Plan Details - 28 April 2009

For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.

I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order 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.  That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.
Ephesians 1:15-23 [NIV]

Paul cannot help himself: he reveals all he knows about THE PLAN.  He is overwhelmed by the love and grace God is showing, he can hardly believe it himself: he falls over himself to spill the beans.  Those who know these things tell us Paul wrote with hardly a full stop for pages when he wrote this letter.  And no wonder – just look at the words he uses wisdom, revelation, enlightened, riches, glorious inheritance, incomparably great power, mighty strength, above all rule and authority – and so on and so on.  He was onto something so amazing he could hardly find words for it.

If we are not moved by these words, then we are not really reading them.  And we can skate over them, either because they have become familiar to us, or we find Paul hard going and keep out of his way, or we don’t get the point!

But whenever Paul hears about the faith of new Christians he cannot stop giving thanks for them.  He knows the joy it is to see THE PLAN coming to fruition – men and women, boys and girls, people of every nation, every part of our world, entering with wonder and joy into God’s new Kingdom and looking with love at the One who has done it.

Here is a plan everyone will love once they begin to see it for themselves.  And Paul says he wants those who believe to ‘know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.’

THE PLAN is for saving the planet – by making a new people who will inhabit a new heaven and a new earth – those who have faith in the Lord Jesus.  And as you and I know him better, so the eyes of our hearts are opened to the hope we have.  Now there is something to think about today!