{"id":10090,"date":"2022-03-17T05:37:13","date_gmt":"2022-03-17T10:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-ephesians\/"},"modified":"2022-02-24T10:54:16","modified_gmt":"2022-02-24T16:54:16","slug":"devotional-on-ephesians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-ephesians\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on Ephesians"},"content":{"rendered":"
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2014 – Along Oregon Hwy 101 – north of Florence<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Church: Christ at work in the world <\/p>\n

Ephesians 1: The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world, the world is peripheral to the church.<\/p>\n

Paul’s writing is filled with superlatives as he begins his letter to the church at Ephesus. God\u2019s people, he tells us, have within our grasp \u201cthe immensity of this glorious way of life\u201d and it\u2019s with \u201cutter extravagance\u201d that the Lord bestows his gifts on his people. He tells us that all this comes from one Source: Jesus Christ. Jesus makes all the difference in (and out of) the world. It\u2019s not \u201chere and there\u201d or \u201cthem and us.\u201d The glorious plan and possibility is that in Christ everything comes together. This great Unifier works through and with a specific group of people who have made him Lord of their lives. That group, we\u2019re told, is the Church. Obviously, Paul\u2019s not talking about a denomination here and he\u2019s certainly not thinking of some local body of believers. This is the \u201ccapitol-C\u201d Church. It\u2019s through this body, \u201chis body,\u201d that Jesus is bringing everything together. As I look at the Church today, it\u2019s a mistake for me to only focus on its failings. Jesus sees the Church as his body and as the hope of the world. Even as I acknowledge its failures, I\u2019d better remember its purpose and the source of its power and authority in the world.<\/p>\n

Take Away: God has chosen to work through the Church to bring salvation to the world.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Church: Christ at work in the world Ephesians 1: The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world, the world is peripheral to the church. Paul’s writing is filled with superlatives as he begins his letter to the church at Ephesus. God\u2019s people, he tells us, have within our grasp \u201cthe immensity of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1491,1428],"tags":[67,1334,881,1072],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10090"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10090"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16136,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10090\/revisions\/16136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}