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Oh To Be Like A Dove

22 June 2022 blogpastor 1 Comment

With ease the dove nestles in the gap that she calls home. Home is simple, bare yet solid. Sometimes the rain flushes the floor clean. However, life has its headaches. The jarring screech that vibrates the home throughout the day ceases only after midnight, and then restarts at dawn. She gets used to it. Not her ideal home but it will have to do. She feels content with her current life circumstances.

Here she finds rest and safety.

She enjoys unblocked views of the Chinese Gardens. On Sundays, she loves watching the foreign workers playing a game of cricket in the vast green before her.

Though she lives from beak to stomach there is no lack.

Anytime, she is free to take flight into God’s vast world and feel the joy of fulfilling all that God has designed her to be and to do. She feels close to God when she uses all the gifts that God has given her: feathers and wings, lightness of body, natural navigation system, sight, and sensitivity to airflow and predators.

God has graced her with peace, goodness and abundance.

Like the dove, I am thankful that God has put me in a place of grace and peace, of freedom and sweetness, of contentment and fulfilment. The Lord is more than enough. The vista ahead is exciting. The simple life is simply life-giving and life-freeing.

“Fear and trembling have beset me; horror has overwhelmed me. I said, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove I would fly away and be at rest. I would flee far away and stay in the desert; I would hurry to my place of shelter, far from the tempest and storm” (Psalm 45:5-8).

“Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you have died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:2,3).

Selah.

Christ’s Finished Work: Blessings

11 October 2021 blogpastor Leave a comment

To be at the right place at the right time makes all the difference in the world. Think of this Covid-19 pandemic: if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person, you could catch an infection. Being in the right place and time makes a difference between light and darkness, blessings and curses, peace and worry, and sometimes life and death.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. (Eph 1:3)

In one sense, what is true in the physical, is true in the spiritual. To be in Christ makes all the difference in the world. It is “in Christ” that we have “every spiritual blessing in heavenly places”. The blessedness is found only “in Christ”, and not outside of Christ. Being in the right spiritual position in this hour of grace is imperative. Let your Google location be IN CHRIST.

What Spiritual Blessings?

What are the spiritual blessings that the apostle Paul is referring to? There is no need to speculate. Look through the rest of the letter to the Ephesus church, and they are described, especially in chapter 1 and 2. I will list a few of them, while you may want the joy of uncovering the other spiritual blessings in the rest of the letter. Here is a list of spiritual blessings:

Election – “he chose us in him before the foundation of the world” (1:4, verse 5 “predestined”).
Gift of righteousness: “holy and blameless before him” (1:4).
Adoption: we become sons and daughters of God (1:5).
Undeserved favour: “his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us”(1:6)
Redemption: our freedom from slavery to sin and death (1:7).
Forgiveness of sins (1:7)
God’s ultimate plan to heal and “unite all things in him”(1:10).
Inheritance: God’s (1:11): this spiritual inheritance is reserved for us in eternity (1 Peter 1:3,4), and the Holy Spirit is a downpayment/guarantee (1:14), the one who enables us to experience a portion of that future inheritance in the present while we are on earth. Most of all, the Lord himself is our inheritance (Ps 16:5).
The gift, the Holy Spirit (1:13).
“The hope to which he has called us” (1:18).
The power of God unleashed on our behalf (1:19).

When I look at this list of blessings, many of which I have experienced, am experiencing and will experience in the future, I feel so glad I became a Christian in 1973. The joy and peace from being a follower of Christ has been a constant in my life. It has also been exciting and self-actualizing to serve him in the power of the Spirit.

Only in Christ

These spiritual blessings and many more that can be found in the other epistles of the New Testament are available to all who put their faith in Christ’s finished work. It is all because of Christ’s death and resurrection from the dead that makes it possible for all believers to be in spiritual union with Christ and enjoy all these spiritual blessings of God (1 Cor 1:30).

(This is part two of a series: “A to Z of Christ’s Finished Work”).