Search Our Blog Posts
Blog Article Tags
We love building relationships. Subscribe to our blog to receive weekly encouragement in your email inbox.
- Details
The prayer at the end of Ephesians 3 has always been one of my favorites. The reminder of the depth, length, height, and depth of God’s love... that His power is at work with me... and that He is able to do beyond what I can ask or imagine. Wow!
These familiar verses fill me with hope, but the renewal of strength came when I took a longer minute to reflect on the way faith and love are an integral part of making it all possible. Christ dwells in my heart through faith—and that faith allows me to comprehend the vastness of His love. I can even know His love that surpasses knowledge. Mind blown. Re-read these verses with me from Ephesians 3:14-21. May you, too, be rooted, grounded, and established in that love, filled with faith that powerfully works in and through us.
14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love,18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
- Details
During the process of transformation, we leave the ugliness and the pain, and move toward freedom. However, if things do not progress exactly as we had hoped, fear takes over and we long to go back to the familiar, no matter how bad things were before. We are not the only ones to fall into that fearful trap. The Israelites had it bad in Egypt. They were slaves and the conditions were getting worse. Deliverance came through Moses, but even before they got very far out of Egypt, their hope of deliverance faded and fear screamed louder than faith.
As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” (Exodus 14:10-12 NIV)
What are you enslaved to? What aspect of your life needs transformation and a dose of faith, not fear. I want to encourage you with Moses’ response in the next two verses:
Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” (Exodus 14:13, 14 NIV)