A (5:23)
They're trying to get them wrapped. They're coming too fast. Some of them are getting through and past them, so they just pick them up and start eating them. Well, that's what we're doing to begin with. We're eating God's word together, and no, we can't keep up. But the beautiful thing, guys, he's written it down in a. And we have that book and we can keep coming back. That's why we're trying to journal. That's why we're taking our time. We're trying to cover less ground, more slowly. That's one of our themes on the Wake Up Call. So take, for instance, the incomprehensibly comprehensive phrase from verse three, every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. It could serve as a banner over the entire letter because no sooner than he says it, Paul starts spinning them off with a velocity only matched by his alacrity. Now there's a good word. As an example, consider this blessing we didn't even acknowledge from verse 5. God decided in advance to adopt us. Wait, did he just say I was adopted? I guess every adopted kid finds out sooner or later. With the blessing of adoption comes the agony of facing the curse of abandonment. With every layer of discovered blessing comes the awareness of a deeper bereftness. You see, adoption here is not a metaphor for our relationship with God. It's a reality. The cold hard truth is God did not abandon us. We abandoned him, hiding in a forest of lies, covered in a cloak of impenetrable shame. And it remains our ingrained pattern to the present day. We aren't bad, just broken. Here's the deeper truth of adoption. We will discover our blessedness to the degree we face our brokenness, that's where most of us get stuck and why adoption is more of a concept we salute than a reality we savor. You know, lately I've enjoyed observing from afar a young family on Instagram. They recently adopted a little girl who looks to be about 10 years old. And it's stunning to see the way they are lavishing this little girl with every possible blessing. She's learning to dance and sing and really to be a child. They want to take her everywhere and show her everything. It's like they want her to know that everything they are and have now belongs to her because she now belongs to them. That's what salvation is. Not a one time transaction in a ledger in the sky somewhere, but the unending full faith and credit of every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. Crashing through the invisible barriers that separate us from God and each other. Invading the old order with a newness that never loses its resplendent sheen. Man, I just kind of want to go back and read that last paragraph again. Wow. Every spiritual blessing, you know, it's just so easy just to read right past it and say, okay, yeah, check. Right. Got. Got it. I'm like, do I have it? Did I get it? I'm just going on to the next thing. Salvation, guys, is much bigger than we thought. It's not just a sort of. Well, Jesus, Yep, I believe, I believe you rose from the dead and I'm going to go to heaven when I die now. And that's the bare minimum. Jesus says, hey, now that we got that resolved, how about we bring heaven into you today? Let's just focus on today. How about we stream every spiritual blessing from the heavenly realms through your physical body, into your relationships, into your parenting, into your relationships with your brothers and sisters, who you may be fighting with on the way to school right now, as we're talking together into the hard places in your life. He wants to stream the reality of heaven through the temple of your very body and into the relationships of your heart, your home, your church, your city, your neighborhood. He wants to bring newness, you know, he's making all things new. You heard that, didn't you? He's making you new. And it's a newness that doesn't lose its sheen. It just keeps getting renewed again and again. You get newer and newer and newer. Even some of you who are getting old and older and you're. You feel your body giving way and diminishing. I mean, I love that text in Second Corinthians where He says, therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, inwardly we are being renewed day by day. He says, so we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is passing away, but what is unseen is eternal. See, this is the amazing thing about Jesus, is how we think of eternity as sequential in time. Like, well, we're going to have, you know, temporal life on earth, and then when we die, we're going to have eternity. And Jesus says, no, no, no, no, no. That's how it maybe used to be. But way, way back before it used to be that it was heaven and earth overlapping, completely intermingled. It was sin and death that broke that bond. Jesus has brought it back together in his very body. He has restored the unity. And he's saying to us, wake up, sleepers rise from the dead. Death no longer has hold of you. Sin no longer has reign in you. It's time to wake up and rise from the dead. Jesus is, I'm shining on you. I'm shining in you. I'm going to shine through you. That's the gospel heaven streaming live through us on earth today. Golly, I get carried away. We got to pray. Abba. Father, we thank you for your son, Jesus, who took on our brokenness and who would make it a thing of beauty if we would walk in this blessed way of the cross with him. Yes, Jesus, we want to know this way. Which is another way of saying, we want to know you because you are the way. You are the truth. You are the life. Thank you. Light us up. We're praying in your name, Jesus. Amen. Okay, journal prompts. And then we're going to sing. Got dad here today. We're going to sing a good one. Have you ever reflected on this notion of being blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms? Mean? Just. Have you ever thought about it? I hadn't thought about it until, you know, a few years ago. Now I can't stop thinking about it. Have. How do these concepts of adoption and redemption become more than abstract concepts in our understanding? Just kind of like. Yeah, I think I know what that means. Yeah, I think I got that. And what do you make of this connection between our experience of the blessing of adoption to our awareness of the curse of abandonment? Okay, I could go on. You know that. Could. We got seeds to sow Today we got songs to sing Today We've got love to pour out Jesus, you see you now are the temple of God okay, I'm stopping.
