Category: spiritual blessings

Spiritual Blessings

Wednesday’s Column: Third’s Words

Gary Pollard

Ephesians 1.3 says, “In Christ, God has given us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” What does that mean? We hear “spiritual blessings” and might gloss over it as another Christianese phrase. Here’s a short list of what those spiritual blessings are.  

  • 1.4 — God chose us before Christ made the world. 
  • 1.4 — He chose us out of love to be his special people. 
  • 1.5 — He chose us to be his own children through Jesus Christ. 
  • 1.6 — God gives grace liberally.
  • 1.7 — We are free because of Jesus’s sacrifice. 
  • 1.7 — We have forgiveness because of God’s grace. 
  • 1.8-9 — God told us how we can get that grace. He didn’t set up a system that we would have to look super hard for, he made sure to preserve the information needed to find him.  
  • 1.10 — He is bringing the heavens and the earth together through Jesus. 
  • 1.12-13 — He made grace available to every country on earth, not just one group. 
  • 1.13-14 — He gave us his spirit as a downpayment on our reward. 

While we won’t fully appreciate these spiritual blessings until later (Paul says these riches are “too great to fully understand” in 3.8), we’re still extremely grateful that God has done so much to give us hope for eternal life. 

Alive In Christ

Thursday’s Column: Captain’s Blog

 

Carl Pollard

Ephesians 3:20-21 says, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

In 1999, Australian Bill Morgan was a truck driver who got in a pretty bad accident that left him in coma. After 12 days and despite doctors giving him zero chance of surviving, he miraculously woke up and was, shockingly, completely fine! Feeling lucky for surviving, he went on and bought a scratch lottery ticket and won 18,000 dollars and a new car.

Normally winning a car wouldn’t have made it to the news but, because of Morgan’s accident story, Channel 9 decided to do a feature on the man who was “clinically dead and came back to win the lottery.” While filming, they asked him to buy a lottery ticket so they could re-enact the winning scratch. He happily obliged and started scratching the ticket on camera. But suddenly he stopped. He looked at the camera, and said “I just won $250,000.” 

Bill is a man that we would say has some pretty good luck. He was supposed to be dead, but instead he woke up, won a car, and $250,000 dollars. There was a point in our lives where we were spiritually dead, and Christ brought us back to life. But Christ doesn’t stop there. He saves us and continues to bless the faithful. Each and every person that has come in contact with the blood of Christ is no longer dead, plus His blood continually cleanses us of sin if we walk in the light (1 John 1:9). 

As lucky as Bill Morgan was, I’d like to suggest that those who are added to the body of Christ are blessed far beyond physical possessions. Our faith in Christ leads to eternal life!