Thank you Stephan for sharing this word this morning, using examples from Lot and his family in the Old Testament, and some from the New. What a wonderful quote from Corrie Ten Boom towards the end!

Today our guest speaker was Stephen Lane of Cork, who is married to a Killarney woman. Stephen spoke on various aspects of what it means to be a child of God! Does our status change depending on our behaviour ? What is our relationship to the Lord like? Are we more like the elder brother or the prodigal son? Many such issues were discussed!

Today we began the practical side or the second part of Ephesians in which Paul has told us how we are to outwork or “walk out” our theology. We may have great ‘orthodoxy’ but how is our ‘orthopraxy’? There are a lot of things that every true believer in Christ has in common. We are part of the one body, having one Spirit, because we were called in one hope in the one Lord, having exercised the one faith, having been baptised with the one baptism. In fact there is one God and Father of all who is over all and is outworking His plans and purposes through all believers and is at work in all believers!

This was the theme of the RCCG Annual Interdenominational Convention 2019 -“Excellency of God Manifested in Christ Jesus”, and based on the theme text – Hebrews 1:3. Each of the speakers was given 10 mins to minister on the same theme! This is only one of the messages shared.

Today we had Larry O’Mahoney giving us the Word, Song, and Testimony about what “Living In Jesus” is supposed to look like!

In Ephesians 1 Paul prayed his 3 “what” prayer. In Ephesians 3:16-19 he prayed his 4 “that” prayer. This was the prayer that he began putting together in Eph.3:1, until he had flashbacks of things to include in his prayer. Eventually he got around to praying this prayer which God the Father was surely willing to grant. All of this was based on Paul’s wonder and amazement at God’s unmeasurable love, which he couldn’t really give dimensions to! It is “So high you can’t get over it, so low you can’t get under it, so wide you can’t get round it, oh wonderful love!” All of these expressions of God’s love and mercy bring glory to God. Therefore, any theology that doesn’t give God all the glory(Soli Deo Gloria) is surely questionable. We believe that Salvation is ALL of God (See Eph.2:8-9), and give “Glory to God Alone!”

It is God’s intention that NOW His manifold or multi-faceted wisdom should be made known by the church to the principalities and powers, or the angelic realm. In fact, we saw in 1 Pet.1:12 that angels desire to look into and understand the grace that has been revealed to us. Sure the angels can sing, “Holy, Holy, Holy” (See Isaiah 6:3), around the throne 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But you’ll never hear them sing, “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, I once was lost but now I’m found!” How blessed we are that we can sing amazing grace, and join in with the angels too, in singing, “Holy is the LORD!”

It might not seem like too much of a mystery to us, but in fact God’s Plan of Salvation included parts that were kept “Top Secret” since the world began (Rom.16:25-27; Col.1:26), even though it was actually referred to in Scripture (Rom.15:9-13), that is that the Gentiles would be included in God’s Salvation Plan.  You would think that this would be clear enough for Paul, but yet it took special grace from God for Paul to be able to see this, and further grace was given to him, because it was Paul who received the call as the Apostle to the Gentiles (Rom.11:13; Gal.2:6-10). God also has given each of us grace to be able to minister and to do whatever He has called us to do (Rom.12:3-8).

One of the most important lessons we can ever learn from Christ and the Gospel is our need of God’s Forgiveness and our need to Forgive those that have hurt, offended, or sinned against us (See Matt.6:9-15). Even if someone sins or trespasses against us continually, we are to forgive (in hyperbole perhaps) 70 X 7 times (See Luke 17:3-4), and not like the unthankful man spoken of in Matt.18:21-35. We need to careful that no root of bitterness spring up in us (See Heb.12:14; James 3:9).

Maybe you feel like you don’t fit in! Perhaps you have even been rejected! Well then, you are in good company. Our Lord Jesus Christ was ‘The stone that the builders rejected” (Ps.118:22; Mk. 12:1-12; Acts 4:1-12; 1 Pet.2:4-10). Yet now Christ has become the ‘Chief Cornerstone’ of the Temple that He is building (the church), a dwelling place for His Spirit (Eph.2:22). You can be a living stone, or a living rock in this building, when you are Regenerated (Born Again) by His Spirit and Fitted Together with other believers in the church that He is building (Matt.16:18).