7/10 - Ephesians 6

Ephesians 6
I think I might read verse 1 to our baby tonite: "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. "Honor your father and mother"—which is the first commandment with a promise— "that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth." I know the baby's still in the womb but you can never start too early. I need to establish some things now so baby won't ever get it confused ;-). Meanwhile, I guess I'll focus on verse 4 and try to do my part now so that as they grow I can build them up in the word of God and not provoke them to anger.

Paul explains in this chapter how the employee-employer relationship for a believer should be. Now it's probably been this way for a while, but today's views of authority & management are pretty low. We see it in Dilbert cartoons, shows like The Office or Office Space and of course we experience it day to day. I don't doubt that people have legitimate beef with their managers but I would venture to guess that our relationship with them is, in general, sub-par to God's standard for it. As you read this you may be thinking of your own manager - maybe you're not convinced of their competency, maybe they actually don't have a clue, maybe they micromanage, maybe they have no people skills, maybe you feel you should be in their position...whatever it might be - the question before us is, as we read verses 5-8, can you serve a person like this as you would serve the Lord?

"Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free."

I don't pretend it's easy, but it is what we're called to do. God is always raising the standard isn't He? Well the cool part about this is that it comes with a promise: that the good you do to your employer/ manager, God will reward because the good you impart on them is as if you're imparting it on the Lord.

7/8 - Ephesians 5, Part 2

Ephesians 5
Continuing on from yesterday, Paul gives the command that we be imitators of God and that we walk in love. All the other things we strive to do as Christians - study the Bible, show compassion to the poor, share the gospel, pray faithfully, serve the community, etc - all will flow out of love; both for God and for others. He presents us also with the other side:

"But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a man is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God."

Just another evidence to the fact that this walk with Christ is a black and white thing. It's not fuzzy nor does it have 'gray areas' as the world would have us believe. Walk with God, follow Him completely, love Him with your whole heart and enjoy the benefits of His salvation OR follow the world & it's greed, lusts & pleasures and forfeit your place in heaven. I'm not trying to simplify Christianity, only the results. There's not many paths as some believe, there's really only two - choose today which way you will go (Deuteronomy 30:19-20, Matthew 6:24, Matthew 7:13-14, John 14:6).

Paul also relays that if we are to walk in love and in wisdom that we should submit to one another in the fear of God (or in other words - cuz He said so). Thus begins the famous diatribe on marriage - that wives should submit to their husbands and husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the church (v. 22-33). As I read this again, I'm sorry but I'm pretty sure you ladies are getting off easy yet again (see Genesis 3). Here, God calls women to submit to their husbands as unto the Lord and maybe that's kinda hard. He establishes a foundational principle in marriage which, if studied more carefully, really starts to work out for you ladies in the end. So what are men called to do? Be to our wives what Christ was to the church. Are you serious? Need I remind you what Christ did and is still doing for the church?! Come on man...OK, got that off my chest.

But seriously, for me this was a great passage of scripture to read over the past couple of days, especially with Kendra being pregnant. We're called to love our wives and, based on Jesus' example, pray for them, sanctify them with the Word, nourish & cherish them. Wives (can I say this?...yea, of course I can) submit to your husbands as he is the head of the household, regardless of income, education or spiritual maturity. Verse 33 is of particular significance: "and let the wife see that she respects her husband." God wisely commands us to do that which by nature we're drawn to anyway: women deeply desire love and men equally desire respect. I couldn't begin to do this topic justice in a blog so I'll wrap it up here. These things that we're called to do, we're also able to accomplish them no matter how hard it sounds. We're able because it's God's desire that it happen and somehow I don't think God engages in wishful thinking.

7/7 - Ephesians 5

This has been one of those mornings where it's tough to get through a prayer and thru reading the word. My old nemesis Sleepiness has tried to get the best of me again but I'm battling through. I'm convinced that my daily battles with getting to sleep on time, the snooze button, and closing my eyes during prayer are all spiritual warfare. Sounds silly, and I was even staring to joke when I typed that last sentence, but it's gotta be real. Sleepiness has kept me from the Word and I'm sure the enemy uses it because we don't suspect him of a thing. So, a cup of hot tea...and here we go

I think verse 1 is a good memory verse as each day this should be our goal:

"Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."

All of what we attain to become as believers is summed up in this verse and so much fruit will flow out of it. The verse requires that we first know who God is before we set out to imitate Him. Actors who depict real life characters spend countless hours studying that person - their mannerisms, speech, tendencies, attire & habits. If the person is still alive they'll even spend time talking to the person directly so they can get the full picture of who this person is as they set out to imitate them. The best example I can think of is Jamie Foxx in Ray. I was able to enjoy that movie as if it were actually Ray Charles I was watching because nothing Foxx did resembled himself - everything looked, sounded and felt like Ray Charles. I'm sure it's the goal of every such actor, that when viewers see them on film, that they see the character and not the actor.

And so it is with us. We study God's word to get to know Him and there's an infinite wealth of knowledge there for us. We should want our actions, mannerisms, & thoughts to so model God that people see Him, not us. God's word to me these last few days through these passages of scripture has been "more of Him, less of me."

God, help me to imitate You today. I want to be pleasing to You just as Jesus was. I want the sacrifice of my life to be a sweet smelling aroma to You, that you're glorified in all I do.

7/6 - Ephesians 4, Part 3

God invites us, at our point of need - when we realize that we can no longer live of our own sufficiency but require His grace for salvation - to come to Him as we are (see 1 Corinthians 1:26). We were unwise, resistant to God, blind, spiritually dead. An old southern baptist preacher might say we were unrepentant, degenerate sinners!! God calls us in this condition, just as we are, but has no intention whatsoever that we stay as we are.

"You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; ²⁴and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness" (v. 22-23, cf. 2 Cor 5:17).

When God enters our lives He has every intention on completely changing us because before we accepted Him, we were nothing like Him. So it should even be our desire and prayer that God continue to change us because, in light of His holiness, anything that's not like Him, He won't even recognize (Matt 7:21-23). So for us who believe, we shouldn't say things like "Well, that's just the way I am," "I'll always be that way so get used to it," or "I'm just being real." That last one is probably the best. We use that to suggest that what we feel (about out language, our dress, our fleshly desires) is a more legitimate reality than what God's word says....that's probably a topic for another blog. God wants to change you. Anything in you that suggests otherwise, anything that wants you to hold on to things that are not like God is a lie from the enemy.

So the end of this chapter (v. 17-32) is all about embracing this newness that can be found in God. It's so easy to conform to the world. They're the majority and there's comfort when you're in line with the majority. There's comfort nowadays in believing that sex [or even living together] before marriage is not only normal but encouraged; that drunkenness, girl-watching, smoking, excessive TV watching, pornography, foul language....comfort in believing that all these things are OK. First of all, because it satisfies the flesh but secondly because there are no social consequences for it. In fact, I may lose a few subscribers to this blog. But God has called us out - "no longer to walk as the Gentiles walk" and that we "put off [our] old [selves], which [are] being corrupted by [their] deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of [our] minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness" (v. 17, 22-24; pluralization mine).

My pastor mentioned yesterday that we can't be like the world and be like God because the two sides are in conflict, in fact they're diametrically opposed. So it's my goal, my prayer that each day I become less and less like the world which will in turn mean I'm becoming more and more like Him. Becoming less like the world means being different, but that's OK. I think God wants us to stand out.

6/27 - Ephesians 1

(I may have posted this vid before, but it's worth watching again if I have :-)...)

"For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and
blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves" (v. 4-6)

Before God created all this, this expansive universe which, even after seeing this video, is difficult to comprehend, the verse says that God chose us. Isn't that crazy to think about? Watching that video I couldn't help but to consider my relative size and significance in that whole system of planets & galaxies. But it was His pleasure to hand pick me before this magnificent creation as evidence for His love for me. Even as I write this I still find it hard to internalize.

Paul lays out for us in this chapter an outline for our salvation: first that we were predestined for salvation (v. 5), redeemed through Christ's shed blood (v.7), sealed with the Holy Spirit upon belief (v. 13) and would be called to heaven at an appointed time (v 10-11, 14). Now I don't find it necessary or even desireable this morning to break down the doctrine of predestination. It's a complex conversation that's surely worth studying and learning about because clearly it's in the Bible and we have to do something with it. However, both sides of that argument can agree to the fact that, if God in fact has already chosen those who will be saved, none of us can really know who that group is and, as such, it would be a grevious fault to base our response to the gospel on a guess as to whether or not our name is on that list.

The final part of this chapter I got a little more from The Message translation. It's just really cool how God's plan came together, how He blessed His Son after allowing Him to endure the cross and entwined His love for us and His Son into one master plan for salvation:

"All this energy issues from Christ: God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven, in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever. He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ's body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence." (v. 20-23)