October 20, 2021 SO THAT YOU MAY KNOW
Ephesians 1:17-20, 2:5-6 “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him form the dead, and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places,” “even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus,”
THE thing that makes the difference in the life of the believer is to “know what is the hope of His calling.” We cannot come to know this truth, this hope, apart from God revealing it to us. Paul prayed that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened, so that we could know the hope of His calling, the riches of His glory of His inheritance in the saints (you and I), and what is the surpassing greatness of His power to those who believe. What a prayer! These things came about when God raised Jesus from the dead, and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places. Do we understand all of this? No-but that is exactly what happened-we receive it and believe it by faith. God wants us to know what awesome things occurred when He raised Jesus from the dead. He wants us to know that even though we were dead in our sins, we have now been made alive with Christ, raised up with Him, and seated with Him in the heavenly places. (I do not fully understand what it means for us to be seated with Christ in heavenly places; but I do know that we are in Him, and He is in us, and nothing can separate us from Him.) We are no longer bound by or limited by mere human experience; we have become the sons and daughters of God; have been made new; have been given new hearts, minds, and spirits; have the Spirit of God living in us; and have a new destiny. We are awaiting for that day when we will receive our full inheritance as His children; but even now as we live in this temporal body, we can know and experience the power of God and His working in us. We can spend a life time of discovering more of who we are in Him and all that He accomplished on the cross on our behalf. I said above that we can know these things only if God reveals them to us; we could assume that all we can do is just wait and hope that He will reveal these things to us. However, it’s clear in scripture that God responds to those who love Him and keep His commandments; He says that all who seek Him, will find Him. If we seek Him first, if our heart is fully turned to Him, and if we read His word to learn of Him, He will reveal Himself to us. As a starting point, let us just believe that God has done awesome things for us through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and ask Him to open the eyes of our heart to see what awesome things He has done for us. Pursuing Him is the greatest activity we can do in this life.
Matthew 6:33 “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided to you.”
Blessings,
Buddy
RSS Feed