Divine Moments

Divine Moments

Ephesians 1:1-15

Good morning everyone, I am glad for those of you that you have joined us online.

Please turn to Ephesians 1

To open this letter to the church at Ephesus, Apostle Paul identifies as an apostle called by the will of God-

He tells the church by what authority that he is writing them. You would think why would he do that?

Because there was those who fought his authority because he was not one of the original twelve.

Bringing up his past as a person who went after the church and God’s people.

Then his next statement is who he is addressing the letter too- to the saints (those who have professed Jesus as Lord)

He calls those people the faithful!

I want Jesus to call me apart of “the faithful”

I want to hear from the Lord what he desires for his church and His people and also personal what he wants for me.

Do you want that for yourself this morning?

There are two things that this world cannot have without Jesus- Peace that only Jesus can bring and His Grace that only Jesus can give.

The older I get, the more mature I am able to be in Him, I find myself looking for divine moments.

According to Dr. B.W. Hambrick, a friend, and Nazarene pastor in his book Kairos Difining moments…he says “What makes that momentary but long lasting difference? God shows up to participate in our lives and performs a miracle, speaks words of peace, gives new direction, or whatever else the creator of the universe chooses to do. But in those defining moments virtually everything changes- the impossible becomes possible.” End quote.

Where the Lord begins to move in our life. He desires and wants to do that.

And when He is not moving, He is preparing us for His changes.

God may be quiet for a time, but He is never not doing anything.

He is ever working in your life… always and forever if we will let him and we are sensitive to what He wants to do.

In our bible study this past week we looked at purpose and meaning- if we are not careful, we can lose purpose and meaning for many reasons.

World pressures to survive

Age- either too young or too old- do we make a difference?

Lose focus- centered in on what is happening now instead of seeing spiritually what God is doing

Definition of Purpose- “The reason for which something is done or created to exist.”

Definition of Meaning- “The sense of significance

When Paul tells us that we have value, meaning, purpose, it is because of who we are in Christ as believers.

“In Christ” is a big thing!

Paul’s only claim to fame as a believer was that He was called of God and that what he did for God was under the power of God working in his life.

Now go to the text and see the heart of the apostle as he shares what Christ has done for all of us!

Praise be to the ‘God and Father of Jesus that He has given us special blessing that come from heaven- that before we were even thought of that God the Father thought of us and through His Son Jesus would choose a way of redemption for our broken and destroyed lives.

He chose us to be able to be blameless and holy- that we can be adopted into the family of God because we have Jesus as our advocate.

(7-10) “In Him, we have redemption, through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put in effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment- to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.”

Stay with me- Under what Christ has done for us is special blessings that come right from heaven to God’s people. He offers redemption to all but we know all won’t accept his precious gift but for those that do his blood will wash away our sins and put us in a right relationship with God the Father through God’s Son Jesus!

Apostle Paul is not writing the church to say how great Paul is but to remind the church how great Jesus is-

He reminds them how important it is to belong to Jesus-

To live as Christ would have us live

That we as believers are sent out into this world as ambassadors of Christ.

That we have special task to do as adopted children into the family of God.