Welcome to Timeless Truth with Pastor Jim Thomas. In season 1, Pastor Jim is leading us in a study of Ephesians. Today’s passage is Ephesians 3:13-15.
V13
Paul found meaning and purpose in his own tribulations and suffering of injustices; and his we’re so much worse than most of ours. How does God pour His glory through our sufferings? We look to the cross and the tomb where we find the God Who turns crucifixions into resurrections; and who will one day, do to all of our tombs what He did to the tomb of Jesus!
V14-15
Like the prayer Jesus taught His disciples to pray, what we call “The Lord’s Prayer”, Paul begins this prayer with a reminder of who it is Paul is praying to, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth, including all living beings. In other words, when we pray it is not merely wishful thinking on our part; we are taking our requests before the God Who is there.
“To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.”
– Karl Barth
“Prayer is not a way of making use of God; prayer is a way of offering ourselves to God in order that He should be able to make use of us. It may be that one of our great faults in prayer is that we talk too much and listen too little. When prayer is at its highest we wait in silence for God’s voice to us; we linger in His presence for His peace and His power to flow over us and around us; we lean back in His everlasting arms and feel the serenity of perfect security in Him.”
– William Barclay
