So I started to read Ephesians the other day..and I'm not going to lie...I got pretty frustrated after the first two chapters. Sometimes I wish Paul would just say what he is saying..more plainly! Why does he have to be so complicated? Anyway...despite being very frustrated..I decided to press on and I will finish the book. However, I don't want to read a book and not really understand what has just been read..so I decided to listen to a sermon online by Matt Chandler (http://fm.thevillagechurch.net/sermons?kw=ephesians&type=sermons&match=any/) Somehow there are 29 sermons on Ephesians alone...that's a lot considering there are only 6 chapters in the book...I may be in this book longer than the 6 days I expected to be!
Anyway..thanks to Matty C., I now have a better understanding of what the verses are talking about...at least chapter 1:3-6 so far. I semi-understood it before..but now it makes more sense. Here is what 1:3-6 says:
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. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
Here's what I got out of the sermon about these verses.
1) Before God created the world, he loved everyone of us. Before he made the earth and the sun and the moon and animals and dirt, etc...he loved us.
2) We are not mistakes. A lot of people are born into bad situations and may have been a surprise to their parents or not wanted by their parents or whatever...but everybody is wanted by God because he created them.
3) God can't love us based on what we do in life (or don't do) because he loved us before we were born. We can't win his love if we don't exist. Therefore, God's love must go beyond us and how we live our lives.
4) Many Christians think that God is up in Heaven waiting to judge us..and as soon as we make a mistake he is right there ready to judge. But Matt gave an illustration that I liked. It goes something like this:
When children are learning to walk, they get up...take a step or two and fall down. The parents don't sit there and yell at the kid for not being able to walk on their first try, instead they cheer and celebrate because their child is making progress. God is the same. We don't fall down only to be yelled at by God. Instead he is here to pick us up and help us.
So those are the lessons I learned from Ephesians and from Matt Chandler. It's nice to have online sermons to listen to when I am feeling confused. It is also nice to have people in my life that I can talk to about this too.
I just want to say one more thing...on point 4 from above. I often feel really dumb having to go to God to admit that I made the same mistake again. Sometimes I won't even pray because I feel so guilty. But recently I had a really cool God experience where I felt (without a doubt) God's love and gentleness. It wasn't guilt or shame or punishment...it was restoring and loving and kind and gentle...and simply beautiful. I think God is much more tender than we realize. I had an awesome moment of experiencing that love and I look forward to more in the future.
More on Ephesians another day...
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