Life Loving Jesus

Check out Ephesians 3: 6-12, 13-16. I used the Voice Version.

“Specifically, the mystery is this: by trusting in the good news, the Gentile outsiders are becoming fully enfranchised members of the same body, heirs alongside Israel, and beneficiaries of the promise that has been fulfilled through Jesus the Anointed.”

Stop and consider: Do you identify more with the Gentiles, or with Israel? Why?

We were all born children of God, but some of us have been outsiders at one time or another. Some of us were born into Christ following families, some of us learned about Christ later in our journeys.

How can your identification with Israelites or Gentiles affect the approach you use to sharing God’s love?

“I became a servant and preacher of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace as He exercised His amazing power over me. I cannot think of anyone more unworthy to this cause than I, the least of the least of the saints. But here I am, a grace-made man, privileged to be an echo of His voice and a preacher to all the nations of the riches of the Anointed One, riches that no one ever imagined. I am privileged to enlighten all of Adam’s descendants to the mystery concealed from previous ages by God, the Creator of all, through Jesus the Anointed.”

Have you ever felt unworthy to be called a child of God?
Notice how Paul talks about the solution to feeling unworthy: “here I am, a grace-made man, privileged to be an echo of His voice and a preacher to all the nations of the riches of the Anointed One”

It’s not about us, it’s about God. It’s about being a channel for the love of God to flow through us.

“Here’s His objective: through the church, He intends now to make known His infinite and boundless wisdom to all rulers and authorities in heavenly realms.”

Catch this: the plan this whole time, the reason for our existence as a collective group of the body of Christ, is to show the universe that the love of God is matchless. Its not just for this world. Its not only for the Gentiles and Israelites. Its for all the worlds. All the beings in the entire universe are to learn of the infinite love of God through us.

“This has been His plan from the beginning, one that He has now accomplished through the Anointed One, Jesus our Lord. His faithfulness to God has made it possible for us to have the courage we need and the ability to approach the Father confidently.”

Its all Jesus. His faithfulness, His commitment. His dedication to the carrying out what it takes to prove to the entire cosmos that God is love.

Here’s the beautiful part: in our unworthiness, in our weakness, we get to claim the blood of Jesus. We get to ask the Father to look at us through the lens of Jesus’ perfection. Its our “get to”.

“It is for this reason that I bow my knees before the Father, after whom all families in heaven above and on earth below receive their names, and pray:
Father, out of Your honorable and glorious riches, strengthen Your people. Fill their souls with the power of Your Spirit so that through faith the Anointed One will reside in their hearts. May love be the rich soil where their lives take root. May it be the bedrock where their lives are founded so that together with all of Your people they will have the power to understand that the love of the Anointed is infinitely long, wide, high, and deep, surpassing everything anyone previously experienced. God, may Your fullness flood through their entire beings.”

Think about who you can pray this prayer for. Your family, community, church, fitness group, school, countries, governments, leaders, etc.
What parts of this prayer resonate with you?
Pray this prayer for a specific person or group with your small group.

This prayer is about being filled with the Spirit, allowing love to reign in our hearts, eating and digesting God’s Word, and having power to EXPERIENCE the love of God.

That experience begins here, in praying for those who are beginning their journeys with God, for those who don’t know His love yet.