Mark

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Grasping Love by Faith in Christ Jesus

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Paul has layered steps into the fullness of God from the posture of prayer. We have been looking at each step starting at the bottom, the fullness of God, and moving up, one step at a time, back to the top, leaving a staircase for our understanding into God’s love. Last time we looked at faith. It is our door allowing Christ to “dwell in our  hearts” allowing us to experience the fullness of God.  

Now we want to look more closely to what the apostle Paul means by dwelling in our hearts. The word he uses in the Greek is a compound word meaning House (οικοs) and down against (κατα). It is not uncommon in Greek to combine a preposition into a word in order to convey a nuance or emphasize a meaning. In this instant, the emphases is not just living in a house or dwelling in it but with the κατα formed into the front of the word, Paul emphasizes the full weight of God’s presence is meant to impact our soul-self. He is saying Christ may come against our heart so that we can know the full content of Jesus’ presence within our soul-self. 

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Grasping Love by Faith

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“Love is layered throughout this passage and the dominate theme.  But none of our core samples of love are the same. In fact, this prayer passage itself suggests God’s diversity. The further away from the center of God’s fullness, the love textures become more dimensioned with reason and truth. They all have love in them but the closer we get to God’s fullness, the more dense is the love surrounding ‘fullness’.”  -GN

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,  …  …  …

May have strength to comprehend with all the saints
What is the breadth, and length and height and depth,
And to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,
That  you may be filled with all the fullness of God.    - Ephesians 3:14-19

We are continuing our look at this passage illustrated in the life of Elijah.  God exposed the breadth, length, height and depth of agape love through  power from where Elijah was standing inside the cave.  Watching God’s display,  protected by the cave, didn’t persuade. Elijah had just been God’s own instrument of power before Ahab and all Israel.  The wind, earthquake and fire may have been a reminder but not a revelation for Elijah. But it wasn’t God’s power he saw, it was His love. Fear had griped his heart driving him into the cave but he left  the cave in faithful submission to the lover of his soul.

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In Christ Jesus - Dec 21

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We began a  “reverse drill down” last week on the following prayer of Paul to saints in Ephesus: 

 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith – that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
– Ephesians 3:14-19.

Paul is giving us the things necessary to be “filled with all the fullness of God”.  This is the climax of his prayer so if we start with the premise that, indeed, we do want to be filled with the fullness of God, lets reverse engineer Paul’s prayer from the “fullness of God”, working our way backwards to where Paul kneels in prayer for the saints. In this way, we can identify the hinge points, the markers Paul uses, from praying on his knees to being “filled with all the fullness of God.”

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In Christ Jesus - Dec 7

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Our life in Christ operates in two scriptural modes. One is grace, the other is faith. Grace is God’s love to us and faith is our response. It is God’s power making them effective. 

We launched our In Christ discussion from a verse platform written by Paul to the saints in Corinth,1Corinthians 1:30:

And because of him (God) you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification and redemption,

We observed these “carnal Christians” are in Christ Jesus. This relationship in Christ Jesus brings a wisdom defined as righteousness, sanctification and redemption.  We identified these “wisdoms” being associated with the work of the Father, the Holy Spirit and Jesus the Son, operating in our life. Spiritual wisdom is God’s grace cultivated by our faith.  Grace is a spiritual capacity but faith is our soul’s ability to receive and apply it. 

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In Christ: Prologue

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My ministry “niche” has been identified by a local Pullman pastor.  

I didn’t take offence, but I did give it some later thought.  How easy it is for us to put physical form to spiritual character. But the message I distilled from his comment has more to do with the shape our gospel takes in our mind because we dimension the Spirit.  When we do this, it takes us immediately out of faith into spiritual management.

This was a constant problem for the disciples and Jesus’ response? “Where is your faith?” (Luke 8:22-25), “Is your heart hardened?” (Mark 8:17)  Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin (Romans 14:23b).

The Bible was not written to defend the deity of Jesus, or to prove the trinity. It is not intended as a thesis for theological debate. It is God’s own living Word from Creator to creation. More specifically, it is written to those whom God loves.