The Everyday Prayer

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.

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 2:19-22 (day two) So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, vs. 19

Unworthiness may be one of the toughest hurdles to overcome when considering trusting Jesus. When we come to the place of examining our lives before the majesty of Jesus, who are we that he would consider us fellow citizens? What do we bring? How are we made worthy? Only through the cross, only through Jesus’s sacrifice is any of this possible. We must reconcile that we are not worthy, and any impostor syndrome we may experience is justified, until we understand God’s intent to make us co-heirs with Christ. It is a feeling that I wish would go away the longer I walk with the Lord, but it is a truth I must struggle with every day. I am unworthy, but he is faithful. Don’t let your sense of self-unworth determine your value in the Lord.

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 2:8-10 (day seven)

and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. Ephesians 2:3

I have two boys under the age of 4 in the house. They do not know that they are children of wrath (nor do their mother or I believe they are bad kids), but the trail of destruction that follows them would say differently. The tendency of the flesh is to lash out when the world around us does not operate as we expected it to. This leads to kicking, screaming, hitting, etc. In the argument of nature vs nurture, this clearly an instance of nature, for I do not fall on the floor crying when I am told I can’t have a second popsicle from the freezer. I have learned how to control my natural desires.

Sin is the perversion of natural desire. God creates in us natural desires that are intended for good works (vs 10), but the flesh twists those things in such a way to cause us push back/lash out against God.  It is not just toddlers and babies that lash out, we all have this propensity to appease the flesh. But God (vs 4) gives us the ability to overcome.