Ephesians 2

King Tides

Posted on by Betsy

I got a phone call from my oldest daughter last night asking if I was in a hurricane. The question surprised me, as yesterday’s weather was stunning, It was perfect example of how gorgeous fall is on the Outer Banks. The temperatures were in the 70’s, the sun shone brightly but wasn’t scorching, there was a gentle breeze all day, etc. My running partner and I met at the Wright Memorial for a pleasant five-mile run and truly the day couldn’t have been nicer. I assured my daughter that I was fine, and she explained that a friend had just seen a news report of houses falling into the ocean due to a storm here.

Indeed, houses have recently been reclaimed by the sea on the beaches south of us. These fragile homes have been the victim of beach erosion over the years. The two hurricanes that recently swept past the east coast brought winds and waves close enough to destroy ten unoccupied beach houses. The damage is horrific, and now the rest of the nearby homes are threatened with floating debris as the county workers and volunteers scramble to clean up the remains of these once beloved homes. But even more threatening is the effect of the destructive power of an incoming King Tide.

“King Tide” is a term people in coastal areas use to describe exceptionally high tides. Tides are long-period waves that roll around the planet as the ocean is “pulled” back and forth by the gravitational force of the moon and the sun as they interact with the Earth in their monthly and yearly orbits. Higher than normal tides typically occur during a new or full moon (such as this week’s stunning Harvest moon),  and when the moon is at its “perigee”, meaning when it is nearest to the earth. We are in King Tide season in the Outer Banks.

In our passage today, Paul warns of a different type of destructive power.

Ephesians 2 (Common English Bible)

2 At one time you were like a dead person because of the things you did wrong and your offenses against God. 2 You used to live like people of this world. You followed the rule of a destructive spiritual power. This is the spirit of disobedience to God’s will that is now at work in persons whose lives are characterized by disobedience.

Disobedience is a soul-destroying force that we all contend with. Pulled to and fro by the destructive spiritual power of Satan, we are tempted and beguiled to turn away from God as we succumb to the pleasures of this world. Paul warns us that these offenses turn us into dead people.

The pull on us is as forceful as a King Tide, but we know where to go to resist it.

1 Corinthians 10 (Common English Bible)

13 No temptation has seized you that isn’t common for people. But God is faithful. He won’t allow you to be tempted beyond your abilities. Instead, with the temptation, God will also supply a way out so that you will be able to endure it.

Is something tempting you today? Are you about to give in to something you shouldn’t ? Lord, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil this day! Amen.

Harvest Moon Over Avalon Pier by Michelle Robertson

Tabernacled Joy

Posted on by Betsy

Here is an amazing truth for you today: You are God’s dwelling place in which God lives by his spirit.

This one sentence undoes thousands of years of temple building. Let’s do a brief history lesson on the Tabernacle/Temple thing. In the beginning, God designed a perfect dwelling place in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve but when they sinned, they were expelled. From that point on, fellowship with God was broken and yet somehow, God still desired to dwell with us. As we follow the story from Genesis to Exodus, we see the people wandering in the wilderness after God delivered them from Egypt and Pharaoh’s vicious pursuit. At this point, God made a plan for them to build a mobile tabernacle, a “meeting tent,” so that his presence could go with them everywhere, and gave Moses very specific instructions for building it.

Now let’s fast forward to the Temple. For Jewish people, God’s Temple meant something very specific: It meant the Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple that was built by King Solomon. The Temple that housed the ark of the covenant in the Holy of Holies. The Temple that was destroyed by the Babylonians, and then rebuilt by Zerubbabel, before being destroyed a second time by the Romans in 70 AD. The Temple which now remains only as a single wall, the Wailing Wall, is still a sacred place for Jewish people. 

Now we move on to the arrival of our Messiah, Jesus. When Jesus came, he completed God’s full plan for the Temple by becoming the temple himself. As high priest, Jesus offers the best and most complete sacrifice at the altar and allows us to be tabernacled with him, becoming the dwelling place ourselves.

Hebrews 9:11-14 (Common English Bible)

11 But Christ has appeared as the high priest of the good things that have happened. He passed through the greater and more perfect meeting tent, which isn’t made by human hands (that is, it’s not a part of this world). 12 He entered the holy of holies once for all by his own blood, not by the blood of goats or calves, securing our deliverance for all time. 13 If the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkled ashes of cows made spiritually contaminated people holy and clean, 14 how much more will the blood of Jesus wash our consciences clean from dead works in order to serve the living God? He offered himself to God through the eternal Spirit as a sacrifice without any flaw.

Paul goes on later to explain the completion of the plan in Ephesians 2:

 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

This is the great charge and challenge for today. As a dwelling place for God, how will you reflect his Spirit to the world in a winsome, inviting way? Do people see enough of God’s Spirit in you that they want to come in and know more? Are you a reflection of his glory and grace?

May we strive to be an open door to others until everyone hears.

The Spirit inside

With doors opened to welcome

Tabernacled joy

Sacred Place by Michelle Robertson

The Fresh Prince of Damascus

Posted on by Betsy

My kids were visiting recently and somehow got into a competition to see who could recite the entire theme song to the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. They were both very good at it. We talked about watching that show together when they were kids and how we all loved this “fish out of water” story. The Fresh Prince was a street-wise kid from West Philadelphia who got sent by his mother to live with his aunt and uncle in upscale Bel-Air when trouble broke out in his neighborhood. The beginning of the song sets up the storyline:

Now this is a story all about how
My life got flipped turned upside down
And I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there
I’ll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel-Air.

The show dealt with cultural and contemporary issues of acceptance, tolerance, respect, teenage life, and family bonding. I think many of us love a great story that involves someone’s life being turned upside down for the good. I bet many of you have a good story about your conversion and your personal “Before Christ/After Christ” life.

But none of us can beat Paul’s “flipped turned upside down” conversion story. Born Saul of Tarsus, he was a Christian-persecuting Pharisee who lived a life of hatred and violence. Read what happened to him on the way to Damascus:

Acts 9 (The Message)

9 1-2 All this time Saul was breathing down the necks of the Master’s disciples, out for the kill. He went to the Chief Priest and got arrest warrants to take to the meeting places in Damascus so that if he found anyone there belonging to the Way, whether men or women, he could arrest them and bring them to Jerusalem.

3-4 He set off. When he got to the outskirts of Damascus, he was suddenly dazed by a blinding flash of light. As he fell to the ground, he heard a voice: “Saul, Saul, why are you out to get me?”

5-6 He said, “Who are you, Master?”

“I am Jesus, the One you’re hunting down. I want you to get up and enter the city. In the city you’ll be told what to do next.”

7-9 His companions stood there dumbstruck—they could hear the sound, but couldn’t see anyone—while Saul, picking himself up off the ground, found himself stone-blind. They had to take him by the hand and lead him into Damascus. He continued blind for three days. He ate nothing, drank nothing.

10 There was a disciple in Damascus by the name of Ananias. The Master spoke to him in a vision: “Ananias.”

“Yes, Master?” he answered.

11-12 “Get up and go over to Straight Avenue. Ask at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus. His name is Saul. He’s there praying. He has just had a dream in which he saw a man named Ananias enter the house and lay hands on him so he could see again.”

13-14 Ananias protested, “Master, you can’t be serious. Everybody’s talking about this man and the terrible things he’s been doing, his reign of terror against your people in Jerusalem! And now he’s shown up here with papers from the Chief Priest that give him license to do the same to us.”

15-16 But the Master said, “Don’t argue. Go! I have picked him as my personal representative to non-Jews and kings and Jews. And now I’m about to show him what he’s in for—the hard suffering that goes with this job.”

17-19 So Ananias went and found the house, placed his hands on blind Saul, and said, “Brother Saul, the Master sent me, the same Jesus you saw on your way here. He sent me so you could see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” No sooner were the words out of his mouth than something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes—he could see again! He got to his feet, was baptized, and sat down with them to a hearty meal.

19-21 Saul spent a few days getting acquainted with the Damascus disciples, but then went right to work, wasting no time, preaching in the meeting places that this Jesus was the Son of God. 

Saul got flipped upside down and became Paul, the greatest evangelist and church planter that ever lived. He authored the Pauline letters that make up a good portion of the New Testament and his words are quoted all over the world in all kinds of contexts. I bet of the hundreds of weddings I have performed, 1 Corinthians 13 was read at 95% of them.

How about you? Are you needing a flipped upside down moment with God? Is there some aspect of your life that needs to be drastically changed for the better? Take it from the Fresh Prince of Damascus: “8 You are saved by God’s grace because of your faith. This salvation is God’s gift. It’s not something you possessed. 9 It’s not something you did that you can be proud of. 10 Instead, we are God’s accomplishment, created in Christ Jesus to do good things. God planned for these good things to be the way that we live our lives” (Ephesians 2:8-10).

You are God’s accomplishment, created to do good things! Sometimes that requires a little flipping.

My Wedding Bulletin

Without Flaw

Posted on by Betsy

I am currently writing a women’s retreat for a large church in Alpharetta, Georgia based on the Temple. That was my one-word assignment: write a retreat on the Temple. Let me tell you, this has been the most challenging one yet! But after many, many long hours of research and study (and sweat and tears) it all boils down to one sentence: You are God’s dwelling place in which God lives by his spirit.

This one sentence undoes thousands of years of temple building! Let’s do a brief history lesson on the Tabernacle/Temple thing. In the beginning, God designed a perfect dwelling place in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve but when they sinned, they were expelled. From that point on, fellowship with God was broken and yet somehow, God still desired to dwell with us. As we follow the story from Genesis to Exodus, we see the people wandering in the wilderness after God delivered them from Egypt and Pharaoh’s vicious pursuit. At this point, God made a plan for them to build a mobile tabernacle, a “meeting tent,” so that his presence could go with them everywhere, and gave Moses very specific instructions for building it.

Now let’s fast forward to the Temple. For Jewish people, God’s Temple meant something very specific: it meant the Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple that was built by King Solomon. The Temple that housed the ark of the covenant in the Holy of Holies. The Temple that was destroyed by the Babylonians, and then rebuilt by Zerubbabel, before being destroyed a second time by the Romans in 70 AD. The Temple which now remains only as a single wall, the Wailing Wall, is still a sacred place for Jewish people. 

Now we move on to the arrival of our Messiah, Jesus. When Jesus came, he completed God’s full plan for the Temple by becoming the temple himself. As high priest, Jesus offers the best and most complete sacrifice at the altar and allows us to be tabernacled with him, becoming the dwelling place ourselves.

Hebrews 9:11-14 (Common English Bible)

11 But Christ has appeared as the high priest of the good things that have happened. He passed through the greater and more perfect meeting tent, which isn’t made by human hands (that is, it’s not a part of this world). 12 He entered the holy of holies once for all by his own blood, not by the blood of goats or calves, securing our deliverance for all time. 13 If the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkled ashes of cows made spiritually contaminated people holy and clean, 14 how much more will the blood of Jesus wash our consciences clean from dead works in order to serve the living God? He offered himself to God through the eternal Spirit as a sacrifice without any flaw.

Paul goes on later to explain the completion of the plan in Ephesians 2:

 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

This is the great charge and challenge for today. As a dwelling place for God, how will you reflect his Spirit to the world in a winsome, inviting way? Do people see enough of God’s Spirit in you that they want to come in and know more? Are you a reflection of his glory and grace?

May we strive to be an open door to others until everyone hears.

(Georgia friends, you are invited to attend this retreat: February 22nd, Midway United Methodist Church, Alpharetta, GA. Registration forms will be available soon on their website.)

Peachtree City UMC

Mulligan Grace

Posted on by Betsy

Well, it was bound to happen. My husband and I finally got pickle-balled. Our neighbors all play and two of them invited us to join them on the Colington courts for a lesson/game. I immediately responded with all the reasons why my game would be terrible, starting with my lack of depth perception, my out-of-shape arms, etc. As it turned out it was a lot of fun and I wasn’t as horrible as I thought I would be.

Part of the reason it was an enjoyable was that our opponents gave us unlimited mulligans. Now, if you play golf, you’ll recognize that word. For the uninformed like me, a mulligan is basically a free do-over. Because we had never played before, each serve that didn’t make it across the net or that made it too far over the net was a chance for a mulligan. And by the way, you don’t score extra points by hitting the ball over the tall fence enclosure and then having to chase it all the way down Colington Road. Seemed unfair, but there you have it.

In theological terms, we call this grace. Grace is the undeserved, unmerited favor of God that offers us unlimited mulligans. Fell off the wagon? Mulligan. Committed a sin yet again? Mulligan. Walked away from God’s will for your life? Mulligan. God loves us so much he offers a steady stream of grace whenever we confess and repent. You can always come home again.

Ephesians 2 (The Message)

7-10 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

I had the chance last week to talk about grace to two extraordinary teenagers who are about to be baptized in my church. Their pursuit of this sacrament was fostered by an extended family who is strong in their faith and triggered by the death of their great grandmother a year ago. Granny also got baptized in my church as a much older adult. Seeing this commitment made this boys want to make the same commitment for themselves. As we talked about the gift of grace that God offers to everyone, they could visualize this in their great-grandmother’s life.

You, too, can be a means of grace for someone. Your offer of love, kindness, help, and free mulligans can go a long way in someone’s life. Is God calling you to extend his unconditional love to someone who needs it? Don’t delay. God’s waves of love are available to all.

Heart Waves by Beth Rary

Opposites Attract

Posted on by Betsy

Outsiders. Insiders.

Members. Non-members.

People of color. White people.

Progressives. Conservatives.

Men. Women.

Clergy. Laity.

How easy it is to draw up opposites. The minute you read these pairs of words, you unconsciously found your place. We can’t help ourselves. Culture, practice, family affiliation, and society all work together to help us understand who we are…and who we aren’t.

In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, the issue is circumcision verses uncircumcision. Either you were or you weren’t. Females were simply lumped in with their male family members. If you were circumcised, you were a Jew. If you weren’t, you were a gentile.

One group gets in, one group stays out. But then Jesus came, and all the ideas about opposites were obliterated:

Ephesians 2 (The Message)

16-18 Christ brought us together through his death on the cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility. Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders. He treated us as equals, and so made us equals. Through him we both share the same Spirit and have equal access to the Father.

This teaching was revolutionary. The centuries-long practice of maintaining strict distances between opposing groups was suddenly gone, and a new paradigm began to take hold. No one is a stranger or an outsider in Jesus’ world. Everyone belongs here, and this place was designed and built by God himself:

19-22 That’s plain enough, isn’t it? You’re no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together.

With Christ as our cornerstone, we will hold all of these parts together in a holy temple.

We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.

We see it taking shape day after day….or do we?

Insiders. Outsiders

Non-members. Members.

White people. People of color.

Conservatives. Progressives.

Men. Women.

Laity. Clergy.

We still have a long way to go, haven’t we?

God is Quite at Home by Michelle Robertson

How God Sees It

Posted on by Betsy

I have a vision condition called mono-vision. One eye is sighted to see distance while the other is sighted to see close-up. My optometrist prescribed contact lenses of different strengths to help my brain learn to focus in order for an image to be clear, regardless if it is near or far away. It is strange in the beginning, but in a short time your brain can actually learn how to instantly chose which lens to use to see the object. The vision in the dominant eye is corrected for distance while the other is left somewhat nearsighted for close vision, and the brain takes over.

In the Bible, we encounter all kinds of “visions” that come to people in different ways. Prophets had visions that were intended to correct the community, like the vision of dry bones that Ezekiel saw. Joseph and Daniel had visions that came through dreams, warning them about dangers and conflicts that were coming. The entire book of Revelation is John of Patmos’ vision of the new heaven and the new earth. God spoke though visions in order to reveal plans to those who would listen. Biblical visions are a way for us to explore how God sees things.

In this passage from Ephesians, Paul described how God sees the activity of Christ on the cross and what that means for us. We were brought to life while we were dead in sin because of God’s great love for his creation.

It is a vision of pure, unconditional grace:

Ephesians 2 (Common English Bible)

4-5 However, God is rich in mercy. He brought us to life with Christ while we were dead as a result of those things that we did wrong. He did this because of the great love that he has for us. You are saved by God’s grace!

The vision continued as Paul saw us raised up in the heavens with Jesus. He described our destiny in this letter…we are destined to rise up with Christ because God is so good and God’s grace is so great.

 6 And God raised us up and seated us in the heavens with Christ Jesus. 7 God did this to show future generations the greatness of his grace by the goodness that God has shown us in Christ Jesus.

Isn’t this amazing? God has plans to seat you in heaven. That is God’s vision for your future!

Can you see it? Are you prepared? Or do you need to take your eyes off whatever is distracting you first and focus on your relationship with Jesus?

What are you looking at right now?

Wherever this scripture finds you today, turn your eyes upon Jesus. Jeremiah wrote that God has plans for you. These plans are to prosper you, not harm you. God plans to give you a future with hope! (Jeremiah 29:11) Focus on this and make it your own vision. Know that because of the resurrection, your place in the heavens is set. You’ve been saved by God’s grace!

That’s how God sees it.

Seated in the Heavens by Bev Mineo

The Power of Love

Posted on by Betsy

The power of guilt is something that can overtake an entire life and crush it with the strength of an oncoming avalanche. I saw this firsthand at a women’s retreat I attended many years ago. A participant sought me out after a very emotional worship experience where people were invited to give over their guilt, sins, burdens, and shame in an act of “dying moments.” The invitation was to process those life-long secrets and figuratively place them at the foot of the cross and “die to them” by letting them go.

This particular woman had about twenty years worth of crushing heaviness to lift up. She told me her story in gasps and sobs as we sat under a piano until 3 a.m. It included drug and alcohol abuse, criminal activity, adultery, an abortion she had never told anyone about, and the eventual loss of her marriage and children. It all came spilling out that night. She was dead inside.

Ephesians 2 (Common English Bible)

2 At one time you were like a dead person because of the things you did wrong and your offenses against God. 2 You used to live like people of this world. You followed the rule of a destructive spiritual power. This is the spirit of disobedience to God’s will that is now at work in persons whose lives are characterized by disobedience. 3 At one time you were like those persons. All of you used to do whatever felt good and whatever you thought you wanted so that you were children headed for punishment just like everyone else.

This is exactly where this woman was in her journey. She had lived a life of disobedience to God’s will. She spent her life doing things that “felt good” and subsequently lost her life to those things.

4-5 However, God is rich in mercy. He brought us to life with Christ while we were dead as a result of those things that we did wrong. He did this because of the great love that he has for us. You are saved by God’s grace! 6 And God raised us up and seated us in the heavens with Christ Jesus. 7 God did this to show future generations the greatness of his grace by the goodness that God has shown us in Christ Jesus.

And so here she was sitting with a strange pastor in the middle of the night and it all came out. Her greatest struggle was believing that with all that she had done, God would still be able to forgive her. She kept saying that her behavior was unforgivable. She was unredeemable. She was “unworthy.”

8 You are saved by God’s grace because of your faith. This salvation is God’s gift. It’s not something you possessed. 9 It’s not something you did that you can be proud of. 10 Instead, we are God’s accomplishment, created in Christ Jesus to do good things. God planned for these good things to be the way that we live our lives.

When she had finally exhausted herself, I calmly asked her if she thought that she was stronger or greater than Jesus. The question took her aback and she said no, of course not. I went on to explain that there is no sin greater than his activity on the cross and so it takes a certain kind of arrogance to think that OUR sin is the one so great and unforgivable that his death couldn’t obliterate it forever. To Jesus, she IS that worthy.

Otherwise the cross is a joke.

The next day, this woman woke up and knew for the first time in her life that she was forgiven, redeemed, and freed of her sins. She was a brand new creation in Christ. Hallelujah!

We are God’s accomplishment. Salvation is not something we possess on our own. It’s not something we did and now we can be proud of ourselves. And the opposite is true: there is nothing we’ve done that is so bad it can’t be forgiven. That’s the power of love.

You were created in Christ Jesus to do good things. Receive his forgiveness and go forth in your new life.

Cleansed by the Water by Jess Spiegelblatt