Daily Devotions

Ephesians 1:15-23 (Part 2) - Prayer Paul’s example is instructive. Often our prayers resemble cosmic shopping lists as we ask God to help us through numerous problems. Health, employment, good grades at university or school, family issues, having enough money in the bank: these are the sorts of things we usually fill our prayers with. That’s all right to a degree. All these things have their place, and it’s not as if God doesn’t want us to pray about these things. But if our prayers are always preoccupied with these issues it may be that we need to learn a lesson from Paul. Maybe we don’t fully understand how much God has already done for us in Christ. God has already been so generous in blessing us with every spiritual blessing that our prayers should be overflowing with thanksgiving. Paul’s prayer is an intense one. He is basically asking God to help the Ephesians to grow in their understanding of what God has done for them in Christ. He wants God to convict the Ephesians of the t...

Ephesians 1:15-23 (Part 1) - Prayer Paul is a master of prayer. More of Paul’s prayers have been preserved in the Scriptures than of any other New Testament writer. Listening in on Paul’s prayers can help us to pray better, because they reflect a passion, a clarity of thought and a Christ-centredness that is often lacking in our own prayers. In Ephesians we have now reached one of Paul’s prayers, and it’s a prayer that may not have just been for the Ephesians. Some of the earliest manuscripts of this letter actually don’t have the words “in Ephesus” in verse 1—the letter is simply addressed “to the saints”. Furthermore, this letter is quite uncharacteristic of Paul because it contains few personal details (compare Romans 16). That’s unusual, since Paul had spent a couple of years in Ephesus and would have personally known quite a lot of people in the church. Putting all this together, it is quite possible that this was really a circular letter from Paul designed to be passed around l...

Ephesians 1:1-14 - Blessed by God! We’ve discovered that we have every spiritual blessing. But how? How has God gone about achieving these privileges for us? The big phrase is “in Christ” (v. 3). In fact, in these first 14 verses Jesus is mentioned 15 times! Paul emphasises that it is only through a relationship with Jesus that we receive these great privileges. The principle is simple; if you don’t have Jesus, you don’t have the blessings. That’s because all these spiritual blessings that Paul mentions come to us through Jesus’ work on the cross. In verse 7, Paul says we were redeemed by Jesus’ blood. That happened at the cross when Jesus gave his life as the payment necessary to buy us back from sin. In the same verse we are told of our forgiveness. That happened at the cross when God’s anger was poured out onto Jesus so that his mercy could be poured out on us. In verse 5, we are told of our adoption as God’s children. The word “adoption” implies we weren’t always his children. So...

Ephesians 1:1-3 - No small thing Sometimes being a Christian can seem pretty ordinary. That’s why the apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus is such a great part of the Bible. When we read Ephesians our eyes are opened to the awe-inspiring dimensions of what God has done for us in Christ. It’s as if the apostle Paul leads us to the edge of a look-out and stretches out in front of us the enormous view of God’s plans for the universe, and where we as Christians fit into these plans. The size and scope of the view just becomes more and more mind-boggling the further we read. A letter like Ephesians, therefore, tells us no matter how weak or small we feel, being a Christian is never insignificant. Being a Christian is radical. Being a Christian puts us with Jesus Christ at the very heart of the universe. In some respects, verse 3 is the summary verse for this intense section of Ephesians. God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. No blessing is lacking; no blessing is ove...

Hebrews 13 - Final exhortations Since we have come to the heavenly Mt Zion, and to the eternal gathering of God’s people around his throne, what should our lives consist of? Answer: true worship. In this chapter we see how the author of Hebrews wants us to “offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe”. True worship is nothing short of pleasing God in all we do. Both our words and our actions can be spoken of as “sacrifices” which we now offer to God (Heb 13:15-16). They are not sin offerings, for Jesus’ once-for-all sacrifice was sufficient for that. Nevertheless, they are sacrifices with which God is pleased, for he wants our whole life to be lived in worship of him every minute of the day. This is because we are already in his presence in the ‘heavenly church’, gathered with all God’s people to worship and please him, just as Israel of old did at Sinai. Like them, we are on our way to inherit the promise—indeed, a better promise, not of this creation, but a heavenly ...

Hebrews 12 - True Worship If God is God and we are his creation then worship must really be about what God wants from us, and not what we want to give God. Thus, idolatry in the Old Testament included not only the worship of false gods, but also the false worship of Yahweh, the true God. The golden calf incident was a classic example. By making the calf, the Israelites were attempting to worship Yahweh, who had rescued them out of Egypt (see Exod 32:1-6). The attempt, however, was abysmal. Not only was the calf a terrible misrepresentation of what God was like, but the sexual orgy that followed was not at all how God wanted to be worshipped. God was not happy, and his displeasure was rightly vented against those who worshipped falsely. Not all worship is valid, especially in the eyes of God. Even under the ‘Christian’ umbrella, different people have differing ways of worshipping God. They arise out of different perceptions of who God is and how he wants us to approach him. We must ma...

Hebrews 11 - Faith Hebrews is designed to help readers have what it takes to face the difficulties in life. Chapter 11 tells us that faith is the key. But what is faith?  Life transforming faith is rational, it’s personal, it’s foundational and it’s graceful. (1) Rational because it takes thinking. Verses 1-3 say faith is being certain. Certain means to validate through evidence. Faith through reasoning and thinking says only God make sense of this seen world. See if as secular people claim this world is all there is, this seen world, and everything has a natural cause then we’re here by accident, we’re not here for any purpose and that means it’s impossible to judge any action as right or wrong. You may feel that violence and oppression are wrong but that is just a feeling. Because if this seen world is all there is, then there is no such thing as right and wrong all statements of right and wrong are just a matter of opinion. Yet we have this unavoidable knowledge that...