Ephesians Devotionals
Bob Morris
Cause for Thanks and Prayer (Ephesians 1:15-16)
For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all his people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.
Sometimes – especially in our spiritual pilgrimage – we live for the spectacular and miss out some of the smaller more mundane blessings that come our way. I remember attending a conference at the Rodon Hotel in the mountains of Cyprus. The terrain can only be described as barren. There was no grass and little greenery other than scrub growth and pine trees. One day on our morning walk we notice some tiny perfect little yellow flowers by the side of the road, hardly visible unless you were looking for them. They piqued our curiosity, so we set out to see how many different flowers we could find by the side of the dusty, rocky road. An hour later we had found yellow, red and purple flowers, flowers with single blooms and some with many – 23 different kinds in all. Who knew? It reminded me of Elizabeth Barrett Brownings’s poem:
Earth’s crammed with heaven
And every common bush on fire with God;
Only those who see take off their shoes.
The rest sit around and pick blackberries.
Too easily we fail to see God and his blessings in our surroundings and in the ordinary days of our lives. Paul thanks God for what he saw in the lives of the Ephesians – things so ordinary we could take them for granted, but extra-ordinary, because they are the marks of God’s work in the church – faith in the Lord Jesus and love for all the saints. These are the classic marks of the body of Christ, and human beings “on fire” with God. Jesus made these points more than once to his disciples. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13: 35). John expanded this in his epistle and wrote, “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us” 1 John 4: 12).
Elsewhere, when the disciples returned from their first short term mission trip ecstatic about their newly discovered spiritual power, Jesus cautioned tem, “Do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10: 20).
No wonder Paul was moved to pray and give thanks continually for “your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all his people”. These people had become new creations in Christ Jesus. That is never to be taken for granted. Let’s be thankful to God for “faith in the Lord Jesus and love for all his people” whenever we see them.
Father, may we your people always be marked by our faith in the Lord Jesus, in whatever challenges we are facing, and by our love for each other, whether or not it is spontaneous.
Print
Email
