Vicki Higgins

God gives spiritual gifts. Yes, our "natural" talents are related to our "spiritual" gifts. They all come from God. The difference between a natural God-given talent and a spiritual gift is that anybody can have a natural talent, and use it without ever giving recognition to the fact that it comes from God; a spiritual gift is something that is bestowed on a believer and used to give God glory.

We must expend a great deal of energy on Christian unity. "The bond of peace" is what keeps us together when we disagree. We strike at peace when we are intent on argument and dissension because we put our prideful need to be right ahead of keeping unity.

Patience and humility are so important to preserving unity because we can't be united with someone if we can't tolerate them or if we're too busy showing how great we are. When we have right doctrine along with a sense of arrogance towards those who disagree with us, the reputation of Jesus Christ gets tarnished. We are to be both "gentle" and "to fight the good fight of faith" by acting the way that Christ did.

According to verse 1, the standard of our behavior is to act as though we are worthy of the calling we have received. The "calling" to which God has called us is to follow Jesus.

As we are between congregations right now, I'll say that if bringing glory to God were considered the very most important function of any church, there would be more unification and less people (like us) looking for a different place to worship. If bringing God glory was my most important job, bar none, my life would be happier because I wouldn't be wallowing in the bitterness of a dead marriage or worrying about my children or money or a million other things that occupy my mind.

To be "filled with the Spirit" means a continual closeness with Him. It is a continual reality. To be filled with the Spirit we must yield ourselves, let go of our will and our want to. Being "filled with all the fullness of God" is like the end result of continually being filled with the Spirit.

Our human-ness prevents us from comprehending the far reaches of Christ's love. When we do comprehend, know, and experience this love, we live in a way that is for others rather than ourselves, for what we can give not what we can get. If I could grasp this, my marriage would be healed; I would be able to see my husband as Christ does and love him in spite of himself.

I think the concepts of (a) strengthened by the Spirit in the inner person, and ( Christ dwelling in our hearts say the same thing, yet are separate and distinct ideas in the same way that the Spirit and Christ are the same, and yet separate and distinct.

Ephesians 3:12 teaches us that we may approach God with freedom and confidence. If we try to pray without these qualities we are shortchanging ourselves.

Paul is so careful to be humble about his call and apostleship because he knew that it wasn't about him, it was and is about Christ. His example can help us remain as humble servants by reminding us to give God the glory in everything we do, because without Him, we can do nothing.

The "mystery" that Paul is talking about is that we who are not Jewish have an equal part in God's kingdom with His chosen people. It was important to the Gentile Christians in Paul's day because they were made to feel inferior simply because they were not Jewish.

God's revelation to "His holy apostles and prophets" is our authority for faith and practice because He reveals it to them and they teach it to us. The danger of minimizing or straying from that revelation is, at best we miss out on the full extent of the blessings He has for us, at worst we risk disappointing Him and the punishment that comes for sinning against Him. The danger of superceding that revelation is, according to Rev 22:18, becoming the personal recipient of all the plagues that are prophesied. The danger of denying that God reveals Himself to us and to His church today is, again, missing out on the abundant life He has planned for us and not receiving the instruction we need to follow His will.

The signifcance that my congregation was made to be "a dwelling place for God in the Spirit" is that He is there, I need to be there too. Animosity towards individuals hinders that from being fully experienced. To help that become more fully experienced and appreciated, I can work on putting aside my differences with people and focus on God.

To have "access to the Father" means exactly that; we can talk to Him, one on one, no intermediary needed. The Holy Spirit facilitates this access by being sort of a translator. When we don't know how to pray for something, or when our emotions are so great that we can't focus, the Holy Spirit brings our petitions to God for us. Jesus enabled this access by dying on the cross so we could all receive the Spirit.

Jesus as Messiah "fulfilled" the Mosaic Law in the sense that He completed the law. The purpose of the law was to enable sinful man to fellowship with Holy God; Christ's sacrifice made all of the previous laws unnecessary because His sacrifice covered all mans' sins for all time. The significance of that for Jewish people is they no longer had to go through the ritual of 'transferring' their sins to the animal and then sacrificing it in order to be forgiven; Christ took all their sins on Himself. For us Gentiles, it means being granted access to Someone who we have no claim to, like having some powerful important person invite you into their home and treating you like one of their own children, only a million times larger than that.

Being out of touch with what it means to be "lost" impedes our willingness to witness because, for me at least, we don't identify with those who need to be witnessed to. I was brought up in church, accepted Christ as my Savior when I was six years old, and with the exception of some teenage rebellion have been in that comfortable place my whole life. I don't have a personal frame of reference for being lost because I've never been there. I don't say that as though I'm better or "holier than thou", I'm just blessed to have been brought up in a Christian home although that puts me at a disadvantage when it comes to reaching out to those who need Him. That said, I think of my very best friend from junior high (25 years ago) who I still keep in touch with. Our lives have taken very different paths, and based on outward appearances I don't believe she has a personal relationship with Christ. Even though I love her dearly, I don't preach to her, and I don't judge her, but I also don't blatantly witness to her, even though I know I should. Why not? I don't want to offend her? I don't want to take the chance of making her feel bad or losing her friendship? Am I willing to risk her spending eternity in hell without being bold enough to ask her a simple question like if she died tonight does she know where she'd go? God help me to break free of these silly human restraints and accept a small amount of discomfort in order to reap the eternal benefit of knowing I did what You wanted me to do.

Most simply put, faith is the evidence of things unseen, it is believing in something without physical proof. I don't think we can take full credit for having it, because all that we are comes from God, but we do have a choice in the matter. We can certainly be condemned for lacking it when God has shown us in so many ways every day of our lives that He provides all we need yet we still doubt Him. Putting faith into terms a 10-year-old could understand would probably be most easily illustrated by "have you seen the wind?"; no, obviously you can't see it, but you can see its' effects, you can feel it, you can hear it etc. You can't see air, but you have faith that it's there because you breathe it.

According to Ephesians 2:10, we were created to do good works so that others will see and glorify God. The difference between these works and the works Paul discredits in verse 9 is these works are to bring God glory, not ourselves.

I think that rescue is an excellent word to use in place of saved; it paints the perfect picture of what Christ does for us. A very timely illustration is "bail out". In my humble opinion, the majority of the people/businesses who are being bailed out by our government created the mess they are in and don't deserve to be spared the consequences of their poor choices, especially when my family is living paycheck to paycheck, hoping our daughter gets enough in scholarship money to pay for college, hoping the boys don't grow so much that they need new clothes before we can afford to buy them, etc. Now, with that being said, I also know that our time here on earth is short compared to the eternity that my family and I will be spending in Heaven, never wanting for anything and praising our Lord for His grace in even allowing us a glimpse of that, let alone to enjoy it with Him.

It is so hard for us to understand grace because it goes against our nature of "deserving" something. Grace demolishes the principle of having to earn favor. Translating the word "grace" into language a 10-year-old child (my son for example) would understand sounds something like this: "Grace is getting something you don't deserve, like when we let you have a friend over to spend the night, even though earlier in the day you were fighting with your brother and being selfish; we didn't have to do it, your behavior didn't warrant it, but we did it anyway, just because we love you."

That we are seated with Christ in "the heavenly realms" means that we will share a place of honor with Him in Heaven. This says that God's grace must know no bounds if it means that a wretched sinner such as myself can even be associated with Christ, let alone be seated with Him in Heaven. This says that we have spiritual authority over the things of this world as well as over the angels (both heavenly and fallen). This knowledge should affect our prayers by giving us the freedom to ask for things in Jesus' name, knowing that when we are in His will, wanting what He wants, it will be done and it should give us the boldness to speak with authority to evil spirits that try to influence us and show them that they have no power over us because we are with Christ.

People can unwittingly follow Satan by not choosing to follow God; if we're not for Him, we're against Him. We are responsible for unwitting rebellion against God in the sense that we know what we should do but we don't always choose to do it. God can, in all fairness, blame us because we are given the choice to do right or not, and we decide for ourselves.

Our non-believing friends, neighbors, and relatives are "dead" in the sense that they have no saving from their sin. The difference between us and them is we have forgiveness for our sins and the hope of eternal life with Christ. If we really believe that they are "dead" and subject to God's "wrath", we should be praying for them constantly and sharing with them what Christ has done for us and what He can do for them too.

We so often take a "pass" when it comes to spiritual warfare because "out of sight, out of mind"; it's hard to remember that we are engaged in war when we can't see the enemy. Christ's exaltation, demonstration of complete victory, and superior rank over all spiritual powers is important enough for Paul to mention it to his readers because we need the reassurance of knowing that He has already won the war. We tend to feel powerless in the face of spiritual enemies because we can't defeat them on our own; it is only when we let Christ fight for us and through us that we will prevail. Paul was assuring the Ephesians that Christ has already conquered their enemies. This encourages us to rejoice because He's conquered our enemies as well and we will share in that victory together with Him in Heaven.

We are powerless sometimes because we don't take advantage of the power that we have inside us by the Holy Spirit. It is always an inadequacy with our faith; there is nothing inadequate about the source. Maybe some congregations or movements that produce believers with miracle-believing faith are able to do that because the leaders believe and act accordingly and that not only tends to be contagious, but also draws other like-minded people to them. This can be changed by those believers who have a stronger faith in their strength through the Spirit reaching out to those who maybe are hesitant to access that power.