EVERY SPIRITUAL BLESSING - PART 1

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, wrote today's epistle to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus. First, He commended the Ephesians for their faithfulness, and second, He described the nature of blessing God has blessed us with, as a result of our salvation through Christ.

Reference: Ephesians 1:3 New International Version (NIV) "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ."

Apostle Paul is telling us that God is worthy of praise and acknowledgement because He is the first to bless us, His children, with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Apostle Paul is always full of gratitude in his epistles. He always establishes a clear emphasis on being grateful and thankful to God. And its a good thing to learn from him. Perhaps, many of us spend time looking for God's blessings because we are not habitually grateful like apostle Paul. The more we bless, praise and appreciate God, the more we experience these blessings in reality.

No doubt, everyone in Christ Jesus is already blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places, where Christ is. In other words, every blessing we could possibly need has been given in Christ. What an incredible heritage for God's people. But these blessings remain mere written words if we don't know what they are. How can we enjoy the blessings that God has given us if we don't get to know them? To know these blessings is to study God's Word and know Him, so He can show them to us by His Spirit, and so we can digest them through constant meditation and appropriate them to our lives.

2 Peter 1:3 (NIV) says, "His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness." To access everything we need for godly life, which God has already given to us in the heavenly places in Christ, we must know God for ourselves, through His Word. That is another way of saying: We have to go through God to get it. No other means. The process of walking in them is through His knowledge because He did not make those blessings accessible in the natural first, rather He supplied all of them in the heavenly realms, so we can place our faith in Him to walk in them. So the certainty of our spiritual blessings is guaranteed in the heavenly places, but the reality in the earth realm depends on our faith.

If we don't get to the place of this understanding, we cannot fully function in these spiritual blessings. They are exceedingly great and precious and when we yield to God's Word and Spirit, uncommon insights and understanding about these blessings will rise up in us. In the Word, the voice of the Holy Spirit will teach us and guide us to locate and spot them, even if we haven't known them before, or He will grant us more revelation about them. Understanding this truth will cause us to identify and walk in them. Therefore, we need divine knowledge to be fully equipped to go for all spiritual blessings in Christ and this requires effort on our part.

This is why we must be well trained in the Word of God and the hope of eternal life. For this reason also, Paul prayed in verse 17, saying, "I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people" (Ephesians 1:17 NIV). I, pastor EJC, also pray that the Holy Spirit would bring us into fuller and more aware knowledge of God for this purpose. In part two, we shall get to know the Spiritual blessings we have in Christ, as Paul further defined them.

Scripture Reading - John 3:16; Romans 8:1; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Colossians 1:14.

Exuberant Declaration: My life is full of glory and excellence because God has blessed me with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ. I'm a new creation in Christ Jesus. I'm alive to God, having been born into a newness of life. Therefore, I function daily in God's unlimited grace, blessings and mercies. Praise God!