Praying Through Ephesians Chapter 4

Father I thank you for your Word, all of it!  Your Word is my truth!  Your Word is my peace!  I thank you that you have taken me through it nice and slow this year.  I thank you for speaking to my heart and my mind daily.  Your presence brings such tender care and mercy.  I thank you today for your Word in Ephesians.  As I pray through your Word in Ephesians 4, I ask that you would lead me in sharing.  I thank you that as I have prayed through your Word this morning, with a very heavy heart, I could feel your presence like a blanket ♥️ Father I thank you that you have never failed me and you certainly won’t start now.  Your faithfulness is the most beautiful thing I know.  

Ephesians 4   

Father I thank you that I have been called by you, although I still have days when I feel unsure about my calling, I know that your Word says in Isaiah 43 I am called, I am redeemed, I am yours.  V1 I ask Father that you would help me lead a life worthy of my calling and that you would show me exactly what that looks like.  My heart longs to please you above everything else.  V2 Father I ask you to keep me humble and gentle.  Help me everyday to be patient with others and to make allowance for faults and disappointments because of your great love.  Father I thank you, that you and my family and my friends faithfully make allowance for my faults and disappointments.  You have blessed me so!  You have loved me so, let me love others in a way that honors you.  V3 Father I ask that you would help me, help all of us, to make great effort to keep ourselves united in Spirit, bind us together with peace.  V4 Father I believe your Word and your Word says, there is one body and one spirit and we are called to one glorious hope for the future.  I believe your Word as it says, there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and you are the Father of all.  V6 You are over all, in all, and living through all.  V7 Father I thank you that you are the head and we are your body and I thank you that you have given each one of us a special gift through the generosity of your Son.  V8 Your Word says, when Christ ascended to the heights, he lead a crowd of captives and gave gifts to your people.  Your Word says Christ ascended, which clearly means he descended to our lowly world.  V10 Christ who descended is the one who ascended higher than all the heavens, so that he might fill the entire universe with himself.  V11 Father I thank you that in Christ and all that he did he has made us worthy to receive these gifts.  V11 Now here are the gifts Christ has given the church (to us his body): the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers.  Father their responsibility, our responsibility, is to equip your people to do your work and to build up the church.  Father I thank you for everyone who is walking out their calling with grace.  Again I ask that you would help me walk out mine with love and grace.  V13 Father I ask that you would keep your body united in your will and let us continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of your Son that we grow fully mature in you.  Let us measure up to the full and complete standard of Christ.  Father help me, help us, to fully understand what that even looks like.  V14 Father grow us up!  Let us not be tossed about or blown by any wind of new teaching that is not from you.  Let us cling to your Word and its truth!  V15 Let us always speak your truth in love and let us grow in every way more like Christ, who is the head of us, your body.  V16 Father thank you that Christ Jesus makes the whole body fit together perfectly!  Thank you that as you help each of us do our part, the whole body will grow healthy and strong and stay full of love.  Thank you Father for Jesus, for his sacrifice, for his love, for your love.  Thank you for binding us together in this perfect love.  Thank you again for your Word, for your Son, for your gifts, for your body, for binding us all together in you.  Father I love you with my whole heart!  I give you this day, I give you my life, I give you my heart and mind.  Lead me please in every step I take today.  Let me love the way you created me to love,  let all of us love like you!  Father thank you for gifts to give away and let me, let all of us, lean in to you for all that we need this day to do your will.  Father I thank you again for Jesus and I ask all of this in his precious name, amen ♥️ 

One Very Long Book Review

I love reading so much!  I don’t always have tons of time for it, but when I do I soak in as much as I can.  I love fiction.  I love the way you can get lost in another time, another world.  Sometimes I get so in that I almost forget these people are not my friends & family.  Seriously, I have been so sucked in that I have almost prayed for characters in books 😂 that’s when you know it’s a really great story! I also really love doing Bible Studies and reading books full of wisdom & advice, and I really, really love reading the Bible!  How about you guys?  Readers or no?  If you are a reader, I would love for you to share your recommendations in the comments so I can add to my already very long list of books to read 😆

As I was saying, I really do love to read, so this summer with an extended vacation time I decided it was a good idea to start and try to finish 5 different books, along with my daily Bible reading.  Kind of ridiculous I know, but I just got caught up 😆.  Anyway, I read some good stuff so I thought I’d share it here with you.  I had started reading Where The Crawdads Sing at the gym before summer hit.  I love to read on the treadmill because if you can find something that sucks you in the time just flies by!  Crawdads definitely did that for me!  The only problem with that one is that there were times when I was reading that tears flowed, and I’m pretty sure my fellow gym goers probably thought I was a weirdo.  I took that one with me to the beach and finished it there, just in time to catch the movie.  It was a good one, sad, but very good!  

Next I started four more, two books (one advice & one fiction), one study, along with my Optivia book.  Yes, I did Optivia, but that is another story for another time.  I have to be honest and admit I am not quite done with that book.  It holds a ton of really good information and advice in its over 500, very small print pages.  I’ve actually made it to page 472, but when I read it my eyes get super heavy after about two pages and have to put it down and go to sleep 😴  Thankfully I had the other three!  I read, Fear Is Not The Boss of Me by Jennifer Allwood and Orphan Beach by Laura Thomas. I also started a Bible Study by Christine Caine called 20/20.  All three were amazing in their on way.  Fear Is Not The Boss Of Me is chock-full of great advice, humor, and encouragement.  It’s an easy read and I love that Jennifer Allwood talks to you like you’re one of her girls friends over for coffee.  I definitely give it a 10 out of 10 😊. Orphan Beach was the second Christian Fiction book that I’ve read and it was so good!  It had drama, sadness, love, happy, all the things you want in a book.  It was written in a way that I thought she had jumped into my life with my friends and family and told our tale.  The characters in this book prayed together and for each other and encouraged each other with God’s Word.  I had never read a book with this kind of content and I loved it so much!  It was like the real life of a believer written in a made up, very exciting story.  I also give it a 10 out of 10!  

And  finally, we have Christine’s study 20/20.  I just finished it up today.  Along with that study, for the last month I have also been reading A Million Little Ways by Emily Freeman for the 2nd time and doing a book club to go with it, but I’ll save that review for another day 😂 Back to 20/20, like I said, I just finished it this morning and I really want to recommend it!  Not only recommend it, but it’s really the whole reason for this blog post.  Seen, Chosen, Sent, that is the message of her study.  Christine has been seen, chosen, sent in a mighty way, that’s for sure, but I have been too, and so have you!  If you are a believer like me, in the wonder working power of Jesus, we are sent!  We are called, we are chosen and we have work to do!  We who know Jesus, know him because someone took the time to share him with us, right?  So it is up to us to carry on!  Christine talks in the last video about watching the Olympics and the relay races and the importance of passing the baton to the next racer.  There is a beautiful exchange that happens in the passing of the baton, and without it there’s no finish.  Do you have a Jesus story?  If so, it’s time to pass it on!  If you haven’t had a Jesus story yet, today could be the day!  I would love to tell you all that I know!  I would love to tell you my story, and if you have a Jesus story please share it in the comments.  It would make my heart so happy for this page to be a place of Jesus stories!  Redemption stories!  Set free stories!  

We really are running a race guys!  We really do have a part to play.  God’s Word (which I believe with my whole heart) says in Hebrews 12:1 - Therefore since we are surrounded by such a great crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up.  And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us!  

We are truly in a race of time and we have the best trainer in the world available to us!  Let us seek Him, Know Him, love Him and be loved by Him, and then let us pass that baton to the next generation so they can pass it to the next and they can pass it to the next and so on!  It’s time guys, to tell our story and to share His Good News and in telling our story, let us live to make HIStory known to the world 🌎♥️