Abide – Ephesians 1
For all who wait, for all who hunger. For all who've prayer, for all who wonder. Behold your king, behold Messiah. Emmanuel, Emmanuel.
Welcome, everyone. Welcome to Abide. I'm so glad you've come to be here. I'm still in the fragrance of celebrating our Emmanuel coming to us. I read that phrase from the song of Laura, Lauren Daigle, “Light of the World”. The bridge of the song sang: “for all who wait, for all who hunger, for all who've prayed. for all who wonder, behold your King, behold Messiah, Emmanuel.”
This is our time to pull away, to obey the command that Jesus gives in Matthew 6:6 to go into your room and close the door and meet with your God in secret. And so this time of Abide, we are cultivating an exterior space to be with God. Maybe it's a room where you light a candle. Maybe it's in your car as you commute. Maybe it's a walk you take. It's important to create a physical space where you return. This helps develop the habit of interacting with God and surrendering to God, and so the exterior space is important.
But this is also deeper than an exterior space. As we pull away, it's an interior space that we are cultivating. And I read recently, St. Ambrose of the 4th century writes about this interior space, he writes “You must not think that he means by this ‘a room with four walls separating you physically from others’, but the room that is within you, where your thoughts are shut up and the room that contains your feelings, this room of prayer is with you at all time. Wherever you go, it is a secret place and what happens there is witnessed by God alone.”
So this time, to abide with Jesus. Its interior. It's within us. It's also exterior. We're creating a space that we set aside physically to give our attention to God. And so I'm so glad you've come to set aside this time to care for your heart, to care for your mind and body, and to seek what is most important and to find that treasure hidden in your very life.
So let's just begin to slow down. Begin to quiet the many thoughts and the business of the day. Maybe set aside what you've already done in this day or what you're going to be doing after this time of prayer, to set those aside. Let's take a nice steady breath in through the nose. And out. And again in. And out. And lastly in. And out. Begin to relax the face. The shoulders. The center body. Quieting the hips. The legs. And down to the feet. We want to bring our minds, our hearts, and bodies into stillness so that we can become more aware, so that we can heighten our sensitivities to the Spirit, to God's word, and to the Emmanuel that is here with us right now.
As you settle into this space and settle into your body, we are reminded that Jesus has come and prepared this place before we even decided to press play on the podcast, he has made a space and has prepared it for us. And in this space, we want to offer gratitude to God. To get the wheels turning and churning, we have a gratitude practice now. And as I'm still in the midst of the celebrations of the miracle of Jesus coming to us in the flesh, Come O Come Emmanuel. I want us to reflect in the last few days and weeks, where we sense Emmanuel coming to us in a personal way.
Some of these special moments are very small. Often they're fleeting, only for a moment, and then they pass. But I want you to sort of look over the days and weeks of the Advent season. Maybe there was a word or a phrase given to you. A gesture of love. An embrace of a loved one. Maybe there was a silence and a stillness and a moment where you felt like all is well. Maybe it was laughter and joy and rest. And so take this time now in this inner physical room, in this inner interior room, to talk to God about any of those beautiful moments where you sensed God coming to you personally. And I'll give you a minute to do this.
In that minute of silence, maybe many things came to mind, and maybe nothing. And that's OK. In this gratitude practice, we are wanting to look and seek and review these moments, so that we might be keen observers of how God is at work in our lives. And sometimes it's easy to see. And oftentimes it's hard. And so maybe this prayer, this desire to sense where Emmanuel has come will reveal itself later on after the practice today. And so be open to that.
In this precious space with God, and with one another, we're going to begin to read the book of Ephesians. In this book is a lovely letter written by Paul to strengthen and to encourage us. It's a letter written to bring unity and peace between us and God, and between God and his people. And so this is a much needed letter to be heard in this time. And so today I'll be reading Ephesians 1 in its entirety, verses 1 to 23. I'll have a few pauses where you'll have time to just soak in the word. And then we'll go back through a few of the phrases and see how we might want to unpack those with the spirit of God into our hearts and into our daily life. So let's begin, the word of the Lord.
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to God's holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
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 for adoption to sonship 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. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment – to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.
In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession – to the praise of his glory.
For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God's people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope in which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.
This is the word of the Lord. May we spend time in silence, so that the words may penetrate our hearts in a new way.
My first reflection or invitation for us in this passage is more so in the context in that Paul wrote this letter while he was in prison. I'm sure not many of us have ever experienced a life in prison, but we all have experienced times where we feel confined. We feel we might be in our own cell of sorts, or our circumstances, or the situations we're in make us feel paralyzed or gripped. And so, we can see that as Paul is in a cell, he's spending the time in the cell to reflect on the glory of God and that Christ came to redeem all things. And he's using this time of being hidden and constrained to celebrate and also to strengthen and empower the ones that he loves.
And so I just invite us all now to think of a space right now in your life where you might feel trapped. Maybe your health hasn't been as great. Maybe there's a relationship that just is not getting any better. Maybe there's financial strains that just seem to never work out for the good. And I want you, I want all of us to just offer these spaces of confinement and that we might just soften our gaze around them. And that we might open, that these spaces, these cells, these prison doors, maybe they could embody gratitude or praise, a reflection on all that you've done. So spend time now just identifying a space that feels confined. Offer that to Jesus once again and open that this space too could become a space of praise, a space of reflection and honour, as Paul has exemplified here.
Allow me to read verses 4 to 8.
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 for adoption…In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us.
These words that we were chosen, predestined, adopted, that he lavishes his love on us. I wonder if we might all be able to just ponder this anew. That God sought you out and knew you before the creation of the world. Ponder that anew. That he sees you, that he chose you, that he cares. That he is very much aware of your life, of your failures, of your circumstances. Ponder this love anew.
Ponder that in your weakness, and in your fumblings, and in your New Year's resolutions that have already not worked out like you thought, that he has come to love you fully.
His desire is to come that we might know his love for us. And then that this love would spill out and over onto our neighbour, our friend, our enemy, our family member. And so today as we interact with family, stranger, friend, I wonder what it might be like if this love, this lavish love, would spill out and over unto the people around us. Imagine that for a moment. What would that look like?
Paul continues, allow me to read verses 17 to 18: I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope in which he has called you. So Paul in prison wants to encourage us. He wants us to be given the spirit of wisdom and revelation. He's encouraging us to know God more and that our higher hearts might be enlightened. And so, as we read these words and listen to these prayers from Paul, I'm wondering if we can think about our daily life. And where do our hearts and our eyes get enlightened? What are the different activities? The different things we read. The people we interact with. Where are the spaces we find wisdom? Hope? Are those the spaces that were turning to? Are those the people and the words that we're spending time with? Take time now in your inner room with Jesus to think about how you, how I might seek wisdom in our days. Might surround ourselves with sights and sounds of hope. That our eyes, the eyes of our heart, would be enlightened. Commit what you read. Commit how you eat. How you walk, how you speak, how you live, to your God.
Thank you for this beautiful letter written by Paul. Thank you that Paul shows us that even in the most unfortunate of circumstances and situations that we can praise and reflect and encourage, in our cells, in our spaces of confinement. Show us how that can happen in us. Father, thank you that you sent Jesus, as we've just celebrated, to come and to live in us, and to offer right relationship once again of peace and of love, lavished love being chosen as your sons and daughters. Remind us of this truth, intangible ways today. And as we go about into our days, may this love spill over. May patience and peace and kindness and care spill out.
And Father, with your seal of the Spirit within us, may your spirit guide each one of us to use our days to seek wisdom. That the eyes of our hearts would be enlivened by your hope. May we choose good things to read. May we choose good artwork and beauty to gaze at. May we choose good friendships and relationships to feed us. And Lord may there just be an outpouring of your lavish love to all that we encounter today for your glory. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen. Go in peace, my friends.
