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EVERY SPIRITUAL BLESSING Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us In Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. (Eph 1:3-6) Dear saints, please take a few quiet moments in the Spirit to slowly and meditatively review the entire first book of Ephesians. It is all here isn't it? The entire plan and purpose of our Glorious Father in His Beloved Son for mankind and the entire world? Notice if you will how all of the Father's blessings move and flow and pass though His Son, and that they are indeed spiritual and eternal blessings, conceived in His vast heart from before the foundation of the world. What blessing do you seek my friend - is it something in or of this present natural world? Is it something outside of the Lord Jesus Christ? Is its source and benefactor someone other than the Father of All Life? Why has He blessed us so, in and through His Beloved Son? Is it not that we might be holy and blameless before Him as His own dear children? Could the law do that? Can religion as we know it achieve it? Can the church on the corner make it so? Can we do it for ourselves perhaps? Oh how foolish and blind we are to think such things. And why has He chosen to bless us so lavishly in His Beloved? Is it because we have done something deserving of this? Or is it not rather unto the "praise of the glory of His grace"? Dear saints - these words are without a doubt some of the most wondrous and heavenly sentiments every written, and anyone with eyes to see will behold in them spirit and life, fullness, grace and truth. That they would be penned by a "religious man"; a Pharisee of all people, attest to the power and wonder of our Lord, in that He has claimed such for His own. Sentences and punctuation can barely contain these heavenly thoughts, and it is as though His very grace and love were spilling out beyond the lines and strokes to touch us more directly, more intimately. Go ahead, read them again out loud this time; and see if what I am suggesting is not so. I pray that He might open the eyes of your heart that you would see such things here. What in fact is comprised in "every spiritual blessing"? What remains if there be no exception? What has He perhaps left out, or excluded if it is stated that "He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ"? Yet how worldly and earthly and primal are we, to think that this life, here and now, is of such utter issue and importance. That this tent we occupy, for example, can ever aspire to where His blessings reach. Oh how small and low are our thoughts of what we have received, if this be all that fills our hope. Let us never think small or limited thoughts of He who fills the universe with His glory and praise. It must never be dear ones. Dear saints - I know this world looks so horribly bleak and hopeless right now; that war and the threat of war hangs like a pall over so many; that the sheer depravity and brutality of men and demons is being increasingly manifested as the days advance. Yet, we have great reason to be hopeful, and even to rejoice - for soon, so very soon, all things in heaven and earth will be summed up in our Lord Jesus Christ by the Father of All Glory and Might. He will fill all things with the substance and glory of His Son surely because it has been purposed in His great heart from before time as we know it began. Preachers today make great swelling words about how important we are; how significant we are, and how impressive we may be. Rubbish, all of it I declare. There is the Father’s Beloved Son and there is He alone; He who will subsume all things and inhabit all things for the Father’s glory alone. It is the Son who is the fulfillment of all things religious, Christian, biblical or otherwise. Ephesians declares this to be so, and who are we to question it. Rather we should fall on our faces and give praise and honor to He who has redeemed us, and claimed us, and filled us to all holiness and likeness with the Holy One! Amen. I must confess that lately I have felt this profound ache in my soul for the world and the condition of the people I come into contact with every day. So many groping as though blind and without anyone to guide them. Yet their hearts are so coiled thick with pride, refusing to see, to be helped, to acknowledge even that they are in such a broken state. The deep leprosy of sin deeply set in their being, beneath the surface causing them to walk as though living but dead. All they have is what they are, and what they have learned from the hollow vanity of life here below - pride, lust, self-interest, greed, fear, violence and war, getting and taking, grabbing for all they can get from their puny little existence apart from God. And lest we forget, this was also you and I, for... In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He has lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight He made know to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which he purposes in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times {that is} the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. (Eph 1:7-12) Billions cut off from ever knowing this mystery my friends. Most self-professing, small "c" christians barely know it to be sure. But do we? I mean has it pierced our very being deep down to the very core, such that we have abandoned everything offered in this life that we might claim "every spiritual blessing" that our Heavenly Father has held out to us in His Son? What does it mean that He has inherited us to be sons in His eternal household? Does it not mean that we are henceforth His children? That we are no longer bound to the devil as father, and his world? And if the Father is to fill all things and to sum up all things in His Son, then does that not mean that we who follow the Firstborn must be filled, and subsumed by He who is worthy to fill all creation? And so are we being filled - is the question? Is the Lord Jesus Christ being increased in us, while we are being reduced? Have we stepped down, in other words, from the throne of our lives, and from the seat of power and influence over our thoughts and spirit? Do we persist in securing ourselves, or advancing ourselves, or positioning ourselves so that we reap the world's blessings here below? Consider how often this chapter speaks of the "praise of His glory". It appears to be important for both the Father and us doesn't it? I believe it is my beloved, and I believe it holds the key to all that He is doing, and where our hearts must be at the end of this age. For too long now we have been seeking the praise of men, and the glory of created things. Repentance and confession of sin must begin in the household of God. In verse 18, Paul prays that the "eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will 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". No defeatism here my friends, for we are His alone. He has claimed us as His dear children, and He has empowered us and enlivened us and provisioned us in His Son. Never forget that dear saints, for we do have a boast for which we can boast, and our boast is always and forever to the praises of His glory! Amen. All things - (and all means all fellow saints) - have been placed in subjection under His feet. And the very power that raised Him from the dead and the grave is also available in us to bring us to holiness and grace in the Lord Jesus Christ; that we might stand and live and rest in the Father's Holy Presence for time eternal. He will fill all things my friends, this is without question; but will we allow Him to fill us now fully, and to have the pre-eminence in our own hearts and lives? I share all of this by way of encouragement and exhortation, for the days are drawing near, and indeed are soon upon us. I know this in my spirit as surely as I know He lives in me. What we need is not what the world says we need, or what even the church on the corner says we need, but rather every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus that our Heavenly Father has ordained for us. Let us go to him now and ask Him humbly as His dear children; and let us repent of wanting anything else. Oh Gracious Father – what glory you have lavished on Your Son, and what grace you have provisioned for us out of the depth of Your vast kindness and love. As surely as we need air to breathe in this life, we need every spiritual blessing that You have intended for us, and for which our precious Savior gave His life. Help us O Lord, for we are poor and needy in spiritual things, and we know barely how to walk in Him whom You have chosen to assimilate all creation. Please stand O Lord Jesus. Stand so that this blind and crooked world may see You in all of Your fullness and light. Stand up by Your people; in Your little ones, of whom the world thinks naught. And thank You Gracious and Holy Father – for all things in Christ Jesus our Lord and Hope, Thank you. Amen.
Please pray for us here at Living-Walk, that we would watch and see the Master at work, and understand what He would have us be and do. Your friend and servant in Christ Jesus,
Wayne |
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