Walking With Christ | Ephesians 2:1-10

A new episode of A Bigger Life podcast is loaded every Tuesday and Thursday. If you’ve ever felt that you needed to learn to pray more, now would be a good time. These are unprecedented, uncertain times. And a very powerful way to pray is to pray through scripture. In our last couple of episodes we looked at how to think vertically about our lives and our circumstances rather than merely horizontally. We said that to think vertically we have to look at our lives and our circumstances through the lens of the reality of who God is. So last time we looked at Psalm 118:1 which says “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.” When we pray scripture, one of the things we’re doing is choosing to believe God‘s word about God. About who God really is. Then we said to have a vertical view of our day we can pray v. 24 — “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Because of who God is we can have this view about today. Right now. God has made it. He has a purpose for it and we can trust in his goodness and his steadfast love for us. So we can rejoice and be glad in it right now by trusting who God is. That’s looking at the horizontal circumstances of our life vertically. Another great place to do that in the New Testament is in Ephesians two. The first three verses describe the dystopian reality of what it means to be without Christ. But this is reality. Deadness. Dark spiritual forces dominating a person’s mindset and behavior in ways we don’t see. Ephesians 2:1-3 ESV “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” But then the apostle Paul describes reality for those who are “in Christ” – but it too is a reality that we don’t “see.” We have to see it by trusting God‘s word – by thinking vertically. By trusting the promise of God to us in his word. Ephesians 2:4-7 “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,” Like Psalm 118:1 this is who God is. Meditating on who God really is. Trusting God's word when he tells us who he is. And who God is toward us! Great love with which he loved us v. 5 “even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.” in spite of our rejection of him in our sin — by his great love toward us he made us alive together in/with Christ. All by his grace. v. 6 “and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” in heaven – not a place but a realm that is the perfect and visible presence and rule and blessing of God. Like Eden was on earth. Like the earth will be when Christ returns. We are in that realm now because we are with/in Christ now. Paul says we are citizens of heaven now in Philippians 3:20. Skip to v10... Ephesians 2:10 “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Because of the riches of his mercy – because of his great love with which he loved us — because of his grace — because he made us alive together in/with Christ — raised us up in/with Christ — and seated us in/with Christ in the realm of heaven now – we ARE his creation. This is who we are in reality now. In Christ. For the purpose of good works – good works God has made/prepared beforehand for us. All we have to do is walk into them. Today. God has made beforehand good works for us today to walk into. “This is the day the Lord has made“ for us! Someone has rightly said... “God will never let you live one day short of the...