We're going to read Ephesians. It's really a beautiful book.
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, who at two to the saints, which are at the thesis and to the faithful in Christ Jesus.
So that, so it's written to us, and it's written to the church of Emphasis Grace be to you and peace from God, our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Whenever I read that, it's so, so comforting to me.
We could gloss over it, but really what it is, it's like if you were with your mother and father and you were on the phone with your sister, you'd say, “Mommy and daddy said hi.”
That's what this is:
Grace be to you. And peace from God, our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with many spiritual blessings in heavenly places.
So we are blessed with many spiritual blessings in heavenly places. If we aren't living that way, we're missing something.
According as he has chosen us in him... He's chosen us.
He's chosen us in Him before the foundations of the world.
Before the world was even made, He chose you before the foundations of the world.
That we should be holy and without blame before Him in love
We should be holly without blame. Without blame.
So that's a big deal. Do you know how many times we put ourselves down?
Well, according to God, we're without blame before him in love.
Having predestinated us.
So he Predestinated us. He in his foreknowledge put us somewhere.
He predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will.
This what we are his, according to his good pleasure.
We're talking about God. To the praise of the glory of His grace, we are in.
He has made us acceptable in the beloved. We are acceptable in the beloved, in His family. We're acceptable.
He made us that way in whom we have redemption.
Redemption! Redemption means you've been brought back, redeemed, brought with a price.
You are probably too young to know about S and H Green stamps.
You would go to certain grocery stores and certain gas stations and they would give you these green stamps and these books, and you would take these stamps, and depending on how much you purchased when you were at the store or the gas station, you would get a sheet of stamps and you would take these stamps ad to add them to the book.
Well, at a certain point, whenever you got enough, you could redeem that book for certain things.
If you had a little bit, you can get, I don't know, some groceries or something.
If you had a lot, you can get a tv, you can get a radio, you could get a knife set.
See you redeemed them. You'd say, Okay, here's this. I'm giving it to you. Now you give me that.
And that's what we've been, we've been redeemed. Jesus said, Okay, I gave my life. Now you give me that (us)
Who have we been redeemed from? From the devil. Because He's the God of this world.
Until Jesus came to buy us back, God had to put his spirit on us.
Now we can be children of God. We've been redeemed. We've been bought back. We are his!
In whom we have redemption through his blood. The forgiveness of sins.
Forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace
Do you remember when Jesus was walking on this earth and he would say to somebody, who needed healing, rise up and walk and sin No more. Your, sins are forgiven.
Well, that was blasphemous back then because only God could forgive sins. They used to have to do things that would cover sins for the year.
Every year they had to do a ritual and, and have their sins covered. But they weren't gone. Jesus came and now our sins are gone.
In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace, wherein he has abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence.
With all wisdom and prudence having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he had purposed in himself.
So this is all because He wanted to. That's it. That in the dispensation of the fullness of times.
That means after time had gone by and certain things were fulfilled and the dispensation of the fullness of times…
He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are in earth, even in Him in whom also we have obtained an inheritance being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who works all things after the council of his own will.
So this is all according to God, God made this happen and all of that, we should be to the praise of His glory.
Who first trusted in Christ. God, first trusted in Christ, in whom you also trusted.
Because we're born again, we've decided, I'm going to believe in the Son of God.
I'm gonna believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God. He was raised from the dead, in whom also we trusted.
After that, we heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, the good news of your salvation, in whom also after that you believed you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise!
The seal is a big deal. You know, like when a king would write a letter, he would take his insignia ring, his little stamp, he'd put it in wax and he would seal his message.
We've been sealed. Now there's probably way more to it than that, but that's part of what that is, that we've been sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise,
Which is the earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the purchase possession unto the praise of his glory.
Wherein I also, (this is Paul saying) I also, after I heard of your faith… so after he heard of the faith of the Ephesians, and now we are included in this because it said, this is written to “the Ephesians and to all of those who are in Christ Jesus who love God”, we love God.
See in the beginning. It says “Grace to you, where it is, where is it pulling apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God to the saints were your thesis and to the faithful in Christ Jesus.
So it's written to us too. We are in there.
I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and love unto all the saints cease not to give thanks for you.
So Paul was thankful, he was praying for you and for me. He didn't have to know us, to pray for us. Cease not to give thanks for you making mention of you in my prayers.
And this was his prayer, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.
So this was his prayer for us. We can take this verse and we can pray it over ourselves.
We could say, Father, my father of glory, give me the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of you.
Now, the eyes of your understanding, being enlightened. So we could say,
Father, I pray that the eyes of my understanding will be enlightened, that I may know what is the hope of Your calling.
Father, I want to know the hope of your calling and what the riches of the glory of your, of his inheritance in the saints.
We can continue to pray this prayer over us.
Father, I want to know what is the riches of the glory of your, of my inheritance in the saints! And what is the exceeding greatness of his power!
So this is continuing his prayer for us. What is the exceeding greatness of his power to us who believe according to the working of his mighty power.
So we could say, God, I want to know the exceeding greatness of your power. To me, I want to know that.
See, we as Christians are living in a way that is far below what God had planned for us.
We should be living the way they lived in the Book of Acts when after Christ died and ascended where just Paul and Peter and John and so many of them did. Remember there were 70 that Jesus sent out. They were there!
The apostles were people that, that Jesus chose. And then there, there were disciples and those disciples he sent out, they were healing as well.
Once we became born again, once the Holy Spirit came and we got to be born again, we are now in the fold.
Once that happened, we became new, new creatures. It said Jesus said, “Greater things will you do than me because I go to my Father.”
We should be doing what Jesus did. We are living in a way that is just five senses. And there's all these clues, all these truths in the Bible that throughout time it's been so watered down that we beg him.
Now when we pray, we beg him instead of just claiming it, accepting it. Thank you Father that I have this.
We can claim these things that is prayed for us here.
And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us who believe according to the working of his mighty power, power, talking about power here, which he brought in Christ when he raised him from the dead.
This is mine because you've put this in Christ, You put this in my brother Jesus and He was raised from the dead and you set him at your own right hand in the heavenly places.
Now my Lord, my savior that is in me Christ in you, it says the hope of glory.
Now he is in me and he's sitting at my God's right hand, far above all principality and power.
In verse 21, Far above all principality and power and might.
What annoys me about most Christian churches is they say, “Oh, the devil's really after me this week.”
Or, “Oh, I'm really getting hit by the devil.” That’ should be never coming out of your mouth!
The devil has no right over us. He only has the rights we give him.
We can relinquish our rights, right? You can be a child of a very wealthy person and you could choose to just relinquish all those rights.
You got a beautiful car, you got a beautiful home, and you have a bank account with plenty of money in it.
You can say, Yeah, I have all of these things, but you know what, I don't want 'em. That's what we do.
We don’t understand our place in God, our place in the family.
Look, it says, this is Jesus far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named. What is that?
It's all the devils out there, all the devil spirits, everything that is evil. He's far above all of that, and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come.
And He has put, listen to this, He has put all things under his feet, under Jesus' feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church which is his body, the fullness of him that fills all in all!
I'm telling you, there is so much that we are missing and I feel like it's my mission to help people see what we're missing.
I'm studying the book called it's “The Untethered Soul”. And now there's another one. And I'm reading that now. And I sincerely believe that God has been trying to get this to the Christian Church, but we weren't listening.
And there happened to be this one man who now is 70 some-odd years old.
He was a barefoot hippie years ago who decided that that voice in his head was always wrong and dictating everything that he did.
He decided, I'm gonna try and experiment and I'm going to believe that everything is working for my good.
And if I'm going to do anything based on my preference, I'm not going to go there, because what that voice says is always wrong.
“Oh, what did you do that for?”
“Why did you do that?”
“I should never have done that.”
“Oh, that's stupid.”
“Oh no, you can't do that.”
And so he decided, to test it out. Well, it's well over 20 years that he's done this experiment and oh boy has he learned a lot and I am learning so much.
It's all the word of God. Because remember? The rainfalls on the just and the unjust.
The same principles that will work for it, works for the saint and sinner alike.
It isn't like, “Oh, well you're good. So now you get a blessing, you're bad. You don't get one.”
We wanna walk in those principles we'll receive. The difference is when you have Jesus, there's there's healing. There's so much more, so much more for us because we go ahead with this, with Jesus, because it's all in The Word.
Renew your mind, put off the old man. Put, put my kingdom first. And all these things will be added to you.
Don't trust in yourself, trust in me. In Proverbs chapter three, don't look into your own understanding.
What is that, that's that voice in our head that we are giving way too much credence to.
There's a verse that says that “All good things happen for us because we love, love Christ Jesus.”
We've been believing that there are too many negative things that are, oh, well that must be bad because no, nothing's bad for us. Nothing. If we'll only push past that b******t pain that tries to come in and navigate our lives and give it to God.
God, I give that to you. It's really pretty incredible and I'm looking forward to just sharing it.
I know that if you remember when I first started it, what I wanted to do was I wanted to say, Look, I've been seeking for 41 years seeking God.
There's a verse that says he's a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.
And I've been doing that for 41 years and, you know, stepped in a lot of holes, had some amazing miracles and but still, I'm not living as they lived and I still have way too many hangups and too much anxiety.
You know, something ain't right. And so what I've noticed is that a lot of the things that I've learned from reading, not the Bible, ties into the Bible.
And because of that, I think I'm unique because most, or I don't know any Christians like pastors or whatever, will embrace anything other than the scriptures.
And to me, that's just foolishness.
Like I went for help for my alcoholic relationship that I had. I had a relationship with an alcoholic.
And it affects your life big time. And for many, many years, many years I went to clergy, I went to pastors, I went to the Bible, I went to church, that's what I did because I believed, well I still believe that all answers lie in the word, but are there specialists out there that understand certain things that once we get those certain things, it snaps right into the word now, Now we've got the answers.
It wasn't until I found Al-Anon that everything changed for me. If I would've known about Al-Anon all of those years ago, I probably wouldn't have even gotten divorced because I would've understood what was going on and I would've known, oh, this is how I behave with that.
To be continued (Your giving will help me give someone who needs a job, a job to do the work of transcribing the podcasts) https://donorbox.org/what-does-god-say-to-you
We're going to read Ephesians. It's really a beautiful book.
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, who at two to the saints, which are at the thesis and to the faithful in Christ Jesus.
So that, so it's written to us, and it's written to the church of Emphasis Grace be to you and peace from God, our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Whenever I read that, it's so, so comforting to me.
We could gloss over it, but really what it is, it's like if you were with your mother and father and you were on the phone with your sister, you'd say, “Mommy and daddy said hi.”
That's what this is:
Grace be to you. And peace from God, our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with many spiritual blessings in heavenly places.
So we are blessed with many spiritual blessings in heavenly places. If we aren't living that way, we're missing something.
According as he has chosen us in him... He's chosen us.
He's chosen us in Him before the foundations of the world.
Before the world was even made, He chose you before the foundations of the world.
That we should be holy and without blame before Him in love
We should be holly without blame. Without blame.
So that's a big deal. Do you know how many times we put ourselves down?
Well, according to God, we're without blame before him in love.
Having predestinated us.
So he Predestinated us. He in his foreknowledge put us somewhere.
He predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will.
This what we are his, according to his good pleasure.
We're talking about God. To the praise of the glory of His grace, we are in.
He has made us acceptable in the beloved. We are acceptable in the beloved, in His family. We're acceptable.
He made us that way in whom we have redemption.
Redemption! Redemption means you've been brought back, redeemed, brought with a price.
You are probably too young to know about S and H Green stamps.
You would go to certain grocery stores and certain gas stations and they would give you these green stamps and these books, and you would take these stamps, and depending on how much you purchased when you were at the store or the gas station, you would get a sheet of stamps and you would take these stamps ad to add them to the book.
Well, at a certain point, whenever you got enough, you could redeem that book for certain things.
If you had a little bit, you can get, I don't know, some groceries or something.
If you had a lot, you can get a tv, you can get a radio, you could get a knife set.
See you redeemed them. You'd say, Okay, here's this. I'm giving it to you. Now you give me that.
And that's what we've been, we've been redeemed. Jesus said, Okay, I gave my life. Now you give me that (us)
Who have we been redeemed from? From the devil. Because He's the God of this world.
Until Jesus came to buy us back, God had to put his spirit on us.
Now we can be children of God. We've been redeemed. We've been bought back. We are his!
In whom we have redemption through his blood. The forgiveness of sins.
Forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace
Do you remember when Jesus was walking on this earth and he would say to somebody, who needed healing, rise up and walk and sin No more. Your, sins are forgiven.
Well, that was blasphemous back then because only God could forgive sins. They used to have to do things that would cover sins for the year.
Every year they had to do a ritual and, and have their sins covered. But they weren't gone. Jesus came and now our sins are gone.
In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace, wherein he has abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence.
With all wisdom and prudence having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he had purposed in himself.
So this is all because He wanted to. That's it. That in the dispensation of the fullness of times.
That means after time had gone by and certain things were fulfilled and the dispensation of the fullness of times…
He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are in earth, even in Him in whom also we have obtained an inheritance being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who works all things after the council of his own will.
So this is all according to God, God made this happen and all of that, we should be to the praise of His glory.
Who first trusted in Christ. God, first trusted in Christ, in whom you also trusted.
Because we're born again, we've decided, I'm going to believe in the Son of God.
I'm gonna believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God. He was raised from the dead, in whom also we trusted.
After that, we heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, the good news of your salvation, in whom also after that you believed you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise!
The seal is a big deal. You know, like when a king would write a letter, he would take his insignia ring, his little stamp, he'd put it in wax and he would seal his message.
We've been sealed. Now there's probably way more to it than that, but that's part of what that is, that we've been sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise,
Which is the earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the purchase possession unto the praise of his glory.
Wherein I also, (this is Paul saying) I also, after I heard of your faith… so after he heard of the faith of the Ephesians, and now we are included in this because it said, this is written to “the Ephesians and to all of those who are in Christ Jesus who love God”, we love God.
See in the beginning. It says “Grace to you, where it is, where is it pulling apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God to the saints were your thesis and to the faithful in Christ Jesus.
So it's written to us too. We are in there.
I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and love unto all the saints cease not to give thanks for you.
So Paul was thankful, he was praying for you and for me. He didn't have to know us, to pray for us. Cease not to give thanks for you making mention of you in my prayers.
And this was his prayer, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.
So this was his prayer for us. We can take this verse and we can pray it over ourselves.
We could say, Father, my father of glory, give me the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of you.
Now, the eyes of your understanding, being enlightened. So we could say,
Father, I pray that the eyes of my understanding will be enlightened, that I may know what is the hope of Your calling.
Father, I want to know the hope of your calling and what the riches of the glory of your, of his inheritance in the saints.
We can continue to pray this prayer over us.
Father, I want to know what is the riches of the glory of your, of my inheritance in the saints! And what is the exceeding greatness of his power!
So this is continuing his prayer for us. What is the exceeding greatness of his power to us who believe according to the working of his mighty power.
So we could say, God, I want to know the exceeding greatness of your power. To me, I want to know that.
See, we as Christians are living in a way that is far below what God had planned for us.
We should be living the way they lived in the Book of Acts when after Christ died and ascended where just Paul and Peter and John and so many of them did. Remember there were 70 that Jesus sent out. They were there!
The apostles were people that, that Jesus chose. And then there, there were disciples and those disciples he sent out, they were healing as well.
Once we became born again, once the Holy Spirit came and we got to be born again, we are now in the fold.
Once that happened, we became new, new creatures. It said Jesus said, “Greater things will you do than me because I go to my Father.”
We should be doing what Jesus did. We are living in a way that is just five senses. And there's all these clues, all these truths in the Bible that throughout time it's been so watered down that we beg him.
Now when we pray, we beg him instead of just claiming it, accepting it. Thank you Father that I have this.
We can claim these things that is prayed for us here.
And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us who believe according to the working of his mighty power, power, talking about power here, which he brought in Christ when he raised him from the dead.
This is mine because you've put this in Christ, You put this in my brother Jesus and He was raised from the dead and you set him at your own right hand in the heavenly places.
Now my Lord, my savior that is in me Christ in you, it says the hope of glory.
Now he is in me and he's sitting at my God's right hand, far above all principality and power.
In verse 21, Far above all principality and power and might.
What annoys me about most Christian churches is they say, “Oh, the devil's really after me this week.”
Or, “Oh, I'm really getting hit by the devil.” That’ should be never coming out of your mouth!
The devil has no right over us. He only has the rights we give him.
We can relinquish our rights, right? You can be a child of a very wealthy person and you could choose to just relinquish all those rights.
You got a beautiful car, you got a beautiful home, and you have a bank account with plenty of money in it.
You can say, Yeah, I have all of these things, but you know what, I don't want 'em. That's what we do.
We don’t understand our place in God, our place in the family.
Look, it says, this is Jesus far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named. What is that?
It's all the devils out there, all the devil spirits, everything that is evil. He's far above all of that, and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come.
And He has put, listen to this, He has put all things under his feet, under Jesus' feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church which is his body, the fullness of him that fills all in all!
I'm telling you, there is so much that we are missing and I feel like it's my mission to help people see what we're missing.
I'm studying the book called it's “The Untethered Soul”. And now there's another one. And I'm reading that now. And I sincerely believe that God has been trying to get this to the Christian Church, but we weren't listening.
And there happened to be this one man who now is 70 some-odd years old.
He was a barefoot hippie years ago who decided that that voice in his head was always wrong and dictating everything that he did.
He decided, I'm gonna try and experiment and I'm going to believe that everything is working for my good.
And if I'm going to do anything based on my preference, I'm not going to go there, because what that voice says is always wrong.
“Oh, what did you do that for?”
“Why did you do that?”
“I should never have done that.”
“Oh, that's stupid.”
“Oh no, you can't do that.”
And so he decided, to test it out. Well, it's well over 20 years that he's done this experiment and oh boy has he learned a lot and I am learning so much.
It's all the word of God. Because remember? The rainfalls on the just and the unjust.
The same principles that will work for it, works for the saint and sinner alike.
It isn't like, “Oh, well you're good. So now you get a blessing, you're bad. You don't get one.”
We wanna walk in those principles we'll receive. The difference is when you have Jesus, there's there's healing. There's so much more, so much more for us because we go ahead with this, with Jesus, because it's all in The Word.
Renew your mind, put off the old man. Put, put my kingdom first. And all these things will be added to you.
Don't trust in yourself, trust in me. In Proverbs chapter three, don't look into your own understanding.
What is that, that's that voice in our head that we are giving way too much credence to.
There's a verse that says that “All good things happen for us because we love, love Christ Jesus.”
We've been believing that there are too many negative things that are, oh, well that must be bad because no, nothing's bad for us. Nothing. If we'll only push past that b******t pain that tries to come in and navigate our lives and give it to God.
God, I give that to you. It's really pretty incredible and I'm looking forward to just sharing it.
I know that if you remember when I first started it, what I wanted to do was I wanted to say, Look, I've been seeking for 41 years seeking God.
There's a verse that says he's a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.
And I've been doing that for 41 years and, you know, stepped in a lot of holes, had some amazing miracles and but still, I'm not living as they lived and I still have way too many hangups and too much anxiety.
You know, something ain't right. And so what I've noticed is that a lot of the things that I've learned from reading, not the Bible, ties into the Bible.
And because of that, I think I'm unique because most, or I don't know any Christians like pastors or whatever, will embrace anything other than the scriptures.
And to me, that's just foolishness.
Like I went for help for my alcoholic relationship that I had. I had a relationship with an alcoholic.
And it affects your life big time. And for many, many years, many years I went to clergy, I went to pastors, I went to the Bible, I went to church, that's what I did because I believed, well I still believe that all answers lie in the word, but are there specialists out there that understand certain things that once we get those certain things, it snaps right into the word now, Now we've got the answers.
It wasn't until I found Al-Anon that everything changed for me. If I would've known about Al-Anon all of those years ago, I probably wouldn't have even gotten divorced because I would've understood what was going on and I would've known, oh, this is how I behave with that.
To be continued (Your giving will help me give someone who needs a job, a job to do the work of transcribing the podcasts) https://donorbox.org/what-does-god-say-to-you