Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Eph 1 How Great is Your Love, Oh Lord, How great is Your love!

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 1:1-23
Greetings from Paul
1This letter is from Paul, chosen by God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus. It is written to God's holy people in Ephesus, F1 who are faithful followers of Christ Jesus.
2May grace and peace be yours, sent to you from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.
Spiritual Blessings
3How we praise God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we belong to Christ. 4Long ago, even before he made the world,
4God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave him great pleasure.
6So we praise God for the wonderful kindness he has poured out on us because we belong to his dearly loved Son. 7He is so rich in kindness that he purchased our freedom through the blood of his Son, and our sins are forgiven. 8He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding.
9God's secret plan has now been revealed to us; it is a plan centered on Christ, designed long ago according to his good pleasure. 10And this is his plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth. 11Furthermore, because of Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, F2 for he chose us from the beginning, and all things happen just as he decided long ago. 12God's purpose was that we who were the first to trust in Christ should praise our glorious God. 13And now you also have heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. 14The Spirit is God's guarantee that he will give us everything he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. This is just one more reason for us to praise our glorious God.
Paul's Prayer for Spiritual Wisdom
15Ever since I first heard of your strong faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for Christians everywhere, 16I have never stopped thanking God for you. I pray for you constantly, 17asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you might grow in your knowledge of God. 18I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the wonderful future he has promised to those he called. I want you to realize what a rich and glorious inheritance he has given to his people. F3
19I pray that you will begin to understand the incredible greatness of his power for us who believe him. This is the same mighty power 20that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God's right hand in the heavenly realms. 21Now he is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else in this world or in the world to come. 22And God has put all things under the authority of Christ, and he gave him this authority for the benefit of the church. 23And the church is his body; it is filled by Christ, who fills everything everywhere with his presence.
FOOTNOTES:F1: Some manuscripts do not include in Ephesus. F2: Or we have become God's inheritance. F3: Or realize how much God has been honored by acquiring his people.
Copyright Statement: Holy Bible, The New Living Translation

~ Lena’s Journalin’~
I want to pick out a few verses today and concentrate on them.
Do we realize how great the love of God our Father is? Do we know what He truly thinks of us or how much He truly loves us and the great plans He has for us while we are living this life on the earth? Look again at this-

4 God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.
5His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ.
And this gave him great pleasure.
How can any human be holy and without fault in His eyes? Haven’t we always been told how faulty we are and when we think of God don’t we feel faulty? I want to ask you a good question - Who told you that?
Why did God send Jesus, and why did Jesus die for such imperfect people who very well may continue to reject God and His plans? He loved/s you!
His love is/was so great He had to take a chance on us for reciprocation of that love and hope with the greatest hope that we would at some point desire to be a participator in His plan. Reciprocation of His love gives Him GREAT pleasure. Obviously, or He would not have extended Himself so far for it.
So what is His plan then?

9God's secret plan has now been revealed to us;
it is a plan centered on Christ,
designed long ago
according to his good pleasure.
10And this is his plan:
At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth.
Why does it say at the right time? I believe that means the time IS now right, has always been right, but for me it is right when I decided it. When I finally decided it, it is right for me.
Bringing everything together in Christ is not at all an easy task. When was the last time you agreed with someone else so thoroughly that you could say you had no disagreements?
Yet there is something we all can agree on. The love of God and the great work of Christ! We can even agree that everyone needs to come to know this great truth.
Sin is a gap maker, sin is a breech bringer, sin is where darkness dwells. If the gaps are closed in, sin and its terrible separating power is nullified. In that place is peace, love, joy.
This is why everything needs to be brought together, that God will be shown victorious and sin’s effects annihilated!
I want to be a participant of the victorious, not of the defeated.
19I pray that you will begin to understand the incredible greatness of his power for us who believe him.
When someone comes to see the great love of the Lord, they receive so much in the way of love, joy, and peace and that sensation continues as long as they walk in His light and it is wonderful and awesome, BUT there is so much more than just the sensations of love, joy, peace. There is life and that more abundantly.
To be born is great- wonderful, we are so thankful to be alive, but to have and raise a child is a whole ’nother world. You received and lived life when it was for yourself, but when you participate in the giving of life it is amazing. I’ve learned more from teaching than I ever did just learning for myself.
This is where the understanding really “kicks in”, when we reproduce the word of God-life in others! WOW
God’s #1 desire- children, us and others than us.
If we have truly understood the words of life we will show that fruit in our giving of that life for and to others. This will show how great our understanding is. Fruit is evidenced in that we have received and so we give, what we really got.



Daily Meditation/Recital/Question
Isaiah 58:12 (New Living Translation)
12 Your children will rebuild the deserted ruins of your cities. Then you will be known as the people who rebuild their walls and cities.