Ken Boa Reflections Ministries

Ken Boa: I'm going to give you a few thoughts on Ephesians. I have something else that I've been processing a lot and I want to share it with you as well. This "being and doing," as you can see up here, we have this dynamic in which the calling of the body and the conduct is a really easy book to outline. What I love about this is that, as we’ve said before on a couple of occasions, there is this wonderful sense of development between what God has done and what we are to do. What God has done is on the left side, and what is it? Everything.

If you are here now, it's not because you were so clever. It's the grace of God that called you into a relationship with Him. You don't have anything that wasn't given to you, so it's the key to grasping our situation. But we are given this commandment to walk out of the foundation. This is why I now put it this way, because really, you can't do living out chapters four to six unless you understand and live out Ephesians one to three. It's a reciprocal relationship because as you do a thing, it affects your beliefs. Yet, at the same time, a certain change of beliefs affects behaviors and they reciprocate. It's very difficult to overemphasize the need to live out of the center and understand our true dignity and calling.

In Chapter 1, we saw the work of the Father, the role of the Son, and the role of the Holy Spirit in choosing us, adopting us, and accepting us. Something you want to remind yourself about is the significance of all that entails. The Son redeemed us, He has forgiven us, He has revealed God's will to us, and He's made us an inheritance. The Spirit has sealed us and pledged us. In one sentence, Paul puts all this into one brilliant sentence that encapsulates good Trinitarian theology in a way that's almost impossible to imagine.

In the first portion of Ephesians Chapter 1, he talks about this wonderful prayer that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened. It became the first of the four life-changing prayers. These are prayers that I've encouraged people to learn and memorize. This richness that we have, that all things are in subjection under His feet, shows the dignity of Christ and that all things come from Him, through Him, and to Him. We've been made alive in Christ as this caption says because formerly you were dead in your trespasses and sins.

In these verses, summarizing what we studied before, you formerly walked according to the course of this world, which is according to the prince of the power of the air. Those are two of the three poles. Then the third one is the flesh, the lust of the flesh. This is where we get the world, the flesh, and the devil, though I don't know why they don't have it in the real order in the Scriptures as the world, the devil, and the flesh. I will point out to you that, again, this is a card we used before that emphasizes the three downward pulls in your life of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

The basic response that we should have to them is that against the devil, you resist. The devil and his angels are always going to be enemies of grace, and you resist. The beautiful thing is I didn't have to make up these three Rs. They were in the Scripture. This was not a forced alliteration. It really does come from the Scriptures because we are called to resist the devil. But you resist him, twice it says.

Then you're to reckon yourself, and that's the term. It sounds like a southernism. From New Jersey, when I first heard "I reckon," I said, "What are they talking about?" Then I realized it's an interesting way of looking at it. I regard it as true. We would never say that up in New Jersey. We would say, "I'm fixing to," or things of that nature. But that said, "I reckon it to be true" is basically to acknowledge it even if I don't feel that it's true. I regard it as such. That's a faith proposition that honors God and says, "If You've said that You've adopted me, then I'm going to believe it's true and know that I'm not here by chance."

Then the third is renew because against the world, our call is to renew our minds. Once again, He tells us to let our minds dwell on the things that are renewing our mind. It's interesting; the "I" stands for the interior. I'm kind of emphasizing the flesh. Thank God that's going to be removed when we see Jesus. He's going to burn it away. But you want to be sure you're one of those people who hears "Well done," not "You may enter." There's a difference. You want to live in such a way that you're going to be giving an account of yourself. I'm going to say something more about that in a minute because I've come up with a process of thought that's been useful to me and it builds upon this.

Bear in mind though that we have this remnant of our mortality. That's what Paul means by the flesh. It's not the real you anymore. It used to be, but when you got a new nature, what happened is this thing that Paul calls the flesh is the remnant of your mortality in Adam. It's because really the memories were not erased, were they? The lies, the scripts, were they erased? Many people bought the lie: "You'll never amount to anything." "You're just stupid, aren't you?" "Why can't you be like your brother?" Those are burned into us. You will not get rid of all that stuff until Jesus burns it away. So it's always a downward pull that would tether us to the visible over the unseen.

Against the flesh, you reckon yourself as dead to sin. That's not who I am. So one of the best things you can use when you're tempted is to say, "That's not who I am." Does that make sense to you? It's beneath the dignity of who you really have become. Why don't you live out who you are? That's the whole point of becoming in your practice who you already are in your position. You're already with Christ, seated with Him in your position, but your practice needs to conform more and more to who you are. That's why we grow and become more and more. That's why we're in this what I call a soul-forming world.

In this world, in your mother's womb, you were being formed for biological life. In this womb, you're being formed for spiritual life. There's even a different Greek word. Biological life is "bios," nine months. "Zoe," eternal life, is really the life of Christ, no beginning, no end. We're given a few decades in this womb, maybe nine decades if you're lucky. Or are you lucky? After a certain point, you begin to wonder. But that's another story.

The point is that, in fact, that's why He's calling us. He's using it very cleverly of Him to make us wear out. A very brilliant strategy. Remember how I say that age conspires with God to get you ready, and so to transfer your hope from this world to the next. I recently ran into someone who was clinging to something that I thought was a mistake because it was evident that there was a self-deception going on. It was prompted by the fact that this person didn't want to go with Jesus yet. There were some things on earth that this person wanted to see, maybe her granddaughters, whatever it was. It doesn't matter what it is. There's a problem with that, isn't there? Because last time I checked, we should be increasing our appetite for home. Why tether yourself to this planet where you're a sojourner? You're an exile, a tenant, a stranger, an alien, an exile. You're a wanderer. You don't belong here.

Your citizenship is where? I'm quoting from Philippians 3. Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we eagerly await the Savior, who's going to transform the body of this humble state into conformity with the body of His glory by the exertion of His power to bring all things into conformity to Himself. That's an incredible promise. It means that your body, this earth suit, is going to be transformed into a glorious resurrected body. This caterpillar will become a butterfly. You need to imagine that rather than cling to caterpillar life. Rather, you want to desire and have an aspiration.

Here's the delicious irony. The more you long for home, the more you will accomplish in terms of the Spirit of God in this "now," not the less. You'll be more alive to the grace of the present moment if you're longing for home rather than if you're clinging to this death-like world. It's just a thing that I've encountered and I find I have to process for myself. So my desire, I can honestly say, is that I have nothing in this world itself that I long for anymore. But I know I have, for lots of reasons, I'm on borrowed time to accomplish unfinished business. All of us are in that position.

We have this wonderful picture of our new life in Christ. You've been brought into conformity with the image of His Son, and that has made an enormous difference in your life journey. In Ephesians Chapter 2, you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. You have those three poles. Among them, he says, we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh. We were just indulging the desires of the flesh and we were actually children not of God, but children of wrath.

But God, I love that, "But God." In spite of the fact that we were dead and we were disobedient and we were completely self-deceptive, deceived and indulgent, "But God," being wealthy in mercy, even because of His great love with which He loved us, not because of anything lovable about us. Even when we were dead in our transgressions and sins, He made us alive together with Christ. He jumps in and says, "By grace you have been saved," which He then goes back into a little bit more detail later. But He can't resist saying it because it's the basis for everything. It's not by works, but by grace. That is what makes the difference between religion and the Bible, God's romance.

Instead of some kind of an effort to achieve or earn or merit the favor or acceptance of ultimate reality, however you define it, whether Eastern or Western religions, it doesn't matter. At the end of the day, they are attempts to attain or achieve or placate or earn. Whereas only, only, only, and I can't stress this enough, only in biblical Christianity do you have the vision of God who says you'll never make it that way, and the only thing you can do is to receive My grace.

What good work, it was in John 6:29, Jesus was asked. What good work must we work in order to do the will of God? What did He say? "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent." So the work is not works, but actually transferring your trust because, as you know, that word clearly used again and again is "pisteuo." Believe means to transfer your trust, to receive. It's not a matter of just intellectually believing because people can have religion without Christ.

When I spoke at Henry Wood's funeral, and it was a glorious send-off as good as I've seen, many people said that. I shared many things with them. But one of the things I shared about him is the glorious context in which he now is going to be moving into the resurrected glory of God, that he wouldn't want to come back. He wouldn't want that. He grasped and understood that that's what his longing was for, that transfer of longing and moving back to Him. So he is going to be back into that fullness of glory and welcomed, and I believe will hear, "Well done." That is a thing that all of us want to live for, is to hear the "Well done" of the Father. It's right and proper that we should because it is natural for a child to desire the pleasure of the Father.

So often we don't get that connection. Sometimes we need to be reparented, but it is natural for us to long for that. But we were dead, we were in our trespasses, we were not desirable. And yet He says He's done this: made us alive, regenerated us. He raised us up. Radical words. Raised us up, seated with Him in the heavenly places. But He's saying that's already been done. How can that be? We're not there, are we? But are you? What's the faith proposition? You choose to believe that your deepest self is a spiritual being, that your spirit is in the presence of God. You are a spiritual being having this earthbound experience. So you are both in the seated in the heavenly places on the one hand, at the same time you're also walking on this world as a pilgrim.

But that's your spirit. Your soul, though, is not in that situation. Your soul needs to be processed because it involves your mind, your thinking, your desires, your emotions. Your soul is not always perfect. Why did I say or think or do what I just said or thought or did? But it's not the deepest you, but we struggle. And so the more as we live in this life, we are to choose "zoe," to choose life. Those who are born twice die only once.

He gives us this beautiful picture: "By grace you've been saved through faith, that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works that no one may boast." For we are His workmanship. I know I taught this already, but I wanted to review a few more things with you. I think that with these truths, I've discovered them to be so. You've got to hear them again and again. You don't get it the first time. Just like you can't get the Gospel the first time, you have to hear it multiple times. But after a while, it begins to sink in. That's why I repeat myself as much as I do.

I hope I'm not boring you, but my point is I'm trying to make it clear by way of repetition, of a reminder, so that you don't forget. It's a discipline that's required because spiritual truth leaks all the time. You're constantly leaking and it erodes and evaporates. Left to ourselves, we would decline. We know that's true in every other area. So you have to constantly be pressing forward and moving on and walking by the grace of God.

This gift, He says, we are His workmanship. The word "poiema." We are His poem. He's saying, effectively, "I prepared you beforehand for these things even before you were born, that you would walk in them." That's a wonderful thought, isn't it? That His intention and plan before the foundation of the world was that He would show you acts of kindness and grace. Go back to verse seven because it's a beautiful verse for me. He says so that in the ages to come, what's He plan to do? Read it yourself. Show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness. What's that telling you? It's the pleasure of the Father to lavish kindness on you, His beloved child, forever and ever. You want to process that, don't you? It means a great deal to me.

Now let's move on to something I wanted to share with you because I had a card that looked like this. This little card: "What do you seek?" "Who do you say I am?" "Do you love Me more than these?" Found it to be a useful tool effectively because recall that it involved Jesus' very first question and then as well the last question He's recorded as having asked. The first question, "What do you seek?" is about the most profound question you could ever ask a person. It's in John 1:38. Because you see, what you seek will define you. You're shaped by your desires, by your intentions, by your longings. You become conformed by that which you desire.

Then, "Who do you say I am?" That's in the middle of His ministry, maybe, but He's working with His disciples. They're at Caesarea Philippi. "Who do men say I am?" And they give Him some answers. But then what does He say? He turns it around: "But who do you say?" No one can avoid that question, whether in this life or in the next. Every knee will bow and then they will say who He really is. Wouldn't it be wise to say it now?

Then, "Do you love Me more than these?" He's talking to Peter effectively, and the "these," we're not sure. I like that it's not specific because it could be your vocation, these disciples, this call, this ministry, whatever. But the "these," He will brook no rival. And so He asks this question because if you have anything you love more than Me, it won't be enough. You must love Me in such a way that everything else seems by comparison to be hatred, though it's not.

Indeed, the mystery is true that if you love Jesus more than another person, you will love that person a lot more than if you love that person more than Jesus. I know it's a hard way to put it, but that's how it means. He will not be the enemy of your love; He will energize it. But only if you love Him more. You see the mystery there? He demands that unrivaled attention and will brook no rival. And so He will find ways of trying to woo us and draw us to Himself. Many people can spend, even believers spend decade after decade in resisting His real call. So it's a question of those things.

Then what happened was I thought of these questions and then we go on to—let me just make sure I got this pointer. Yeah. Okay. Then I realized, you know, this prayer of St. Richard of Chichester, probably written around the year 1200 AD. So it's an old prayer. You know where it comes from. It's an old prayer that he wrote, but it was then later became popularized, interestingly enough, in the thing Godspell as "Day by Day." Day by day, three things I pray. Then you think of that music, but don't worry about the music. What I'm saying is this is an old prayer and I love the sequence: knowing You, loving You, following You.

Then I realized, you know, they do conform, don't they? To those questions of Jesus. "What do you seek?" because if you seek to know Him better than anything else, is there any higher good that you could seek? You're already seeking infinity and eternity, aren't you? Then that's the right question. "Who do you say I am?" Love You more dearly, again because "Do you love Me more than these?" again is going to be—He's going to be saying. But this love that He has is a romance, you see, because He is the groom and we are the bride. And so it's a sacred romance.

Then third, loving You more than these, following You more nearly. Then I realized as well we could do something more with this. I can combine it with "Trust the Father, abide in the Son, walk by the Spirit" because that has been a real central theme. As I processed what does that mean to do that, I realized that too conforms to the sequence of those prayers, doesn't it? I'm not making it up; it really does. Because if I'm to trust the Father, I want to know You more clearly. Abide in the Son, may I love You more dearly. Walk by the Spirit, may I follow You more nearly. Because that really is a great fit for that relationship. And so those are great prayers.

But then I came up with this and I did something different with these questions. I put them in a different sequence. First of all, I had this first sequence: "What do you seek?" "Who do you say I am?" "Do you love Me more than these?" Then I did something different. I put that next to it here. Then I did this. I put that there. It suddenly changed the rules completely. This is what I came up with. It became a trinity of trinities. It works vertically and it works horizontally. And so I'm just going to point this out.

This central theme, it's very Trinitarian, isn't it? So when I ask this question, "What do I seek?", I then put—it relates to the Father that I want to know more clearly. I meditate on that. And then I can then say "Who do you say I am?" which brings it to the Son: "May I love You more dearly." And that's the response to Him. And so it is with the Spirit as well. I realized you can do this vertically, but it works nicely horizontally as well. You can even do it this way if you want it, but what's in the center of the trilogy of trinities, the trinity of trinities? It's the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. It's Jesus.

I found this to be a very useful tool and I'm going to be sharing it with Diana and having her send it. So this has become a powerful tool. But I want you to notice there's—they conform to goodness and truth and beauty, which is interesting how that works because it's different from the sequence that God uses to reveal Himself in the world. There He starts with beauty, and then the beauty of God's created world points beyond itself to the truth of God's revealed Word, and that then points to the Father. But that's just parenthetical.

But here's what I'm going to send you. That, but then it occurred to me just on Friday, because I only came up with this last Saturday when I was with a friend, another person I'm likely not to see again in this life. Knowing this, I began to share what could I want my friend to think in his last days and times. And then that's when I spoke of these things and these converged as I was speaking to him. It was a really interesting thing. So I wrote it out, and that was a gift from God. For me, it's been very helpful.

Then on Friday when I was teaching this, I realized there's another way of using these questions. At the end of the day—I find, by the way, I'm using this—I probably did this 20 times already today. I can do it instantly now. I don't even have to because you know you can train yourself to be aware on two levels simultaneously. So I can've—it's become so familiar, I've done it hundreds of times since that last Saturday. It's become so routine, but not routine-rich, that I can summon it at all times when I'm talking with you or whatever.

It's become very easy, but I can just zoom in to the "Trust the Father, abide in the Son, walk by the Spirit," and then bring the other elements as required. But really that centrality, what does it mean to trust God? And I can develop in that. And so that makes it very rich because God, remember, told us you'll never understand Me, but you must trust Me. As a scientist, you know that I'm involved with trying to amplify the glory of the created order in such a way that people will begin to realize it's more mysterious than they could have ever dreamed. In fact, so mysterious that you can't understand anything in the natural world. You can't understand a molecule of water, let alone a cell, which is more complex than the city of Atlanta, let alone an insect or a bird and so forth. It's all mystery.

Then to do a paraphrase of what Jesus encountered with Nicodemus: "How can a man be born? Don't you understand? Unless a man is born again." If you cannot understand when I speak to you of natural things, how would it be if I spoke to you of spiritual things? Do you think if you don't understand the mysteries that surround you, and you don't—in fact, we're called to garden and steward mystery—do you think if you don't understand that, you're going to understand God's purposes and why He's allowing this person to suffer as they are? If you can't understand this, you think you're going to understand that?

So come to the understanding that you really—the question you really ought to be asking is not "Why is this happening?", but "What do You want me to learn from this? How do I learn to change my desires?" The other "Why" is becoming more important to me, the why of gratitude. What have you or I done that we deserve this? And the answer is nothing. So really living in mystery rather than trying to whine and wonder. Because even if He were to tell you the reasons, you wouldn't have understood any more than if Job were given answers or could answer. He gave him a—He looked at his creation and said, "You can't understand that, so stop trying to 'why' me and then trust me."

Let loose of the arrogance that you're going to understand Me. This is what theologians do all the time, I fear. So many theologians get locked into a theological system that's so they think consistent. It's a rationalized system that they love their theology more than they love the God that it's supposed to be about. Occupational hazard. So I want you to be a person who uses these tools as a resource. But as I say, I did on Friday morning, I came into this extra insight. Instead of this, at the end of the day, you do that. Why would you do this at the end of the day? What do you think? Why—in the daytime I'm saying "What did you seek?" At the end of the day, it's a review. You see, this is a review. And by the way, it's also preparation for the judgment seat of Christ.

I find it to be very powerful as well because it gives me a chance to review this last day. Did I squander it or did I invest it? It's a review. But it's wise to ask these questions because Jesus is going to ask you effectively something like this: "What did you seek more than anything else in this world? Did you come to know Me? And did you love—" You see where I'm going with that. So I use that that way, but throughout the day, I do this. Any questions on this? I'd like you to try it out, so I'm going to send this to you as I said by way of Diana. Any comments or questions on this? It's been so valuable to me; I just felt I wanted to share it with you. Yeah.

Guest (Female): You said something about the whys, "whine and wonder."

Ken Boa: It has to do with these four whys of pain. You recall these four whys of pain? Whine and wonder. I'm just being silly. We tend to whine or "why," and the wonder is the why. Whine is also a part of it. There's a lot of whining going on. Really because we feel that we are owed an explanation. We arrogantly demand understanding. And He says you'll never understand Me.

So the first why, as you see up here, is the why of grumbling. This is just by way of review. It's never helpful. It assumes there's no answer, and it's putting God to the test and it's arrogant. The why of grief—yes, there is some good biblical examples of that. They're called Psalms of Lament, both corporate and individual Psalms. And so they are like saying—not saying I don't understand, but they're saying—it's like crying out to Daddy, saying "I'm hurting." That sort of thing. What I love about those lament Psalms though, is that when they cry out to God, then they do something. They review God's work in the past. Sometimes some of them will also reflect on God's promises for the future. And guess what happens at the end of the Psalm? What started with a lament ends with praise. Did their circumstances change? No, their perspective did. At the end of the day, the most important thing about us is cultivating an eternal perspective in this temporal arena.

The third why, the why of guidance, is as I say more helpful because it turns the question "Why is this happening to me?" into the question "What is the Lord teaching me in this experience?" So I say that it transforms the "Why" into a "What," and openly invites God to change us rather than to change our circumstances. Does that make sense to you? You can see that's more valuable because otherwise we're really in some ways asking God to love us less, not more. You can't grow without adversity; it's part of the process, part of the course. So it's a wisdom perspective: how do we respond to it?

Finally, the fourth why is the most helpful of them all. Because when I'm going through a trial, "Why have You been so good to me?" is a clear acknowledgment that God's compassion, grace, and loving-kindness are in our lives. This is the why of amazement, affirming that all we are and have is gift and grace. And that to me is very significant. So I do believe you could—and I'll send this to you as I say—it's easy to memorize this little trinity of trinities. If you will try it out, I believe you can learn to love it. That's what I want you to do is make it an experiment. What do you have to lose? So maybe have a printout worth but I want you to memorize it and use it until it becomes part of you.

Now I say this because my desire is for your well-being. Remember, what is love about? The steady intention of your will toward another's highest good. So if I love you, I want what's best for you. My eager desire is that you become conformed to His image and do not succumb to the mediocrity that so often is accepted as norm. But rather, you understand that you still have life and purpose. And while you still have life and vitality to any degree at all, you are called to operate in this life as a responsible steward. Because to whom much is given, much will be required.

So don't put yourself out to pasture, but realize He's given you actually gifts and tools, hard-learned wisdom and skills and insight. Often we feel, "Ah, what's the use?" and fritter that. I think there's other ways of living, and that's what I'm just urging you to do as well, to see actually the best can be ahead. Not to say it won't be more painful, but to say that you will find that an obedient and inspired pursuit, and asking "What do you seek?" and loving Him more than anything else, abiding in Christ, walking by the Spirit—you'll see that you've been granted time to accomplish unfinished business.

I've often wondered about various composers and painters and writers and others who died young and who were very accomplished; they weren't diminishing. And you wonder, "Gosh, what would have happened if they were able to live 70 years instead of their 39 or 47 and so forth?" But the issue is this: you can ask yourself, what is it God's got you here for right now? I think He's got you here for a purpose. His desire is for you to make the best yet to come. It's not a question of what's measurable because here's the divine equalizer: faithfulness to opportunity. So whether you have a little or a lot, it's not what you have, but what you do with what you're given. That's the equalizer.

So the desire of your heart should be as you ask God to—use these questions as a diagnostic tool as well and go from there. Almost out of time. Any closing questions? Surely this doesn't raise any questions. I can't believe it. I feel like I'm looking at a still-life painting. Sometimes we just look at you like that because it's so rich and there's so much depth, and you just have to absorb it.

I see. These are, and frankly, what's fresh bread for me, much of what I just shared the last short time, this little chart here, this one here and this one here, this is fresh bread. It's working for me very well, this trinity of trinities, of the vertical-horizontal work and the centrality of Christ as the central thing. So all you have to do is just summon it to mind and the whole is now there. I want it to become a tool. Try it out for 30 days is what I'm trying to do. Usually takes about 30 days, doesn't it, to form a habit? At least that. Give it a go. But you have nothing to lose by because I'm not wasting any time, I'm not spending extra time. When I'm driving, I'm thinking about it. It's not like you're just paralyzed. Something we could do for Lent. Not bad.

I had a funny experience because I have two more minutes according to the watch. My friend Benny Curl in Tennessee, last time I had a conversation with him, he was going nuts because I couldn't—he couldn't understand a thing I was saying. So I sent him a set of hearing aids. Now we had a good conversation a week later. He's delighted. And then we were able to share stories since we go back to Knoxville in 1972. A lot of funny stories and a lot of laughs because there's no substitute for a friend of your youth. It was very rich.

But the funny thing is, he's focused on caring for his mother and so forth and he's almost living a life of total solitude. Yet I think he's doing what he's called to do. I think there's real reasons behind his—not a matter of numbers, but there's a rich things that are going on there in this season. So I'm trying to prepare him for that as well. But then I realized by his accounting that he does see a lot of my stuff and so forth, but he is a news junkie. He spends so much—and he told me what he's focused on these things and that. So I said, "Let's try something." I said, "I want to give you a 30-day trial here. I want you to go cold turkey on the news." Don't watch any news at all, not even the futures. No news.

So the idea of news and then secondly, what I want you to do is to take these things I just gave you here and to make that the centrality of your time, that you're going to be focusing on these things and that you're going to be—and I gave him certain other things to do as well. Isn't that wonderful to do that? He said, "I'll never do that except because of our relationship." What've you got to lose? And what'll happen is you'll realize that you're getting so paralyzed with fear. The expulsive power of a new affection is to love a better good more than an inferior thing. You'll never regret that. So I'm trying to give him a better good. You can never get rid of something by extinction, can you? It's got to be by replacement. Give him something better and give him an appetite for the good stuff. Then they'll say, "I don't need that anymore."

May I pray that for you, this becomes a tool that the Spirit will use? Father, we thank You that You have called us to trust You in all things and to abide in Your Son and to derive our life and vitality from Him by walking in Him, and to walk in the power of Your Spirit and to keep in step with Your Spirit. As we do this, we realize that we become Your people and that we come to live out of the center of who we and whose we are in Christ. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last, the firstborn from the dead, the root and the offspring of David, the bright morning star. We pray that Yeshua HaMashiach would be the one that we'd love and that we would love Him more than these. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.