August 16, 2012
When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God's love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. -- Ephesians 3: 14-19 (NLT)
The Gospel of Jesus Christ must always be preached with balance. Unfortunately, we often see the extremes in preaching. Either God is an angry old man hurling lightning bolts down upon us or He is dressed in rainbows and puppy dogs and we have nothing to be vigilant about in our lives. The "love wins" Gospel is just as destructive as the barbed wire Gospel because neither presents the whole Gospel; something Paul was very concerned about:
Therefore, I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God. -- Acts 20: 26-27 (NIV)
These are Paul's words to the Ephesian elders when he was leaving them for the last time. In these two verses are two very sobering reminders. First of all, we have a responsibility as preachers to preach the entire Gospel. We cannot cherry pick -- the Gospel is not a salad bar. Jesus healed the sick and rebuked the Pharisees. Jesus suffered the little children and cleared the temple. The second sobering reminder is that the blood of our listeners is actually in the balance. I have seen too many people trying to divine the Word of God without the calling. We have a solemn responsibility as ministers of the Gospel to be very cautious in assuring that the entire Gospel is preached -- lest we end up with blood on our hands.
That said; I want us to look at the love of God over the next four days. I want us to look at the love of God every day because it is the key to the power of God in our lives. There are too many Christians bound and shackled by the very things that Christ died for and one of the more prominent reasons is that they simply do not understand the love, mercy and grace of the God they serve. They may have been beaten down be religion so much that they are missing out on the relationship with Christ they are supposed to be enjoying. Even though the Bible clearly says that there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, too many of us simply do not walk in that promise. Let us turn our attention to the key verses from the Apostle Paul. This is a prayer he is actually saying for the Ephesian Church and within the details are things we need to embrace today.
First as always, Paul extols who God is. Paul reminds us that God is first our Father and second He is the Creator of everything in heaven and earth. Let's think about that for a second. I think one of the reasons why we fail to grasp the love God has for us is that we do not reflect to Him first as our loving Father. Perhaps we reflect first that He is somehow angry with us. Perhaps we did not have such a great relationship with our earthly father so that when we do think of God as our Father, it doesn't help much. The problem of course is in the comparison:
"You parents--if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him. -- Matthew 7: 9-11 (NLT)
Some of us need to redefine the relationship we have with God. He is our Abba Father first beloved. Everything He does is out of His great love for us -- the ultimate example being the sacrifice of His only Son so that we can be reconciled unto Him. The second declaration from Paul however reminds us of the power our Father possesses. He created everything! Yet we hold Him in reserve sometimes. We only go to Him when everything has fallen apart because of our poor decisions. Will our Father help us at those times? Absolutely! But He desires to be the God of our decisions too, not just our repercussions. Why does Paul start his prayer like this? Because we need to remind ourselves who we are dealing with when we deal with God. First of all we are dealing with our Father -- not some distant and abstract entity who doesn't care about us. Secondly, we are dealing with someone who can handle whatever it is that we are facing because He created everything. Everything!
So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most. -- Hebrews 4: 16 (NLT)
Let us start reflecting properly to God when we approach the Lord in prayer. Let us approach Him reverently because He is our Father but boldly because He is our Father. Boldly because He created everything. Let us start every prayer with reminding ourselves of who we serve and how much our heavenly Father loves us.
We will continue tomorrow"
Rev. Anthony
