Day 11-"Strengthen"

Day 11- "strengthen"
Strong's definition for strengthen: from the greek krataioo (krat-ah-yo'-o); from NT:2900; to empower, i.e. (passively) increase in vigor:
(Biblesoft's New Exhaustive Strong's Numbers and Concordance with Expanded Greek-Hebrew Dictionary. Copyright (c) 1994, Biblesoft and International Bible Translators, Inc.)
So in essence, the Lord, speaking through Paul, is saying
'I pray that out of his glorious riches he may "Empower" you with power...' Doesn't that sound a bit redundant. Duh, will he empower us to weakness, or self-love, or pride? However, I believe the point here is that the human race has a form of power. We can wield influence, we can expand our portfolio and get people to do our bidding, we can build bombs and nukes to show how powerful we are, we can put men on the moon and robots on mars, and send spacecraft through our solar system. We can build big buildings, we can gain PhD's, we can gain wealth, prosperity, influence. We can split atoms. We can tame animals, we can, we can, we can. But in all reality, we can only do so much and in all actuality even that isn't much. The Lord can spread out the heavens like a curtain, the Lord can tell a mountain range to crumble and it would, the Lord can create Light, the Lord can make an atom, the Lord can understand quasars, the Lord can comprehend the rising of the sun and the setting of the same. The Lord can claim power over the earth and all that is in it for with His very word He spoke it into being. The Lord, can calm the seas, the Lord can raise the dead, the Lord can make water into wine and wine into water, the Lord understands equations both the simple and quadratic, he is not restrained by time, body, flesh, height, depth, width, space, earth or sky. The Lord can make planets, stars, galaxies, universes, black wholes, gamma rays, x-rays, microwaves, and the Lord can see a sparrow fall and a leaf wither. He can, Ha Can, He CAN. So, let me ask again, does it sound so strange that He who CAN, would empower us with power? I see it this way, our realm of influence is within a radius of 384401 km or roughly 240,000 miles. Now don't get a big head I'm not done yet. We're gonna talk about why we need to be strengthened. You're now thinking wow we've gone pretty far out but I'm gonna blow your mind. The farthest estimation of how big our universe is is 8,083,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles away, if I did my math right. In light years it thirteen billion light years away (one light year is about 590 trillion miles). But that is just in one direction since we are not the center of the universe we could be seeing just the closest edge of the universe, and the other edge is twice that far away making the universe a possible 24,249,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles across. Which means that our 240,000 mile sphere of influence of what we call our empowerment of the human race is only 1 x 1021 of power, of the universe. For example if you take one 3 foot step you are point 1 x 10-21 of the way to a 570,000,000,000,000,000 mile journey, or a 1000 light year trip. 1000 light years would get you two-thirds of the way to the Horse-head Nebula. I'd say we need to be strengthened. We are small, we are weak.
Finally, I also looked up the definition for strengthen and one of them was, "to fasten upon." So in essence the Lord who made the boundaries of our infinite universe also will fasten upon our hearts the same strength that comes from Him. He will strengthen us for the glorification of Himself. The reason we need strengthened is because we in our own power thought we were strong but we've been proven by nature to be rather infinitesimally small. We need, need is not a strong enough word, we must have His strength to even breath. Strengthen us Father for the works You have prepared for us!

Day 10- "may"

Day 10- "may"
Grammatically speaking, "may" is a word that could quite easily be misunderstood. Often we use "may" to mean possibly, might, maybe, and other such words. Yet, I don't think that is the purpose in this verse. Webster's Thesaurus gives these possible synonyms: "be allowed, be permitted, be authorized, be at liberty to, can, be privileged to." So contextually, Paul is explaining to us and the Ephesians that He is laying prostrate in prayer with the intent that the Lord, whom whatever he touches is glorious, give us the privilege... Amazingly, through Christ our strength (which we'll go over next time) is no longer from within us, within our frail human condition. To often we believe that we deserve strength or blessing or happiness from God, but in reality, it is only through His profuse benevolence that we have anything at all. Because He has chosen us and set us as believers apart, He also has given us the privilege, the "may," of becoming like Him in strength and glory and character. "May" is not a perhaps it is a privilege. Through Christ we are privileged to see His strength up close and personal. "To be close is a mounting terror of His might."

Day 9-"He"

Day 9- "he"
Once again we have a pronoun, specifically, and most importantly, a male pronoun. I'm not being a male Chauvinist, but I do believe we have a God who is the epitome of maleness. He is not as some would have us believe a neuter God. He has all the perfectly and perfected attributes of a real man, but he is also spirit. "He" is not, on the contrary, restricted to "he." He is not restricted by sexual passions or the other physical hindrances to normal (or shall we say fallen) man. His maleness is not as much physical as it is emotional and spiritual. If he were not a he, we would not be able to appreciate him. However, this is a theological discussion that I really have not studied well. However, it is important that "he" is "he." This word is specifying a male individual, named Christ, who was man (remember God made man first) as God had intended Him to be. It's not that Jesus hates women or that women are less, but God has placed more responsibility on men's shoulders. Anyway, this word reminds us, once again because we often forget, of who the glorious riches belong to, Jesus. He, alone. He sees, he hears, he is the source and giver of everything!


PS- I had to laugh when a came across this very European looking, as well as very feminine picture of Jesus. Jesus was a manly man Jew! Go "He."

Day 8-"Riches"

Day 8- "riches"
As I read some cross-references for the word riches and as I looked in Strongs for the Greek meaning I was intrigued. First, Strongs defines riches as "wealth, possessions, abundance, and fullness." I love those last two, abundance and fullness. Meaning there is plenty of these glorious things, God's riches are not running low, he's still got plenty to bestow (Strong's gives an interesting phrase in the definition of riches, it says, "valuable bestowment"), God is still willing to bestow His weighty or heavy value upon us. Secondly, I noticed that everywhere the scriptures (and it is only in the NT) that the phrase or derivatives of the phrase "glorious riches" it was always connected to Jesus Christ. Why? Because he was the perfect one, and all wealth (as scripture says in various places) belongs to Him because he was slain. Hence, these riches are His to bestow. These riches are even more closely connected with the word grace, "Rom. 9:23 '...he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory; Eph. 1:7 in accordance with the riches of God's grace.' But what are these riches. I have come to the conclusion, because of the aforementioned ideas, that because of God's abundance in His riches and because they are so closely connected with Christ's grace and mercy, AND because Christ was completely perfect, these riches are what we generally call, "the Fruit of the Spirit." You see, the fruit of the Spirit as the Matthew Henry commentary says proceed directly from the Holy Spirit, which indicates that grace has covered an individual and that the Spirit is able to work through that person. I'm reminded of Eph. 2:8, "For it is by GRACE you have been saved through faith and this NOT OF YOURSELVES!" The glorious riches are connected with grace because they are administered by the Holy Spirit not of the flesh which is an evidence of grace. As it says a few words later in this present verse, "through His Spirit in your inner being." Grace, abundant grace, glorious and bountiful grace that is not flowing from human intelligence or cleverness or flesh, but from the very Source of grace and it is flowing right back to the Source to bring Him more gloriousness!

Day 7- "Glorious"

Day 7- "Glorious"
How do you begin with a word like "glorious?" Whenever I think of glorious I connect it with a few other words, such as splendor, majesty, wonderousness, etc. However, glorious passes all of those. So, perhaps I should try and connect it with a different word a word we may not often see connected or associated with glorious. The word is weightiness. Huh? Now maybe your scratching you head going, "OK I was cool with the whole, 'I, Paul, bend my knee' thing but I'm not gonna go with 'out of his fat riches!'" However, weightiness does not necessarily mean fat. What I mean by weighty is what is meant when we say, "That guy/gal throws his/her weight around." Does that mean that person is fat? No, it means that they have power and influence and they can use their "weight" or "pull" to cause others to be of use to them. Perhaps instead of Weightiness we could use the term "influentially convincing." Strong's defines glory with words like, "one's own pleasure, to think, splendor." Yes, all of the above. You see the primary thing is that we understand that God is the epitome of gloriousness, and therefore if anything is "His" (see yesterday) it will also be filled with His glory (or His pleasure, thoughts, influence, weightiness, or splendor). The riches we are going to talk about tomorrow would be meaningless except for the word glorious that is connected to them because of necessity. If Jesus God = glory then do we want anything else than glorious riches? I personally only want what has been blessed by the hand of God and is therefore glorious. I am truly tired of the Church squandering its time and energies on less than glorious things and as a result we are falling apart. We've lost sight of the gloriousness of Christ and have in turn also compromised our love and hunger for things that are glorious--because God has blessed them. Let us seek things that are glorious and noble and upright. In that way God receives more glory. When we seek glorious things it isn't with the intent of us becoming more glorious, it is with the intent that we might be closer to God as a result.

Day 6- "His"

Day 6- "His"
Oh yeah, this is the one I've been looking forward to! So, "His." What do we know grammatically about the word? Well, it is a possessive pronoun for the male gender. So for instance instead of saying, "The dog belongs to Bob," you could say, "The dog is his." In the context of this verse, who does "his" represent? if the example sentence's "his" represents "Bob," who does the verse's "his" represent? On day 1 "I" represented Paul, so does "his" also represent Paul? Ah, no. It represents Him who is I AM THAT I AM! The Author and Perfector, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First, the Last, the One who upholds all things by His powerful word, Who stretched out the skies, Who threw the stars into place, Who set kings on the thrones and utterly obliterated other rulers, Who is the Word in the beginning, Who is the Amen at the end, Who controls time, is Who He is, the Son, Who humbled Himself even to death on a cross and God the Father gave Him the name that is above every name--even Karl Marx, Nebuchadnezzer, Jonah, Jeremiah, Moses, Hitler, Neitzshe, Stalin, Bush, Hussein, Ben Zornes, Your name, Billy Graham, Speilberg, Frodo Baggins, C.S. Lewis, Freud, Napolean, King Arthur, David, Saul, Adam, Eve, Mother Theresa, My mom, Hillary Clinton, Barbara Streisland, Julia Roberts, Johnny Depp, Kiera Knightly--that at His name every knee--including the above names--will bow and every tongue--even the staunchest atheist--confess that He is Lord to the glory of His Father; HIS NAME IS JESUS CHRIST MESSIAH!
And so, does this help us understand better who "His" is? His is supremacy, dominion, power, glory, praise, worship, adoration, wealth, wisdom, love, faith, joy, peace, wrath, death, life, need I go on? So, if Paul is praying with his knees bowed, with the intent that according to, "HIS." Yeah, it is ALL HIS so he can give out of it, and bestow whatever he chooses, whether blessing or curse, rain or shine. He can impart wisdom or foolishness, he can reveal and he can blind, and finally he can do what Paul is earnestly desiring for us...strength. Yet, by extension he can also impart weakness. However, when I am weak them He is strong...but that is for another day!

Day 5- "of"

Day 5- "of"
OK, by now I know you're thinking what in the world can one possibly get out of the word "of." What does of mean and how can it help me understand this scripture better?! Well, the first thing that came to my heart and mind was a sermon I heard preached about the different spirit's or influences we can be under or "of." For example there's the spirit of the Law, the Antichrist or of holiness! The preacher, Norm Wakefield, continually asked throughout the sermon, "What spirit are YOU of?!" Meaning what influence holds sway on you, which spirit do I take part in, what authority persuades me what to do? So, since that sermon, I have asked myself, "Ben, What Spirit are you of?" And my answer must be "The Holy Spirit is what I am of." You see when we allow ourselves to be "of" a spirit we give that Spirit (or influence) absolute sway over our thoughts, affections, desires, goals, dreams, attitudes, etc. In effect when we are OF something we resemble or accurately imitate it. I am OF my parents, meaning I came from them, I resemble them, I imitate them, I'm the spittin' image OF my Pa, get the point? Out OF his glorious riches! Ah...meaning when Jesus strengthens us with power (in the following sentence) it is OF (meaning accurately imitates or manifests) His glorious riches. I'll discuss glorious riches later, but it is important to understand OF. Because OF is a key to a lot of sentences. If we found a forgotten painting of da Vinci, we would say as we studied it that, "This is of (it accurately represents, depicts, imitates) da Vinci." Hence, I pray that out of his glorious riches...shows us that his glorious riches will be imputed to us and we will be given the exact representation of his glorious riches (oh boy and wait until we talk about his glorious riches!). Hmm...that phrase "exact representation" reminds me of a verse in Hebrews 1:3 "The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the EXACT REPRESENTATION of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word, NIV." Do you see it? Right after exact representation...OF his being!!!! Beautiful isn't it! I pray that you may receive the exact representation of his glorious riches (oh boy I can't wait for glorious and riches! For now think about Jesus Character traits!).

Day 4 "Out"

"Out"
Ah, this is a preposition, see I payed attention during homeschool! As I remember prepositions designated the subject's relation or position to the object of the preposition (OP). As in this sentence, "Tim went OUT of the store." This shows the reader the subject's, Tim in this case, relation to the OP, the store. Thus, we learn, if we look ahead a bit and rearrange the order of the sentence we see the verse more like this, "Paul bows his knees with the intent that He (meaning Jesus, see Day 9) would strengthen You (the Ephesians and by the rule of extension, us; see day 12) OUT of His glorious riches!" The relationship of the subject, us and the Ephesians, to the OP is the same as Tim to the store. Or, perhaps the example sentence would better parallel the verse if we rewrote it this way, "Tim took some products out of the store." Just like Jesus can take strength and impart it to us out of his glorious riches. This word out also implies there is something "in." His glorious riches are extensive and He can more than afford to give strength to us. But I am running away with myself, the word is "out." However, since out is a preposition it points to other words rather than itself (Kinda like we should do with God, but that is taking the verse out of context!). The KJV says "according to" rather than "out of. " Isn't that interesting? He can impart strength according to his strength, or "out of " His strength! Amazing! He has something, a storehouse for example, that He can take things Out of and give to others. It all belongs to Him, but He is the only One who can take "out." Praise the Lord! Out of His glorious Riches!

Day 3- "That"

Day 3- "That"
Yeah, that's exactly what I thought when I realized what the next word in the sentence was. How in the world are you supposed to write about a word like that, "That?" Wow, umm...hmm? I guess the thing that comes to my mind is that when I write I use the word "that" a lot. Already I've used that word 6 times, that's a lot for three sentences. This could get confusing as well, since I'll be using "that" as part of my sentences as well as the subject. I'll put it in "" when I use it as a subject! OK, we use "that" a lot. We use it mostly to generalize what we are talking about. Instead of saying, "See the little speck of bright pink plastic on the blue table," we simplify by pointing and saying "That." Can you see Paul now, pointing and saying "that?" He's pulling in the Ephesians attention directing, pointing preparing for what "that" is. "That out of His glorious riches..." Make sense? The Greek word for "that" is elaborated on by Strongs this way, "in order that (denoting the purpose or the result): KJV - albeit, because, to the intent (that), lest, so as, (so) that, (for) to. Do you see it? I think my favorite one is "to the intent." Slip that in there to replace "that." Paul bowed his knees with the intent. OH, so Paul had a purpose for praying. He wasn't idly petitioning God with Aunt Millie's broken finger nail. Or that the church budget would work out, or that his wife would show up soon, or many of those things we "pray" about that really we have no intent for praying them. Think of how many prayers we pray without intent. They usually go something like this, "Dear Jesus, thanks for this day. Thanks for the food. Thanks for the pretty flowers. Let us do your will. In Jesus name we pray, Amen." Without intent. May we never be accused of praying without intent. "That" is a little more special than you thought huh? I pray with intent! Let THAT be the way, the denoting, the course of your prayers. OK, that is all I can think of for today!