A Lovely Scolding!

May 26, 2017
A Lovely Scolding!

Daily Reading
Ephesians 2:1-10
Psalm 93
This week’s sermon text: James 4:13-17

Field Notes
Eugene Peterson in The Message has done such a pointed paraphrase of today’s text that it needs to be shared fully. As long as I am getting a scolding (the same one Paul gave the Ephesians so long ago), it may as well be crystal clear!

“It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.

Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.”

Questions for the Field

• Read the text three times, pausing to sense or hear which word(s) speak loudest to you.
• Sit with your word or phrase for a bit, letting it soak into your mind and heart.
• What is being asked of you today?

Family Field Talk

• Christ is constantly calling us to those actions, thoughts, behaviors that are life-giving. What might that mean for you and your family?

Prayer Guide
Holy God, you save us and redeem us again and again. Turn our eyes and our hearts to full life in you. Amen.