September 27, 2023
“Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18 NLT). Two commands are given here, with the first being illustrative to help understand and emphasize the second. They are: First, Don’t allow your mind and senses to be dulled and dissipated under the influence
September 26, 2023
“Don’t use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them” (Ephesians 4:29 NLT). In a generation of course communication, we are to sound a different tone. The apostle Paul wrote that believers are to speak the “truth in
September 25, 2023
“Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church” (Ephesians 4:15 NLT). In this verse, Paul described both the goal and the means of our speech to one another. The goal is maturity in Christ. And the means
September 24, 2023
“Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen” (Ephesians 3:20-21 NLT). The apostle Paul closed his prayer at the end
September 23, 2023
“For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago” (Ephesians 2:10 NLT). We cannot earn salvation, but having received it by God’s grace through faith, we become God’s “masterpiece” (Greek: “poiema”). In Christ, we become God’s poem, His
July 23, 2023 | Ephesians 6:1-4 |
What is your parenting approach? Where did you learn how to be a mom or dad? Was it from your parents? From friends or a book? Or are you just winging it?
February 26, 2023 | Ephesians 4:11-16 |
In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he gave them a vision for being a church that builds up believers in love, growing them to spiritual maturity in Christ Jesus. We can get a vision for being built up in love, growing up to spiritual maturity in Christ Jesus.
January 15, 2023 | Ephesians 4:17-24 |
What kind of ideas and images inhabit your mind, your thinking? Where did they come from? Do you have a mindset, a worldview, shaped by the Word of God as applied by the grace and Spirit of God? Or is your thinking shaped by the culture you’ve grown up in? The truth is, as believers, we all struggle with being “double-minded,” having competing ideas and images in our thinking. Some from God and some from the world.
God wants to renovate our thinking so that we have the mind of Christ. In the apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he taught believers to yield their minds, their thinking, to Christ for renewal, for transformation, for renovation. We can yield our minds, our thinking, to Christ for renovation.
September 24, 2022
A PRAYER FOR INNER STRENGTH The apostle Paul prayed that the Lord would empower the believers in Ephesus with “inner strength” from the Holy Spirit, whose power is glorious and unlimited. Literally, he prayed for strength for their “inner man,” which is the human soul. We seem to know more about how to find strength
September 22, 2022
THE INCREDIBLE GREATNESS OF GOD’S POWER FOR US Paul prayed that the believers in Ephesus would understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for them as believers. What kind of power is this? It is the same kind of “mighty power that raised Christ from the dead” (Eph. 1:20). It is resurrection power! Not only