flooded

Ever since I first heard of your strong faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for God’s people everywhere, I have not stopped thanking God for you. I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and insight so that you might grow in your knowledge of God. I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called—his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance.

Ephesians 1:15-18

Okay, so just as I appreciated the NLT version of the last section of Ephesians I tackled, today I find it somewhat lacking compared to the NASB, especially the latter part, verse 18.  Here's the NASB take on verse 18:

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, . . .

I realize that the NLT was trying to get away from the somewhat poetic (and potentially confusing) "eyes of your heart" phrase, but that's the very thing I like about the NASB version.  I appreciate the image it conjures up in my mind, of our heart seeing the truth of our hope and knowing our hope in Christ, being flooded with the light of understanding like a 1000-watt flood light blinking on over our heads.

So there ya go, one of the reasons I like to read from several different translations of the Bible.  I get the best of both worlds, so to speak, and since I don't speak Greek or Hebrew or Aramaic, by comparing English versions it brings me closer to understanding what the writer was really trying to say, or so I believe and hope.

I started to take this post in one direction, but as so often happens, I have found my thoughts sidetracked.  And as I have learned to do here, I will follow the sidetrack wherever it leads me.

The phrase that sidetracked me is in verse 16, "I have not stopped thanking God for you. I pray for you constantly..."  And it's appropriate, I guess, because the whole thrust of this section is Paul's prayer for the folks in Ephesus.  As you probably know, he almost always includes this sort of section in his letters, a prayer for the people he's addressing.  Paul had a lot of people for whom he was "constantly" praying!

How does that work?  When did he have time to write his letters if he was sitting around praying all the time like that?  Am I supposed to pray constantly, too??  According to 1 Thessalonians 5:17, we are supposed to "pray without ceasing" or to "never stop praying," depending on which version we're reading.  Some folks I've talked to have suggested that means that if we're praying 5 minutes a day, we should never stop doing that.  Personally, I think that's sort of a copout, and believe he really does mean that we are supposed to be praying at all times.  Paul says that he prays constantly, and I assume he would strongly suggest that we follow his example.  (See Philippians 3:17.)

So again, how does that work?  Well, to me, praying without ceasing or being constantly in prayer simply means being in constant communion with God.  Being with God.  It means to realize and recognize that God is constantly with me, right beside me, within me no matter where I am or what I'm doing.  And his desire, his will, is that I acknowledge his presence and simply talk to him, communicate with him, commune with him, be with him.

Then, whenever someone or something comes to mind that concerns me, I can immediately hash it over with my good friend, the Creator of the Universe.  Paul alludes to this in his letter to the Philippians when he says "Every time I think of you, I give thanks to my God."  He is in constant prayer, so he prays about anything that comes to mind, whether it's the Philippians, the Ephesians, or his ingrown toenail.  It's a continuing conversation between two loved ones, and that's the kind of relationship God longs to enjoy with all of his children.

It's sometimes referred to as Practicing the Presence of God, but personally, that sounds a little too mystical to me.  I'd rather just think of it as simply being with God.  But it is something that requires practice, no doubt.  It's so easy to go on as if God isn't even there.  It's so easy to get distracted by life and to find myself ignoring the one who gave everything for me, who loves me beyond comprehension, who never shouts at me but rather whispers to my heart and speaks to me through his word and guides me with his creative hand, the one who is always with me even when I fail to be with him.

I just need to be aware of him, to know the truth of his presence, to have the eyes of my heart opened in order to see and comprehend his constant love and the confident access we have to him, in him.  As we grow in that comprehension and as we learn to be constantly with him, all of our concerns naturally turn into prayer.  Constant, unceasing prayer.

One more thing, though.  Notice that Paul prays that God will open the eyes of the Ephesian's hearts.  He doesn't tell the Ephesians to do that because they cannot.  And neither can I.  It has to be God's work and we simply need to surrender to him.  In prayer.  And we have confident hope - an assured hope, hope in a sure thing - that he will do what he says.

Father, open the eyes of my heart to the confident hope I have in you and let me be constantly in prayer, constantly in conversation with you, constantly with you.

money-back guarantee

And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him.
Ephesians 1:13‭-‬14 NLT

As a life-long, card-carrying Gentile, I feel quite blessed indeed, knowing by way of the Holy Spirit that I, along with believing Jews, am truly one of God's own people. Lately, I have been reading through the Hebrew Scriptures (a.k.a., the Old Testament), and it's amazing how "God's own people" back in those days continually failed to follow his instructions, ignoring the prophets, and generally living as if they weren't his own people at all. And yet, God never gave up on them. Oh, they paid for their rebellion, but even when the whole lot of them (almost) were exiled to Babylon, God promised that he would bring them back, and by golly he did.

I hear a lot of folks grumbling these days about the God of the Old Testament, how he bears little resemblance to the Jesus of the New Testament. But the Old Testament God was ever faithful and extremely merciful to his people, no matter how rotten they were acting.  Sounds like Jesus to me!

But anyway, that wasn't what I wanted to focus on from today's selection from Ephesians, because I have always been a bit confused by the whole idea of how the Holy Spirit was given to us as God's guarantee of our inheritance in Christ, and I wanted to take some time to think through it, pray about it, and ask God to speak to me about it today.

The NASB says it this way: "In Him, you [Gentiles] also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation--having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of His glory."  That's the version I've been used to reading for most of my life, and it might just be the main source of my confusion.  Yes, I must say that the NLT has helped me understand it better.

The idea that the Jesus "identifies you [me, us] as his own by giving you [me, us] the Holy Spirit" reminds me of a verse from another of Paul's letters:

"For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!" The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him."  Romans 8:15-17 NLT

Paul is almost saying the same thing in Romans as he does here in Ephesians, but he comes at it from the opposite direction, starting with the Holy Spirit who confirms to us that we are God's children, and therefore heirs.  In Ephesians, Paul is saying that God has made us heirs in Christ, and has given us the Holy Spirit to confirm (guarantee, pledge) that fact to us.  It's the same thing but turned around.

That Paul, he was pretty consistent, wasn't he?  But he does like to turn things around from time to time.

So let me see if I can put this whole thing into my own words, avoiding all the churchy-sounding stuff.

When we put our faith in Jesus and all he accomplished when he died for us on the cross and was raised from the dead, God adopts us into his family to be his heirs along with Jesus.  And since it's hard for us to wrap our heads around that, he gave us his Holy Spirit to live inside of us, and part of the Holy Spirit's job is to keep us convinced that we are indeed children and heirs of God in Christ, to remind us of who we really are, even when (especially when) we aren't following the path God has laid out for us.

I think that's right, more or less, although I added a little more than what Paul actually says in Ephesians.  But one thing I do believe is that it's never the Holy Spirit's job to "convict" us when we sin, but rather to remind us of who we are, to encourage us to walk with God, and to celebrate with us when we show evidence that we are growing in Christ.   To "convict" carries a connotation of guilt, and I do not believe that the Holy Spirit ever makes us feel guilty. The exact opposite is true, in my opinion; he inspires us to walk in a manner worthy of our calling.

But I'm getting ahead of myself again.

Father, thank you for adopting me as your child and for giving me the amazing gift of your Holy Spirit living in me, encouraging me, reminding me of who I am and whose I am.  Open the ears of my heart to listen more closely to you and to walk in the Spirit, because the Spirit knows who I am and who you are.  I love you, my "Abba," my Father.  Thank you for speaking to me today.