The Everyday Prayer

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 3:1-13 (day six)

God’s grace is not limited to forgiveness but travels into everyday life. In Christ, grace can bring about real-life transformation from one life to the next. That is Paul’s objective when he describes his life in Christ as a prisoner and servant. He wants the Ephesians to know that God does not play around. The grace of God in Jesus is not a fashion trend to take out on the occasional spin. We don’t move grace around; grace moves us. Paul’s life was a living testimony of what the grace of God can do through him in others.

We are the beneficiaries of the very same grace.

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 3:1-13 (day five)

“…so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.”

I love the way Paul describes God’s wisdom in Ephesians 3:10- uses the word manifold. The only place this Greek word is used. It’s a compound word. The root word is Poikilos- various or varied of all kinds of colors. Paul adds the prefix Polu- very, considerably, much.  So Paul is communicating the wisdom of God is “very various”. It is universally sized. It has  unlimited variations, and subtleties. It is unsearchably intricate.

So the questions come: Does the way we give our trust, dependence, and obedience to God reflect our belief and confidence in His manifold wisdom?  Do I believe that God in His manifold wisdom knows how to live a human life (better than I do)?  Do I ask for (prayer) and act on His manifold wisdom that is available through the mystery of the gospel (a relationship with Gods through Christ Jesus)?

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 3:1-13 (day four)

“…so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.”

The church is essential. I realize I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but the church is absolutely essential in the work of God. It is essential because God decided it was so. From the very beginning, the church was part of God’s plan. The church is the way in which followers of Jesus gather for worship and fellowship, it is the way in which believers serve the needs of their community, and it is the way by which the city comes to know Jesus.

But Paul tells us here that the church isn’t only part of God’s plan for the visible world. The church’s testimony reaches into the cosmos. When the church carries out its mission, it reverberates from the neighborhood all the way into the heavenly places.

The church certainly has its quirks. She has no shortage of bumps and bruises, and has hurt some with scrapes and serious wounds. Imperfect though she is, the church is still God’s plan for all creatures in heaven and on earth to know that Jesus is Lord. In Christ, what would otherwise be a rag-tag group of misfits becomes the unified reflection of God’s mercy and love. Will you stick with God’s church, and shout her testimony into highest heaven?

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 3:1-13 (day three)

“…in accordance with the eternal purpose which he carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord…”

Paul came along too late to have been one of Jesus’s disciples during the three years of ministry on earth. Nonetheless Jesus apprenticed Paul during the nearly twenty years between the Damascus  Road incident and the beginning of his writing and teaching. There was none more appropriate than Paul, then, to drop this bombshell revelation on the Ephesians: God’s intent all along was not a limited mission to save a fragment of the human race, but rather an expansive whosoever-will-may-come doors-thrown-open invitation to all who would come to him for healing. It was not just a sect thing,  not just a Judaism thing, but a cosmos thing. The church’s work will involve inviting all the world to Christ.

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 3:1-13 (day two) 

For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles – vs. 1

Paul experienced captivity in both a literal and figurative sense. He was held in chains for his bold preaching and unwavering message of the gospel, and Jesus had captured his heart to this purpose. Because of Jesus, Paul was turned around in a manner that was truly jarring to those who knew him, or knew of him before the Damascus Road encounter. His encounter with Jesus was so transformative he was willing to change everything to focus on the Savior. How captured and captivated by Jesus are we? What does radical transformation look like in the church? Paul clearly understood his assignment to make the message of the cross available to everyone. If Paul was willing to surrender everything; if he was willing to endure incarceration; if he was willing to re-think how to treat and love others, what are we being called to do?

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 2:19-22 (day seven)

 In whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord. vs 21

You also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood. 1 Peter 2:5

I teased this in the Monday vlog this week, but we are currently with our high school students at our annual Beach Retreat. We were teaching them the importance of a baptist distinctive known as “Priesthood of the Believer.” This is the belief that each person has direct access to God due to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and through the work of Jesus on the cross. How cool is it that we are both the temple and the priests? Not only can we enter into the presence of the Lord as the priests, but the presence of the Lord dwells within us as the temple.

If this is true, do we still need the church? The verbiage of this passage constitutes that we are being fitted together to grow into the temple. Yes, we do have access to God without others, but we fit together like a puzzle. Each of us are a different shaped piece, but as the pieces come together, the bigger image becomes more clear. Together we make a more holy temple.

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 2:19-22 (day six)

⁴⁴ Even as Peter was saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who were listening to the message. ⁴⁵ The Jewish believers^[e]who came with Peter were amazed that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles, too. ⁴⁶ For they heard them speaking in other tongues^[f] and praising God. Acts 10:44-46

There was a great concern among Christians in Ephesus that they weren’t family but instead second-class citizens in God’s Kingdom. Paul’s letter had to have been a relief, “You aren’t strangers anymore; you are first-class citizens with all the rights and privileges.” What the law had kept separate, Jesus brought together. Jews and Gentiles together had become God’s dwelling place in the world, a new humanity in Christ. What a miracle?! What a responsibility?!

And come to find out, that had been God’s plan all along.

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 2:19-22(day five)  Paul uses three pictures or metaphors in just 3 verses to drive home his point of belonging for these gentile believers- Citizenship, Family, and Stones. Was a new thought to them and also to the Jewish believers, that they all now belonged in community, together. Paul’s words ring true for us today, challenging the western cultural thought of separation and individualization, “I don’t need to join a church or even attend a church to be a strong and growing christian”.  Paul emphatically says no to this line of thinking. Christianity is a “team sport”. Trust, patience, kindness, steadfastness, and love are all needed and required to function as fellow citizens, family, and stones being built together. When we receive and give these things with (Paul’s word) others in local church community, people sense and see God at work. It is one of the sermons that we get to preach. I wonder how clear and how bold this sermon is seen and heard from those looking at and listening to our church.

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 2:19-22 (day four)

I was recently back on Baylor’s campus and walked past one of the new buildings that had popped up since my last visit. In the bricks on the facade of the building, there were peoples names on them, the names of folks who had donated in order for that new space to be built.

When Paul says that we are now part of the household of God, he means that not only our names but our entire lives serve as bricks in the temple, built for the glory and worship of God. But we don’t get a brick in this building by donating or earning it, we’re part of this building because of what Jesus did on the cross.

The work of the cross is a work of scandalous unity, grafting all the people of the world into the family of God. We as Gentiles aren’t included in this building as an annex or a mother-in-law suite, an after thought or an add-on. We’re included in the very body of Christ, the ever-growing temple of worship to the God of all the earth. Praise God, the opportunity to be apart of this work is open to everyone, and the temple is still being built.