February 15, 2018
Last night we continued to look at the book of Ephesians, this time focusing in on Chapter 1, verses 15-23. The main thrust of this passage of scripture is Paul praying for the Ephesian believers, specifically that they would continue to grow in their knowledge of God by the working of his power. Paul starts off the section in verse 15 by saying that he has heard of the Ephesians’ faith and love for the saints, and he gives thanks to God ceaselessly for it! Here, we stopped for a moment to point out what a cool example of brotherly affection this was. How often do we encourage our own brothers and sisters in Christ when we see evidences of grace in their lives? I challenged the students to take a moment to write down an encouragement on a notecard that they would share with a christian friend, brother or parent later.
In an attempt to be brief in summary, Paul didn’t pray that the Ephesians would simply continue on doing what they were doing, but he prays that they would increase in a knowledge of the Lord! Paul didn’t want the Ephesians to simply know the truth, but to know it so intricately that everything else they saw would be colored by the gospel. To illustrate this, I quoted CS Lewis saying, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” This is the reality with a knowledge of God, the more we see Him, the more it illuminates every other part of our lives. This is especially important for us, as we can often feel stagnant when learning about God. We can feel like we know it all, and we’ve heard it all before. But who can know the mind of God? I encouraged the students that this life is a continual journey to know God more, because while we are on this earth, we can never know God enough.
I pray that these truths hit home for the students. It’s so easy to get caught up in grades or sports as the most important thing and forget that we need God more than all of it. It’ll be good to flesh these things out a little more over the winter retreat this weekend with the High School students.
Categories: Youth Ephesians, Youth Night Updates