just reminded the readers not to rely on former ways of thinking and acting, but to be transformed by who Christ has called them to be. It is in this knowledge that light is being shone on every thought, word, and deed. We must measure everything by that light. It will be one of the distinguishing characteristics of believers in the world. It’s one of the reasons I love big bright sanctuaries. I want there to be an abundance of light to remind us that we are no longer to cower in shadows, but to live out our faith in the glorious light of Christ.

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 4:17-24 (day seven)

But you did not learn Christ in this way. vs 20

Having a toddler in the house means we are doing lots of learning. One of the things we are learning is how to dress yourself. I say this all as a disclaimer: if you see my son walking around the church with clothes on backwards or inside out, we are not terrible parents, we have allowed him to be proud of the fact that he put on his own clothes, and frankly, we are just happy he has clothes on.

Similarly, we have to learn how to put on the new self. We have to learn how to put on Christ. The goal at first is just to get it on. It may not feel like it fits quite right or may even feel backwards, but that is because Christ is counter cultural. To put Him on should feel different, but if we are faithful to put Him on everyday, the fit will begin to feel seamless.

It begins with a conscious effort, will I put Christ on today?

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 4:17-24(day six).

Don’t forget verse 17 follows Paul’s teaching about the body of Christ (vs. 7-16). Paul is teaching the Ephesians that to live as the body (4:16), they must abandon old ways of thinking. So he is not just saying, “Don’t be greedy like unbelieving Gentiles.” He says don’t be greedy because greed and desire are the enemies of connectedness and commitment to others. Greed and desire pull people apart; they don’t bring them together. Greed and desire make others pawns to be manipulated rather than brothers and sisters in Christ.

So, brother and sister, what ways of thinking may keep you from deeper connections with your church family? Give it a thought.

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 4:17-24(day five). The point Paul wants to make is clear. Don’t walk like the Gentiles. Don’t behave or act like them. Don’t practice impurity or greediness. How did they get there?  How do we get to the point where we would/could behave like that (like the Gentiles)?

The answer is “peppered” throughout this passage. Futility of their mind, vs 17. Darkened in their understanding, vs 18. Learn Christ, vs 20. Heard and been taught in Him, vs 21. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, vs 23. We must be ever cautious and careful of how we think and what enters our minds. Paul points out that our thoughts and minds are actually incubators- for either sin and ungodly behavior or for holiness and purity. As sinfulness begins with corrupted thinking and attitudes toward God, godliness begins with a transformed mind, filled with the righteousness and holiness of Gospel Truth.

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 4:17-24 (day four)

The phrase “ignorance is bliss” hadn’t been coined yet, but Paul is already proving how untrue it is. The Gentiles were living in ignorance, hardening their hearts towards God and searching for satisfaction through lusts of the flesh. Their lives were anything but blissful. Anyone who has ventured down that spiral of sin would say they felt shameful, not satisfied.

Paul is telling us, ignorance isn’t bliss, it’s death. But we, the redeemed of the Lord, aren’t living in ignorance – we have seen Christ and we have heard his teaching. God’s plans for heaven and earth have been revealed to us and we’ve been given all truth through Christ. Therefore, we can no longer claim ignorance. We have seen the light and we can’t unsee it. We have seen the better way.

When our flesh inevitably tries to lure us back into that spiral of sin, when we’re tempted to put the old self back on, we must stand firm knowing that we have seen the fullness of light and witnessed the fullness of love.  After seeing the truth revealed in Jesus, we can’t go back to how we used to be, no matter how hard gravity pulls in that direction. We are accountable to what we know, so stand firm in the new self – it is through life in the Spirit that we find bliss.

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 4:17-24 (day three)

“They, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.”

When nerve sensation ceases in any part of the body, one of the dangers is that wounds will go unnoticed and untreated; what you can’t feel you won’t address. This is true of the human body, and it’s true of one’s emotional and spiritual experience too. When one develops an inner callousness, panic can set in when the realization dawns that the ability to feel love, joy, sadness, hope – even pain – has faded or ceased altogether. In that panic, a person will reach for more and more extreme behaviors, greedy to feel something – anything. The mounting damage to one’s soul from such activity goes unnoticed because, again, the person cannot feel. Jesus Christ can restore feeling to the heart, halting the spiritual gangrene.