3 Give praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. Those blessings come from the heavenly world. They belong to us because we belong to Christ.
4 God chose us to belong to Christ before the world was created. He chose us to be holy and without blame in his eyes. He loved us. 5 So he decided long ago to adopt us as his children. He did it because of what Jesus Christ has done. It pleased God to do it. 6 All those things bring praise to his glorious grace. God freely gave us his grace because of the One he loves.
Ephesians 1
Who are you? A mum, a shop worker, an executive, teacher, public servant, footballer, musician? We all define ourselves in some way. But our culture mostly defines us by what we do. Subtly we are rated against our job, and so many people make judgments on that basis. Is this person a success, or attractive, or good? Have you noticed how damaging that can be to us. What if we don't have, hate or no longer do a job? Why should we be judged by these standards, and reduced to simply what we do?
That's why Ephesians 1 is such good news for us. Read the verses again and remind yourself the identity God gives you. You are his creation chosen for goodness and holiness,and blessed to belong to him. Now ask yourself the question, 'who am I?', and answer it with those things. And with thanks, pray.
There's been some talk in the press recently about the "what do you do" question. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what we can replace it with? In church and non-church circles?
Posted by: Dom | January 28, 2009 at 06:35 PM