When you are a child of God, when you are walking in the Will and knowledge of God, many things which happen in your life – some of which may be painful now – are like an instruction, a teaching, to prepare you for the future! In Isaiah 30v20, ‘Although the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction…’ I’m sensing, that although your life’s experience will be of adversity and affliction, yet they will become the very thing which God will use for His glory. When I look back on my life and my 70 years of ministry, it is very clear to me that in order to come to where I am today, the Lord had to take me through adversity. I would not be where I am, seeing the power of the evangelism and the phenomenal miracles unless I had had cancer twice and been in prison.
The fullness of God's love
It’s a very lovely thing the Apostle Paul is saying in Ephesians 3.17-19, “that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, and length and depth and height of the love of God.”
This is really beautiful, it’s Paul being very expressive and very explicit. We’re so familiar with two dimensions, flat, and with three dimensions where there is some depth and perspective. But Paul’s description of the love of God is higher and greater, more enlightening, it’s wide, it’s long, it’s deep, and it’s high – four dimensions – the height AND the depth! I’m intrigued! God’s love is not just the length which encompasses the world, it’s not just the width, but it has a height – and it has a depth – it’s an almost unfathomable mystery of God. And yet Paul wants us to understand it.
Held by the love of God
We are held by love, an invisible power that doesn’t let us escape out of the Grace of God! Oh, what a wonderful description of being a ‘prisoner of God’. We are held ‘captive’ to His Love… It so binds us, so holds us… But it’s not only God’s Love for us, but our love for Him! Our love for Him acts as a lock, a guard, to prevent us from getting away! So, you and I, we’re a ‘prisoner’ of the Lord! Not in the sense of pain and suffering, but something full of Glory, full of joy! I follow the Lord because I love Him! I preach the Gospel – because I love Him! I see the miracles – because I love Him! My whole life is governed by love. Love is surely one of the most powerful forces!
The God of exceedingly abundantly
Let the faith of God come into YOU in such a way that YOU can expect MORE! Not less. With God, it’s not a partial fulfilment, it’s ABOVE what we can think! God is not only able to answer your prayers, whatever they are, but whatever you ask for, He is willing to give you MORE! And it is for His GLORY!
What is your ministry and purpose?
What is your ministry? What is the church? The purpose of the Church is that the manifold wisdom of God be made known to the ‘principalities and powers in the heavenly places’! In other words, that the great wisdom of God might not just be revealed to the unbeliever, but to the rulers and authorities in ‘heavenly places’. Paul is revealing in the book of Ephesians that we have to demonstrate the Wisdom, Power and Glory of God, not only on the earth, but to those ‘other powers’, those ‘heavenly powers’, those other spiritual powers. By ‘heavenly’, Paul is not meaning ‘Heaven’, but unearthly, ungodly. Paul writes later in this letter, ‘We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.’ These are the powers that you and I must not only to wrestle with, but be witnesses to! We have to witness, through our faith in Christ, through our lives, through the way we live, the Power of God to the devil!
The Power and Glory of your inheritance
Enter into the Power and the Glory of God! Because we are in Christ, seated in the Heavenly Places in Christ, ALL THAT POWER AND GLORY – that Paul describes to us here in Ephesians Chapter 1 – is ours! It’s in the Church! You are His Hands, His Feet, His Eyes, His Mouth – YOU are the only manifestation of Jesus that the people on earth can ever see! And they HAVE to see that Glory in YOU! The Inheritance, the Glory – is in Christ, in Heaven.
Jesus is our intercessor in heavenly places
Jesus is interceding for us. NOW! God the Father has EXALTED Christ above everything – given Him the Highest Name, the Highest Place, the Greatest Power – ALL this God has put in Christ when He exalted Him – AND THAT IS OUR INHERITANCE! People ask me to pray for them, and of course I do, if you are sick, if you have a need, I pray for you, as Paul also did. But the GREATEST Intercessor is Jesus Himself. He’s in the Presence of the Father, at the Right Hand of the Father – praying for YOU!
Open your eyes to see
My earnest desire is that you receive a Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation, that the eyes of your understanding be enlightened, that you may KNOW what is the Hope of God’s Calling and what the riches of the Glory of His Inheritance in the Saints. The Apostle Paul prays in Ephesians 1 that the eyes of our understanding would be enlightened, opened – to receive this REVELATION! Unless you receive the Holy Spirit, you can never fully comprehend who Jesus is, and all that He means to us! That you might KNOW what the Hope of His Calling is. He has called us, chosen us. Jesus said, “You have not chosen Me, I have chosen you and ordained you that you would bring forth fruit, and that your fruit would remain.” John 15:16. We are called of God!
Chosen by God
God chose us in Christ, before the foundation of the world! We have to understand the foreknowledge of God! BEFORE we were born, when we were in our mother’s womb, God foreordained a plan and a purpose for our lives! That we should be ‘holy and without blame before Him in love’! We live one day at a time, yet God sees all our days. I cannot over-emphasise the peace that I have, and the peace that you should have - and this peace is based on God’s foreknowledge!
Our confidence is in Christ
Our confidence is in Christ! When we have faith in God, He takes away our fear. In Christ we have no fear of the past, the future, no fear of the virus, no fear of the devil – we have confidence in God! Scripture says, don’t throw away your confidence! Keep that confidence in the reconciliation we have with God – nothing can break our relationship with God, no evil can destroy what we have, we are one with God, reconciled in Christ – and that’s why Jesus Christ is so important in our lives!