Powerful Prayers: The Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation III (Incomparable Power)

Posted on February 25, 2020 by salooper57

Imagine you are at your high schooler’s track and field regional finals. She has already run the 100-meter relay and won’t run the 200 for at least a half-hour, so you mosey over to watch some of the field events. The shot putters are competing right now and they are well-matched and they are remarkably good. A couple of them are throwing around the 60-foot line.

At the moment, your school has a pretty strong lead, which might be unsurpassable. Then a shot putter from another school steps into the circle. He hoists the shot, gets into position, spins and releases. The shot flies not 60 feet, not 65 feet, but 75 feet. He doesn’t beat the previous best by inches but by 15 feet. It is astounding. It is miraculous.

What word would you use to describe the difference between this shot putter’s throw and all the rest? Greek has the perfect word for it: huperballon, which means literally “throw beyond,” and figuratively to outdo something by a long shot. That is the word St. Paul uses to describe the power of God. It is not even in the same ballpark with any other power we can name or conceive. It is beyond our grasp.

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Has the Generation Gap Become an Abyss?

Posted on February 22, 2020 by salooper57

The term “generation gap” came into use in the 1960s, as both young and old people recognized basic generational differences in outlook, aspirations, and values. Acknowledging that there were differences did little to improve strained relationships. It may even have exacerbated them.

The troublemakers in those days, at least in the eyes of the “Traditionalists” (as they are sometimes called), were the Baby Boomers. Those young whippersnappers went off to college and suddenly thought they knew everything. They called the older generation names: “square,” “uptight,” and “plastic” (that is, hypocritical). They faulted them for not thinking for themselves; for just doing whatever “the Man” told them to do.

How ironic it is that today’s Millennials and Gen Z’s, while using different terminology, accuse the formerly freethinking Boomers of the same things. The gap may not be as wide as it was in the sixties, but it has deepened. When a Gen Z says, “OK, Boomer,” they’re not just telling Boomers they are wrong, they’re telling them they don’t matter.

My wife and I were at a large family gathering, where I saw firsthand the tension that exists between the generations. I sat at a table with two Boomer and three Millennial women and listened in on their conversation. I was wise enough, or maybe fearful enough, not to voice my own opinions.

When I sat down, the two Boomers were raking “younger women” over the proverbial coals. Younger women are wimps. They are thoroughly self-centered. They put themselves before their kids. With anecdotal evidence and questionable analytics, they supported their conclusions.

It was obvious to me that the Millennials at the table took offense and felt slandered, but the Boomers didn’t seem to notice. They continued to press their point until the discussion became a debate. The younger women didn’t say it, but “OK Boomer” was written all over their faces.

Has the generation gap become an abyss? Recently, a Minnesota church announced to its members that it would temporarily close its doors while it reorganized and prepared for a relaunch under new pastoral leadership. Older people were asked to “move to an alternative worship” for 15 to 18 months, to allow the new pastor time to attract younger worshipers to the church.

Apparently, the church (and perhaps its denominational leadership) thought the presence of older members would compromise efforts to attract younger members. Not surprisingly, older people in the congregation took offense. They interpreted the invitation to worship elsewhere for 18 months to mean they were no longer wanted. The pastor, however, insists that was never church’s intent.

People have questioned whether leadership was right to make the request. A more fundamental question is: were they right in their estimation of the situation? Does the presence of Boomers hinder efforts to attract younger Millennials and Z’s?

I suspect it does. Yet the Church should be setting the standard of love and respect for people, whether old or young. Older people should remember they can learn from younger ones. After all, Jesus was in his early 30s during his teaching years. And younger people should remember the biblical injunction to “Rise in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly…”

St. Paul goes even further. He does not limit the display of respect to the elderly but encourages all of Jesus’s people to “Outdo one another in showing honor.” The idea is to lead the way in honoring other church members, regardless of their age, race, or class.

Is it realistic to think that this attitude can be maintained? Can church members from different generations take the lead in showing each other genuine respect? It is possible, but only if we live counterculturally and refuse to segregate the church generationally.

The racial segregation of the Church has discredited us and hindered our witness. Must we compound our mistakes by adding generational segregation?  

We must not. One generation cannot wait for another to be the first to show respect. We cannot even refuse respect to those who don’t respect us. If we do, we are conforming to the age in which we live rather than to the clear directives given by Jesus and his apostles.

First published by Gatehouse Media.

What do you think? Is generational segregation a problem? Any ideas for fixing it?

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The Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation: The Riches of His Glorious Inheritance in the Saints

Posted on February 20, 2020 by salooper57

(Note: For a few weeks , I will post the manuscript that goes with the audio (posted Tuesdays) from a sermon in the Powerful Prayers series. People have requested the sermon manuscripts many time, but I’ve always been reluctant to make it available for two principal reasons: 1) I never simply read a sermon, so what people read is not exactly what I spoke. The manuscript might be better or it may be worse but it will be different. And (2) because the sermon has not been edited for publication. With those caveats, here is The Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation III (His Incomparably Great Power for Us Who Believe)

(Ephesians 1:15-21) For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.

To date, NASA is pretty sure it has found around 4,000 planets outside our solar system and has compiled a list of 4,000 more promising sites. Since it is utterly impossible to see planets in another solar system, even with the most powerful telescopes, how does NASA look for them? Astronomers look for the temporary dimming of a star’s light, which they believe happens when a planet’s orbit takes it between us and its own sun.

Doing astronomy is a little like solving a detective mystery: one must search for clues. In a mystery novel, the brilliant detective walks into the room and knows almost immediately that the duke slumped over in his chair did not die of natural causes. He’s certain someone else was in the room when his lordship met his untimely death. The police, of course, noted the wine glass on the tray but only he understood its significance: the dead man was a teetotaler.   

Those are clues for finding murderers and exoplanets but what clues would a detective (say, an apostolic detective) look for to determine whether God was in a church? St. Paul knew the signs and referred to them again and again. When you find (v. 15) the presence of faith in Jesus, along with a love for all the saints, you can be sure God has been there. No one else leaves precisely those clues. They are as good as a fingerprint. They are God’s fingerprint.

Some people think the surest clue to the presence of God is a miracle. Paul didn’t. Even if he found one, it wouldn’t prove to him that God was there. Jesus warned that imposters would also be able to do miraculous things, so even an incontestable miracle is not sufficient proof that God has been there.

I’ve heard people say of a church with lots of buzz and excitement that God was obviously “in it,” but it wouldn’t mean that to the apostle Paul. When Paul found money, power, and the cultural signs of success, he did not say to himself, “Ah, I can see He’s been here.” But when he saw faith – confidence – in Jesus and love for Jesus’s people, he was absolutely certain that God was there.

As I mentioned last week, the sole request in this prayer (though some English versions blur this) is for God to give the Ephesians a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. The presence of this spirit will enlighten the eyes of the Ephesians’ heart – their command center – and lead them to know three things: (1) The hope of God’s calling; (2) the glorious riches of his inheritance in the saints; and (3) the incomparably great power God is prepared to use in the lives of those who believe. We looked at the first of these last week. Today we will look at the second.

Paul wants the Spirit of wisdom and revelation to bring home to Jesus’s people the inestimable value – the “riches” or “wealth” – of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. Of the trinity of blessings for which he prays (knowledge of the hope of his calling, of the riches of his inheritance in the saints, and of the power that works on behalf of believers) this one acts as the binding that holds the other two together.

One scholar suggests that the hope of his calling deals with the past, because it has to do with when we were called; the glorious riches of his inheritance in the saints regards the future, when all God’s people will be together in heaven; and the power that works on behalf of the saints regards the present. That doesn’t quite seem to fit. While it’s true our calling may have come to us in the past, the hope Paul wants us to know clearly deals with the future. Likewise, he did not consider God’s inheritance in the saints to be a future treasure only, as if it were some kind of retirement savings or IRA. Paul regarded the Philippian believers as a very present treasure – his joy and crown – during his lifetime. And the incomparably great power for us who believe was great before we knew we were called, is great now, and will be as great in the age to come as it is or ever was.

It doesn’t seem to me that these three great realities fit into a past, present, and future framework. They connect, and the second of the three, “the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,” is where they attach. Or think of it as an intersection where two roads meet: one of them is called Hope Boulevard and the other is Power Avenue. Our hope travels along one, God’s power along the other, and where they intersect there is a roundabout (or traffic circle). The hope of his calling and the greatness of his power circle around his holy people. Hope and power meet in his glorious inheritance in the saints.

Notice the surprising pronoun: it’s not your inheritance or our inheritance but his inheritance—his inheritance in the saints. Paul is not talking, as he frequently does, about our inheritance but about God’s and it is an inheritance to die for. But what am I saying? Someone did die for it: Jesus. We often speak of Jesus dying to give us salvation (which is wonderfully true) but he also died to give God a glorious inheritance in the saints. It’s not too much to say that Jesus was dying to have that inheritance.

But what does God need with an inheritance? Doesn’t everything already belong to him? Doesn’t he hold the intellectual property rights, since he thought of everything? Aren’t all use rights determined by him, since he made everything? Does not “every animal of the forests and the cattle on a thousand hills” belong to him (Psalm 50:10), not to mention every planet and sun and galaxy in the universe. Everything belongs to him by right, including every person who lives, has lived, or will live. But God is not satisfied to have us by right. He will have us also by love. This is the meaning of the extravagant, inordinate, sacrificial life and death of Jesus.

With all of creation at his disposal, God could choose anything that piqued his interest for his personal inheritance: the 420-trillion-mile-wide Eagle Nebula or the blazing Horsehead Nebula, or the pearly Milky Way, with its wealth of planets – over a hundred billion solar systems (by the most conservative estimate).

So what did God choose for his inheritance? He chose the saints – his holy people – to be his treasure. Christ didn’t die for the Horsehead Nebula but for us. Apart from God himself (as if anything could be apart from God), the richest, most beautiful thing in this vast and breathtaking universe is Jesus’s people. For beauty, there is nothing that compares to the Bride of Christ, the Church. For potential to do good, bring pleasure, excite joy, and produce benefit, there is nothing that matches God’s holy people. They are not a natural resource, like gold or oil or timber. They are a supernatural resource, capable of bringing about unimaginable good.

Paul uses the word “riches” or “wealth” (depending on the translation) in speaking of the saints. Enormous wealth resides in the saints – the people who are set apart for God’s service and pleasure. When God chose the saints for his inheritance, he knew what he was doing. He chose the best – most beautiful, most powerful, most promising – thing in the universe. And if you belong to God because you have faith in Jesus Christ, you are a part of this.

Paul also uses the word “glory” – “the glory of his inheritance” – to describe the saints. We look at the saints and we see old Mrs. Smudge, who can never manage to put her lipstick on straight. We see Mr. Contrary, who is about as much fun as a toothache. Then there’s Nancy Neurotic, who is a bundle of weirdness and John Washout, who has failed spectacularly in marriage, family, and business. It sure doesn’t seem like glory that we are seeing.

Jon Foreman described the saints (including himself) as the “Beautiful Letdown.” He called us “the church of the dropouts, the losers, the sinners, the failures, and the fools.” Where is the glory in that?

It’s there, but it’s down deep and we just get glimpses of it. But then our spiritual vision is monocular. We lack depth of vision, especially when we look at the saints. We can’t see past the surface. We see two-dimensional, cartoon-like characters: flat, occasionally funny, frequently sad. But God has great depth perception. He has X-Ray vision! He sees the depths.

God looks past our foolishness and our failures to see deep inside. And do you know what he sees? “Christ in you, the hope of …glory!” (Colossians 1:27). Without Christ in us, we are flat and our potential is limited. But Christ’s presence in us changes everything.

In the nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox Church, priests hardly ever ventured out of their churches to help people. They waited for people to come to them. But John of Krondstadt was different. He went out into the streets, among the alcoholics and down-and-outers and told them about Jesus. He would lift hungover, foul-smelling people from the street, cradle them in his arms, and say to them, “This is beneath your dignity. You were meant to house the fullness of God.”

John of Krondstadt caught glimpses of Jesus within[1] but God sees Jesus, “all glorious within,” with perfect acuity. Add Jesus, even to people like us, and you get glory. The Russian comedian Yakov Smirnoff used to say the thing he loved most about America was the grocery stores. He’d say, “I’ll never forget walking down one of the aisles and seeing powdered milk; just add water and you get milk. Right next to it was powdered orange juice; just add water and you get orange juice. Then I saw baby powder, and I thought to myself, What a country!”[2]

When God looks at us, he sees something others might overlook: Jesus Christ. Just add Jesus and you get … glory.

We are spiritually monocular – no depth vision – but we are also temporally myopic: we can barely see past this moment. But God sees deep and he sees far, right into the endless future. He not only sees what we are, he sees what we will be. And it’s not that he looks into the future, like a prophet or fortune teller. He’s already there. He sees us, complete and resplendent in glory. He sees the Church, the Bride of Christ, effulgent, breathtakingly beautiful, unconquerably strong. He sees glory. The difference between us now and us then is the difference between looking at a magazine with the designer’s sketch of the new Lamborghini and sitting in the completed car, behind the wheel, on the straightaway, doing 185.

You may think, “Yeah, but … this is just Lockwood.” Yes, this is just Lockwood, but do you know what Lockwood is? A society, as C. S. Lewis magnificently put it, “of possible gods and goddesses … the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship…”[3]

If it seems impossible to you that I should be such a creature, that you should be such a creature, then I tell you your instincts are spot-on. It is impossible … apart from Christ. But add Jesus – even to creatures such as you and me – and you get glory. But it is a shared glory. There are no superstars here; there are only saints, and saints come in a multipack – they’re a package deal. This rich glory is shared.

Every December, the Music Department at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, put on a fabulous Christmas concert. Moorhead waits for it in anticipation. In fact, they start getting ready for it in the middle of summer.

That’s when people in the community begin working on the backdrop for the concert stage—a one-hundred-by-thirty-foot mosaic. Each year, the community designs the mosaic, rents an empty building, and then begins painting. Hundreds of people, from middle schoolers to senior citizens, paint the mosaic. It’s like a large-scale paint-by-number, with thousands of tiny pieces. Day by day for six months, the mosaic takes shape, one little painted piece at a time. For several months, their “work of art” looks like nothing more than a confusing tangle of lines and colors. But by December, it has come together, and looks like a beautiful stained-glass window.

On the weekend of the concert, the people who helped paint the backdrop come early and bring their friends and neighbors. All around the concert hall, you can hear people whispering things like: “See that little green spot below the camel’s foot? I painted that.”[4]

That little green spot had no glory until it shared in the glory of the whole. That is the way it is with us. Paul prays we will know the glory of the saints, not the glory of the saint.

Before we close, let’s look again at the word “riches” (or “wealth”) in verse 18. It will help us understand the nature of this wealth if we can remember Jesus’s answer to Peter, who said: “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?” Jesus told him: “…no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life” (Mark 10:28-30).

In what form do they receive this wealth – homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and fields? They receive it in the form of God’s holy people, the Church. When the economy goes through a downturn; when the stock market crashes; when inflation devalues our savings; when hospital bills send us into bankruptcy; the true people of God remain as valuable as ever and more than enough to cover whatever God wants to do or make of our lives in the world.

It’s important to remember that the saints are God’s wealth and we’d better be authorized to spend his wealth before trying to do so. God will readily use his wealth on behalf of those who serve him – those who put Jesus and the gospel above everything else. But people who expect God to spend his valuable inheritance on their behalf when they are only serving themselves will find their expectations dashed. And people who try to spend God’s wealth without permission – that is, people who wrongfully use the saints of God – will wish they hadn’t.

Now, let’s pull this together. The saints – those people whose lives are set apart for Jesus and his gospel (any of us can be counted among them) – are God’s chosen inheritance. They are unimaginably valuable, yet God can and will spend them to support, provide for, and bless those who put Jesus first.

There is, however, a weird dynamic in play when God spends his inheritance. When we spend ours, we end up with less than we had. When God spends his, he ends up with more. Those saints who are spent by the Father on behalf of the Son are the most precious, most beautiful, and least tarnished treasures in all God’s glorious inheritance.

It is a paradox. The more the Christian gives of himself, the more he has of himself. Now this doesn’t work if he just gives his money or possessions; he has to give himself. As Jesus said, “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap” (Luke 6:38).

[1] James Bryan Smith, The Good and Beautiful God (IVP, 2009), p. 162

[2] From Mark Batterson, The Circle Maker, (Zondervan, 2011), pp. 134-135

[3] C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), p. 45

[4] Mike Yaconelli, Messy Spirituality (Zondervan, 2002), pp. 118-119; submitted by Greg Miller, Madison, Mississippi.

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The Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation (Part II)

Posted on February 17, 2020 by salooper57

You’re reading a novel in which the main character has a fantastical experience which changes him. From that time on, whenever he shakes hands with someone, he can see what that person will be in twenty, thirty, even forty years.

He meets a handsome young man who is brilliantly successful – straight A’s in college, captain of the basketball team, with acceptance letters from Harvard Business and other top graduate schools. But when he shakes his hand, he can see that alcoholism will destroy his life, his wife will leave him at 35, take the kids, and he’ll be dead by 50.

Then he meets a woman. Her eyes are hollow with dark bags under them. She is dressed in out-of-date and frayed clothes. But when he shakes hands with her, he sees her clearly as she will be twenty years down the road. She will be lovely. She will have three children who adore her. People will come to her for her wisdom.

He is amazed to see how people’s lives turn out, some beautifully and some tragically. Then he meets and shakes hands with … you.

What will he see? If Christ is in you, he may see lots of success or lots or failure over the next few years, but he will undoubtedly see glory. That is the amazing promise of God. We explore it this week, as we look again at Paul’s powerful prayer in Ephesians 1:15-23, and especially at “the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.”

Your insights are always welcome (comment below)!

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Where is Heaven? (Clue: It’s Closer Than You Think)

Posted on February 15, 2020 by salooper57
Photo by Brett Ritchie on Unsplash

In 1869, The Scientific American ran a short (and sardonic) piece on Dr. D. Mortimer, a medical doctor who believed he had found the location of heaven. His suggestion, if I understand it correctly, was a fascinating one. According to Dr. Mortimer, heaven lay within the sun as a vast globe, “at least 500,000 miles in diameter.”

Apparently, Dr. Mortimer believed that the blessed occupants of heaven were either shielded from its heat or transformed physiologically (an idea based on the Apostle Paul’s writings) so they might flourish there. This location also offers the added convenience of close proximity to a large “lake of fire” for those who are not blessed.


NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Dr. Mortimer was not the first person who located heaven somewhere in space. Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons) wrote that a heavenly body known as Kolob was “nearest unto the throne of God” in the celestial heaven. Whatever Joseph Smith meant by that, he seemed to suggest there is a heavenly realm in outer space. Others have located heaven in the star cluster Pleiades.

People who look for heaven in outer space appeal to language used in the Bible. God, for example, “looks down from heaven.” The psalmist lifts up his eyes to God whose throne is in heaven. Jesus described himself as the one who “comes from above” and, in the ascension, was famously “taken up before their very eyes.” His followers stood dumbfounded, “looking into the sky.”

Locating God’s place in the skies can, however, lead to childish and uninviting depictions of heaven. For example, in a children’s book on death, Maria Shriver wrote: “[Heaven’s] a beautiful place where you can sit on soft clouds and talk to other people who are there. At night you can sit next to the stars…”

Ms. Shriver’s heart is in the right place but I don’t think her heaven is. The heaven she describes is not the stuff of Sunday morning scripture readings but of Saturday morning cartoons, where Elmer Fudd get’s blown up and finds himself on a cloud in a fluffy heaven. It is Looney Toons theology. Has there ever been a real boy or girl who would care to spend an hour in such a boring place?

But locating heaven within a cluster of stars has other problems. For one, the New Testament routinely refers to the skies above with the singular “heaven” but uses the plural “heavens” to refer to God’s place, thus acknowledging a distinction. For another, if Jesus was literally “taken up” in the ascension outside Jerusalem, would he not have been literally “taken down” in relation to the other side of the world – say, Honolulu, Hawaii?

The distinguished New Testament scholar and theologian N.T. Wright has written that “heaven and earth in biblical cosmology are not two different locations within the same continuum of space or matter. They are two different dimensions of God’s good creation.”

According to Wright, this means that “heaven relates to earth tangentially…one who is in heaven can be present simultaneously anywhere and everywhere on earth.” This means that heaven is earth’s “control room,” the “CEO’s office, the place from which instructions are given.”

Jesus’s ascension, then, was not a “vertical take-off” but an assumption of his office as earth’s rightful ruler.  This means he is “available, accessible, without people having to travel to a particular spot on earth” – a temple or church building – “to find him.” This explains why Jesus could say, prior to the ascension, “Look, I am with you always.”

Knowing this makes prayer easier. If God is light years away, we’d better pray loudly. But prayer is another thing entirely if he is “available, accessible.” The philosopher Dallas Willard says that the “first heaven, in biblical terms, is precisely the atmosphere or air that surrounds your body.” He suggests that God relates to space as we do to our bodies, which means he is as close to any point in space – which includes us – as we are to our fingers or head.

All this suggests that the answer to the question, “Where is heaven?” is: closer than you think.

First published in Gatehouse Media

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Powerful Prayers: Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation (Ephesians 1:15-21)

Posted on February 13, 2020 by salooper57

(Note: For a few weeks , I will post the manuscript that goes with the audio (posted Tuesdays) from a sermon in the Powerful Prayers series. People have requested the sermon manuscripts many time, but I’ve always been reluctant to make it available for two principal reasons: 1) I never simply read a sermon, so what people read is not exactly what I spoke. The manuscript might be better or it may be worse but it will be different. And (2) because the sermon has not been edited for publication. With those caveats, here is The Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation III (His Incomparably Great Power for Us Who Believe)

I once read about a young Irish woman who emigrated to the U.S. in the first decades of the twentieth century. She had family in New York, who told her she could find work there, so she saved and scraped and purchased a transatlantic fare on an ocean liner.

After setting aside a little money for expenses she knew she’d incur when she got to New York, she packed a bag with food stuffs to carry her through the six-day journey, mostly crackers. When passengers headed to the dining room for lunch and dinner, she went to her small cabin, got out her cracker ration for that meal, and ate every crumb. She did this for five days.

On her final day aboard, someone asked her why she never came to the dining room and she, embarrassed by her poverty, admitted that she couldn’t afford to purchase her fare and buy her dinner. The woman said to her: “But my dear, all your meals are included in the price of your fare.”

For five days, she went without breakfast and ate crackers and drank water for lunch and dinner, even though the delicious meals in the dining room were hers by right. They had already been paid for, but she didn’t know what she had.

The same thing can happen to us who belong to Christ. He has purchased for us (as the author of Hebrews put it), “so great a salvation,” but we may not know what we have. Many Christians live on rations when they could be feasting.

Not St. Paul. He knew that God “has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3). Those blessing include being chosen by him, made his sons and daughters, granted forgiveness, and given a role in the most important project in the history of the world: the Headship of Jesus over every person, institution, and thing on earth (Ephesians 1:10).

Grace has been freely given to us (verse 6), even lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding (verse 8). The delectable fare of the grand dining room is ours, yet some of us have shut ourselves in our tiny cabins with our crackers and water. We don’t realize what is available to us.

But Paul prays we will see it. He doesn’t want Jesus’s people eking out an existence when they could be flourishing – and they could be. The opening paragraphs of this letter are a paean of praise to the God who lavishes his people with all they need. But Paul knows that many of Jesus’s people are like that poor Irish girl on the ship. They don’t know what they have, don’t know how to access it, and are living like they’re destitute.

Let’s read out text (Ephesians 1:15-21) For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. 

Verse 15 plays a now-familiar tune. When Paul heard about the Ephesians’[1] faith in Jesus and love for all the saints, he knew they were the real deal: a genuine church with enormous potential to serve the kingdom of God and a real adversary who would try to stop them. In other words, they were people in need of prayer.

It should be a warning to us that this church that loved all the saints would be faulted by Jesus himself within a few decades for having “left [their] first love” (Revelation 2:4). If it could happen to that solid, exemplary church, it can happen to us too. The enemy of our souls is too clever to challenge our love for the God who sacrificially loves us, so instead he challenges our love for the saints who ignore us, exploit us, or take us for granted. God’s enemy understands that love works on a circuit. He doesn’t need to break the circuit between God and his people, so long as he can break it between some of God’s people and others of his people. So that’s where he concentrates his efforts.

When Paul heard about the Ephesians’ faith and love, he couldn’t stop thinking about them and wouldn’t stop thanking God for them. Notice how he links thanksgiving with remembering (or, literally, making remembrance) in verse 16. “I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.” If we, like Paul, would take a moment to remember the people we’re praying for – what they’re like, what they’ve done, what they value, who loves them and is loved by them; in other words, if we would make remembrance of them – our prayers would be more powerful. Making remembrance is so much more than rattling off names on a prayer list.

Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians, like his prayers for the Philippians and Colossians, features one principal request. Perhaps we ought to follow his example. I’m not saying we shouldn’t make more than one request for people but that we would do well to have a principal request for each person, one that stands out when we bring that person before our mind and then before the Lord.

After repeatedly holding these believers in his mind, Paul’s one request for them is that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father (literally) “of the Glory” (a loaded phrase, if ever there was one) would give them (literally) “a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.” Yet another Pauline prayer for people to receive knowledge. We pray for peace, for provision, for healing, and for comfort – all good things to pray for – but he prays for knowledge.

When Paul writes of “a spirit of wisdom and revelation,” he probably has the Holy Spirit in mind. Even if he is thinking of a human spirit characterized by wisdom and revelation, the Holy Spirit will be behind it. Wisdom has to do with knowing what you already have – those spiritual blessings Paul cataloged in verses 3-14 – and what to do with it. Go back to our friend on her transatlantic cruise. Wisdom knows what is covered by the purchase of the fare. In our case, wisdom knows what Christ has purchased, what’s available to us, and what’s possible for us.

While wisdom takes advantage of the knowledge we already have, revelation imparts knowledge that we don’t have. Because God is infinite, revelation is, and will always be, needed. So, Paul prays for the spirit of both wisdom and revelation.

Notice it is wisdom and revelation “in the knowledge of [God].” The knowledge of God is of more practical use than the knowledge of economics, philosophy, mathematics, physics, mechanics, or any other body of knowledge. The knowledge of God is life-giving. (That’s John 17:3.) The knowledge of God brings grace and peace in abundance (2 Peter 1:2). Where the knowledge of God is present, men, women, and children flourish.  

That’s why Paul asks God to give these Ephesians the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. But what happens when people are given this Spirit? The eyes of their hearts are enlightened (verse 18).

The NIV 84 translates verse 18, “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.” The latest edition drops the word “also.” The Greek has neither the word “also” nor the words “I pray.” They were probably added as a way to break up a very long run-on sentence. Verse 18 is a continuation of the sentence Paul began in verse 15. He is not making a second request here; he’s stating the desired outcome of the first (and only) request.

He prays that the eyes of their heart may be enlightened. The “heart” in Scripture is the human command center. It is from the heart, not the mind, that decisions are handed down. To have the eyes of the heart enlightened is to have the command center fully informed. It is from the heart that directions are decided.

Donald Miller, the author of Blue Like Jazz and a score of other Christian books, had a bad habit: he chewed tobacco. He knew it wasn’t good for him, but he liked it, and he didn’t want to stop. He couldn’t stop. He’d been told that it causes gum disease, tooth decay, and even cancer of the mouth and throat. He knew he should stop; he just couldn’t.

Then one day he was in the car, listening to the radio, and a public service announcement came on. 30 seconds later, Donald Miller no longer chewed tobacco. In a strange, distorted voice, a man warned of the dangers of chewing tobacco (things Miller already knew). Then he explained why his voice sounded like it did: he didn’t have a lower jaw. Cancer, caused by chewing tobacco, had eaten it away.

During that 30 second PSA, the eyes of Donald Miller’s heart – his command center – were opened. Suddenly, what had been impossible for him – quitting tobacco – became possible, even urgent. He says that as the man spoke, he could visualize his face without a lower jaw. He never chewed tobacco again.

The “eyes of a person’s mind” (which is not a biblical phrase, but you get the idea) are able to see all kinds of things in the Bible – good things, true things, beautiful things – but seeing them has little effect on the person. He might eloquently teach them to others but he’s pretty much the same after he sees them as he was before he saw them. But when the eyes of a person’s heart are enlightened, he is transformed. He not only thinks differently, he acts differently.

That illustration might lead us to assume that whenever the eyes of a person’s heart are opened, they will see bad things, like a chewing tobacco habit. That certainly happens, but mostly they see good things. That is where Paul puts the emphasis. He knows there are wonderful things we will miss without the spirit of wisdom and revelation, chief among them, recognizing God in our daily lives.

Years ago, a tourist to Basel, Switzerland, climbed onto a streetcar and sat down next to the twentieth century’s most eminent theologian, Karl Barth. The two started chatting and Barth asked him if he was new to the city. The tourist said he was, so Barth asked him if there was anything he was hoping to see while he was there.

The man said, “Yes, I’d love to meet the famous theologian Karl Barth. Do you know him?” Barth answered, “Well as a matter of fact, I do. I give him a shave every morning.” The tourist was absolutely thrilled. When he got back to the hotel, he went around telling everyone, “I met Karl Barth’s barber today.”[2]

Without the spirit of wisdom and revelation, we may fail to recognize God when he speaks to us. Without the spirit of wisdom and revelation, we will not make the most of the things God has made available to us. Paul mentions three of those things here. He prays that God will give the Ephesians the spirit of wisdom and revelation and so enlighten the eyes of their hearts so they can know: (1) the hope of his calling; (2) the riches of his inheritance; and (3) his power that is at work on behalf of believers.

The first thing Paul wants the Ephesians to know is “what is the hope of his calling” (literal translation from verse 18). If they know – which they won’t without the Spirit of wisdom and revelation – what God had in mind for them when he called them, their entire outlook on life will be transformed. If they know the hope of their calling, they will be able to come through hardship, pain, and even anguish in ways that will impress the world and glorify God.

Paul knew that hope keeps people from being blown off course by the prevailing winds of culture. Hope enables people who are hard pressed to endure. A shared hope makes it possible for people of different races, from different social classes, with differing educational backgrounds to work together, play together, and be for each other.

Paul refers to this hope as the hope of his calling. Let’s not misread that, as if Paul had written, “the hope of your calling.” This calling is not full of hope because we receive it but because God issues it. It is not just a vocational calling, like a calling to be a pastor or a schoolteacher, but a calling to join Jesus’s side, his campaign, and work for him – to be his special people.

In Philippians, it is referred to as the “high calling” or the “upward call” but we are liable to misunderstand that. “High calling” sounds like the vocation of a doctor rather than a factory worker. That’s not at all what Paul means. If we translate it, as some versions do, as “the upward call,” it sounds as if we’ve been called to leave earth and take an extended – eternity-long – vacation in heaven. That’s not it either.

When I was in high school, hoping to avoid Vietnam, guys would talk about their brothers getting “called up.” They were being drafted, called to active duty, called to serve. That’s more like what Paul had in mind. We’ve been called up.

In high school, getting “called up” did not sound hopeful. So, what does Paul have in mind by “the hope” (literal translation) “of his calling”? The hope of his calling is that our side (that is, Christ’s side) will be victorious. Our king will conquer the enemies of evil, suffering, and death. Heaven will come to earth and there will be peace and no more fear. As Isaiah put it: “…the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9).

If you wanted to sum up this hope in one word, you could hardly to do better than the word “glory.” We are hoping for God’s glory: “We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:3). We are hoping for Jesus’s glory (2 Thessalonians 2:14b), when he is acknowledged head over all things in heaven and on earth (Ephesians 1:10). And we even hope to be part of this glory, since God called us to share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Thessalonians 2:14). We hope for the day when our faith will, as Peter put it, “result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Peter 1:6); the day when, as Paul put it, “the glory … will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).

Our calling is to be a part of this with the rest of Jesus’s people. We share the “hope that creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). We hope to play a role in the biggest, most glorious thing in history; a role in making the world come out right, in remaking it. It seems absurd to think that people like us can have anything to do with something so great and glorious and yet, because we’ve been called by God himself (entirely of his mercy and grace), we are a part of it.

You’ve been called up to live for, fight for, and even die for Jesus Christ. It is a calling that is full of glory, full of hope. It portends a better world, a united human family living peacefully, joyfully, lovingly, and creatively with God in our midst. It is not a wistful hope but a living one, already substantiated by Jesus’s resurrection – “the sure and certain hope of the resurrection.”

If you think, “But I have never heard his call,” then listen and hear it now. God is calling, calling you to join his side, to join his people, to serve his kingdom. God is calling you to his glory. Can you hear him? He wants you! Don’t dodge his call.

[1] “Ephesians” is used here as a circumlocution for the Christians in Asia Minor Paul was addressing in this letter.

[2] John Ross, Surrey, England, Leadership, Vol. 8, no. 4.

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Powerful Prayers: The Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation

Posted on February 11, 2020 by salooper57

In this incomparable passage on prayer, we’ll discover another way to pray for the people and the church we love.

After Josh Ferrin of Bountiful, Utah, bought his first home, he went poking around and found a little access panel in the ceiling of the garage. He thought it might be a place his kids would like to play. When he investigated, he found eight boxes, each with rolls of cash wrapped in twine – $45,000 worth.

He called the previous occupant, whose family had owned the house for years, and told him to come and get the cash. The owner, a Mr. Bangerter, never realized what treasure he had in his own home. St. Paul knows that Jesus’s people might not realize what treasure they have in their relationship with Christ, so he prays that they might discover it.

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A Different Kind of Climate Change

Posted on February 8, 2020 by salooper57

Though many Americans first became aware of climate science in the last few decades, it has a long history. By the 1850s, scientists investigating large-scale climate differences in past geological ages began to suspect that atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane might have an impact on global temperatures.

Their theories generated debate but not consensus. Nevertheless, interest in vacillating global temperatures (in ages past) grew. By the late 1950s, some scientists were not just thinking about the history of climate change but its future and they saw trouble ahead.

I feel like one of those 1950s climate scientists (minus the math proficiency). Like them, I am warning about climate change, although it is a different climate – the social climate – that concerns me. I too see trouble ahead.

In the earth sciences, climate change is measured by temperature fluctuations in earth’s oceans, on its surface, and in its lower troposphere. In the social climate, change is measured by fluctuations in respect and contempt levels. Currently, respect levels are falling and contempt levels are rising.

Social climate change threatens human flourishing. It puts human institutions like marriage and government at risk. Long-term consequences could include poverty, governmental instability, and the unraveling of the social fabric.

What signs are there of social climate change? One is the long-term decline in respect rituals. Every culture has respect rituals, which are exhibited in greetings, introductions, interactions between people of different ages, genders, or class, and during major life events like births and deaths. These rituals have always been open to modification by succeeding generation.

It appears that certain respect rituals are not so much being modified as dropped. For example, it was once normal to use honorifics when introducing people to each other: “John, this is Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Smith, this is Doctor Roberts.” In many cases today, the honorifics are not the only thing that’s been dropped; introductions themselves have been abandoned.

As a long-term pastor, I have witnessed significant changes in death rituals. Funerals and memorials services once provided a shared outlet for grief and an opportunity (as people used to say) to “pay our respects.” It is increasingly common today for families to dispense with the funeral service altogether, or to hold a gathering in its place at a restaurant or even a bowling alley.

Not only are respect levels falling, contempt levels are rising. Consider the outburst by the congressman who shouted, “You lie!” at President Obama while he was addressing a joint session of Congress. Such behavior could not have happened a generation earlier; it was unthinkable.

I was in a Barnes and Noble in suburban Chicago recently and was surprised (and dismayed) to see all the recently published books that have the f-word in their title. The use of vulgarity is rooted in, and gives expression to, contempt and is often a precursor of hostility. The rapidly rising level of vulgarity in speech is a clear sign of social climate change.

According to Professor Steven L. Grover of the University of Otago, respectful behavior is “the manifestation of believing another person has value.” If this is true, then the absence of respectful behaviors and the presence of disrespectful ones betoken a belief that another person does not have value.

We’ve seen this before. The twentieth century genocides in Turkey, Germany, Cambodia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina were all preceded by the proliferation of a belief that certain people do not have value. The spread of such a belief inescapably leads to dramatic changes in the social climate, changes that bode poorly for future generations.

In earth sciences, people have come together to take steps to slow or even halt the harmful changes happening to the climate. Changes in the social climate have received less attention, though they are potentially just as destructive. Even the few who have sounded the alarm seem unsure about what can be done.

Jesus, however, understood what can be done and has outlined steps for doing it. They are more demanding than anything suggested by the Kyoto Protocol or the Paris Agreement, which explains why they have been alternately ignored and contested. Yet they represent an achievable approach to securing a healthy social climate in which future generations can flourish.

First published by Gatehouse Media.

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A Prayer for Your Love Life: Philippians 1:9-11 (manuscript)

Posted on February 6, 2020 by salooper57

(Note: For a few weeks , I will post the manuscript that goes with the audio (posted Tuesdays) from a sermon in the Powerful Prayers series. People have requested the sermon manuscripts many time, but I’ve always been reluctant to make it available for two principal reasons: 1) I never simply read a sermon, so what people read is not exactly what I spoke. The manuscript might be better or it may be worse but it will be different. And (2) because the sermon has not been edited for publication. With those caveats, here is The Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation III (His Incomparably Great Power for Us Who Believe)

St. Paul wrote more of the New Testament than any other writer – he is the author of something like one quarter of the New Testament. If we are going to understand his letters, it is important to realize that he wrote them with some basic assumptions in place. He doesn’t argue for these things. He takes them for granted and assumes his readers do the same. For example, Paul assumes that the Creator of heaven and earth is actively involved in what is happening in our world. He is not on vacation. He is paying attention.

He assumes that the Creator, who is the God and Father of Jesus Messiah, is currently at work in our day-to-day world. All people on earth and every institution of which they are a part is known by God, accessible to God, and responsible before God. That includes you and me and Lockwood Church. This is not something Paul argues; he takes it for granted.

He further assumes that this God is pursuing a specific goal and is employing individuals and institutions to achieve it, whether they realize it or not, whether they cooperate or not. That goal is stated this way in the letter to the Ephesians: “to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ” (Ephesians 1:10).

We read over that and miss how revolutionary (in the fullest sense of the word) it is. The goal is to bring all things – nations, for example, and their governments – under the headship of one leader: Jesus. The U.S., Russia, China, England, France – and the other 191 so-called sovereign states – will be governed by one head, Jesus Messiah. That’s the plan. Talk about a one-world government – this is it – and it is God’s intention to make it happen.

But it is not just nations. It is people, animals, weather systems, physical processes, spiritual forces – authorities, powers, and dominions – everything. Paul sees God making all things work together toward this goal and Paul has committed himself – even to the point of sacrificing his life – to that cause. He further assumes that the Colossian church exists for the same purpose: the realization of the universal lordship of Jesus; otherwise, they would not be a church.

If we read Paul without realizing this, we will unwittingly substitute some other goal in place of this one. For example, we’ll assume (like most of the people we know) that the goal of life is happiness. We’ll read a passage about prayer (for example) against that background and it will look quite different to us than it did to Paul. We can carefully exegete the passage, do word studies, and have really good insights. We can use the right theological terms to describe it, but we’ll nevertheless miss the point.

Take, for example, the request we looked at last week: that church people be filled with the knowledge of God’s will. That will look very different to us than it did to Paul, if we assume the reason for knowing God’s will is so we can help our children succeed in school or establish our financial security in retirement. Paul assumed the reason for knowing God’s will is to establish the headship of Jesus over all the earth.

This explains why some people try the Christian life for a while and then give up: they thought it was about one thing when it was really about something else entirely. Some years ago, we had a remote control for the TV, another for the VCR, and one more for the DVD player, and we kept them all in the same drawer. Sometimes, I would grab one, push the power button and, when nothing happened (or, at least, nothing I noticed), I’d think: “This thing isn’t working!” But of course it was. I was just trying to make it do something it wasn’t designed to do.

If we think the purpose of knowing God’s will is so we can avoid every difficulty and live a comfortable and prosperous life, we’re bound to come to the conclusion that prayer doesn’t work. However, if, like Paul, we are committed to and engaged in preparing for Jesus to take sovereign rule over all the world, we’ll see that prayer works exactly as intended.

With all that in mind, let’s look at the next prayer in our Powerful Prayers series. Paul prays for his friends in the city of Philippi (Philippians 1:9-11): And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. 

Back to what I was just saying. When Paul writes of “what is best” in verse 10 (we’ll go into that shortly), it is with the goal – the universal headship of Jesus – in mind. What is best is not determined by our ease, comfort, or prestige, but by the establishment of the sovereign rule of Jesus Messiah over all the earth. If you haven’t realized it before, the people of Jesus are insurgents, revolutionaries, preparing for the overthrow of the status quo and the return to power of earth’s rightful ruler.

So, it might surprise us that Paul, the committed revolutionary who for the sake of the cause spent years in jails and prisons all around the Mediterranean, prays for the Philippian revolutionaries’ love life. He’d already written in verse 4 of “all his prayers” for the Philippians and mentioned that he always prays for them with joy. In verses 9–11, he tells them what he prays, and it is about their love. What has love got to do with the subjection of every nation and people and power on earth under one head, even Christ? What’s love got to do with it?

Everything. The revolution to which Paul was committed is a revolution of Love. The Lord to which Paul submitted is the Lord of Love. His rule is the rule of love: To “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’”; and to “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27) is the law of his kingdom.

Life as Jesus’s person begins with, and ends in, love. If your faith does not equip you to love – God and people – something is not right. Jesus called love the greatest command.1 He told his followers that they must be like their Father in heaven and love even their enemies.2

Paul told the Roman Christians to “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law.”3 He wrote, “Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”4 In Galatians, he went so far as to say, “The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself”.”5 James, the first leader of the church at Jerusalem, wrote, “If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing right.”6

Jesus told his disciples that love was their ID card. “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”7The reign of Jesus will not be one of severity and dominance but of love. The revolution is powered by love – love is the Church’s secret weapon. No wonder Paul prayed for the Philippians’ love. We can’t do right when love is absent. We can’t be right when love is wrong.

Paul’s prayer for his friends is that their love will abound. That word is frequently translated “overflow,” like a river that overflows its banks. Kenneth Wuest says the word suggests something that is conspicuous. When the river that flows through some town overflows its banks, it is conspicuous. Paul is praying that the thing about these Christians that overflows, that is most conspicuous, will be their love.

Let’s pause there for a second. Is that the most conspicuous thing about Lockwood people? Is love the first thing others notice about us? God gave the Church no substitute for love. Organizational efficiency can’t replace it. Good preaching won’t compensate for its absence. Superb music is no alternative. Love is what makes a church great. Lack of love is what spoils it.

There are two specific qualities in love with which Paul is especially concerned. He wants love to abound more and more – start overflowing and never stop – in knowledge and depth of insight. Both those qualities merit close attention.

Knowledge is the same word we saw previously in the Colossians’ prayer, and carries the idea of recognition. In Colossians, that knowledge had to do with recognizing God’s will. Correlating love with knowledge seems odd to us because we, influenced by Chaucer and Shakespeare, think that love is blind. Paul thinks that love alone truly sees.

Now, this has consequences. If Paul is right, we’ll never really understand someone we don’t love. Husbands won’t understand their wives, wives their husbands, parents their children, children their parents, without love. The Senegalese poet Baba Dioum had it backwards when he said, “we love only what we understand.” We only understand – really understand – what we love.

That means if you’re having trouble understanding someone – “Why is he doing this? I don’t understand him at all!” – your first step should be to ask God to love him through you. Then love him. Pray for him. Speak well of him. Do good to him. That is the path to understanding.

Paul prays that “depth of insight” will also abound in their love. “Depth of insight” translates a single Greek word, which originally referred to sense perception. Paul is praying that the Philippians’ love will be perceptive. Love can actually heighten a person’s perception.

Think about a quarterback who is totally in the zone: he sees things he wouldn’t otherwise see. Nobody displayed this ability more often than Peyton Manning. When he was on his game, he could see (without realizing he was seeing) the middle linebacker picking up the slant, the cornerback blitzing from the right side, the safety helping out on the wide receiver and the tight end releasing and having about a five-yard opening. Because he perceived all this, he could choose the best option, hit the tight end, and make a first down.

For us, the way to get in the zone is to love. When we love, we perceive things we would otherwise miss: the delay in answering; the tense facial muscles, the hesitation in speaking. We will sense things we would normally not notice. That is love at work.   

When does this “depth of insight” come into play? It comes into play all the time: when we’re raising children; doing our jobs; spending our money; relating to our parents; teaching a class; helping our friends; even playing the piano or building a house. Paul knows that the knowledge and depth of insight available through love will help us discern what is best.

The word translated “discern” is an important one in Paul’s vocabulary. 86 percent of the time it is used in the New Testament, Paul is the one using it. It is a “quality control” word. It has the idea of testing something for approval. It’s the word Paul uses in Roman, when he tells the Christians there that they will be able to “test and approve what God’s will is” (Romans 12:2).

How often we need to do that. Is this opportunity from God? Should I forge ahead or hold back? Should I take this job, volunteer for this ministry? We weigh the pros and cons – which is the right thing to do – but in the absence of discerning love we’re bound to misjudge their weight. We’ll think the financial component weighs more than it does and the relationship component less. We’ll approve or reject an opportunity without realizing we’ve set it on an inaccurate scale. Only love can balance the scale.

If (verse 10) we are “able to discern what is best” we will be able to remain “pure and blameless until the day of Christ …” The word we have here is not the one usually translated “pure.” It is a compound word with two roots: The first meaning sunlight, and the second from the verb to judge. “Something evaluated in the light.” Paul wants his friends to lead the kind of life in which they can see clearly and be seen, without deceiving or being deceived. That has never been more important than now.

The word translated “blameless” is also not the usual word. The idea here has to do with avoiding stumbling. Paul is praying that his friends’ love will enable them to make choices they (or others) won’t stumble over later. I’ve seen people make choices that eventually caused them to stumble and fall out of a healthy relationship with God, with spouse, and with family. Paul doesn’t want that for his friends.

A therapist who specializes in working with millennials says there is a theme that runs through the various encounters she has with her clients. Whether they come to her because they struggle with anxiety or feel like failures, the theme that resurfaces again and again is: “I can’t decide what to do. What if I make the wrong choice?”

What these millennials need is exactly what Paul is talking about: love that overflows with knowledge and insight. It’s what we all need.

The result of this perceptive, discerning love is (verse 11) a life that brings glory and praise to God. Sir Christopher Wren built St. Paul’s Cathedral in London to the glory of God. J.S. Bach composed his music to the glory of God. Handel dedicated his Te Deum to the glory of God. Countless church and school buildings have “To the glory of God” etched on their cornerstones. But nothing brings more glory to God that a person who loves, except a church-full of people who love.

We can only live this kind of life if we are connected to the source of this kind of love. This “Love,” as St. John put it, “comes from God” (1 John 4:7). Paul writes, “God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:5) It is possible to connect to the source of love, through confidence in his Son Jesus Christ. If you’ve never done that, I invite you to do so today. If you don’t know how to do that, please talk with me after the service or get together with a Christian friend whose life you respect and ask them how they got connected to God.

It’s a little like using a hose. It doesn’t work unless it’s connected to a spigot. The hose doesn’t make water; it conveys it. No water is coming out of it unless water gets into it. It has to be connected. But that’s not all. Once connected, we need to open the valve. The way we do that is by choosing to love. That choice is ours.

A wise man once said, “Do not waste your time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.”12

Choose to love. Choose it again and again. It’s not enough to say you love your spouse. You must choose to love your spouse. Choose to love your friend, your enemy, your teacher, the stranger in the store. Your choice is what opens the valve.

Love – not only a feeling but an attitude; not only an attitude, but a commitment –is eagle-eyed. Love discerns what is best. Love keeps us from making decisions that will trip us up and hurt those around us. Love is what brings glory and praise to God. Dare to love. Choose to love. Live a life of love.

Go and be imitators of God. Choose to love. Dare to love. Live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Amen

1 Matthew 22:37-40

2 Matthew 5:43-48

3 Romans 13:8

4 Romans 13:10

5 Galatians 5:14

6 James 2:8

7 John 13: 35

12 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

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Prayer for Your Love Life

Posted on February 3, 2020 by salooper57

I’ve often asked myself what must happen for someone to discern what is best in a given situation. Is it best to take this job or stay with the one I’ve got? Should we move to a larger house or continue making do? Shall we retire or should keep working for a few more years? How can we discern what’s good from what’s best?

When we ask: “What must happen in order to discern what is best?” we’re assuming that discernment is primarily a procedural thing, as if discernment is just a matter of following the right steps. I’ve come to think there is a prior and more important question: “What kind of people do we need to be to discern what is best?” The Apostle Paul’s surprising answer to that question is: We have to be people with a healthy love life.

That love life – what Paul elsewhere calls “a life of love” – is critical to godly discernment. And that’s what Paul prays for in tPhilippians 1:9-11: that his dear friends’ “love will abound … so that [they] will be able to discern what is best…”

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