Ep.316: A Tour of God’s Love.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

Psalm 48 takes a tour of Jerusalem, saying: 
    Walk about Zion, go round her,
    count her towers,
    consider well her ramparts,
    view her citadels . . . (vv. 12-13). 

The Message Bible uses a tourist image to translate Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3: 
   I ask God that . . . with all followers of Jesus you will take in
the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love.
      Reach out and experience the breadth!
      Test its length!
      Plumb the depths!
      Rise to the heights!
  Live full lives, full in the fullness of God (Eph 3:17-19). 

Yes. Take a tour of God’s love.  

The Oceania cruise company fills my mailbox with flyers. I can cure my problems with a warm-weather cruise to the Caribbean or Mediterranean. How about Around the World in 180 Days, for a bargain price of only $120,000 per couple.  I went to the Oceania website to see if I could stop the flood of mail. They they don’t make it easy. 

Meanwhile, I’m still on God’s mailing list. But I’m not sure how to sign up for a tour of his love. I follow the usual prescriptions–read the Bible, pray every day, meditate, attend church, fellowship with believers. But I don’t feel immersed in God’s love. I feel more like a camper, dipping my toes in a glacier-fresh lake, shivering against the plunge that would immerse me.

Is this God’s problem or mine? How can I, as Paul says, test the length and plumb the depths of Christ’s extravagant love? Is the experience of God’s love a gift he gives, or withholds? Sometimes, he takes me on amazing tours; sometimes he lets me sit under a vine and lament. 

God teaches me what I’m willing to learn. He’s patient with things I need to unlearn. He’s making a way for me to go deeper.

Pray with me.

Our father, you journey with us, not to reward us for being good, but to be our friend in bad times and good. 

You hear our prayers, but you give us what we need, not what we want. You sympathize with us when we feel forsaken. You rejoice with us when we feel loved. We sense your presence with us in a place beneath our flow of thoughts and feelings, beneath our pains and pleasures. 

Guide us by your Spirit. Make us true to your presence. Reveal to us the Christ who dwells in our hearts by faith (Eph 3:17). 

Now to you who can do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine, to you be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, now and forever (Eph 3:20-21).   

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

In Ephesians 2, Paul says Jesus broke down the wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles (v. 14). What wall?

Israel became a nation when a company of Israelites escaped Egyptian slavery, wandered in the desert, waged war against the inhabitants of Canaan, and took the land for themselves. 

After that, the nation of Israel vacillated between friendship and hostility with neighboring Gentiles and their gods. God had instructed Israel to be a unique nation—eat the right foods, sacrifice the right animals, keep right holidays, and observe many cultural and moral commands. The prophets constantly reminded Israel to be faithful to their scripture and their God, but the people were fatally attracted to the politics and religions of other nations. They often forgot their unseen God.

In more recent times, a remnant of Jews who survived the horrors of World War II established a Jewish nation, waging war to drive out the Palestinian inhabitants and create a Jewish state. 

A wall of hostility, Paul says, between Jews and Gentiles. When Jesus stepped into the middle of that hostility, he annoyed both groups. His God was too liberal for the conservative Jewish religion. He disrespected the Romans by refusing to answer Pilate’s questions. In a rare instance of Jews and Gentiles working together, they crucified Jesus. And we call him a peacemaker? 

In what way did Jesus break down the wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles? 

Paul says that Jesus “created in himself one new humanity, thus making peace” (v. 15). It’s a lesson our world needs. We all belong to one human race and we see Paul locating the center of a peace-loving new humanity in Jesus.

Meanwhile the old humanity continues to build walls of hostility-–between Jew and Gentile, between Gentile and Gentile. Since Jesus’ time, we’ve had European pogroms, we’ve had the Crusades, we’ve had inter-Christian conflicts and wars. Today, many North American Christians are sorting themselves into hostile camps: conservative, pro-gun, pro-life, anti-vaxx tribes, and inclusive pro-choice liberal camps. 

Where is the united center? Are Christians building the wall of hostility that Jesus came to destroy?

Let’s pray. 

Our father, we bring to you a fractured Christendom, a world in disunity, and a creation groaning under the weight of disordered humanity. 

Is Jesus still breaking down walls of hostility? Where is the new humanity he created? 

We thank you for places where his new humanity destroys walls of hostility. In ourselves, as we grow in respect for fellow humans and creation. As we resist the urge to splinter our families and churches into tribes based on politics and vaccinations and minor points of doctrine. 

We thank you for every agency that brings healing and relief in our world; for those who serve Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and flood victims in Pakistan and war casualties in Ukraine. Your work goes on, breaking down walls that we keep building. 

O God, teach us to feed the hungry, to accept strangers, to be true to your words of life, to think more of others and less of ourselves, to destroy walls instead of building them.

Bring quickly the time when the new humanity in Christ replaces this old humanity. 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

In Ephesians 2, Paul says, “You are saved by God’s grace through faith, not by anything you do. It’s a gift, not something you worked for” (Eph 2:8-9).

Then Paul says, “[God] created each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the work he has prepared for us to do” (Eph 2:10, Message Bible, paraphrased).

What is Paul saying about faith and works? Is his message, “Right. We got the saved bit out of the way. The next step is to get busy! From now on, it’s the work you do that counts!” 

A classic evangelical formula is that we are saved by grace, then we work from a motive of love to express thanks for salvation. I find this a daunting standard, because it requires me to have pure motives.  Mine are anything but! 

It’s a long time since I was saved. I continue to be thankful, but the euphoria of first love is past. God leads me through darkness as well as light. Sometimes life is ice cream and joy, sometimes it’s sandpaper and discipline. Jesus calls me to an abundant life.He also calls me to to lose my life, to carry a cross. If you put a meter on how thankful and how motivated I am each day, that’s not a reliable indicator of anything! 

Another problem with my motives is that they are not always clear. Proverbs asks, “Who can say, ‘I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin’” (20:9). When I work for God, is my motive thankfulness? Is it half-hearted duty? Am I trying to manipulate God into answering my prayers? Proverbs’ says to me, Unanswerable question. Who can understand their motives? 

Paul says, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph 2:10). I have a lingering sense that I’ll never get it all done. As Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes, puts it, “God put me on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I am so far behind I will never die” (Bill Watterson). 

I need to discern which good works God has prepared for me to do, and which should be done by others. It’s not always easy to tell! Like Calvin, I’ll never catch up, so I choose instead to live into my uncertainty. To make choices about what to do. I hope that God who saved me by grace will also view the work I do, and the work I don’t do, with grace. 

My motives are obscure, even to myself. But God works in that obscurity to purify my motives and set me in the right direction. Hebrews tells us that God’s word is a two-edged sword, piercing to divide joints and marrow, soul and spirit; it exposes the thoughts and motives of the heart (Heb 4:12). 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, as Paul said to those who are saved by grace, Work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you (Phil 2:12). When we were experiencing the joy of first love, we had no idea how much our motives needed sorting and cleansing and healing. 

We thought we were working for you, but we were working for ourselves! We were trying to build your kingdom, but we were building our own. We thought our work was transforming us into your image, but we discovered our goal was to transform you into our image.  

O father, sort out our confused lives. Unmix the motives. Discard the rubbish. Strengthen what comes from faith, until all our work is in your vineyard, and none in our own.   

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

God’s grace is a favorite theme with Paul—he cites it 86 times in the New Testament. In Ephesians he says when we were dead in sin, God was rich in mercy—he saved us by his grace (Eph 2:4-5). 

When Jesus was a corpse in a grave, God brought him back to life. Paul says God does the same for us. When we were dead in sin, he made us alive with Christ, not because we deserved a new life, but because he is rich in mercy. 

For me, grace points to the good things God has done. He freed me from introspective self-absorption, from addictive habits, from my short-sighted view of life. He’s invited me to journey on an endless road of love, viewing the marvelous landscape of his goodness.  

I respond to God’s grace in three ways. 

First, I choose not to focus on negatives that appear to marginalize grace—on people God hasn’t healed, on wars and famines he hasn’t stopped, on pandemics he permits to migrate and mutate their way through the world. Instead, I focus on what God has done–on his world that produces food and sunsets for 8 billion, on his offer of forgiveness for all who ask. 

A second way I approach grace is to receive it, to accept the grace that accepts me just as I am. God doesn’t focus on my sin or load me with expectations of instant goodness. Though I don’t live up to his standard, God receives me and forgives me. I extend the same grace to God: though he is not achieving my standard of excellence for healing diseases and creating world peace, I approach him with thankfulness instead of anger, with hope instead of hate, with grace instead of resentment.  

The third part of receiving grace is for me to be patient with the process. Sometimes grace is a refreshing rain on my dry and thirsty life. Other times, it is a desert that draws me to pray for water.  

Let’s pray. 

Our father, Paul the apostle of grace told us about your goodness. He shaped his life and letters around your generosity, not around his complaints. He looked at his life in a mirror of healing. He saw the church through a lens of hope, our broken world through eyes of promise. 

O father, change our vision until we see your grace as Paul did. 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

In the 1968 horror movie, Night of the Living Dead, zombies invaded the world. They were animated corpses without soul or spirit, half dead and half alive, ghoulish characters, driven to eat human flesh. Yuk.

In Ephesians Paul says, “You were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live . . . gratifying the cravings of the flesh, following its desires and thoughts” (Eph 2:2-5). 

Does that nail zombies, or what? People dead in sin, animated by the spirit of disobedience, driven to gratify fleshly cravings (Eph 2:3). A strange description of zombie-people half dead and half alive. 

Do you think that’s what Paul means, “You were dead in your transgressions and sins?”

The Message Bible doesn’t use Paul’s metaphor of people dead and alive at the same time. It says, “you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience” (Eph 2:1-2).

One evangelical explanation of Paul’s metaphor says we are composed of body, soul, and spirit, but the spirit part is dead if you’re not saved. Sounds zombie-like to me: the body is active, but the spirit is dead. This explanation says when you are born again, God raises your spirit from the dead. 

But not so fast.

Paul doesn’t see it that way. He doesn’t say a Christian’s spirit is raised from the dead to a perfect life. He tells Christians to cleanse themselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit (2 Cor 7:1). Being born again is great, but it doesn’t immediately cure the problems in my spirit. I still struggle with greed, anger, envy, and lust. Paul urges me to cleanse my spirit, to get it into a cold shower with soap and shampoo. 

However, Paul’s words do nicely point out some zombie features of my pre-Christian state. I lived in the universe of me, where I was boss, where I was driven by the cravings of my sinful nature. I was dead to God and God was dead to me. 

I thought I was doing what I wanted, but I was mostly a zombie slave to the flesh-eating, relationship-destroying intuitions of my sinful self. 

But now, through Christ, I reject the God-is-dead philosophy. I’ve discovered it was me who was dead in trespasses and sins. Since God has inhabited my life, he has been renovating. He’s unstopping the plumbing so I can flush out the excrement. He’s rewiring the electricity so I can turn on the lights. He’s transforming my spirit to make me holy.  

Let’s pray. 

Our father, I neither imagined or wanted your renovations in my life. I thought freedom was being free from you. I thought my cravings were the key to satisfaction. I mistook my confused intuitions for sound conclusions. 

But in your mercy, you took the zombie me, and clothed me with a healthy mind and a new spirit and a longing for a life of wholeness and love. 

Continue your work in me. Save me from a zombie apocalypse. Bring me into your kingdom and your glory forever. 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

Philip Yancey describes a Bible college reunion, writing:
“. . . my classmates speak in phrases we learned as students: ‘God is giving me the victory . . . I can do all things through Christ . . . All things work together for good . . . I’m walking in triumph.’ Yet they speak a different vocabulary when relating their lives after college. Several suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome, and others are clinically depressed. One couple recently committed their teenage daughter to a mental institution.”

Yancey says, “I wince at the disconnect between these raw personal stories and the spiritual overlay applied to them.”  (p. 294) 

I wince with him, and think of Karl Marx’s words, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed . . ., the heart of a heartless world . . . . It is the opium of the people.” (Wikipedia article Opium of the People, quoting Marx in A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of the Right.) 

The apostle Paul was a prime candidate for pain relief via opium. He said, “Five times I received of the Jews forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked. I spent a night and a day in the open sea. I have gone without sleep, I have known hunger and thirst, I have been cold and naked” (2 Cor 11:24-27, excerpts). 

Listen now to Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians, and ask, “Is he overdosing on religious opiates to dull his sense of pain?” 

Paul prays,
  I have not stopped giving thanks for you,
      remembering you in my prayers.
  I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father,
      will give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation
        so that you may know him better.
  I pray that the eyes of your heart will be enlightened
      so that you may know
        the hope to which he has called you,
        the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,
        and his incomparably great power for us who believe. (Eph 1:16-19a)

Doesn’t sound like the prayer of a homeless man looking for a fix. Nor of a heroin-induced escape from pain. This prayer comes from one who lived fully, who found a savior and a cause, who invested his life in things seen and unseen. Paul found in the unseen Christ something Marx was never able to see. 

At his college reunion, Yancey winced at the discrepancy between religious bromides and harsh realities. He quoted his unbelieving brother, “What is real, and what is fake?”  Yancey concludes, “I know of no more honest book than the Bible, which hides none of its characters’ flaws.” (p. 295). 

And how does this apply to me? Is prayer my opium to avoid life’s pain? Or does it give me access to another reality, where hope calls, and a glorious inheritance beckons, and the power of the resurrection awaits? 

Let’s pray. 

O God of our Lord Jesus Christ, O glorious father,
  give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation to know Christ better.
Enlighten the eyes of our hearts, that we may see
    the hope to which you call us,
    the riches of your glorious inheritance in us who believe . . .
    that we may see your incomparably great power for all your children,
      the same power that raised Christ from the dead
      and seated him at your right hand, 
       far above all rule and authority, dominion, and power,
      and every name that can be named,
          both in this age and the age to come.

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

As I read chapter 1 of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, I find he uses striking superlatives to create a magnificent vision of the Christian life. 

Paul says God’s grace is glorious, lavish, and freely given. We are part of his world-encompassing plan to work out everything the way he wants it. He made an expensive downpayment on our future, giving us the Holy Spirit as promise and proof we will participate in his world-changing future.

Paul says God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing (not just a smattering) in the heavenly realms in Christ. 

I meditate on this greatness while I wash dirty dishes. While I mow our tired lawn. While I walk the dog and pick up after him. While I scrub the car at the carwash. 

My life seems very ordinary. Is it really connected to the grand vision and countless spiritual blessings Paul writes about?

Jesus didn’t live an ordinary life. His was extraordinary–healing the sick, sighting the blind, freeing captives. But Jesus-in-me doesn’t do those miracles. If he did, I’d be healthy, visionary, and free! 

I think John the Baptist felt much as I do, when he was in prison and sent a message to Jesus asking, “Are you really the one who is coming?” 

Like John, Paul was a common Roman prisoner when he wrote Ephesians about his grand vision. I wonder about Paul in prison. Did he lose touch with reality there, substituting spiritual fantasies about the heavenlies to escape the poverty of his life on earth? 

Or did Paul live in two realities at once? Perhaps he believed God was in charge of his mediocre prison existence and his future inheritance as God’s son. 

What does that say about my ordinary life? Evangelical books give me advice about closing the gap between my daily experience and my riches in Christ. Most of them say, Try harder. Try harder to believe. Try harder to love your neighbor. Make a plan to study the Bible. Limit your social media and try more prayer! Just try harder. 

Methinks that’s the path to madness. Hard work might move the needle on my life from mediocre to uninspired. But what I really need is not incremental improvement but inspiration. I need something to enable me to live out Paul’s grand vision. 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, once again I am pained by the gap between my ordinary experience and Paul’s glorious vision of the Christian life. I am unable to close that gap. Self-improvement books and projects aren’t much help. 

Perhaps it’s not about how I can up up my game and become better. Perhaps it’s not about techniques to connect me with your reality. Nor about ways to improve my spiritual perceptions and obedience. 

Perhaps it’s not about me at all. Maybe it’s about Christ. Maybe you want to make him  the center of everything, even my life. 

O God, John found peace in prison while Jesus preached and healed and freed others. Paul found peace in prison writing about your world-changing plans and activities. Help me to find peace as I mow the lawn and do the dishes and meditate on Paul’s grand themes. 

Draw me out of myself, into the new reality you are creating in Christ. Do in me your  invisible work, preparing me to exchange my ordinary existence for the extraordinary reality I do not yet see. 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube