Precious Lord, take the hand of this dear reader and guide them gently to the place where you need them to be; in Christ Jesus I pray, amen.
Paul write to the church in Ephesus with these words in the first ten verses of chapter two: 1 It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. 2 You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. 3 We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. 4 Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, 5 he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! 6 Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah. 7 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. 8 Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! 9 We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! 10 No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing. (The Message).
Already I can see a theme for this week; our reponse in faith to God. Yesterday it was John 3 and powerful verses that told of God's love, and today's it is Paul and his reminder to the believers in Ephesus and here, about more of the redemptive, transforming power of Jesus in our lives, and the question remains, What are we doing about it or because of it? What I do love about The Message version of the Bible are some of the ways Peterson describes our actions: "You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience." But then his "He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ." Alive in Christ! I just read, at the insistence of the women in my family, "Heaven is For Real," the short book about the little boy who visited Heaven and shared things after his emergency surgery that a four year-old should not have known. Among the things he learned from his visit was that his Dad's grandfather was the one with whom he stayed during his visit. This man had not been known for his faith but they learned that two days before his death in a car accident, he had attended a revival service held by a neighbor and he had given his life to Jesus. His wife did not know of this event and so fretted for many years about his destiny with God. As soon as this little boy shared about that, the son called his mother and she drove immediately from her home in another city, to hear more about this visit. I enjoyed the book for it just emphasized what I already believed from the first "book" that mentioned Heaven to me (The Bible), but for the images of being alive in Christ that came with it. We can exist or we can come to that fullness of life as offered by Jesus Christ (re-read John 10:10).
Have you come to the fullness and abundance of life through Jesus Christ?
PRAYER: Loving God of life and the fullness of life, may I and this dear reader who is praying this prayer for their own, come to know the joy of being fully alive in Jesus. May our lives be a blessing to others, a beacon of hope and joy especially to those who need it. I pray this in the precious and powerful name of He who made it possible, Jesus my Lord, amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord!
Eradio Valverde
