Monday Morning Mail, 20th April 2015

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Every year, I try to give us some thoughts about what God is calling us to do and who he is calling us to be. This year, I kept on being drawn back to Paul's incredible prayer in Ephesians 1:15-23.

Paul has just spent the first 14 verses telling the Ephesians how blessed they (and we) are in Jesus. We have every spiritual blessing in Christ v3, God has chosen us to be adopted as his children v5. We have redemption through Jesus' blood v7. We've been let into the secret of how this story ends, so that we know how to live now v9. If we trust in Jesus we have been given God's Holy Spirit to live in us and seal and protect us for our future inheritance v13. So it's right that Paul spends v15-16 praising God for that.

And yet there's something missing. The Ephesians have everything, but Paul prays for more. They are like millionaires who don't realise that they have the money, and live like paupers. They have God's Spirit living in them, but Paul asks God to send his Spirit on his church. They need God to turn the lights on so that they can see everything he has done for them.

I think that's what God is calling us to this year. I think he wants us to ask for God to send his Spirit and help us to grasp how awesome his plan is for us, because so often we live as people who follow God out of a sense of duty, but who do not experience his joy in doing so. Our minds are converted - we know the truth; our wills are often converted – we live rightly. But our hearts need to keep on being converted by God's Spirit so that we love him more and more and rejoice in him.

What are the consequences of God's Spirit coming and turning the lights on for us?

Paul sees three of them:

  • We know the hope God has called us to – we start living in the light of God's future rather than just trying to be comfortable in the present. We become like Moses, who considered disgrace for the sake of Christ worth more than all the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking forward to his reward.

  • We know the riches of God's glorious inheritance in his saints – we see what an amazing thing it is to be part of God's family. We are loved and adopted by the King of the Universe. Imagine how we would treat the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge – just because he is descended from the Queen. But we are children of the King of Kings, and if we saw it clearly, we would treat each other accordingly!

  • We know God's incomparably great power for us who believe. So often we limit our expectations of what will happen in church or in our lives by what we think is humanly possible. But if we trust in him, God lives in us by his Spirit – the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead. Jesus who died for us is now reigning as king of the universe, and he's doing so for his church (v22).

So let us not be jaded or cynical about what God can or will do here. Let's not think we've got it as good as it gets. Let us instead ask God to come among us by his Spirit, to turn the lights on so that we can see the truth with our hearts and can follow God with our whole hearts.

May God come into our hearts afresh by his Spirit; may he transform us and help our hearts to see his glory; may we know him more clearly, love him more dearly and follow him more nearly day by day. Amen.

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