Monday, November 13, 2006

Eph 5 Alarms & A Light On Submission

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.

If the e-mail text you receive is encrypted at all, just scroll down to the end of all of the text and click on Lena’s Journalin’ , which will take you directly to the web-page where you will be able to read the text quite clearly in it’s purposed form.

Ephesians 5
Living in the Light
1 Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children. 2 Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us[a] and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God.
3 Let there be no sexual immorality, impurity, or greed among you. Such sins have no place among God’s people. 4 Obscene stories, foolish talk, and coarse jokes—these are not for you. Instead, let there be thankfulness to God. 5 You can be sure that no immoral, impure, or greedy person will inherit the Kingdom of Christ and of God. For a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world.
6 Don’t be fooled by those who try to excuse these sins, for the anger of God will fall on all who disobey him. 7 Don’t participate in the things these people do. 8 For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light! 9 For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true.
10 Carefully determine what pleases the Lord. 11 Take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness; instead, expose them. 12 It is shameful even to talk about the things that ungodly people do in secret. 13 But their evil intentions will be exposed when the light shines on them, 14 for the light makes everything visible. 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
15 So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise. 16 Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. 17 Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do. 18 Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit, 19 singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, and making music to the Lord in your hearts. 20 And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Spirit-Guided Relationships: Wives and Husbands
21 And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. 24 As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.
25 For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her 26 to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word.[b] 27 He 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. 28 In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. 29 No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. 30 And we are members of his body.
31 As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.”[c] 32 This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. 33 So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Footnotes:
a.
Ephesians 5:2 Some manuscripts read loved you.
b.
Ephesians 5:26 Greek washed by water with the word.
c.
Ephesians 5:31 Gen 2:24.

~ Lena’s Journalin’~
Ever notice how sacrifice brings the rewards? Even with Superman, Batman, Spiderman, etc, the sacrifices made are what warrant the heroism.
Where do you think those stories come from? The principles are found in the Bible. Sacrifice is the price paid for whatever is of true value, and is where real life tales off. The more one is willing to sacrifice for you, the more love is felt by you.
Christ gave His life, and when we really get that, we realize how deep that love is and that of His Father. When we get that, we can then also see the deep love of the Father, one so deep a son would rise up and say. “Yes, Father, I’ll be more than happy to suffer and die for who You love!” Even Jesus said there is no greater love than this, “that a man would actually lay his life down for someone other than himself.”
Where there is love, there is no sin. For sin hurts, harms, and keeps distance between persons and God. So where there is love there is restoration of that gap, and the desire for sin is erased. Love is a strong and passionate force, greater than the desire for sin.
It is craziness to excuse our sins. God’s enemy is who deceives us into thinking we’re ok, when we really need a check up. If we won’t yield to the check up, we’ll get ill and die, so he’d rather lie to us and let us die by telling us we are ok and don’t really need to have attitude checks.
The Bible says beware, don’t be fooled. If you think you’re fine, that could be a good signal to you to go before God. It would be a sign to go in for a good spiritual check up. If you feel like hiding, that’s a signal to expose yourself. It’ll be your salvation! If we expose ourselves to God, we’ll not have to be shamed before people. It is so time to hear the alarms sounding. If you are not hearing serious alarms in the spirit, it is time to wake up, put your ear to the clock and let it ring in your ear till you hear it.
A MUST READ PART_ ***
This may surprise you, but some alarms are in the form of personal trouble. These continual alarms the Lord is so graciously sounding off for us come in the form of circumstances, and problems we are experiencing. They are telling us of our great need for God’s help and that He is the only true way out of the death grip of sin. If we don’t or won’t heed, the grace of God will cause it to come around again. When get agitated, and then we find relief and then we are at peace again, we falsely made to think all is well. All is Not well and that was an alarm! We may have hit “snooze”, but it was an alarm. Usually the alarms are saying, “Are you ready to commit to God and become a vital one to be counted on in His Body yet?”
If we get relief from our present problems, we think we have time to get right and don’t need to make any true commitment to the Lord, we feel His love and so we stay away from church a bit longer and don’t read the word or pray….Ding Dong.. the alarm sounds again, circumstances call to us, another family situation shows up, a tragedy happens.
Alarm, alarm, alarm is sounding. If you do not heed it as an alarm, it is a sign you are asleep, deaf, dumb or numb to God. God will not make you follow Him though you need to oh so very badly. He may watch you go around that next corner and go off the side of the mountain, and not save you, because you never really cared to heed His alarms. You showed Him your preference by your lifestyle choices. You choose your own way and when He tried to show You His ways of help, true life-change help, you refused. Now you call and He does NOT answer, don’t wonder why, don’t blame Him, don’t get mad at the church. He gave each of us free wills to chose or not choose Him. We made our choices.
What pleases the Lord is those who follow by faith because of love. It is not all about what He can do for you, He did it all for you, so you could desire to do a few great things for Him! He is looking for a few good committed “men”.
I’m finding the word “submit” is more of a helping word than a “be a rug to walk on” word. It means to under gird, to support, to lift up (for the help of better vision), to afflict one’s self for (as in labor to bring forth into a better place, as in intercession), to be occupied with and for a specified purpose. It is a willingness to take the pain for, to humble one’s self and not be the center, but giving the center of His attention to another for their own good. To weaken one’s self to help another become strong. It’s to stand in the gap for. To put yourself under for the specific purpose of lifting another up before the throne of God, as in giving them first, rather than yourself first in intercession. Caring for enough to uphold and lift up in prayer.
This “submission” is a voluntary action. If it is not volunteered it is domination and control. Yet the same person who is feeling “controlled” by another can voluntarily submit before God, offering their yield to God as an offering of faith, for the purpose of intercession and to lay a platform of the honor of the Father. It shows I trust His work and yield to it. Submission is assuming responsibility, and carrying a burden when another does not yet have the ability to. It is an example of forgiveness, not faulting, but standing in the gap for those who do not know yet what they are doing.
There is such an independent spirit in our nation, one that is very rebellious. We submit ourselves to nothing except what we deem as God’s voice, which many a time is our own voice. It many times is not the voice we should yield to, but the one we want or choose to yield to. We pick and choose who or what we’ll hear. We deem false prophets people of our own congregations! When that is so far off of what God has said about us judging words that are spoken to us. Then we wonder why God does not speak to us. He has already spoken to us, probably through unsuspecting means, we were not attuned to, and due to our culture and lack of yielding to anyone, at anytime or anybody, we resist, rather than submit. The spirit of the Lord does not hang around rebellion and pride. He is grieved by it. These are the core and root of all sins against the Father and His proposed world order.
If we understand that submission could be defined as- God sets me with a group of people in life, my family, my church, my co-workers and bosses, and further than that, my own community. He sets me there as a light for Him. Out of this sphere of influence God saves me, redeems me, then I find myself with others not yet saved and maybe some are, but they don’t know Him personally yet. I am a light. When I am prideful and arrogant and rule the people around me with an iron-hand and I’m opinionated etc. I am rendered ineffective.
When I am a humbled servant I am further received. My service of unconditional love builds a platform of faith for them to allow me to speak truth in love into their lives. They may be wrong, so wrong. They may have rotten attitudes. They may be controlling. I pray for them. Who else is? I command cloaks of darkness to be taken off of their eyes. I heal their clogged ears and broken hearts. I stand for them, rather than join in agreement with all who are against them. I love them when no one else does, because I know no matter what they do, He loves them and came and extended His soul for the salvation of theirs. I forgive them, a lot, in order to loose them from the bondage of their own sin. I intercede, I pray, I bless. The enemy is cursing them, the world around them is cursing them. I submit anyways, for no other reason except the love of God. They don’t deserve it, and neither did I. I see no matter how compliant or good I’ve been I’d go to hell without His blood and its precious forgiving power that cost an amazing amount and paid my own eternal debt for me. I want those I influence by my love actions to see how great His love is. Where leaders are concerned, I do the same. Yes they may be wrong, and if so, who will pray for them to be corrected by God and not exposed to the cruel world that is so unforgiving? In our society we act like we like it when leaders are exposed in nakedness and shame. We act like we like when people are humiliated, they deserved it. Like it was due them. Wow. It was due them, but it is the same shame that was due me without His shed blood for me. Submission asks me, “Can I shed some blood and tears for the salvation of a soul?” Or is it worth it to me at all? Are they worth it to me at all? Do I love God enough to love people who are acting like enemies? To fight their enemies off in prayer and leave them made whole, or do I join in tearing them apart?
Love is- when one can give up his own wishes for life, his own “want to’s” and desires and say, “yeah, your way is fine, let’s walk together (prophetically), lets do it like that.
Now I’m not saying if your leader asks you to poison people submit to his wishes. THTAT’S NOT what I’m saying. I’m talking about building a platform for good communication and being an intercessor. I’m saying put more trust in God by exercising and following after unperfected men in faith. Are you perfected yet? It seems we all know so much better than anyone else does, even about things we’ve never done yet and will never do. There’s something wrong with that.
There’s an answer, ”Submit yourselves one to another in the fear of God.”


Daily Thought to Ponder -
“Oh Give Thanks to the Lord for He is Good!”