Tag Archives: Ephesians 2

Quiet confidence

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“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws…. you will be my people and I will be your God.

(Ezek 36.26-28)

“If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another counsellor to be with you for ever – the Spirit of Truth… The Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. 

(Jn 14.15-17,25-27)

“.. but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about.. you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you will be my witnesses..

(Acts 1.4&8)

Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

(2Cor 1.21&22)

So I say, live by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature… but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control..

(Gal 5.22&23)

For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

(Eph 2.10)

How good and gracious is our God, and how abundant his provision for the people he has called into his family and his great work of redemption and re-creation!

As Jesus prepared his disciples for their future after his ascension, he told them that the great prophecies of God’s anointing and indwelling Spirit were shortly to come to pass. By that spirit, God’s people throughout all time to come could live in intimate fellowship with God, dwelling in joyful harmony and unbroken communication with him.

The Spirit is within us is a guarantee of our inheritance as beloved children – a first taste of what awaits us. The Spirit within us is our teacher, taking the words of scripture and applying them, making the book live to us and feeding our faith for the journey. The Spirit within us is our constant companion, bringing Christ alongside in every situation and interceding for us in our praying. The Spirit within us continually reminds us and points us to Christ, to his love, sacrifice, power and glory, so that we might grow in love for the Lord. The Spirit within is our counsellor, prompting us in our thoughts and actions to be obedient to God’s will, and to discern where and how we might join in God’s work. The Spirit within is also our power, divine enabling and provision for every good work which is prepared for us to do.

Friends, I do not think that this is a matter of feeling, but of fact. As those who have confessed Jesus as Lord, we are indwelt by the Spirit, God’s gift to his church so that we might live to glorify him and enjoy him forever. The gift is for our blessing, and for the growth of the kingdom, and as we live in faith that this is our reality, we can have confidence in God’s provision for every task to which we are called.

The apostles, after receiving the Holy Spirit, lived every moment of their lives in confidence that God would enable and provide for their needs. The handful of women and men who received that Spirit went on – in that power – to turn their world upside down, and birth the church of which we are the heirs. They were ordinary people, indwelt and loved by an extraordinary God – our God, who longs to work through us in the same way.

As we face the everyday, and also the extraordinary, things which God has put in our way, we can do so in confidence that we will have the help of the Spirit for every need. We do not start each task in fear, in case somehow the Spirit has abandoned us, but rather quietly commit ourselves to obedience and to glorifying our God as we go.

Am I living in fellowship with God? In so far as I know, am I obeying his commands and sensitive to his direction? Do I long to please him above all others? Then, let me go out in quiet confidence and thankfulness, rejoicing that I am living in the strength which God gives, that his power is at work in me, and that all I need to tackle each situation will be provided for.

A blank sheet..

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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.

(Eph 2.10)

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

(1 Peter 2.9&10)

God has now revealed to us his mysterious plan regarding Christ, a plan to fulfill his own good pleasure. And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ – everything in heaven and on earth.

(Eph 1.9&10) 

As I contemplate the next few months, with a change of home; church and lifestyle – moving after 16 years in one house, 22 in the same church, and a lifetime in the city – I am deeply conscious that God is asking every day, “do you trust me?”

Do I? I am tempted to barter with God, to ask to see in advance how he will provide for me – for friends, rewarding activities, replacements for all the things that make my life here so rich. That is not trust. Indeed it speaks of a deep suspicion, an unwillingness to believe that God is going to be faithful to his promises, and I am ashamed to recognise it in my heart.

The whole of scripture reveals an active God, one who has a plan – both a great overall strategy and an intimate personal plan for the lives of the individuals caught up in it. Think of the wonderful story of Ruth, called out of her native land to become a mother and grandmother within the people of Israel, and part of the blood-line not only of King David, but also our great King Jesus himself. She needed to be cherished and provided for as a woman in her society, and God brought Boaz to be her husband, meeting both the intimate personal needs and the larger plan he was steadily working out. Or consider Hannah, a faithful but barren wife – mocked and demeaned by her neighbours and suffering deeply for her lack of children. God heard her prayer for a son, and filled her arms and her heart with joy; but he also brought into the nation the boy who would become one of the greatest prophet leaders, Samuel, who would anoint first Saul and then David as king.

I need to remind myself of these promises, these stories, of God active to meet personal needs within his great plan, as our family faces upheaval and I wonder what I am to do in our new place of ministry. God’s great plan remains – to call a people to himself, to make disciples of all nations and to see all things gathered together under the lordship of Jesus Christ. It is astonishing to think that I have a part to play in that adventure, but it is for this that I was created new in Christ, and God has planned good works which he will enable me to do for him!

But on a personal level too, I will have things to do, new relationships to establish, people to encourage and serve, new ways to serve and glorify the God who has called me out of darkness into his glorious light! Will I not trust him to reveal those to me in his own good time? I want to close with words which I first heard through Elisabeth Elliott – a woman who learnt to trust God through great suffering – and which although archaic to our ears yet convey that sense of waiting in trust that God will direct my steps in his own, good, time.

From an old English parsonage, down by the sea

there came in the twilight a message to me;

Its quaint Saxon legend, deeply engraven,

Hath, as it seems to me, teaching from Heaven.

And on through the hours the quiet words ring like a low inspiration –

“Do the next thing.”

Many a questioning, many a fear,

Many a doubt hath its quieting here.

Moment by moment, let down from Heaven,

Time, opportunity, guidance, are given.

Fear not tomorrows, child of the King, trust them with Jesus,

“Do the next thing.”

Do it immediately; do it with prayer;

do it reliantly, casting all care;

do it with reverence, tracing His Hand

who placed it before thee with earnest command.

Stayed on Omnipotence, safe’neath his wing, leave all resultings,

“Do the next thing.”

Looking to Jesus, ever serener

(Working or suffering) be thy demeanour,

In His dear presence, the rest of His calm,

The light of His countenance be thy psalm,

Strong in His faithfulness, praise and sing, then as He beckons thee

“Do the next thing.”

(author unknown) 

But what am I, a mere mortal ?

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When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers – the moon and the stars that you set in place – what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?

(Ps 8. 3&4)

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.

(Eph 2. 10)

Breathtaking, isn’t it? And I am not just referring to the picture – sunset over the Lake of Galilee, a symphony of colour and grandeur! We rightly wonder at the diversity, majesty and beauty of the creation around us, and revere the Creator whose power and unsearchable wisdom brought it all into being. But even more, we should be struck dumb at the realisation that in the great story of creation, the human race was the pinnacle, all was brought into being in order to give us a home, a place to share with one another and above all one which would reveal God’s greatness to us as we shared fellowship with him.

The great narrative of scripture puts us in pride of place at the climax of creation, the only beings which God created to reflect his character, and into which he breathed life. We know very well that our rebellion against our loving God led us out of fellowship with him, that the image in us was scarred almost beyond recognition, and the world around us was broken by our sin. And yet, in spite of all this, the bible is adamant that our proper place remains as the crown of creation, the apple of God’s eye, his greatest handiwork.

From the moment when God confronted Adam and Eve with their sin and spelled out its consequences, his plan was being revealed, a rescue plan, and one which would result in even greater glory to God than if we had never sinned, never needed saving! It takes a great craftsman to produce a work of art, and an even greater one to take a desperately flawed and spoiled thing and make of it something beautiful and useful. Our God is the great craftsman, the one for whom nothing is too broken to be restored to wholeness, and for whom no amount of painstaking labour is too much.

How is it that we can be made beautiful again, restored to bearing the image of God and sharing fellowship with him? It is all his work, and all through the way in which we are united with Jesus by God when we trust in the power of his death to wipe away our sin. As Paul says earlier in that chapter of Ephesians :- ” So God can point to us in all future ages as examples of the incredible wealth of his grace and kindness towards us, as shown in all he has done for us who are united with Christ Jesus. God saved you by his grace when you believed.” (Eph 2.8)

Praise be to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for his saving power, and his great love, which he pours out on us, so that we may live new lives, free from the guilt and power of sin! What good news we have to share of an Eternal Father’s love, a Saviour’s blood to cleanse and a Holy Spirit’s power active in our lives to make the fact of our new nature more and more a daily reality.

As I allow the truth revealed in the bible to soak into my mind, applying it like a filter to every view of life, I will see things more and more the way God sees them. This is the transforming of my mind, my thoughts, so that I am increasingly aligned with the unseen realities, with the truths which underlie our lives instead of the lies and myths which our culture imposes on us. The devil would love to keep me blind to the truth, hobbled by a sense of my own past failures, and present weakness; to keep me doubting God and afraid to ask for his help because I fear that he really doesn’t care about me. I need to keep on returning my gaze to the stars, the heavens above and the wonders all around, and saying to myself:- “Lord, your handiwork is great, I am humbled by your power and majesty, but I choose to believe that in Christ, I am a masterpiece in your hands, that you look upon me with delight, and that I have purpose and a place in this world and in your family.”