Category Archives: Ephesians

⁸ God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. ⁹ Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. ¹⁰ 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 2:8-10

Dear God, what does it mean to be saved? We use that word a lot: “Saved.” Growing up, it mainly meant saved from hell. “If you were to die tonight, do you know where you’ll go?” That was the selling point. That was the benefit transaction. I am rescued from hell. But from even the age of 17 or 18, I started to realize there was a different story to tell. It’s not about getting saved from hell. It’s about getting saved from myself. Getting saved from separation from you in the here and now. It’s about loving you and humbling myself enough to experience your love and comfort in this moment. It’s about getting myself transformed into who Jesus taught me to be through his life and his teaching.

Paul reinforces that perspective here. He isn’t talking about me getting saved from hell. He’s talking about becoming your masterpiece. It’s about us doing the good things you planned for us long ago in the now. Not later. Not after death. Now.

So my job is to continuously choose the narrow gate (Matthew 7:13-14). I didn’t choose the narrow gate once just so I can get my fire insurance. No, that’s not the gate Jesus called me to. Jesus called me to live up to the standards of the Sermon on the Mount through developing my relationship with you and being transformed into what Paul is talking about here to the Ephesians. It starts with loving you with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and then loving my neighbor as myself. Low and behold, if I do those things then I will be a peacemaker and merciful. I will be comforted when I mourn. I will be salt and light. Hate and lust will become more and more distasteful to me. I will give. I will pray. I will fast with a humble heart, not for show. My treasures on earth will be the things that are of you and not the things of this world. I will be curious and not judgmental. I will ask for better and better things, and you will delight in giving me the things that are good for me. I will judge people by their fruit and be shrewd around those I do not trust. I will build my life on you and get rid of as much sandy soil as possible. That is my job, even today.

Father, it starts with loving you, and I do love you. Thank you. Thank you for loving me and being who you are in your nature. Thank you that knowing you better means knowing how to love better. Help me to share that love with others. And help me to love others around me. My wife. My children. My family. My coworkers. Our volunteers and donors for where I work. Our nonprofits clients. My friends. My community. Let your love flow through me to all of these, for their good and for mine.

I offer all of this to you in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen

¹⁷ He brought this Good News of peace to you Gentiles who were far away from him, and peace to the Jews who were near. ¹⁸ Now all of us can come to the Father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done for us.

¹⁹ So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God’s holy people. You are members of God’s family. ²⁰ Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself. ²¹ We are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord. ²² Through him you Gentiles are also being made part of this dwelling where God lives by his Spirit.

Ephesians 2:17-22

Dear God, it’s amazing to see how many ways the Bible finds to tell me that you love me. That’s something even now I tend to take for granted. You love me. You love the people I love. You love the people I don’t care for. Like a parent loves a child at the deepest levels of their soul, you love us that much and even more. I’m sorry I don’t really know how to appreciate that.

And then there’s the matter of spreading your love to others. Sharing it. Helping other people be drawn to you. To experience what it means to sink their roots into your river and feel you flow into them. To grow your fruit.

Father, help me to be a source of your love for others today and to encourage just one person to embrace your love for them. I pray for the two new pastors in town and the new church that started last month. Help all of them. For the new church, while it breaks my heart that it felt it needed to break away from another church to star anew, I pray that it will fill a need in the community that wouldn’t otherwise be met. Fill the leadership with your love, compassion, wisdom, and Spirit. Help them to hear your voice. For the new pastors, well, there are always criticisms of the last guy. The day I leave my position there will be criticisms of me. Help these two pastors to avoid those traps. Help them to follow their predecessors in love, to follow you completely, and to be part of your kingdom coming and your will being done in their churches and in our community as it is in heaven. Show me how to support them as well. And for those who are on my mind who are facing physical challenges, I pray that you will heal, strengthen, and comfort them. Strengthen their caregivers as well.

I offer this to you in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen

Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ. Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. 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. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.
Ephesians 4:11-16

Dear God, this sentence really struck me: “This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.” It would be nice to think that being mature in you is attainable, but I feel so far from it.

I was on a bike ride this morning, and was thinking about how I’ve been in a bit of a spiritual lull lately. No excuse. I simply haven’t love you with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. I’m sorry for that. I really am.

Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit, I give you this day—this moment. I’m here waiting for church to start. I commit this time to simply worship to you.

I pray all of this through the grace of Jesus,

Amen

Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children. Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God. Let there be no sexual immorality, impurity, or greed among you. Such sins have no place among God’s people. Obscene stories, foolish talk, and coarse jokes—these are not for you. Instead, let there be thankfulness to God. You can be sure that no immoral, impure, or greedy person will inherit the Kingdom of Christ and of God. For a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world. Don’t be fooled by those who try to excuse these sins, for the anger of God will fall on all who disobey him. Don’t participate in the things these people do. For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light! For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true.
Ephesians 5:1-9

Dear God, I’m always reminded that nothing is new. I mean, technology–namely the Internet and social media–seems to have given sinfulness an exponential boost in the ways we can engage with it, but still. I mean, for Paul to be talking to the Ephesians about dirty jokes, licentious stories, impurity and sexual immorality–and this was to the church!

I was reminded of a prayer I did to you a few months ago about “How Jesus Would Fight the Culture War.” I saw this one quote I pulled from the Holy Post podcast I took it all from:

Phil Vischer question to Mike: How do you define culture wars? Answer: I don’t define culture war but ask the question, “What is the role of the church in the world?” The answer to that question answers the first question. Is the role of the church to transform society or is it to be transformed into the image of Jesus? The answer to that first question is clearly the latter.

Yes, you are calling us to be fully transformed into your image. In fact, right now there is a brewing conflict growing within the ministerial association in our town and it is over this exact thing. The conflict is over how to transform and impact society instead of looking in our own hearts and churches and figure out how you want us to be more like you. Satan is distracting us (including me) with our own sense of how society should work and how we need to fight Satan’s plans instead of starting with making sure we are worshiping you and transforming our individual and corporate hearts to looking like Jesus.

Father, thank you for the way you did the Jesus solution. Jesus, thank you for coming and giving us your example. Thank you for giving us a vision of what we should strive to be, and thank you for the bad examples that surrounded you during your time on earth, including the disciples. Please help me to learn from this. Help me to be the man you need me to be in every interaction I have. Let your kingdom come into the world through your church. Let your will be done in the world from the bottom up, one soul at a time.

I pray all of this under the authority of my Triune God,

Amen

²⁵ For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her ²⁶ to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. ²⁷ He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. ²⁸ In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. ²⁹ No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. ³⁰ And we are members of his body.

³¹ As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” ³² This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. ³³ So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Ephesians 5:25-33

Dear God, I always think of this verse on my anniversary. It was read at our wedding, and I’ll always remember one of my wife’s friends telling her that the verses preceding verse 25 about women submitting to their husbands made them nervous, but they trusted her to know what she was doing.

I was thinking about it yesterday on my bike ride. I was thinking about how much I have changed since I was fresh out of college 22 years ago. My wife has changed as well. I think the key is me really learning what it is like to:

• Love her
• Make her holy and clean through the cleansing of your Word
• Present her without a spot or wrinkle
• Love her as myself
• Leave my father and mother and join with her
• Unite with her

So what does that look like, and does doing those things successfully help her to “submit” in a way that is edifying for her? Back to my bike ride, I was thinking about how needy I was when we first got married. I was incredibly insecure, looking for her to love me the way my insecurity needed to be loved. I had expectations of her that were not freeing to her. Submission to 22-year-old me could be burdensome. Not because I was being mean, but because I did not really love her in a way that gave her freedom to discover who she was in you. I was too busy making sure she fed a part of my ego that was damaged.

I guess it didn’t really start to change until 1.) I started doing these prayer journals eight years later and 2.) I experienced Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas for the first time. The prayer journals rekindled my discipleship and reliance upon you for the needs that my damaged ego had. Sacred Marriage taught me that her job in my life was not to make me happy, but to be a friend and help me to grow into a better, more humble man. All of a sudden, I could take my need to control her love for me and turn it into an incredible desire to see her flourish in every way–just like Jesus wants to see His church flourish.

Father, I haven’t figured all of this out. There are still parts of my life that are a mess. There are still things I do that frustrate her and hurt her. So I’m not sitting here and claiming to be this amazing husband. What I am saying is that I know I’m not the man I was 30 years ago, and that is all because of you and what you have done for me, including what you have done for me through her. Thank you. Thank you for the 33 years I have known her. Thank you for the 30 years of marriage. Thank you for our daughter and our son. As year 31 starts today, I pray that you would help us to be, as a couple, exactly what you need us to be for all of those in our sphere of influence. And please continue to grow our hearts together.

In Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen

Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior. Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.
Ephesians 4:31-32

Dear God, like all sin, whether it’s anything from lying, to lust, to intoxication, to the things listed in verse 31 above, they feel so so good in the moment, but the good feeling is hollow and short-lived. Then we are faced with a choice as we sit there in emptiness: Do we keep chasing the good feeling through diving deeper into these things or do we turn, repent, take the time to rebuild the damage caused by these things and then embrace the things you have said are good for us?

The rebuild is always harder than the teardown. Trust is something that is lost over a moment, but only regained with time and experience. I had someone I trusted completely at one point. After only a few betrayals and lies, my trust for them was shattered and it’s still not completely back. Am I bitter against them? No, I’ve gotten over a lot of my bitterness (although there is still some anger and deep hurt remaining). But I am also careful about how much I expose myself to them and make myself vulnerable to them. I am still have tenderness in my heart for them. I forgive them. But I still have up some walls.

Father, show me the path forward with all of those in my life whom I do not trust. Show me how to be the kind, tenderhearted, forgiving man you have called me to be. Do all of this for the sake of my soul and peace and for your glory.

In Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen

A final word: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil. For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.
Ephesians 6:10-12

Dear God, I so often forget this reality. I read this before my wife and I did our daily prayer together this morning so I incorporated it into our prayer. Whether it’s family conflicts, community conflicts, work conflicts, or world conflicts, what we see with our eyes and perceive with our minds is only part of the story. There is so much more happening, and I need you in the midst of so much unknown.

Father, help me to be your vessel today. Love through me. Bring peace through me. Heal my heart and heal other hearts around me, using me in whatever way you want. I am yours. I am all yours.

In Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen

God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. 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 2:8-10

Dear God, “masterpiece?” That’s a little generous of the NLT translators. The NASB calls us your workmanship. The NIV says handiwork. The translation must be difficult to find a direct correlation in English. But let’s at least say that we are a particular pet project for you, you paid close attention to what you were doing when you formed and engaged with us, and you do good work. In this case, your plan for redeeming us and creating us new and in Jesus’s image is good so we should maybe consider it an honor to be let of it and take up the responsibility that comes with being the subject of your affection and redemption.

I’ve been fairly disengaged from you this last week. Not totally. It’s been hit and miss. But you certainly have not been my first love. I have not loved you with all of my soul, heart, and strength.

Father, I embrace the idea that what you have done for me through Jesus is a masterpiece. I take no credit for it or anything good in my life. You are my God. I and yours. I will worship you, follow you, and submit my own gain for yours.

In Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen