Tuesday 12th July - Ephesians 4

Today’s chapter is Ephesians 4, you can read it here.

Tom writes:

I can’t remember the last time I urged someone to do something.  Maybe it was when I urged my wife to buy me more chocolate.  We don’t tend to go in for ‘urging’ other people to do things - let alone something as potentially guilt-inducing as urging someone to live a life worthy of their calling. What could have possessed Paul to do it?  I think that there are two main pillars undergirding this urge.  The first pillar is a real desire for God to be given glory.  Paul seems to have been far more obsessed with that than any person I have ever met.  Paul was constantly driven forward by a desire to see Jesus acknowledged as the boss in the church right now. Paul wanted the future supremacy of Jesus to be acknowledged by all the church in all their lives all the time and Paul pursued this above everything else. I so much desire to emulate him in this.  The second pillar undergirding Paul’s urging is a near-unlimited expectation of what God can do through people.  His litmus test of success in the Christian life was not clinging on until the day you die.  Paul didn’t think the management of a bit of sin and the giving of a bit of time and money was the highest peak of the Christian’s walk. 

He actually believed - nay expected - the rank and file to be filled with the whole measure of the fullness of Jesus. Paul operated on the assumption that every half-wit and rogue who came to his churches would one day be living their lives as if they were Jesus. He believed that through the power of God and the work of his church all of us could become fully mature, beautifully holy, staggeringly powerful, overwhelmingly loving, changers of the world. Paul’s vision for people was immense because his vision of God was immense. If we could only get half way towards emulating Paul in this it would have catastrophic consequences for the mundane and ordinary existence that many of us call Christianity.  If we could emulate Paul in his zeal for God’s glory and in his vision for people then we would really see what it is like to live in unity and live well.  I urge you to start praying for this vision to fill our minds and our church.

Question for reflection

If God answered all of your prayers and desires for other people, how much would it really change the world? How could you expand your vision of what you pray into others  lives?