Seeing that our study is taking us into the prison epistles, letters that Paul wrote while being imprisoned for his work as an evangelist and missionary, it pushed my mind to an experience I had the first time I engaged in a prison ministry. Many years ago, one of the elders in my church who […]
Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon are known as “the prison epistles” because they were written from prison (either Caesarea or Rome, Acts 24-26 or 28). Ephesians is known as “the queen of the prison epistles.” It was written by Paul as a circular letter, meant to be read and distributed among churches in the Asia […]
The longer I live, the more I understand Job’s lament that “man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7). Sadness flares up regularly, and I encounter a lot of it in my daily work. After more than 40 years in the ministry, I am accustomed to walking through seasons of […]
Use one or both of these questions to introduce the lesson: 1. What things did you have to stop or start when you acknowledged Christ as Lord of your life? 2. What attitude and behavior changes have you seen in others who have accepted Jesus? Read Ephesians 2:1-3 1. Paul described Satan as “the ruler […]
When I interviewed Greg for a faculty position at William Jessup University, I knew I had a tiger by the tail. He was a strong personality, enormously self-confident, and took delight (so he said) in “speaking truth to power.” In the marketplace he had worked for a Fortune 500 company where he hired and fired […]
