DB Eph 5 w/ comments

Scripture selections are taken from the Rock Church Daily Bread Reading schedule for each month. “Lena’s Journalin’” are Lena’s comments on the specific passages from her Daily Journal.

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Ephesians 5:1-33
Living in the Light
1Follow God's example in everything you do, because you are his dear children. 2Live a life filled with love for others, following the example of Christ, who loved you and gave himself as a sacrifice to take away your sins. And God was pleased, because that sacrifice was like sweet perfume to him.
3Let there be no sexual immorality, impurity, or greed among you. Such sins have no place among God's people. 4Obscene stories, foolish talk, and coarse jokes—these are not for you. Instead, let there be thankfulness to God. 5You can be sure that no immoral, impure, or greedy person will inherit the Kingdom of Christ and of God.
For a greedy person is really an idolater who worships the things of this world. 6Don't be fooled by those who try to excuse these sins, for the terrible anger of God comes upon all those who disobey him. 7Don't participate in the things these people do. 8For though your hearts were once full of darkness, now you are full of light from the Lord, and your behavior should show it! 9For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true.
10Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. 11Take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness; instead, rebuke and expose them. 12It is shameful even to talk about the things that ungodly people do in secret. 13But when the light shines on them, it becomes clear how evil these things are. 14And where your light shines, it will expose their evil deeds. This is why it is said,
"Awake, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will give you light."
Living by the Spirit's Power
15So be careful how you live, not as fools but as those who are wise. 16Make the most of every opportunity for doing good in these evil days. 17Don't act thoughtlessly, but try to understand what the Lord wants you to do. 18Don't be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, let the Holy Spirit fill and control you. 19Then you will sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, making music to the Lord in your hearts. 20And you will always give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Spirit-Guided Relationships: Wives and Husbands
21And further, you will submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22You wives will submit to your husbands as you do to the Lord. 23For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of his body, the church; he gave his life to be her Savior. 24As the church submits to Christ, so you wives must submit to your husbands in everything.
25And you husbands must love your wives with the same love Christ showed the church. He gave up his life for her 26to make her holy and clean, washed by baptism and God's word. F10 27He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. 28In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man is actually loving himself when he loves his wife. 29No one hates his own body but lovingly cares for it, just as Christ cares for his body, which is the church. 30And we are his body.
31As the Scriptures say, "A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one." F11 32This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. 33So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
FOOTNOTES:F10: Greek having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word. F11: Gen 2:24.
Copyright Statement: Holy Bible, The New Living TranslationCopyright © 1996 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.

~ Lena’s Journalin’ ~
Let’s look at today’s scripture in another facet than we usually do. Let’s put ourselves as the children, and as the wife and then the Lord as the husband.. We must never disregard ourselves where the word of God is concerned, we must always apply ourselves to and in the word of God. We must place ourselves inside of the word of God in many forms and as many persons to apply it to our own lives every time we read it or heard it read.
Don’t you do that at work and at home and in life period? One moment I’m a wife, then a mother, then a friend , a teacher, etc…This is how we must read God’s words, and apply them never exempting them and saying, well that one doesn’t apply to me. They all apply to us all, always.
2Live a life filled with love for others, How does one live this way? By following the example of Christ, In His born again newly changed spirit man and through the replenishment of the word of God.
What are we living by in Christ anyway? Feelings? Situations? No, by faith!; and so we love that way, by faith. It begins by faith and continues by faith as we emanate Him, we also become as He is, by decisions based on the life of the word of God and faith in that word. If we believe we will act on what we truly believe.
The word believe is not a passive, but rather and active word.
If I say I’d like to see you at Panera Bread at 9 am tomorrow, and you say, “I believe I’d like that, never been there”, then I go at 9 am and you don’t show I can see you wished it, maybe thought it was somewhat of a good idea, but if you really believed it enough, you’d put action to the faith words and show up. Words are not real expensive or costly unless a life is applied to them.
What is living thoughtlessly? It’s just letting things happen as they may, they just happen and I’m somehow a part of all of the happenings around me, oh well.
No, not oh well. We are not subjects of the evil world, we are Divinely appointed Ambassadors of God’s earthly kingdom. We have an assignment and only so many years to accomplish it. We do not have the luxury to just let things fall as they may, that’s insane. God told us to rule and it starts with self discipline! Don’t discipline others, until you yourself have become disciplined in that same area.
We can encourage one another, we can share God’s word, but we cannot instruct and correct, until we have ruled ourselves in an area. Teaching by example surpasses any words anyone could speak ever. A life example is powerful. We can rule the earth by our life example, then for those who see that example and ask us how we got to this place, where there’s visible and eatable fruit on our trees, we can teach and share that life with them.
Telling others what they should do and how they should be, is counterproductive if no example is demonstrated. It’s a critical and a religious spirit, that will point out the faults and short comings of others, while never looking in on the inside and digging deeper with God, allowing Him to expose and change thought patterns. We must become examinable by the Holy Spirit, purposely opening our lives up to the “scrutiny” of God’s exam.
Our Christian walk must be deliberate, we have to decide to read God’s word, decide to come to church, decide to pray, decide to give time and money, decide to sing praise, etc. Etc – ON PURPOSE! We cannot just see if it will work out. It won’t. We have to work it out! Make it work. If we do not we are not - Christians.
I heard someone say every man in a house is a Priest, Prophet and King. He’s priest, because he willingly takes his family members before the throne of God in intercession, he actually stands in the gap for them between their enemies and them. He does not allow evil to come against them, through intercession and prayer between God and himself, casting down any earthly arguments, no need, he argues by prayer, not debate, but prayer. As he stands continually in this place, he receives words from His Father on how to implement change, how to love change into the home and because he is faithful before God to do this on behalf of his family, he is crowned by his wife, by his family , as King. He cannot insist on any of these positions, he has to do and be them.
How many of us stand this way for anyone? Why? Love gives for another.
Another truth I heard is that man came out from God, from His heart. Man was one being when God formed him out of dust, he was one being, but there was another being inside of Him, almost like he was invisibly pregnant or something. Then God put spiritual anesthesia over him and took part of His physical body out of him, used that part to make another man, a wombed-man. She was bone of bone flesh of flesh, she was the same as he was yet different in wonderful ways, not bad or wrong ways, but great ways. Then a miracle happened, they got put back together as one in marriage, they had an intimate communing of oneness expressed in physical love in action. In the expression of oneness one was put inside of the one who came out of the male-man, he put in her so she’d be like him who had one inside of him. Now they were really alike, really alike, they were both with man inside. He was, she is – pregnant. Then she brings forth a man-child, a smaller man, whom they are appointed by God to form and fashion. They three are one-flesh. She was in him, he was in her also, they were one. It is all a grand and living pictorial example of God and man.


Daily Repetitive Verses:

John 3:17
You know these things – now do them! That is the path of blessing.