Prayer of Blessing
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.” Ephesians 1:3-6
Paul starts out his letter to the church in Ephesus with this prayer of blessing and praise to God. When Paul wrote the church in Ephesus it was less to do with pointing out problems that they were experiencing in their Christian walk and more about explaining doctrine. In other words, Paul felt the church of Ephesus was getting much more right than they were wrong. They must have been walking right paths in this Christian walk and were possibly already growing spiritually so Paul wanted to feed that spiritual growth.
This prayer starts with blessing and praise to God for what he has already given us. He has already given us every spiritual blessing in our salvation. Because we are, if found to have Christ, already blessed with every spiritual blessing, which is far greater than material blessings. Unfortunately, many times our prayer lives become more about a “to do” list that we are giving to God. We ask for things, we ask for direction, we ask for healing, we ask for God to fix “it” for us, whatever our “it” is. But truthfully because we have already received the blessing of Him, our prayer lives can and should be about just spending time with Him. Now don’t get me wrong, I think it is ok, and even necessary sometimes, to pray specifically, it’s much more about priorities though and recognizing, as Paul did, that even when we don’t get that thing that we want, that we already have the spiritual blessing of Him. And we should present ourselves to Him as holy and blameless. Because we are, because no matter what we have done, no matter what happened yesterday or even five minutes ago, we are holy and blameless because the blood of Jesus covers us and covers our sins.
I love the next thought that we are adopted as sons because of Jesus and that was the Father’s plan and purpose all along. When Jesus came to earth as a baby, the plan was in motion for him to die on the cross for our sins. Because He did that, we are sons and daughters of God. We have been adopted into the kingdom and we get to be called Beloved!
I love that word Beloved. I’ve only begun paying more attention to it in recent past. It simply means to be loved, or dearly loved. Friends just because of what Jesus did on the cross, we get to be called Beloved of God. Have you ever thought about that? I have tried more recently to live from a place of being loved by God. Let me put it this way. I felt loved and seen by my Daddy, and the thought of disappointing my Daddy hurt my heart. Why? Because I treasured his love. Now I know that even if and when I disappointed my Daddy it didn’t change his love for me. I was still loved by him. But many times I made better decisions just because I didn’t want to disappoint my Daddy. God’s love for us is even greater than any earthly daddy could ever give. Being Beloved by God means we are treasured by Him, even when our actions don’t “measure up” in our human minds, God still just sees us as His Beloved! And when we recognize that, for me, I want to live more from that Belovedness! (Not sure that’s a word, but hopefully you get the point.) I want to try to live my life in a way that He won’t be disappointed in me. Not because I see Him as a superior being waiting to cast judgment on me, but because He loves me and I love Him and I am so grateful to be adopted that I want my life to be a blessing to Him! I am so grateful to be His daughter! I am so grateful to Jesus for the spiritual blessings I have received because of what He did for me. I am so grateful to be His Beloved!
Restore 