Book: Ephesians

Opportunity Knocks by Tracy Marsh, youth pastor Ephesians 5:15-17 James…

Without repentance, our hearts can grow hard & will turn away from God. Sin is deceitful & will trick you into thinking you are safe to continue living however you want. If there is any relational distance between God & you due to sin, drop everything that stands in your way & restore your relationship.

If Jesus is willing to get on His hands & knees & wash feet, may we have that posture that we would be willing to do anything at any level for the sake of the Kingdom of God.

Essential NOT Optional Ephesians 2:8-10, Hebrews 11;1, 2 CORINTHIANS 5:17

Jesus Christ changes the way we live. Christ living in us & through us should transform us from the inside out. The presence of Jesus should radically change how we relate to other people.

Only through the truth of the Gospel can we undo years of lies, undo the damage and wrong thinking about who we are, what we’ve been created to be, and replace it with what we’ve been promised through Christ Jesus.

The Gospel is the power of God in your life—the way God reverses the corruption of sin & repels the power of Satan from you. It’s the antidote that keeps death from eroding your life & the shield that keeps Satan from manipulating it. Paul is urging the Ephesians to take the things he taught them about God and cover every part of them with it … The way we keep the corrupting influence of the enemy out of our lives is by establishing every part of our life—our hopes, dreams, failures, worries, fears, relationships, disappointments—on the Gospel. The flip side is that whatever part of you is not established in the Gospel—whatever part is not saturated in the Gospel is subject to manipulation of the enemy against you.

You won’t coast your way to spiritual victory… If you don’t have a plan, you are not setting priorities, choosing relationships & growing intentionally… you’re dead. We are either killing sin or being killed by it.

We are created for God, and when we are one with God, our hearts are satisfied & filled. When we rejected God, we lost that essential, life-giving, soul-satisfying relationship. We found that our souls were starving; we felt naked. We know we’re missing something. We may not even realize what it is, or how we got to this place, but we know we’re searching for something.