Pleasing God, Making Disciples of Jesus Christ

Out Of Necessity And Delight

EPHESIANS 3:14-19 – For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

THEME OF THE DAY. OUT OF NECESSITY AND DELIGHT. Today’s scripture is a prayer of the Apostle Paul taken from one of his prison epistles, the book of Ephesians, written from a dungeon in Rome. It would not be a stretch to call this prayer, “The clearest definition of the Christian life and the Christian’s pursuit to live all of the Christian life.” Let me explain.

First, the Christian life is not a profession of faith in Christ; a decision for Christ; attempting to live a life following Christ; or anything else that has to do with us. In its simplest definition and understanding, the Christian life is Christ in us, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). Or we may say using today’s scripture, Christ dwelling in our hearts. We must understand a person becoming a Christian is by God’s act of sovereign grace meeting the dead in trespasses sinner, granting him or her new life in Christ with the gifts of repentance and faith, making them one with Him in an inseparable union. This Biblical definition of the radical nature of being a Christian – Christ in us, us in Christ – prevents the false assurance of saying, “I made a decision for Christ” but the life of the professing person is worldly, carnal, and lacks any resemblance of new birth in Christ. Profession of faith in Christ is not salvation. Possessed by Christ, possessing Christ in the heart with a lifestyle of radical obedience to His Word are marks of Biblical salvation.

This prayer is also to be the daily pursuit in the Christian life; to know the reality of Christ within them producing stable lives rooted in love and bringing the child of God into greater joy-filled experiences of Christ’s love bringing us to the pinnacle of our walk with the Lord – the fullness of Him in us.

So, based on the profound nature of this prayer and what it offers us in the Christian life, it should become a daily prayer out of necessity and delight. Necessity because we can’t get there on our own. Any experiences of Christ are initiated from Him. We are receivers, but we are also seekers And when we truly grasp what God promises in this prayer, we will pray out of necessity –“Father, I need this. I want this. I long for this. Make the reality of Your Son in me as much as a human being can handle.” And the prayer will also become a necessity of delight because when God answers it, and Christ becomes our all in all, we will want more out of pure delight in who He is.

But here is the catch . . . we don’t pray this prayer simply for our enjoyment of God. The Apostle Paul tells us how the Christian life is to be lived – For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised (2 Corinthians 5:14-15). We exist for God and others. We are saved for the pouring out of our lives for God’s purposes, God’s mission, and God’s people. We may rest absolutely certain that any fellowship we have with the Lord; any intimate times with Him in His Word, prayer, and worship, will always leave us less focused on self-interests and more on His interests and those of others. If our professed times of fellowship with the Lord are not making our hearts more like His, changing us to be more concerned about His will than ours and leading us to increased experiences of self-denial for others, whatever we may call this “quiet time” or “devotional”, we cannot call it time with the Lord. He never meets us to leave us like we are.

PRAYER: “Father, help me pray for greater experiences of Your love so I may love You and others more fervently.”

QUOTE: “God never gives us spiritual intimacy with Himself for ourselves. It is always to drive us away from ourselves.”