that we should no longer be children’…. Ephesians 4:14 NKJV

Jesus tells us we need to be born again. He tells us we must enter His kingdom as a little child. We must die to self and be born again, as we have things we need to unlearn and relearn. We must come as little children, trusting God and wanting to learn and grow. Yes, grow. While Jesus tells us to come as children, He does not expect us to remain as children. He expects us to grow up. 

Image © Providence Collection at Goodsalt.com

Years ago I helped a family in my church with their neighborhood youth Bible study group. Several of the kids were already into their teens, but one young girl was in kindergarten. Unable to read, she has a picture Bible. The other kids would help her find the right picture to go along with the passages we were studying in our regular Bibles. The parents and youth were very eager to participate in this study and it was successful for several years. Before we knew it, the girl in kindergarten had grown into a very smart and talented young lady. One day I asked her to read, and when she started fluently reading from the regular Bible she now possessed, my mind went back to her younger days with the picture Bible. I asked the class if they remembered her picture Bible. Several of the other kids were amazed how they had totally forgotten her picture Bible. She had grown slowly day by day, year by year, until she was reading just as good as any of the rest of the kids. Still it was so gradual, the other kids confessed they had not noticed, and over time had just forgotten about the picture Bible she once brought to the study. 

While Paul encourages us in Philippians 3:13-14 to keep moving forward, in Ephesians He also takes time to remind the Ephesians that at one time  you lived in darkness, but not now, You once were dead in sin but not now. Look how you have grown! 

Ellen White  encourages us that … 

As God is perfect in His sphere, so man is to be perfect in his sphere. –Ellen White, Maranatha, page 227. 

When my young friend was in kindergarten looking  up pictures in her picture Bible was perfect for her in her sphere of kindergarten. However she kept growing and, as a young lady, the picture Bible was no longer perfect for her. She grew into a new sphere, where an adult Bible became perfect for her. Still the class, as well as the young lady herself, were very intrigued when I pointed out how much her reading skills had improved over time. While we keep moving forward, and growing so that we are no longer children, it is also important to look back occasionally just to see how far we have come and encourage ourselves that actual progress is being made. By God’s grace we can be perfect it our own sphere as we grow from sphere to sphere. 

While we once walked in darkness and were dead in sins, we are no longer in darkness and dead in sins. We are growing day by day, year by year, and we will keep growing by grace,

till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; Ephesians 3:13 NKJV

While we all still see plenty of room for growth, it may still be a good idea to pause for a moment and give God some credit and thanks for helping us to grow to become the men and women we are today. What are some areas of your life where you would like to thank God for helping you mature? 

Amen!(1)

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Safe in Jesus: Part 2

By Andrew McChesney

One afternoon, 16-year-old Almira decided to take a nap after returning home from school, exhausted from months of fitful nights. She lay down on a couch, her face to the open door of the room. She was at home alone.

Image © Pacific Press

Suddenly, she sensed the presence in the room. Looking toward the door, she saw the presence for the first time. He looked like a gray cloud, completely obscuring the doorway. Almira didn’t know why, but she understood that something terrible would happen if she even blinked. She stared at the doorway for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, she had to blink. In that split second, the gray cloud darted to her. Almira felt like she was entombed in a giant stone, helpless and unable to move. She struggled to breathe. She pleaded with good forces for help. There was no response.

At that moment, she remembered a prayer that she had memorized. It was a non-Christian prayer associated with her ancestors’ traditional religion. She recited it. For a moment, she was free and could breathe. But then the presence captured her again. She repeated the prayer again and again. She was released and recaptured, released and recaptured.

Growing weary of the struggle, she frantically wondered what she could do to save herself. Abruptly, she remembered that one of the Russian teachers at the supernatural courses had mentioned Jesus Christ was more powerful than all good and evil forces. The thought flashed into her mind to call upon Jesus. She opened her mouth to speak. She only managed to utter the first syllable of Jesus’ name, and the gray cloud fled. She felt like Jesus had entered the room and thrown the evil captor off her.

Almira had no doubt that she needed Jesus. But how? She was not a Christian. So, she went to her ancestors’ traditional place of worship for two months. She began to sleep better, so she decided that Jesus must also visit that place of worship.

Then her older sister, Faniya, came home with two friends whom Almira had never seen before. She learned that day that Faniya had started going to a Seventh-day Adventist church located on the same street as their apartment building. The two friends were members of the Adventist Church. Almira related her story to the Adventist girls.

“That is Satan,” one girl said.

The other girl said Almira had entered Satan’s territory by taking the classes on the supernatural.

“But Jesus is on your side,” she said. “Only He can free you from Satan’s power.”

Read more about Almira next week. Thank you for your mission offerings that help spread the gospel in Russia and around the world.

Produced by the General Conference Office of Adventist Mission. Find more mission stories at adventistmission[dot]org

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/inside-story-safe-in-jesus-part-2/

Further Thought:

 Study carefully the following preamble to the discussion questions listed below:

What is the specific context in which Paul writes Ephesians 2:11-22 as he describes the sweeping effects of the Cross on human relationships?

Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com

 He is addressing the relationships between Jewish and Gentile believers who together are members of the church. He expresses an obvious concern that they understand and live their shared, reconciled status as fellow members of God’s household (Ephesians 2:19). However, in the context of the letter as a whole, Paul demonstrates a broad, far-reaching purpose. His theme is God’s grand, ultimate plan to unite all things in Christ (Ephesians 1:9-10) and his scope includes “every family in heaven and on earth” (Ephesians 3:15, ESV).

More important, the unity of members within the church — the specific topic he addresses in Ephesians 2:11-22 — itself has a wider purpose that Paul discloses in Ephesians 3:10: “so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God [in creating the church out of both Jews and Gentiles] might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (ESV). Through actualizing the unity Christ won on the cross, believers are to signal that God’s ultimate plan to unite all things in Christ is underway. Their reconciled relationships signal God’s plan for a universe unified in Christ. So it is appropriate to look to Ephesians 2:11-22, set in the context of Ephesians as a whole, for biblical principles concerning a topic of importance today, relationships among people groups or races.

Discussion Questions:

<–Thursday

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Is this True or False? The greatest danger to the church is a spirit of bitterness and division. Join us as we discuss Lesson 5, Horizontal Atonement: The Cross and the Church.

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What culminating set of images does Paul use in Ephesians 2:11-22 to signal unity between Jews and Gentiles in the church?

Reviewing Ephesians 2:1-22, we recall that verses 1-10 teach that we live in solidarity with Jesus, while verses 11-22 teach that we live in solidarity with others as part of His church. Jesus’ death has both vertical benefits in establishing our relationship with God (Ephesians 2:1-10) and horizontal ones in cementing our relationships with others (Ephesians 2:11-22).

Image © Rolf Jansson from GoodSalt.com

Through the Cross, Jesus demolishes all that divides Gentile believers from Jewish ones, including the misuse of the Law in order to widen the gulf (Ephesians 2:11-18). Jesus also builds something — an amazing, new temple composed of believers. Gentiles, once excluded from worship in the sacred places of the temple, now join Jewish believers in becoming a new temple. We all become part of God’s church, “a holy temple in the Lord” (Ephesians 2:19-22, ESV) and are privileged to live in solidarity with Jesus and our brothers and sisters in Christ.

How does Paul’s use of the metaphor of the church as a temple in Ephesians 2:19-22 compare with the uses in the following passages? 1 Corinthians 3:9-17; 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1; 1 Peter 2:4-8.

Paul employs the metaphor of the church as temple as a culminating image for the full inclusion of Gentiles in the church. Once banned from worship in the “Court of Israel” in the temple, they now not only gain access (Ephesians 2:18) but themselves become building materials for a new temple designed as “a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22, NKJV).

New Testament authors employ the temple metaphor to visualize the sanctity of the church, God’s role in founding and growing the church, and the solidarity of believers within the church. The metaphor is used in conjunction with biological language (see Ephesians 2:21-22, where the temple “grows”), and the process of building is often accentuated (see , “you also are being built together,” ESV). Rather than a static image, the church is able to acknowledge its identity as “the temple of the living God” (2 Corinthians 6:16, NKJV).

<–Wednesday Friday–>

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