"Surprise!"
EPISODE 187
Be Bold in God's Salvation
What should we take from Paul's positivity in prison? How do we connect our circumstances to our story and — through the eyes of faith — see that we're a part of God's great story? In our sixth episode Talking Through Ephesians, we celebrate the mystery now revealed in Christ, as Paul proclaims access to God for all the nations. Finding Jesus in this week's text, we imagine swimming in riches like Scrooge McDuck and enjoy our "freedom of speech" before God. And as fantasy football draft parties happen across the country, we're going in a different direction in this week's A-Team, drafting Gentiles Paul impacted in his ministry. Go to biblegeeks.fm/ephesians and check out all the videos, guides, and episodes as we talk through Ephesians!
Takeaways
The Big Idea: Paul's suffering and imprisonment paled compared to the privilege of preaching God's eternal plan to the Gentiles.
This Week's Challenge: Ask a believing friend to join you in talking to a stranger about the Lord.
Episode Transcription
Yeah, that's just me. Nothing big. No biggie on my end. We're keeping it light on this episode. Surprise! [music] Well, hello everyone and welcome to the Bible Geeks Podcast. This is episode 187. I'm Bryan Schiele. I'm Ryan Joy. Thanks so much everyone for tuning in here on session six of our Talking Through Ephesians Guided Study. On this episode, we are going to continue into Ephesians chapter 3 now into the first 13 verses where we're going to talk about God's eternal purpose. And as we mentioned on the last episode as we teased, we are going to be talking about a great mystery which leads us to our conversation starter this week and that one we called "Hidey-Hole." This is Talking Through Ephesians, "Heidi-hole". Ever since I was little, I've wanted a house with a secret hiding place. A hidey-hole where I could safely escape from the world. But sadly, in the past 20 years of homeownership, none of my stock standard builder grade homes have had such a feature. That is, until now. During a recent renovation, we created a custom cabinet reserved for our robotic Roomba vacuum. Though typically out of sight, words can't express my extreme elation every time it emerges from its secret cubby to clean our house. Here in Ephesians 3 verses 1 to 13, Paul reveals the good news that's been under wraps. The mystery hidden for ages in God. Ephesians 3, 9 calls it, specifically, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. So here's the big idea. Paul's suffering and imprisonment paled compared to the privilege of preaching God's eternal plan to the Gentiles. Sitting in jail, the apostle knows he's a prisoner of Christ, rather than Rome. He's in chains because his Jewish contemporaries couldn't conceive of co-mingling with these horrible heathens. "But God, being rich in grace and mercy, made Paul his minister, a servant sent with unsearchable saving news for those who once were far off." Paul's message echoes the past two chapters, connecting his discussions of enlightenment, grace, oneness, and the incredible blessings found in Christ. So like a light bulb turned on in a dark room, we stand in shock and awe, seeing God's incredible wisdom on full display. And it's not just us, but the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places also marvel in amazement at God's work in the church. So rather than wallowing in self-pity, Paul calls us to join him in faith and boldness, rejoicing in the glory and salvation the gospel brings to believers of every nation. So here's the big question. How does God's revealed mystery give you boldness and confidence? So follow along with this guided study at biblegeeks.fm/ephesians and may the Lord bless you and keep you. Shalom. So the big idea we talked about there was Paul's suffering and imprisonment paled compared to the privilege of preaching God's eternal plan to the Gentiles. That's a lot of P's. That's what happens when I get to write the big idea. It's alliteration all day. You love use some alliteration. So this big idea, maybe think of the difference between story and circumstance, like these two ideas. So when you tell a story, you already know enough of the arc to see it's going somewhere. I'm telling you a story about what happened to me the other day, I know the ending of the story or at least know a ending that or it's not a story that doesn't have a beginning, middle and end. And stories are infused with meaning, but circumstances are just what's happening to you right now. And sometimes it's hard to place what's happening to you right now, minor headaches, major troubles, whatever it is, into that bigger narrative of your life, because it's your life and you just you're with you all the time and you're just seeing all the stuff that's always happening to you. And it just feels just, this is it. This is the mundane. This is the whatever it is. And it's even harder to put it into the epic story of God's eternal purposes. But that's the magic of Paul's faith here. He sees his current imprisonment as a movement in God's story. He looks at his imprisonment. He looks at this is stuff that he's just looking at a wall or whatever he's looking at. This is just life. He knows exactly how he got there, but he's saying, no God, you're doing something here. And I just think that is so hard to connect those two sometimes, but it really makes a difference and that's some meaning that faith can bring to us, a sense of direction and, and purpose and focus when we connect our circumstances, good, bad, miserable, indifferent, whatever it is, to the story, God's big story, recognizing we're part of that story too. - Yeah, yeah. Seeing ourselves in the whole mix of everything is really a game changer, I think, in the way that we think about things. And I think that maybe leads to our big question here, which is how does God's revealed mystery give you boldness and confidence? And we talked about it on the last episode, how God has made one new humanity out of what used to be broken and disparate and disconnected sinful people. But now he's brought us all together in Jesus and this mystery that's been revealed to us. It is such an important thing seeing an open door versus a closed one. Like on the last episode we were talking about that curtain between first class and second class here in our house. Sometimes our daughter's door will be closed and it's like, "What are you What are you doing in there? Why is your door closed? And there's a disconnection there. I don't wanna go in there. I need knock first before I go in there. I need permission before I can enter there. But when the door is open, when I'm easily able to walk through, there's a certain level of confidence that I have walking in the room, knowing that everyone's in their proper clothing and everything's above board. And when the door is open, it gives me a lot more confidence to walk in. And so as God reveals to us His mystery and shows to us all that we've been created for something great and new, and that he's pulled us all together into this new collection of people, bringing the Gentiles into this fellowship with him. Man, it's a bold way of accessing the Lord our God through Jesus. - That really pulls together the last lesson in this one. There is access and with access also, like the curtain has been brought back, and we can see what he's been wanting to show us. Oh, here it is. Here is what I've been wanting to show you all. That's really neat. The icebreaker question this week where we lighten it up a little bit, maybe focus on something that really doesn't matter at all is the question this week is, what's the best surprise moment you've been on the receiving end of, Bryan? - Well, I have an idea of what this might be actually. - Do you really? And that's awesome. Yeah. So for me, I can think back to my past and there's been a lot of really exciting moments, but man, most recently, this is the one I cannot get out of my head. And it was when not only four days ago, my mom told me, "Well, I think I'm gonna get married." (laughs) And I was like, "Huh?" - Whoa. - Whoa. And so yeah, it's something that she's been really excited about and it's someone who our family loves and who's been a big part of our lives for a really long time. And you know, mom is choosing to move on in her life and find companionship and with a really great guy. And yeah, it's been just, it's been a real shock to our family, but in the best possible way, I think. Something that maybe not a lot of people know, but as this episode drops, I think maybe some of you will probably find out more about it. So yeah, that's just me. Nothing big, no biggie on my end. We're keeping it light on this episode. - Surprise! - Okay, I have a confession to make. Whenever you texted me about that, you said someone in our house is dating, and I immediately thought of Ashlyn. - I said that so that you could grapple with whether it was Ashlyn or my mother. Obviously, you would have guessed Ashlyn. Surprise! - Surprise, wow. Well, not quite as recent or as maybe bombshell-y in this moment, But one time when I was in Arizona, it was back when my dad was sick and I was out there visiting all the rest of the family. My family was out here in Indiana and Adrienne and the three kids FaceTimed me and she pulled out an arrow, which was our way of saying, you have a fourth arrow coming to your quiver. And that was, I just did not see that coming at all. And it was, Nadia was a big surprise. This was the Evie surprise and it was, it was a good one, but it was shocking. - Oh yeah, we're just keeping it light with marriage and babies and all kinds of things here on the episode. Let's move into really the substance, I think, the meat of this conversation. And that's gonna be our finding Jesus segment. And again, we're in Ephesians chapter three, verses one to 13, where we're talking about God's eternal purpose. And we find out here in the beginning of this section that Paul is a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of the Gentiles. Really God has given him the job of revealing this mystery, The mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs. He opens up the mystery, he explains it, and then he says, "That's been my job, has been to preach to the Gentiles. I've been going around and really just being responsible for opening their eyes and their access to this new kingdom that we talked about on the last episode." He's saying that now he has this boldness and he has this confidence, even though he's in chains at this moment, that he is a prisoner and he's suffering, he's struggling, but all these things have just given him a boost and he's excited about the way that God is using him in the kingdom. And so as you look at this section, where do you find Jesus here? I love this passage towards the end where it says Jesus gives us boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. Three different words that kind of go together to make one idea. This word for boldness often referred to freedom of speech in classical Greek and And Paul uses it at the end of this book of Ephesians to describe his desire to speak freely about the gospel. He's going to pray that he can speak with boldness. So there's a sense of free speech and being able to go and say whatever you need to say. But Jesus gives us a different kind of free speech, the ability to come before God and just talk, to speak confidently. We can come near to worship Him. We can thank Him. We can lay out there whatever we have to say. We have absolute access and opportunity to share our needs, our weakness. Why can we be so confident? Because Jesus' position at God's right hand is secure, and that means ours is. He's conquered every power that would hold us back, and we stand with Him. Our lives are hidden with Him in the heavenly places we talked about the other day, And so we are always able to come and speak freely before the Lord. You think of those times whenever the officers in the military are standing there, "Permission to speak freely, sir!" And we always have permission to speak freely. It doesn't mean that God isn't God, that He doesn't deserve our reverence, our honor. It's not like we, we treat Him lightly. Oh, see the last episode, right? Yeah. - Yes, but we come openly, we come confidently that he wants to hear from us, that he cares what we have to say, that we come to him with the Abba father spirit of his son and are able to talk to him in that way. - That's neat. That's an interesting way of viewing that, just that boldness that we have. It's secure because of what Jesus has done for us. Where he is gives us that security and confidence. That's kind of what I was seeing here as well. There's a picture here in Ephesians 3 verse 8, where Paul says to me, who am less than the least of all the saints, Paul's really throwing himself under the bus here, but he says, this grace was given. So God has given him a blessing, this gracious offering, that he should preach among the Gentiles, the unsearchable riches of Christ. So Paul is definitely putting himself at the bottom of the totem pole here, but where we see Jesus is just the unsearchable riches of Christ, this kind of language, it's just dripping with lavishness and excess and that in Christ is just everything. It's all the best stuff, it's all the good stuff. I can't get out of my head this picture from Duck Tales, how Scrooge McDuck would swim in the big swimming pool in his safe full of money. And just, you know, he's got his swimming trunks on and he is just doing the backstroke in all of this money. And obviously it's not about our physical wealth, but really in Christ, we have everything we need. And that's really, you see this language throughout Ephesians, right? We've seen the conversation about our inheritance, the riches of our inheritance there in the first chapter. And we've seen discussions about how God lavishes his blessings on us as we've already talked about that. And now even in Jesus, we're seeing that it's not, he's not being stingy in Christ. He's not stingy with Jesus' blood. He pours it out onto all of us so that we can all be cleansed and welcomed in and not even just on a few select people, namely the Jews, but to everyone. And that little truth, that little quote unquote truth has been hiding in plain sight this whole time. And now Paul gets to be the one, the least of all the saints, who gets to just blow the doors off the thing and tell everyone around about how rich life is now with Christ. - I love the word lavish, that's such the word that I think of, it's a friend and I talked not too long ago about this word unsearchable that's used here. - Oh yeah. - Because we're so used to, if you wanna know anything, you can just search, just go Google it and press search and you can find out all the things you wanna know. And there's some things that are unsearchable. - Fathomable, that you can't know, you can't search into it, you can't look into it enough to get it. And the riches of Christ are one of those things that you just can't search it. - The un-Google-able riches of Christ, you gotta love it. All right, so let's move on to our second segment here on the episode, and that is the A-Team. - If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team. - Of course, just because of that audio clip there in this segment, it is one of our favorite segments on the show, the A-Team, where we get to draft a few things. And so on this draft, we are gonna draft our favorite people of Paul's Gentile Impact. And what do we mean by that? Well, Paul's main mission here in this section in chapter three, he's talking all about how he taught the Gentiles. That was his focus. And so who did he really impact? how did he impact the Gentile world? And so we're gonna pick some of our favorite Gentiles that Paul had an impact on. And rather than one of us going first, we are gonna flip a coin. Ryan, you get to pick Hez or Tails. - Tails never fails. - Flip a coin. It's Tails. Tails never fails. There you go, man. It's all you. - Tails never fails. Oh man, where am I gonna go with this? I am going to, I think I will go a little bit of a deep cut here, But I think I got to go with Aphrodite. He's just a personal favorite of mine. There's the, this passage in Philippians two that I've always loved where there's this circle of concern where a path for dietists is concerned that people would know how much difficulty he's been going through and he's worried about them. Worried for him. And, you know, he's just so concerned about others. He's delivers the support of the Philippians to Paul and then comes back. And the word, the name of Aphroditus, it has Aphrodite in the name. So that tells you how much of a Gentile he is. And yet he has come to be this devoted servant of the Lord and a real partner to Paul and the idea that Paul who surely wouldn't have had a lot of association with somebody like a Aphroditus back in the day now is considers him such a dear brother and friend, I think just starts to illustrate this starts this thing off. So what about you? - I like that choice. I think that works. I'm gonna just blow the doors off here with one of my favorites. As a character that we really only find once in the Bible, and that is in Acts chapter 16, where we read about the Philippian jailer. So just a Gentile through and through, a jail official there, he is somebody responsible for taking care of all the prisoners. And when he's afraid that Paul and Silas have escaped, they say, hey, don't do yourself any harm. We're gonna be fine. We're right here. And he falls at their feet and says, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" And him and his whole household are baptized. Just an amazing story of conversion there. And the Philippian jailer is a hard Gentile not to appreciate for his amount of faith there in that moment. - That's great. I didn't even think of him, but because you picked him. - Oh no. - I'm going to go with someone else in Philippi just a few verses earlier, and that is Lydia. So get a woman in there and Lydia, who was that seller of purple gathering there on the river. She was a worshiper of the true God, probably like a God feuerer. One of the Gentiles who hadn't proselyted, but was, was worshiping. And Paul went and taught her and she became baptized and became a believer in the Lord and brought him in and became noted for history. Her name becoming an important name that many of us know a Lydia, right, because of her. - Yeah, we sure do, yeah. Definitely not a lot of Jezebels, but a whole bunch of Lydias for sure. I think that's a good pick, and especially given her connection to Paul. They were very cut from the same cloth, maybe a purple one, so to speak. But I would also go here in my second pick, I'm gonna pick Titus. I think it's easy to pick Titus. And we know a little bit about Titus. See, here's the part of the problem is, There's so many Bible characters who it's hard to tell whether they actually were gentiles or Jews. And in some cases you want to make an assumption about who they were. Well, it's no doubt that Titus was a Gentile because in Galatians chapter two, the description there, Paul is telling us about why he did not circumcise Titus as he brought Titus to Jerusalem. And he was going to go and confront these people about their beliefs and how they wanted to turn everyone into Jews like them. And he was going to make sure that no, no, Titus was not going to be circumcised. He was going to be set apart and separate and no one would steal the liberty, which they had in Christ as he talks about there in that verse. So cool example there. And Titus, I think was a great servant and worker right alongside Paul, I think in their travels, a great pick for sure. It makes me want to go with another guy, half Gentile that I associate with them. - I was wondering if you're going to do that. - I got to go with my man, Luke, Dr. Luke. - Ooh. - The great physician, the beloved physician, not the great physician, that's Jesus. (laughing) The beloved physician. - Luke was a great physician, but not the great physician. - Not the great physician. (laughing) - Yeah, I mean, come on. The gospel of Luke is just, I just love it so much. And I go back and forth on all the time what is my favorite gospel, but Luke and then go following it up with the book of Acts and just truly grateful to that guy for his work, his inspired work in the Lord. - It's so funny though, because I, and I'm really glad that you picked Luke because I don't really connect Luke and Paul at all. Like in my brain, Luke and Paul are totally separate from each other. but I mean, you're totally right. 'Cause as the writer of "Acts," - All the wee narratives, yeah. - He is literally following him around. Like he's probably in the boat, like all the things that are happening to him. He's just right along for the ride and he's the quiet writer, just doing his job, documenting everything. But man, yeah, Luke and Paul probably would have been a power duo in a lot of their interactions with each other. I have no doubt. That's a good one. - Oh, no doubt. Yeah, he's brought up by Paul Philemon, which I shouldn't even talk about. - Oh. (laughing) - But Philemon 1 verse 24, he's brought up. And Colossians, he's brought up. So anyway, what is your, bring us home here, Bryan. - All right, so-- - Final Gentile associate of Paul. - There's a handful here, and you skipped over one of them, and I'm just gonna skip over him too, although he'll probably wind up in our notable mentions here. But I'm gonna pick the Centurion on the shipwreck. Paul really spending a lot of his time there at the end of acts, as we just mentioned actually about Luke, but spending a lot of his time with some soldiers on the boat, lost at sea shipwrecked on an Island, all kinds of things. And we see the Centurion who's probably just watching out for Paul because that's his job and he would be killed if he lost a prisoner. But I think this Centurion really did start to respect Paul and start to want his best interest and was looking out for him. And as Paul would stand up and basically give them the words that Jesus had given to him about not leaving the boat and staying in the boat and everything else, like the centurion was following right along and listening. So kind of a deep cut maybe there too, but I like the centurion for sure. - That's a cool one. I like that. Yeah. What other honorable mentions did you, were you thinking, you said you were thinking of one obvious one. - Well, the obvious one I think both of us are thinking about is Timothy. Timothy, whose mother clearly was a Jew, but whose father was a Gentile. So, who was Timothy? - Yeah, circumcised before Paul circumcised him. So that tells you something about him. - Definitely lends credibility there to that one. He probably should have been picked, I think, but a good one there for sure. Who was another one of yours not chosen? - I mentioned Philemon. I was thinking Onesimus would be an interesting pick. I think that the story of those two men is interesting. - Yeah, there's a lot, Jason, there's a bunch of people that you start to see the names, but maybe not as prominent. I like this pic of the Centurion where you closed us off 'cause it's not just people that maybe you don't read about their conversion, like Sergius Paulus. - Yeah, oh yeah. - Who knows what actually ultimately happened? He heard the word of the Lord and we saw the miracle of the blinding of the false prophet, but this idea of those that Paul impacted that were Gentiles, his impact was all over. Think of the different rulers that he went before and spoke to. - And this is sort of interesting to focus this down on particular people, but I think you could even just zoom out and see Paul's great impact on large swaths of people, like in First Thessalonians, how he talks about the Thessalonian brethren as being these people who served idols and how they've now turned from their idolatry and idol worship to serving the living and true God. It's like, I mean, he changed entire groups of people, like with the Thessalonians and then the Corinthians as they struggled and he was trying to help them as well. And then the Ephesians, as we're talking about it here in this section, they're hard to miss too, for sure. - How about this one? His effect on me, a Gentile sitting here in 2020. - And on that note, drop the mic, move on. That's a good one, no, for sure. And I think it is important for us to see how Paul's mission really was the Gentiles. And in a weird way, like his imprisonment and everything that happened kicked off as he went back to Jerusalem. You remember what they accused him of was trying to bring Gentiles into the temple, which-- - Sweet irony. - Oh, just the worst. - No, and actually he didn't do that. That was untrue, but he was actually doing that in a deeper, more spiritual way. Pretty cool just to see. - I love that. I've never even thought of that connection. But another irony is that he was a Jew of Jews sent to all the Gentiles. And that's what made him a perfect emissary of the Lord to all the nations. - Yeah, an ambassador in chains, as he talks about himself quite often. So let's move on to our next segment, our final segment here on the episode, and that is our reach out question. ♪ Reach out, reach out and touch someone ♪ So our deep, heavy, substantial reach out question this week is what do you take away from Paul's positivity in prison? It is, it's cool to see how if I was in his shoes, I'm not sure I would have such an outlook on my life, but Paul was such an encouraging person, even when he was struggling, and as he went all the way to Rome and was eventually killed there, and all the things that we know about his life and his imprisonment, and even the whole time, he was there understanding what his mission was and staying positive with it. So what do you learn from that? - This is a bookend to where we started about story and circumstance and that distinction. As we think about Paul having this different take on everything he's going through, another two words that I think of that I think are worth distinguishing are optimism and faith. And I think I've talked about this before. An atheist can look on the bright side, but if it's all random and there's no purpose to anything, it's just a way of tricking your mind into more productivity and happiness and whatever good effects you want it to have. But Paul is operating from a different paradigm, from a different outlook on everything. Because if God is at work in him and in his gospel, if God is a partner in the mission and working things out for good, whether Paul gets it or not, then all this means something. Life, its trials, all the difficulties, the imprisonment, his work, it matters. It has purpose. There is a story to it, to go back to what we talked about, but there is eternal significance to it. And God is doing something. God is busy. And it's only logical, I think, to look for what God is doing in all of this. if you believe that and see God is going to work for the kingdom's growth. And so that's Paul, but then I have to take that to me and remember God's busy in my life and work too. It looks different than with Paul, but the testimony of scripture is that God is a work in his people. God is a work in the gospel. God is a work in the church. God is doing something still and he will continue his work. And I can't let my focus or my confidence or momentum slip because of a downturn in my work. If our attendance drops or there's some promising person that I'm studying with and I'm thinking there's real progress and then they cancel all our studies. And, you know, just there are things happen all the time. There are difficulties, but we have to see through it. like Paul does, he could have just said, I thought my life was about something. I thought God was using me to do something, but then I got stuck in prison and it's all over. You know, what's a good antidote to that is people thought Jesus was going to be the Messiah, but then Romans killed him on a cross. That must've been the end, but God raises the dead. God brings life and newness and success where there should be failure. works through all these broken things of our lives and whether it's family difficulties or whatever obstacle we're going through, if we can remember the hand of God is with his people, whether we understand what he's up to or not, then we'll keep our joy and our faith. I always think back to that passage in Nehemiah, "The joy of the Lord is my strength." And if that's true, then where is Satan going to try to take us down? He's going to try to steal our joy because then he's taken our strength. And so we can't let the darkness steal it. And one way to do that is to keep the eyes not of just optimism, but of faith and see that there is always reason for hope and faith in whatever dark circumstance we're in. And it's so amazing to me. And what I was thinking through this question about was that God uses the the weak things and the broken things and the hidden things to really change lives. Like how he sent Jesus, who was a carpenter's son, who nobody would have expected would have done the things that he wound up doing. He sent someone who well-meaning, logically minded people rejected because of just how he acted and who he was. He sent him to save us all from our sins. I mean, how much sense does that make? And so often, you know, we see weakness really being the driver for how God does what he does. And so even Paul in 2 Corinthians actually talks quite a lot about his weakness and the thorn in the flesh that he talks about in chapter 12, how it was really Christ's power that was being shown in his weakness. And so he's gonna boast even more gladly about that weakness and how he's just gonna settle into the fact that he is suffering and struggling, knowing that Christ is able to do something way more than he can even imagine through that suffering. And even when we get to places like 2 Corinthians chapter three, where he's talking about in verse four, the confidence that we have through Christ toward God, not that he says we are sufficient ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who makes us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit. He says, "For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life." It's not about how amazing we are as people. It's about how amazing God is. And when we're ministers of God and bringing the message and enlightening people's eyes, our bad circumstances, our challenges, our weakness, our struggle, our difficulties, all the things that we might on paper look at as being super negative, those can actually be the things that can make a difference, that can be used in service. And, you know, I think about people who just have had a cushy, comfortable life, their entire existence. That's probably me in a lot of ways. Like I've had a pretty comfortable cushy existence, but for whatever difficulties I've encountered and struggled with, those things make me better able to connect with other people. They give me perspective on my life and my ability to work for the Lord. And I can use those things in positive ways. And I think rather than seeing all of my challenges as just something that gets me down and something that I should be really super hard about myself on, like Paul, as he looks at his situation in prison, he sees that as a blessing because he is suffering for Jesus and that means he's working for him. And he's using every opportunity that he can to do the Lord's work. And even in these difficulties and struggles, he's using his servitude to Christ to his advantage or to the Lord's advantage really. - Yeah, that's a different angle on what Paul does talk about the meaning and purpose of the things he's going through is not only the forwarding of the gospel but the work that these things are doing in us. And he emphasizes that in Romans five, James brings it up. The Bible continually brings up this idea that we are meant to be trained and schooled and made better through the things we suffer. And so that's a reason for joy because our character is being proven and refined and we're growing in our hopefulness and our perseverance and all of these things. We are because, you know, it really is only in trial and difficulty that you fully see character. I mean, do you really see what, how can you best show someone love or faith or courage, You know that, well, if they're going through something, if you're going through something, if there's an opportunity to really show up in crisis, okay, now you start to see who people are and it lets us strengthen those muscles through the strain. So that's another, again, like you said, if we take that attitude, that life is about that and the trials are about that, then we see God is at work there and faith tells us this isn't just an outlook, this is what we believe to be true. God is doing something to develop us and to forward his kingdom and to continue his work. Yeah, I think as we look back to Paul and being in prison, like none of us hopefully will ever be in that circumstance or maybe suffer extremes to that degree. But yeah, we can definitely see how Paul gives us a sense that we have a bigger purpose and that we really can look to God's eternal purpose every time we are struggling and see how can I help pass that along I suppose to to those around me. So let's move on I think to our challenge for the week that I think has something to do with that. I am ready to face any challenges that might be foolish enough to face me. This is an interesting one I think you wrote this one so I'm excited to hear what you have to say about it but I think it's a great challenge to ask a believing friend to join you in talking to a stranger about the Lord. Again, we're not keeping it light anymore. Not only are you going to a stranger, but you're recruiting and getting somebody in it with you. Well, this is like the A-Team, right? You got to have Mr. T coming along with you. Uh-huh. Yeah, you got to have somebody. Have your back. But it's I think for me there's an intimidation factor of talking to a stranger one-on-one about really anything Especially about something that's important But I think when you see how often disciples would go out two by two even Paul You know as we sort of we're talking through our little a team segment there There were so often times where he was spending all of his work right alongside arm-in-arm with someone else Going out and teaching other people Silas and Titus and Timothy and all these other people Barnabas He relied on other people to go out and teach the gospel to to the loss to these Gentiles This was something that obviously he took the mantle on and he drove it But he wasn't alone and what a cool thing to think about how I can loop other people in on sharing the good news with a stranger and as we're talking here about revealing the mystery and how God has opened our eyes to the fact that all people everywhere, Gentiles and Jews, are welcomed into this covenant relationship with Him. Why not loop someone else in to help you go share that message with someone else? So, I like it. Yeah, I see what you're doing there. That's a good one. Okay, well, let's bring it to a close here with our closing prayer. And the suggested prayer that comes from Ephesians three verse 10 is may your wisdom be shown to all through your church. We put that prayer suggestion in our study guide, but now let's go to God in prayer. Our holy God, we exalt your name. We come to you now to ask you to continue your work in your people. Send your power and love. Let your word and your spirit light our way. Lord, we believe in you. We trust in your promises and we plead for more confidence and hope in you and in all that is ahead for your people. We pray that you would fill us up. Make our thoughts pure and selfless. May our steps bring glory to you as we strive today to be holy and to take new ground in our devotion. Wherever our comfort and our fear, our old habits or anything else have held us back, forgive us Lord. Renew our strength in you. Break down every fortress of Satan through Christ's power. Tear down everything within us that opposes you. We pray for help as we bring everything under Christ's control. For help as we try to see clearly where we can show more love, where we can align our worldview with what is true, where we can be more like you. We pray for all the reverence, all the worship to come to you and that we, though formerly weak and foolish without you, would point every being in this world and beyond towards your goodness. We praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. All right. So this was our sixth session in our guided study on the next episode. You guessed it, it'll be our seventh session in our guided study talking through Ephesians. It just makes sense. And we're going to be going through a discussion of Christ's love in Ephesians chapter three verses 14 through 21. And I think a few study guides back, we talked in a conversation starter about how we see this progression or this book ending of prayer, how prayer had started off this section. And then we're going to basically end this large first half of the book, chapters one through three, with another prayer and praise. And so here we see this prayer that's going to be offered and talking about Christ's love. And so to prepare for that conversation, Ephesians chapter three, verses 14 through 21. And this will, I think, conclude this first section about this grand sweeping, amazing, cosmic battle that's going on. And in chapter four, in session eight, that's where it really starts to get practical. So hold on, we're getting there. Oh man, yeah, it ends with a bang though, this first half. It's such a significant prayer with significant truths for God's people about how Christ loves us and may we all come to understand that's an episode worth tuning into and a passage worth reading as you prepare for it. more abundantly than all we ask or think. It's just a sneak through you for that one. All right, so thanks so much everyone for tuning into the Bible Geeks podcast. You can find us as always on our website at biblegeeks.fm. You can find show notes for this episode in your podcast player of choice or at biblegeeks.fm/187. And if you want to find this series, Talking Through Ephesians, you can go to the biblegeeks.fm/ephesians. You'll find all the study guides, the conversation starters, everything you need to know for that series is going to be there. And until next episode everyone, may the Lord bless you and keep you shalom. [MUSIC PLAYING]