Unforced Rhythms of Grace

The 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. (Ephesians 1:14) I was reading Ephesians 1 today and I stopped at this passage. The Holy Spirit is God’s guarantee. What could that mean? Interestingly I have read this passage more than a dozen times. I never noticed it before today. I am not sure why. In the spring I was studying Ephesians. I even wrote a few blog posts on it. The guarantee that is being referred to is like a down payment on a loan. God is using the Holy Spirit to show us a piece of our inheritance. So feeling lead by the Spirit or all of the other ways we experience God here on earth is only a small portion of our true inheritance. What a powerful metaphor!

Eph 3:17-19, NIV And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge —that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. I recently returned from a vacation with my friend and her 3 ½ year old son. We stayed with my friend’s parents so it was a little bit hard to remove ourselves from the space the toddler was in to discuss our plans. Like any 3 ½ year old, if we allowed him to hear us discussing going to the park, or a movie, or the zoo, he would latch on to that and not allow us to easily change our plans. So we did what many adults do to pre-school aged children. We spelled out the words we didn’t want him to hear. I guess he caught on because the last day we were there he suggested that we should go to the ‘p-r-c’ and buy him a Slurpee. Now ‘p-r-c’ doesn’t actually mean anything having to do with...

Ephes. 2:12-13 (NLT) In those days you were living apart from Christ. You were excluded from God's people, Israel, and you did not know the promises God had made to them. You lived in this world without God and without hope. But now you belong to Christ Jesus. Though you once were far away from God, now you have been brought near to him because of the blood of Christ. The book of Ephesians was written by Paul. Paul had a mission to bring the message to the Gentiles (which is quite ironic.) The Gentiles were considered outsiders by the Jews. They were not considered God’s people. They were on the outside looking in. I realize when I read this passage that I identify with the Gentiles. Especially where it says “You lived in this world without God and without hope.” The translation of the Bible I read most often is The New Living Translation. In this translation Ephesians 13 starts off “But now you belong to Christ Jesus.” The fact that I belong to Jesus is not new to me. ...

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. (Ephesians 3-6, NIV) Anyone who has known me for a while knows I have a pretty huge aversion to name-it-and-claim-it philosophies. I am very sensitive to anything that looks at all like it. Lately I have learned that I might be just a little bit wrong about that. I still do not believe God is going to give us anything we want if we just find an example of it in the Bible and ask. Yet I have noticed that I need to find some balance. God has shown me that by never expecting blessing or never asking I have been settling for a life that is not abundant. Not ...