Ephesians 1:18 (NKJV) 18 the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,
From Ephesians 1 and 2 we have been looking at a number of things related to our ability to walk in God’s possibilities and not limit ourselves to natural possibility alone. We have looked at the fact that we are seated with Jesus at the right hand of the Father. It is for our minds to process that we are in two locations at once and yet in a legal, spiritual sense it is true. From that location we have access to God’s possibilities.
Yesterday we began looking at what Paul prays that God will reveal to us. The first thing in the list is the hope of his calling. As a pastor, I am always talking to people about their calling. I believe God creates each one of us with a specific call and destiny. I believe God wants all of us to know that we have worth and that our lives matter. That said, Paul is not praying here about our calling he is praying about God’s calling.
What this is really talking about is God’s calling us to salvation. The word is derived from a root meaning to call by name. I believe God has called each of us by name to be with him and to participate with in spreading that call to the world. Yesterday we focused on the fact that with that call comes the ability and provision to fulfill it. However, in the lives of the early church the real hope of that calling had little to do with life here on earth.
In the western world in general and the United States in particular we live in a world that is far too focused on the kind of life we live here on earth. Everyone is created with a desire to be valuable. Today we have so much free time and so much access to information and entertainment of all kinds that we get far too focused on that aspect of things.
Although it is being challenged today, we also live in an age of security. Even with threats of terror, crime and natural disasters we do not live under moment to moment or day to day threat. The number of people suffering violence in our world is miniscule compared to the whole. True Christianity is under attack but not yet with violence. That was not true in the days of Paul and the rest of the first century church.
The people gathered in the upper room on the day of Pentecost had no idea if they would be arrested and killed like Jesus had been. I believe they were hiding in the upper room. The threat to their lives was real and tangible. Paul lived under that threat as well. Look at the list of things he suffered for the Kingdom of God.
2 Corinthians 11:23-27 (NKJV) 23 Are they ministers of Christ?–I speak as a fool–I am more: in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequently, in deaths often. 24 From the Jews five times I received forty stripes minus one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been in the deep; 26 in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; 27 in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness—
That is a long list of things I do not want! We tend to be concerned about how far we go in our ministry, how big our church may be, what kind of financial base we have or who received more opportunities than we did. Paul was not worried about those things. That was the reality for anyone who named the name of Jesus Christ.
The early church did not worry about much of what so concerns us today. A little persecution at work or being made fun of in school were not problems. Being pressured to stay out of the political debate was not on their minds. They were concerned with being arrested and beaten. They were not just left out of the political debate, the politics of their day saw them as a threat. They lived in the ever present reality that faith in Christ could cost them their life.
It is in that context that Paul speaks of the “hope of His calling.” They were thinking in a far more eternal manner than we tend to think. I believe that God wants to prosper. I believe he wants to bless and heal us because we are his children. I believe God wants to give us success and victory in life. I believe that those things can be relative terms. To the early church they meant something very different than they do to us.
When I was in my twenties I heard the message that faith could change things in our natural life. I heard that God wanted to bless us and that our covenant gave us certain rights with God. I believe that. I do not think God is offended when we have a nice house, car or some money in the bank. I do not believe any of those things should become our focus. I do believe we can believe God for good things. Nevertheless, travel has given me a little different focus.
I was ministering in West Africa many years ago. I was part of a group preaching in a conference. The “big” speakers were two men I did not know. I was leading a team that was asked to participate in the meetings. One of the speakers was a very nice African American brother from a larger city who had a good sized church. He was from a background like mine who believed, as do I, that Godly prosperity is for everyone. That is great. I teach that as well.
The problem was one of perspective. He was talking about the $200,000 discount he got on his $2,000,000 house. (I do not really remember the numbers but they were something like that.) He was showing the people his $1000 alligator shoes and encouraging them to believe that God is a big God and they could see the same results. He meant well. He really did. However, he was completely ignorant about the people to whom he was speaking.
I knew these people. I spent time with them and went to their churches. Many of them had nothing. They lived in conditions that this brother could not imagine. To them, that was life. Does that mean they could not believe for better? Of course not, but you do not go from where they were to “alligator shoes.” The numbers he was speaking of meant nothing to them. I often say to our people that where I go, people aspire to what we call poverty. God will bless them and prosper them but that does not mean the same thing there as it does here.
More than that many of these pastors had escaped from war torn nations. Most of them had lost loved ones to extreme violence of a nature you and I cannot imagine. They had endured life in refugee camps and times where the only food they had was the leaves off trees. To these people, prosperity often meant survival. Not because they did not have the faith for something better but because where they were born life simply meant something different than it does to us.
This is much closer to the kind of life Paul was living when he wrote Ephesians 1. We know that he was eventually killed for the Gospel. To the first church the things listed in 2 Corinthians 12 did not happen because of where they lived. They happened because they were Christians. The hope of God’s calling was much more eternal to them than temporal. They were not nearly so concerned with things on the earth as we are. They knew how temporary those things were. They were concerned with the eternal hope that was theirs in Christ.
We need to continue to believe that God will bless us here. We need to understand that blessing comes with a responsibility (1 Timothy 6:17-19.) However, that does not mean it is wrong to believe for it. However, we must add the hope Paul is talking about if we are going to access the fullness of God’s possibility. We must understand the real hope of God’s calling upon us is eternal. That is just as true for us as it was for them.
More tomorrow.
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