Ephmylife-Evil Days Parents Honor External Present Heavenly Chapter 5 and 6

so this post is a week late and probably a tad thin in comparison to what was taught last week... but let me try and hit the highlights

so we conclude Ephesians tonight and it has been a bit challenging for this writer to deliver with intensity and intimacy what raw power is within these pages...

Chapter 5 starts positively enough... "be imitators of God" a clarion call if there ever was one for believers in the church of Ephesus from their apostle Paul.. however... then the chapter fully discloses its weight... Paul ramjams a flurry of regards/listings/indictments at the hearers... and inescapable insurmountable force of odds that

Evil Days- there are dark forces, people, and places out in the world and Paul writes against them, but also against us and those that would remit themselves to the things he hath listed, things that seem to be for everyone... declaring not that darkness live in us but we ourselves have become the darkness... a weight and hurtful (and true) claim!

Parents- after all the weight and pressure pouring out of Paul's wordpurse... comes the solution to proposed problem... submission... which to the divine authority sounds fair and honest and holy enough... but he complements that kind of submission by opting for household submissions... that wives be to husbands, husbands to wives, children to parents, and slaves to masters... a spiteful claim that would spur most away from his words... to salt the injured with submission to authorities "that may be proper, but misplaced" Paul does not fully "understand my situation" how could he could offer something like this... this is.. .unfair...

Honor- i think i read somewhere that the understanding of honor comes after loss... this must be so... because honor seems to be a form of exaltation after suffering or something like that... but Honor is what Paul asks of us... after we have submitted

the final bout of lettering for us comes in a particularly cool twist...

External- all of the recent character crushing/bashing seems to come with a purpose... to BOLDEN us... we must be broken and beat to listen, to charge, to brave... the internal clarification, character cleansing comes for us to understand the external reality we now face... that we are in a fight!

Present Powers- we face a current force of darkness that is sometimes unseen so we need to be on our best guard and readiest posture... we face evil forces there is no doubt about that... and we must be brave.. but we must also be ready!

Heavenly Hope- the things we fight, the realization that our present condition is not all conditions for all times... there is brightness gleaming and pockets of hope to live in and fight through!