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The kind of things that prevent us from understanding the fullness of Chrisst love among others are: = our inability to avail ourselve to the power of the Holy spirit to enable us know Him better, hence Paul's prayer for the Ephessians. = Indulging in sin drives away the Holy Spirit from us. Consequently we are left without the source of power that will open our inner eyes to understand the magnitude of His love for us. When we comprehend, know and experience the extend of His love for us, we will love Him and love one another better and deeper. We will live to please Him and live fulfilled lives full of joy as we walk in His way. Our lives will be Christ like, more meaningful and more fulfilling as we grapse this.

The concepts of being strenghened in the inner man by the Holy Spirit and Christ dwelling in us to me, mean one and the same thing. The Holy spirit in our our hearts provides the strength we need to walk with God. Jesus promised sending the Holy spirit to us after he had ascended into heaven. But Jesus comes into our hearts when we receive Him at conversion and He also dwells in our heart too. The Holy Spirit is one with Jesus Christ and God thus the three dwell in our hearts and that is why our hearts are said to be the temple of God.

Ephessians 3:12 tells us to approach (come to) our God with boldness and confidence believing that we are His children and He loves us. Approaching in this manner show that we have faith in Him and it pleases Him. The word of God says in Hebrews 11:6 that without faith we can not please Him. When we do not approach him with boldness and confidence, He wont be pleased with us thus our communication with Him through prayers will not be effective.

Eph 3:12 teach us that we shold approach God with confidence nad boldness given our special position as children loved by Him. Without these elements, our approah does not show that we have faith in Him. We need faith to please Him and to pray to Him and get answers

Paul was careful to be humble because he had a new ministry that involved preaching the Good news to the gentiles. He needed to come down from his previous 'high' position as a Jewish leader and authority in the Jewish legal system to be a humble servant to the gentiles. He was now contorlled by the humble Spirit of the Lord Jesus. We should emulate Paul's example of humiity as we are called to serve God and one another in humility.

The mystery? The gentiles are no longer second class citizens but are heirs together with the Jews. I am (a gentile) important to God and will share with the Jews (who accept Christ as their saviour), God's heavenly blessings, promises and glory. This mystery revealed was important to the gentiles because they were treated as second class citizen but then came the revelation that they were joint heirs with Christ together with the Jews. How exciting!

Why God's revelation to His "holy apostles and prophets" is our authorty for faith and practice: Because the message revealed was transmitted to the prophets and the apostles by the Holy Spirit. The message is the Truth because it is God's inspired/ breathed. The danger of minimising or straying from the revelation to the prophets and apostles: Doing so will make us miss the complete/ true message. This will in turn lead to our inability to obey/ apply the message correctly since we have strayed from the real truth. The danger of superceding the revelation could be the the error of including what God had not said in the revealed message. This can mislead other people of weaker faith or those who do not study the Word to know the Truth. The Bible forbits us that we should not subtract or add anything to the Word. The danger of denying that God still reveals Himself to us and the Church today: This position will cause us not to expect and thus miss the message that God could reveal to the Church.

The significance that my congregationis is made to be a dwelling place og God in the spirit: This means that the Lord God's presence through His Spirit is among us whenever we are gathered together. Little wonder that the Lord said where two or three are gathered in His Name, there He is among them. Our tendency to isolate our selves to do our own things is contrary to the command that we should not fail to meet together. This is one of the factors that hinders us becoming the dwelling place of God. I will try and ensure that I attend Church programmes and also encourage others to do so inorder to help our congregation to become the dweling place of God.

To have access to the Father means that we can communicate to God directly because of our special position as His children. This relation and access was made possible through the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. The Holy spirit knows the mind/ heart of God. He helps to pray by guiding us in our prayers. Jesus is the Way, through Him we can have direct contact with the Father. Those who are not Christian cannot have direct contact with God.

Basically, the Mosaic laws were made to take care of the moral, ceremonial and civil aspects of the relationship between the Jews and God on the one hand and also between the people and one another (their "neighbour") on the other hand. For exaple the moral laws that addressed righteounes became obsolete when Jesus came and died on behalf of the people and thus declared them NOT GUILTY. His righteounes became the people's righteousness. The ceremonial law also became obsolete as Jesus became the once and for all sacrifice for the people thus fulfilling the ceremonial law. The significnce of Jesus fulfilling the law is that the Jews who accept the the Lord Jesus Christ are no longer expected to struggle to keep the laws but can be saved by accepting the Lord Jesus as their saviour by faith. As for the gentiles who did not have hope before, can now have access to to the Saviour by faith as the law that excluded them had been abolished.

To be 'lost' means to be without hope (the present and future) and to be without God (now and in future). This is a serious situation we take for granted or do not really appreciate the import hence our failure to witness and bring people to be recncilled to God. The spiritual condition of a colleague/ friend that has not been conncted to God through Christ can be described as DEAD, LONELY AND LOST

Faith is BELIEVING and TRUSTING in God. Can we take credit for our faith? I would have said yes if I had not read Pastor Raph's notes. Now I have been made to understand that even faith that is supposed to be our own responsibility of the salvation process is GIVEN to us by God! Thus the credit is to my Lord. Can we be condemned for lacking faith? I have no dought that we can be condemned for lacking faith. A gift has to be ACCEPTED before it becomes ours. So if we refuse to receive the free gift of faith then we stand condemned for lack of it. Period. To a 10 year old I will tell him that faith is like that absolute TRUST/ BELIEVE he has in a parent (Mum) that a meal will ALWAYS be availble for him at the time of NEED.

We are created to do good works. Jesus came to this world doing good deeds to bring glory to God. We are created in Him and have His nature in us for good works. Our faith in Him produces in us ability to do good works through the Holy Spirit. The difference: The works paul is talking about in Eph 2.9 are the legalistic works done with the mind-set that they will earn us salvation. These works are self centred and NOT God centred. But salvation is not earned but given to us freelly by faith (trust in our Lord as our Saviour). The other works he is talking in verse 10 of the same chater of Ephessians refer to the 'EFFECT' of our faith that produces works that are God centred. Such works cause people to see and give praise and glory to God.

Translating the word "saved" may be better understood when we appreciate the danger we were saved from. Before accepting the Lord Jesus we were: [*]dead and lost all sensitivity to God [*]followed the corrupt ways of this world [*]were followers of satan [*]gratifying our selfish desires and engaged in sinful **** [*]as a result of these, we were subject of God's judgement with death as the penalty But God so loved us so much that out of share favour, sent His only son to RESCUE us from the penalty of our sin. In place of death we have been made children of the most High God, exalted and elavated above all demonic and human authorities and powers in the heavenly realms with Christ. In short, to be saved means to be rescued from etenal death by the the Lord Jesus. It is important that people understand that the word "save" means to "rescue" from danger (death) because the latter has lost its significance in the minds of people

Grace is probably difficult to understand because people find it difficult to reconcile how a Holy God could love a dirty sinner and grand him favour (save or rescue him) from the consequences of sin- death. I think the common life principle reffered to here is that people get what they deserve. If one does what is good, he is rewarded. If on the other hand one does some wrong, he gets judgement. This is different from grace when we are loved, accepted and rescued/ saved by God despite our sin. This is amazing thus the wordings of a song " Amazing grace that saved a wretch like me" I will tell him/ her that grace is shown in a situation when a child breaks a tumbler and Mummy hugs him/ her with love and understanding and tells him/ her, son/ daughter, don't worry, I will not punish you for what you did. I forgive you.

When the Lord Jesus was raised from the dead by God, having defeated death, He was seated at the right hand of God in the heavenly realms in an exalted position above all demonic and human authorities and powers. By accepting Him as our Saviour, we are united with Him, we are in him and He is in us. Hence we are therefore also seated with Him spiritually in the heavenly realms. I am exalted above all demonic and human authorities and powers. How exciting it sounds! Amazing grace! It is humanly not comprehendible but true that by grace, I am highly exalted with my Lord in the heavenly realms. Praise God, how powerful I am in the Lord even here on earth! Your power is my power Lord! Your authority is my authority dear Lord! My Lord, please help us to to remmber this amazing fact of grace all the time, I pray in Jesus Name, amen. This outstanding revelation and knowledge should make our faith as solid as a rock when we pray (boldly) expecting answers without wavering.

The words that describe Gods motivation and character are: GREAT LOVE for us; RICH in MERCY and GRACE. God is love and loved us when we were in our filth (in a pit and meant for eternal judment) he reached out and broght us out, washed us and declared us 'not guilty' as we received Jesus Christ into our hearts. What amazing love and grace in action (for even me!). The verbs that describe what had happened to us in Christ are: MADE ALIVE with Christ; BY GRACE we HAVE BEEN SAVED. I thank you Lord for I am alive with (and in) Christ. What a privilege! Praise God.

People are dead in sin and have lost their sensitivity as regards to sin. Such people are blinded by their sinfull nature, and thus obey their sinful desires which is manupulated by satan. We are responsible for unwitting rebellion to God because we have an option to choose what we do. Our choise to rebel against God has a consequence that we must bear, punishment/ judgement. We are given the option between life and death with an advice to choose life. If we thus go ahead and sin, then we will face eternal death. God is fair and just. He has given us the opportunity to repent and live by accepting the Lord Jesus Christ. If we fail to do so, then we should NOT blame God for the judgment that follows our refusal.

Our non- believing friends and neighbours are "dead" in the sence that they are not sensitive to the fact that sin is repulsive to God. Sin is commited at will without any remorse. They commit sin and even boast of it. They are thus dead in sin and in God and face eternal death. The difference between us and our non- believing friends and neighbours is that while they are dead in sin, we are alive and are conscious of sin. The holy spirit convicts us of sin causing us to have no peace until we confess and repent and our peace returns. We should make all efforts to bring our "dead" friends to the saving grace of our Lord jesus Christ so that they can also experience life in the Lord and escape from eternal death.

We are often ignorant of the tremendous power available in and with us, thus we do not confront the enemy with our superior power. The Bible tells us that 'my people perish for lack of knowlege'. Now that I have been reminded that He that is me is greater than he that is in the world, and that I am more than conquerors in Christ, I will henseforth fight to win and never to loose. I will be bold and not timid. Paul needed to let Christians know that Christ is the Head of the Church and has been exalted above all powers. This information is to let us know that since our Captain is the head and is more powerful than any other power, it follows that we (in Him and He in us) are also exalted and should not therefore go timidly about in fear. Praise God for the power we have in Christ Jesus. We tend to feel powerless in the face of warfare because we do not remember to fall back on the source of our power but rather, we face battle in the power of our own strenth. We see only our weakness or the size of the enemy. The Children of Israel saw the size of Goliath and knew the history of his victories and were thus very afraid of him because they failed to remeber that their God was more powerful than any being. However David knew that victory was not by their might/ power but by the Spirit of God. This made him courageous to face Goliath victoriously. Pual was assuring the Ephesians that they had power to be victorius Christians because they had the source power that was more powerful than any other. This assuarance is for us too and should encourage us to face our battles with courage and faith in the power of God.

We are sometimes powerless because we do not leally appreciate that we have a huge reservoir of power available in us to live lives that are powerful and victorious. It is like being hungry and weak while our store is is well stocked up with food stuff. I am in deed guilty of this and will rise up to live a life of trust and dependency on the Holy Spirit. I will surrender to Him and will consciously believe that I have such power within me. From what I have stated above, our lack of power is NOT that of inadequacy with the source but our lack of faith. I thus pray, increase our faith Lord. The miracle-disciple producing congregation study the Bible, believe the Word, know and believe that the source of power- the Holy Spirit is in them and practice the Word. That is the secret. We can change from operating from the powerless position to a higher level by increase in our faith through studying/ meditating in the Word and absolute trust in God.

If I knew I would be getting $10 million, I would make plans and budget on how I would spend the money. I probably would not start behaving like a millioneer but I would likely be thinking about such prospects most of the time. Our expectations for a glorious inheritance in the presence of our lord should make us to be heavenly inclined in our thoughts of such a gloriuos day. I now believe that I should let this expectation to occupy my mind more than ever. This should make me to live a life that is pleasing to my Lord and God. The idea of sharing the gloriuos inheritance with the saints in the future is a reminder to me that I should live a life of sharing my possesions now with other believers. We should also go back to the times of the Apostles where fellowship involved sharing property/ possession and also sharing of the Word. This (sharing)was a common phenomenum then.

Christians should look forward to the return of our Lord Jesus Christ in His glory and majesty to take us home where there will be no more pain and sorrow but rejoicing with the saints. This expectaion should be a motivation for us to run the race without quititng because when He comes in His glory to take us home, there will be no suffering, hunger, wars etc. Since we have a great hope of seeing our Lord Jesus, we should live lives that are pleasing to him and obey His Word. Our lives and decisions should be only those that please Him and are according to His will so that whe He comes He will not find us wanting. Our great hope differ from that of non- believers because ours is a living hope of a future with the Lord where there will be eternal life in heaven. The non- believers have no hope for eternal life but eternal damnation in hell.

The 'end of time' comes up when the trumpet will sound and time shall be no more; when our Lord Jesus comes to take us home where there won't be pains and stains of this sinfull world again. The Holy Spirit plays a role now by bringing the things of God from Him to us and also takes our yearnings to Him enabling us to experience a bit of heaven here on earth.