Jesus is working to see the whole church share the whole gospel with the whole world. Satan is working against this plan by trying to turn everyone in Christ’s church into spiritual weaklings. To see Christ’s plan prevail, Jesus is training us to receive His divine gifts, including the sword of the Spirit and prayer in the Spirit, so the world gets the Good News, God gets the glory, and we all, except Satan, get to be a part of it.
God created life. But sin created death. And the inevitability of death is troubling. We have a variety of ways of coping with this reality, of protecting our minds from fearing it. We deny the inevitability of death or rationalize it to try to lessen its burden. But none of these things actually prevent it or our fear of it. Only one thing can truly alleviate our fear of death: the assurance of salvation, of life after death. The assurance of salvation is a helmet that protects our minds from fear.
We are exhorted to hold up the shield of faith in all circumstances, to extinguish the arrows of the evil one. Just what are those arrows? Attacks come in many forms, including accusations, deceptions, distortions, distractions, false assurances, and temptations. How does faith in God act like a shield in these attacks? We can draw on the heroes of our faith and on Jesus himself to consider how we, too, might stand against and be empowered to overcome these attacks to produce lasting fruit in the Kingdom of God.
Join us for a very special Family Sunday in which we invite the children to demonstrate all the pieces of the Armor of God, and we hear a short devotional from Pastor Jay Oertli on what it means to have shoes made of the readiness given by the gospel of peace.
Jesus reigns and He is near to all of His followers. Yet, when difficulties come, it’s natural to get distracted from this central reality. Anticipating hard seasons, Paul used a quill to remind us of several exquisite everlasting facts of faith which he calls the armor of God. This week we will learn why we desperately need to embrace, in our challenging days, God’s breastplate of righteousness
How do you know what is true? In the “information age”, where we have constant immediate access to the media, it can be difficult to untangle the objective reality from our limited knowledge and personal experience. In his concluding message to the Ephesians, Paul calls all believers to armor themselves against the lies and confusion of their day. He warns the only way to stand firm against spiritual attack is to bind our faith together with the fundamentally important belt of truth.
Kids are to obey parents, students are to obey teachers, employees are to obey employers and citizens are to obey governments. God wants us to obey all whom He puts in authority, assuming they allow us to obey Him, our greatest authority, and He wants us to do it in a Christ-like way because obeying them is ultimately obeying Him. Similarly, God wants parents, teachers, employers, and governing authorities to use their authority in a Christ-like way so that both our obedience and our authority imitate Christ and unite us in Christ.
God loves children and so do the people of Hope. Since the kids will be with us throughout this 4th Sunday service, Pastor Dean will bring a shorter and kid-relevant message entitled, “Kids, God is For You!” from Ephesians 6:1-4. Parents, this message will encourage your children to abide in Jesus in various ways, including through obedience and honor toward you so if you are in town, join us as God’s family unites to worship and receive His wisdom for our everyday lives.
Sometimes we disagree with people we love. This difficulty can cause sleepless nights, stomach aches, avoidance, anger and sometimes even slander. Last week we learned from Ephesians 4:1-16 that God’s vision for the church is unity, not uniformity. In this coming message, from Ephesians 4:17-32, we will begin to discover God’s guidance on how to be faithful to our convictions and kind toward others, especially when we disagree.
Imagine a deeply unified people. What would it look like for people with legitimate differences to eagerly maintain unity in a community of peace? Christ envisions His followers to be this unique group and in this message, we will learn how He summons us to think and live together that it may be so!