Ephesians 1:15-21: 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. I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe Him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated Him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms. Now He is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else—not only in this world but also in the world to come.
Can you imagine what our lives would have been like today if sin hadn’t been allowed by Adam to enter into our world? Sin separated us from the life of God, but not from the love of God. It’s because of God’s love that He has given every person that enters this world the opportunity to live the life that He originally intended. There’s only one condition that is required for us to be reconnected to God’s original plan for our life; we must now place our complete faith in Jesus as the Son of God. If you’ll read Ephesians 1, you’ll see that God chose us in Christ before sin, but more than that, He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. In other words, God knew what was going to happen when He created man. Therefore, He made provisions for the fall of man in His original plan.
Here’s where you and I come into the story. In much the same way as Paul describes in the above Scripture, we must now decide to believe in Christ and allow Him to reveal God’s master plan to us. So you don’t have to imagine what it would have been like had sin not been allowed in the earth. To the degree that you allow yourself to trust in the Lord, He will be able to reveal to you His hidden wisdom to you by the Holy Spirit. Literally, our faith in Jesus as God’s only Son allows us to know and to fulfill all that God had originally planned for us from the beginning.
The obstacle we all must overcome is the fallen mindset that we carry over into our salvation experience. When you received Jesus as your personal Savior, it wasn’t with the mind that you believed, but with your heart. God bypassed your mind and dealt directly with your heart. Therefore, we can’t use our human reasoning and memory to try and figure out God’s plan for our life; we must believe with our hearts and this will renew our minds. The fallen mind wants you to think that you’re not worthy, or that you have no ability to know what God’s will is for your life. We must train ourselves to believe instead of trying to think with our human reasoning. As we do this, the Holy Spirit will give us wisdom, revelation, and knowledge that our minds are incapable of producing. To put in it earthly terms, just think of faith as God’s secret communication tool especially designed for His children’s spiritual education. This keeps Satan and his will out of the equation.
If you struggle with your spiritual identity and purpose as a Christian, then do what Paul did when he heard about the faith of Christians in Ephesus; he prayed and asked God to give them the spirit of revelation, that He might illuminate their understanding. Through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, they learned how to know and walk in their heavenly calling. Do you have obstacles that confound you? Are there hurdles in the way of you accomplishing what God is telling you to fulfill in your life? Simply pray and ask the Lord to give you the spirit of wisdom and understanding. After you pray, believe and wait for the release of God’s power to fill your heart and show you the way to get beyond human limitations.
Final thought: If God didn’t allow sin to eternally separate us from Himself, then how much more is He able to show all Christians His will for us and then empower us to fulfill that will in spite of having fallen prey to sin. Utilize your faith and not your mind to communicate to the Father. He, in turn will use the Holy Spirit to speak to you and not your mind. When Jesus asked His disciples who they thought He was Simon, by the revelation of the Holy Spirit told Him that He was the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus told Simon that flesh and blood hadn’t revealed this to him, but it was given to him from the heavenly Father. All it takes is faith. —submitted by Pastor Asa Dockery, US
daisymarygoldr on August 22, 2011 at 5:56 pm
I agree; faith is God’s secret communication tool for His children to keep Satan and his will out of the equation. There is nothing hush-hush or mysterious about faith—at least not any longer, since it has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ (1 Tim 3: 9).
God gives His children precious faith that enables us to outsmart the enemy at his own game—i.e. to defeat us through doubt. And yes, “our faith in Jesus as God’s only Son allows us to know and to fulfill all that God had originally planned for us from the beginning”
It is no secret that Satan has no power over a person armed with faith in the truth of God’s Word. For, when we hold up the shield of faith it deflects the devils’ fiery arrows of disbelief. This is how we achieve victory over evil through our faith (1 John 5:4).