Copyright © 2018 by J. D. Walt
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Walt, John David.
(Un)puzzled : Ephesians / J.D. Walt. – Franklin, Tennessee : Seedbed Publishing, ©2018.
pages ; cm. – (The Seedbed daily text)
ISBN 9781628245837 (paperback)
ISBN 9781628245844 (Mobi)
ISBN 9781628245851 (ePub)
ISBN 9781628245868 (uPDF)
1. Bible. Ephesians--Devotional literature. 2. Bible. Ephesians--Prayers and devotions. 3. Bible. Ephesians--Meditations. 4. Spiritual exercises. I. Title. II. Seedbed daily text. III. Unpuzzled.
BS2695.45.W34 2018 |
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2018954135 |
SEEDBED PUBLISHING
Franklin, Tennessee
seedbed.com
How the Daily Text Works
Introduction
1.On the Difference between Living for Jesus and Living from Jesus
2.Why the Bible Was Not Written for the World
3.Why Do We Think Spiritual Blessings Are Immaterial?
4.Are You Adopted?
5.Why God’s Plan Is Not for My Life
6.Only Two Kinds of People
7.Would the Real Seekers Please Stand Up?
8.Meet the Fellowship of the Holy Discontents
9.Why We Must Understand the Real Problem
10.On Starting Downton Abbey at Season Six
11.On Starting a Jigsaw Puzzle at the Center
12.On Picking up Our Pieces and Making Our Own Puzzle
13.Those Walls of Hostility
14.On Building Fireplaces
15.From Amazing Grace to Astonishing Grace
16.On the Difference between Information and Revelation
17.Are You Aware of Your Inner Being?
18.Why Love Must Become More than We Thought It Was
19.Are You Filled with the Fullness of God?
20.Why Discipleship to Jesus Outside of Relationships with Others Is Not Discipleship to Jesus
21.One Body, Twenty-Something-Thousand Denominations?
22.Why Down Is the New Up
23.Calling All Apostles, Prophets, and Evangelists
24.The Challenge of Growing up as a Grown-Up
25.The Two Groups down at the Church
26.How Behavior Management Stunts Your Growth
27.Would the Real Me Please Come Forth?
28.The Junior-High Beast Within
29.On Shifting the Center of Gravity in Your Life
30.So What Are You (Really) Angry About?
31.Until the Pattern Is a Person, It Remains a Puzzle
32.The Real Problem with Acceptable Pornography
33.On the Personal Devastation and Communal Decimation of Sexual Sin
34.The Least Asked Most Important Question of Our Time
35.Addicted to the Holy Spirit
36.Why Love Is Blind and Marriage Is an Eye-Opener (Part 1 of 3)
37.Why Love Is Blind and Marriage Is an Eye-Opener (Part 2 of 3)
38.Why Love Is Blind and Marriage Is an Eye-Opener (Part 3 of 3)
39.The Secret to Extraordinary Parenting
40.On Telling the Impossible Story to Impossible Situations
41.The Surprising Way of Becoming Strong in the Lord
42.And though This World with Devils Filled . . .
43.One Little Word Shall Fell Him
44.Thanks, Tychicus
45.The Grace and Peace of Puzzle Work
It seems obvious to say, but I write the Daily Text every day. I mostly write it the day before it is scheduled to release online.
Speaking of that, before we go further, I would like to cordially invite you to subscribe and receive the daily email. Visit dailytext.seedbed.com to get started. Check out the weekly fasting challenge while you are there, and also the very active Facebook group.
Eventually, the daily postings become part of a Daily Text discipleship resource. That’s what you hold in your hands now.
It’s not exactly a Bible study, though the Bible is both the source and subject. You will learn something about the Bible along the way: its history, context, original languages, and authors. My goal is not educational in nature but transformational. I am more interested in our knowing Jesus than I am in our knowing about Jesus.
To that end, each reading begins with the definitive inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the ongoing, unfolding text of Scripture. Following this is a short and, hopefully, substantive insight from the text and some aspect of its meaning. For insight to lead to deeper influence, we turn the text into prayer. Finally, influence must run its course toward impact. This is why we ask each other questions. These questions are not designed to elicit information but to crystallize intention.
Discipleship always leads from inspiration to intention and from intention to action.
While Scripture always addresses us personally, it is not written to us individually. The content of Scripture cries out for a community to address. The Daily Text is made for discipleship in community. This resource can work in several different ways. It could be read like a traditional book, a few pages or chapters at a time. Though unadvisable, the readings could be crammed in on the night before the meeting. Keep in mind, the Daily Text is not called the Daily Text for kicks. We believe Scripture is worthy of our most focused and consistent attention every day. We all have misses, but let’s make every day more than a noble aspiration. Let’s make it our covenant with one another.
In our judgment, the best and highest use of the Daily Text is made through what we call banded discipleship. A band is a same-gender group of three to five people who read together, pray together, and meet together to help one another grow into the fullness of Jesus Christ in this life. With banded discipleship, the daily readings serve more as a common text for the band and grist for the interpersonal conversation mill between meetings. The band meeting is reserved for the specialized activities of high-bar discipleship.
To learn more about bands and banded discipleship, visit newroombands.com. Be sure to download the free Guide to Micro-Community Discipleship or order a supply of the printed booklets online. Also be sure to explore our online platform for bands at app.newroombands.com.
The Daily Text has also proven to be a helpful discipleship resource for a variety of small groups, from community groups to Sunday school classes. Here are some suggested guidelines for deploying the Daily Text as a resource for a small group or class setting.
I. Hearing the Text
Invite the group to settle into silence for a period of no less than one and no more than five minutes. Ask an appointed person to keep time and to read the biblical text covering the period of days since the last group meeting. Allow at least one minute of silence following the reading of the text.
II. Responding to the Text
Invite anyone from the group to respond to the reading by answering these prompts: What did you hear? What did you see? What did you otherwise sense from the Lord?
III. Sharing Insights and Implications for Discipleship
Moving in an orderly rotation (or free-for-all), invite people to share insights and implications from the week’s readings. What did you find challenging, encouraging, provocative, comforting, invasive, inspiring, corrective, affirming, guiding, or warning? Allow group conversation to proceed at will. Limit to one sharing item per turn, with multiple rounds of discussion.
Note: this resource comes with a free series of online streaming videos for each week’s group meeting. In them, I share a seven- to ten-minute reflection on some aspect of the Scripture readings from the prior week. Some groups like to play the video at the beginning of this group sharing time as a way of kicking off the conversation.
IV. Shaping Intentions for Prayer
Invite each person in the group to share a single discipleship intention for the week ahead. It is helpful if the intention can also be framed as a question the group can use to check in from the prior week. At each person’s turn, he or she is invited to share how their intention went during the previous week. The class or group can open and close their meeting according to their established patterns.
Are you a puzzle person? Some people are. I am not. I am more of a puzzle(d) person. Dump out a jigsaw puzzle box of a thousand pieces on the kitchen table on a Saturday afternoon and I’m running for the remote control and a spot on the couch.
We live in a puzzled world; all at once created by God and decimated by people. Reading the first two chapters of the Bible is like looking at an artistic masterpiece. Read the next nine chapters and it’s like someone shattered the masterpiece into a million fragmented pieces. In fact, the eleventh chapter of Genesis and the story of the Tower of Babel shows the people of the earth literally being scattered across the planet like so many disparate, confused puzzle pieces.
We’ve been trying to put it back together ever since—to no avail. One need only watch the evening news to see things get more and more puzzled every day. Beginning with the twelfth chapter of Genesis, the God of all creation—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—began a quiet project to put the puzzle back together. It finally came to fruition with the coming of Jesus Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit.
Paul’s letters continue this work as the Holy Spirit reveals how and where all the pieces fit. His letter to the Ephesians does a particularly masterful job.
There’s a brilliant story about the first Christians in Ephesus found in the travelogue we call the Acts of the Apostles. As the story goes, Paul made his way to Ephesus where he found several disciples of Jesus. Something must have seemed a bit askew to him based on the question he asked them. Clearly, what Paul observed puzzled him: “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” (Acts 19:2 NIV).
It’s like they had put the pieces to a jigsaw puzzle together in a way that didn’t resemble the box top. Something was missing.
Their reply was one for the ages: “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit” (v. 2).
He kept pressing: “So Paul asked, ‘Then what baptism did you receive?’
“‘John’s baptism,’ they replied.”
With that, Paul had the missing puzzle pieces and brought it all together again.
Paul said, “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus. On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. There were about twelve men in all.” (vv. 4–7 NIV)
Imagine how puzzled these early Ephesians disciples must have felt as they heard stories of signs and wonders and profound growth from across the powerful movement of the body of Christ. What are we missing? they must have thought to themselves, as they compared their fledgling community.
Let’s refer to this conundrum as the Ephesian Puzzle. How do you have an expression of the Church of Jesus Christ without the Holy Spirit? Short answer: you don’t. The reality? Millions of these so-called churches litter the landscape of today’s world. It must be utterly puzzling to Jesus to look upon these anomalous entities attempting to do the work of the kingdom without the authority and power of the King. The leaders and members of these organizations themselves must be somewhat puzzled at how they work so hard with so little to show for it. It must be akin to running on a treadmill that has not been plugged in. And certainly the surrounding culture and world must be puzzled as to what makes these churches any different from the United Way or the Kiwanis Club. Why pay the religious rent when they can belong to a real country club and volunteer at Goodwill, right?
After overcoming the false start and getting the Ephesians church properly planted, Paul pressed on to the next place and its problems. Along the way, Paul was dealt a “Go Straight to Jail” card. With a lot to reflect on and a ton of free time, Paul wrote letters to these churches. Many consider this letter to the Ephesian Church to be his masterpiece. It became what was known as a circular letter; one that churches passed among themselves through different cities and across national borders.
In this masterful letter, Paul pulls so many pieces together it is as though he is putting together a massive jigsaw puzzle. He shows how spiritual and material fit together, how male and female, slave and free, and even ethnicity and nationality connect and interrelate in this new creation of the kingdom of God. He reveals for us how the disparate pieces, powers, and principalities insert themselves into the affairs of heaven and earth. He gets granular at the level of husbands and wives, employers and employees, and even parents and children and how the gospel must work itself out from cosmic dimensions to every day practicalities. The puzzle really comes together in a marvelous way through this ancient letter to the Church in Ephesus.
We have all experienced the challenge of a good jigsaw puzzle. We know where to begin, right? First find the corners and then all the edges and then work toward the middle. And, of course, the key to putting a puzzle together is to keep the box top in plain view.
The interesting thing about this puzzle is that it has no edges. In fact, putting this puzzle together requires the unconventional method of beginning with the centermost pieces—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. With this centerpiece in place, the circumference moves aggressively outward in the gospel mission as far as the grace of God will go.
The other challenge with this puzzle is there no box top. In place of a box top, Paul masterfully works and weaves the gifts of the Word and Spirit in a profoundly prayerful and prophetic way. The outcome is not a static image but a dynamic, moving vision; a vision of how high and wide and deep and long is the love of Christ. The amazing thing is what will happen in us as we enter into this way of knowing God beyond mere knowledge.
It’s what happens when the Word of God and the Spirit of God interweave themselves into our lives. We begin by thinking our life is the puzzle only to realize our lives are only the pieces. When we glimpse the vision of the greater plan we are hit with the epiphany—God doesn’t have a plan for my life, rather, God has created our lives for his plan.
Here’s the invitation. Over the next forty something days let’s pull our chairs up to the table and spread out as many of the pieces of our lives as we can access. As we read this text together, submitting ourselves to the Word, the Spirit, and one another, we will behold God bringing something together beyond our ability to even comprehend.
Whether we are puzzle people or not, we have a puzzling and puzzled world in front of us. The good news is God is putting it back together again and wants to involve us in that task. I’m putting down the remote control and leaving the couch. It’s time to get this puzzle party started!
For the Awakening,
J. D. Walt
Easter 2018
Have you ever gotten a letter from God? I haven’t either.
But wait! Isn’t that what the Bible is—a massive letter from God? Yes, we believe the Bible is God’s Word, but God did not write it. People wrote the Bible. The Bible is a human document. So does this somehow diminish the Bible’s authority? Not for a second, because the Bible is also a divine document. Every word of the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit. Look at how the apostle Peter describes this mysterious reality:
Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. (2 Peter 1:20–21 NIV)
Notice when Paul opens the letter he doesn’t say, “This letter is from God.” Go back and read it again. His opening five words are, This letter is from Paul. In saying this, Paul takes responsibility for the letter. Watch what he says next: chosen by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus.
Paul claims to possess authority without claiming to be an authority. Jesus Christ is the authority. Paul is his apostle. Because Paul knows he is not the authority, he has the capacity to share in the authority of Jesus. An apostle (or a Christian for that matter) is not a worker for Jesus but a messenger from Jesus. These distinctions may seem like subtleties; they are not.
We do not live our lives for God. We live our lives from God. We do not work for Jesus. We work from Jesus. Our lives are the letter. Paul’s letter and his life are one in the same because they’re all coming from somewhere else—from the person of Jesus Christ, through the presence of the Holy Spirit, resident in him and through him.
Discipleship is not about mastering a body of knowledge or conforming to a behavioral code. Discipleship means learning to live freely under the mastery or lordship of Jesus Christ, which is to stay in the abiding zone of his active presence. It means learning to be “carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is not a flat description of something he has mastered. It is an inspired declaration, description, and demonstration of the reality in which he lives.
Prepare yourselves, my friends. We aren’t taking a seat on Paul’s tour bus. We are entering into the zone of divine presence.
Abba Father, we thank you for your Son, Jesus, in whom the very fullness of your presence dwells bodily, and who dwells in us through the Holy Spirit. I want this more than life itself because this is in fact life itself. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
EPHESIANS 1:1–2 | I am writing to God’s holy people in Ephesus, who are faithful followers of Christ Jesus.
May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.
We know who the letter is from: Paul. And we know Paul is writing “from God,” as he is being “carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21).
So who is the letter to? We most often refer to Paul’s letters according to whom they are written. In this case, the common parlance would be, “Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.” That’s exactly wrong. Paul was not writing to the Ephesians any more than he was writing to the Colossians, Thessalonians, Galatians, or Romans (or the Americans, for that matter). Go back and check it for yourself in today’s text.
I am writing to God’s holy people in Ephesus, who are faithful followers of Christ Jesus.
Paul is not writing an open letter to the citizens of Ephesus. This is not meant to be read in the town square or etched onto the walls of city hall. It’s arguable that Paul is not even writing to Christians, in the loose way we throw the term about today. Paul writes to a very particular and distinctive subset of people. He calls them “God’s holy people in Ephesus.” These are the baptized ones, the ones who have come out and publicly identified themselves as Christians through their baptism. But wait, there’s more. The circle gets smaller. He writes to God’s holy people in Ephesus—and here’s the kicker—who are faithful followers of Christ Jesus.
I may be pushing the text a shade here, but it strikes me that Paul writes to a circle within a circle within a circle. Live in Ephesus? Check. Part of the church in Ephesus? Check. Faithful follower of Jesus Christ? Hmm.
If I’m honest, there were long seasons of my life when I could check the “God’s holy people in Arkansas” box, but was not standing in the circle of those who are faithful followers of Christ Jesus. You too? And then there was a significant season of my life wherein I would step into and out of the “faithful followers” circle. It depended on who I was with, how I wanted to be perceived, or the lifestyle I wanted to lead. I wanted to be a reasonable Christian.
Then, by the mercy of God, I woke up to the grace of God. Finally, I began to actually know the one whom I had once only known about. There is a difference between following the followers of Jesus (which can look a lot like showing up for church and doing church stuff) and following Jesus himself.