In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace. \u2014Ephesians 1:7<\/p>\n
A prisoner who survived 14 years in a Cuban jail told how he kept his spirits up and his hope alive: \u201cI had no window in my cell, and so I mentally constructed one on the door.<\/p>\n
I \u2018saw\u2019 in my mind a beautiful scene from the mountains, with water tumbling down a ravine over rocks. It became so real to me that I would visualize it without effort every time I looked at the cell door.\u201d Ironically, some of the most hopeful books of the Bible\u2014 Philippians, Colossians, and Ephesians\u2014come out of Paul\u2019s house arrest in Rome. The letter to the Ephesians gives a hint as to what the apostle Paul saw when he thought about life beyond his place of confinement.<\/p>\n
First he saw the spiritual growth in the churches he left behind. This book opens with a burst of thanksgiving for the vitality of the Ephesian church (Eph. 1:15-16). Then he sought to open the eyes of their hearts to even more exalted sights: the \u201cexceeding riches\u201d of God\u2019s grace (2:7).<\/p>\n
When Paul cranks up the volume to express God\u2019s plan of love, not one low, mournful note sneaks in. If you feel discouraged or question whether the Christian life is worth it, Ephesians proves to be a great tonic. It prescribes the riches in Christ available to all.<\/p>\n
Source: Philip Yancey, odb.org<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace. \u2014Ephesians 1:7 A prisoner who survived 14 years in a Cuban jail told how he kept his spirits up and his hope alive: \u201cI had no window in my cell, and so I mentally constructed one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.najicherfanfoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.najicherfanfoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.najicherfanfoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.najicherfanfoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.najicherfanfoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2294"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.najicherfanfoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19044,"href":"https:\/\/www.najicherfanfoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294\/revisions\/19044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.najicherfanfoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.najicherfanfoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.najicherfanfoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.najicherfanfoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}