Being known and established in love
16th July Trevor Withers
Eph 3 v 14-21
Trevor told us a story of being given some home made real curry by an Indian lady – it was the real thing!
This Ephesians passage talks of the real thing of God's power and love. We often only get an imitation of the power because it works hand in hand with the love. Jesus was raised from the dead (power) out of the love of submitting and sacrificing.
Are we going to accept an imitaton of God's power or are we going to grapple with his love and therefore release his real power.
The secular world view dominates Christian thinking which denies the spiritual world on earth.
The missing middle: There are three 'levels':-
1) The Transcendent: includes hell, heaven, cosmic forces etc
2) The Supernatural fores on this earth – spirits, ghosts, demons, earthly gods and goddesses, angels, demons, planetary influences, the Holy Spirit, signs and wonders. This is the middle section we miss out on in our western world view, we end up with the top and bottom only
3) The empirical world of our senses – theories to explain things, explanations based on empirical observations, folk religion to explain the natural world
It is difficult for us to operate in the sense of God's power because we miss out on a whole spiritual layer in the West. The growing new age spiritualism helps us to speak to our friends about a spiritual God because they accept spiritual experiences and they know we can't explain everything. The 'excluded middle' is opening up again, the challenge for us is are we going to engage with it.
Through demonstrations of power rather than rational arguments people will come to faith, although one doesn't exclude the other.
Engage with people where they're at, offer to pray for them, to chat about where they are and what they believe.
Verses 17 & 19 'filled to the measure of all the fullness of God'. We often think of God's love being unconditional, but maybe there are conditions;-
If its completely unconditional it doesn't matter what we do, we don't need to grapple with the issues.
When God wiped humanity off the face of the Earth that wasn't showing god's unconditional love. And yet it's the same God in Old and New Testaments.
John 10 v 17 'for this reason the Father loves me' (why does there have to be a reason) 'because I lay down my life so that I may take it up again'. The reason is obedience.
John 15 v 9-11 'if you keep my commandments you will abide in my love'. Obedience again.
There is a link between our obedience and living in his love. The danger with the usual view is that we do what we like because he loves us anyway. There are dangers with this proposed view too – it's not advocating that we need to earn God's love.
The prodigal son only experienced the Father's love when he decided to come home and made the journey back. Interesting that the Father didn't go looking for him, but did meet him when he came back.
He welcomes us when we turn to him.
This is not salvation by works, but we need to keep a healthy balance in our view of his love.
Eph 3 v 16-19 this isn't just going to happen to us, it's a process.
| 
