Getting stuff out late this week, but we continue our study in Ephesians after a week off while Kerry and I were in SW Missouri.
Paul again reminds us – were darkness, now light. Live up to who we are in Christ. But to do that we must fully trust him.
God is our eyes in this world or we are blind men and women.
Message Title: Wake Up and Walk in the Light!
Message Text: Ephesians 5:8-14
http://bible.com/59/JER8.8.ESV “How can you say, ‘We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us’? But behold, the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie. The wise men shall be put to shame; they shall be dismayed and taken; behold, they have rejected the word of the Lord , so what wisdom is in them?
Bible.com/app
Sent from my U.S. Cellular® Samsung Galaxy SIV
http://bible.com/59/JAS1.22.ESV But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless.
Bible.com/app
Sent from my U.S. Cellular® Samsung Galaxy SIV
Let the creative explosions begin …
The article isn’t just “throwing bones” to the old folks. It really makes sense. We have lost some things but also gained some very valuable abilities as far as creative production and the ability to communicate life at a different level.
At least read down until you come to the part about the cooperation of the right side/left side of the brain. The wall is lower because we need more cooperation, and because of this cooperation we can excel as never before. This is not fluff. We might not remember why we walked to the other end of the house, and our chess game and math ability may have lost a little of the zip, but we are primed for creative outbursts as I call them. But we need to use our minds and neither be imprisoned by the fear of failure or the awkwardness of our forgetful moments.
Dave
Here is an excerpt, the web link and the PDF of the entire file ————————-
How To Live Long
It may be no coincidence that so many creative types have long lives. New findings show how doing what you love can add years.
By Jeffrey Kluger Monday, Sept. 23, 2013
Illustration by Serge Bloch for TIME
One of the greatest buildings in New York City was created by a very old man. You won’t find it on the skyline–it’s far too small for that. You have to get up close, at street level. It’s on Fifth Avenue, which for block after block obeys the old New York building rule of big and tall and flat–until all at once, at 88th Street, it doesn’t. There stands the stout, round drinking cup that is the Guggenheim Museum, with its natural light and spiraling floor and snow white exterior, parting the neat scrim of the streetscape and filling it with a bit of stylish defiance. The human genius behind that structural genius was Frank Lloyd Wright, who started designing the building in 1943, when he was 76, kept at it until ground was broken in 1956 and lived until 1959–just shy of both his 92nd birthday and the museum’s official opening.
“If you walk into any of Wright’s buildings, you see he didn’t think like us,” says neuropsychologist Donald Davidoff of Harvard Medical School. “His rooms can have seven different heights to them depending on where you’re standing. He thought in three dimensions, which is something we can appreciate when we see it but can’t do ourselves.”
Wright may have been unique in the style and quality and iconoclasm of his work, but he was not unique in how old he was when he did it–and that’s true in a lot of fields. You can keep your boy geniuses in Silicon Valley, your young guns tearing up the fashion world, your celebrated wunderkinder in music and art and finance and government. Spare a moment–spare more than a moment–for the superannuated creators: Goya, who produced some of his most haunting paintings when he was in his late 70s; Goethe, who finished writing his masterpiece, Faust, when he was 81; Galileo, who published his last paper when he was 74, just a few years before his death–at a time when average human life expectancy was 35.
http://bible.com/59/HEB10.19.ESV Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
Bible.com/app
Sent from my U.S. Cellular® Samsung Galaxy SIV
Message Title: Be Like God
Message Text: Ephesians 5:1-7
This week Paul really shifts gears between Ephesians 5:2 and 5:3.
Ephesians 5:1–7 (NKJV)
1 Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. 3 But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; 4 neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. 5 For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. 6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. 7 Therefore do not be partakers with them.
From walking in love to “don’t fornicate.” But this is God’s wisdom. Paul has spent much time and energy teaching us who we are in Christ.
However …
To live up to who we are in Christ we must know where we are in the world. If they were still involved in sexual immorality, impure living and greed, then they needed strong teaching to tell them that the clothing of the old man would just not do for God’s new creation.
For those who have believed in Jesus Son of God for the forgiveness of sins and have received his gift of eternal life, God promises amazing things. He brings us from total separation standing in judgment to an intimacy with the Most High God of the universe that is beyond our ability to understand or explain. We go from the flames of God’s eternal judgment to the flames of God’s eternal love and holiness.
Now we can say, “It doesn’t get any better than this!”
So we praise him!
This week’s message is more of our general theme. This is who you are. The words are written in our Bibles. The Spirit bears witness with our spirit. Now believe God and live up to our calling.
Here are the handouts for this week.
dave
http://bible.com/59/ISA44.8.ESV Fear not, nor be afraid; have I not told you from of old and declared it? And you are my witnesses! Is there a God besides me? There is no Rock; I know not any.”
Bible.com/app
Sent from my U.S. Cellular® Samsung Galaxy SIV
http://bible.com/59/PRO26.24.ESV Whoever hates disguises himself with his lips and harbors deceit in his heart; when he speaks graciously, believe him not, for there are seven abominations in his heart; though his hatred be covered with deception, his wickedness will be exposed in the assembly.
Bible.com/app
Sent from my U.S. Cellular® Samsung Galaxy SIV
http://bible.com/59/ISA40.21.ESV Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.
Bible.com/app
Sent from my U.S. Cellular® Samsung Galaxy SIV
http://bible.com/59/PRO25.18.ESV A man who bears false witness against his neighbor is like a war club, or a sword, or a sharp arrow.
Bible.com/app
Sent from my U.S. Cellular® Samsung Galaxy SIV
