{"id":3703,"date":"2011-04-12T09:24:25","date_gmt":"2011-04-12T14:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/?p=3703"},"modified":"2011-04-17T13:45:18","modified_gmt":"2011-04-17T18:45:18","slug":"the-most-important-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/12\/the-most-important-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"The most important thing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just finished teaching through the  first three chapters of Ephesians and as we finished chapter three we  came to Paul&#8217;s closing prayer for the first three chapters.  After some  wonderful theology Paul&#8217;s prayer focuses on one thing- that they would  understand how much God loves them.<\/p>\n<p>Honestly,  it doesn&#8217;t seem to fit, but what Paul knew was that if you understand  the love of God then everything else fits very nicely, thank you.  It&#8217;s  God&#8217;s love that brings all the theology of this book into sharp focus  and makes faith possible in the midst of questions we can&#8217;t answer.  If  we could understand the love of God, even a little, it would buffer the  pains and arrows of life.  It&#8217;s that important.  In fact, it&#8217;s the most  important thing.<\/p>\n<p>The  atheist will argue with you contending that if God is all powerful and  all good we have a problem.  From those two parts of God&#8217;s nature they  try to refute God&#8217;s existence, but they are focused on the wrong things.   The key thing they must address&#8230;the key thing we each must address  is the love of God.  Does he love us?  If so, if there is evidence for  God&#8217;s love and his resolution of our problem, then I can endure the  pains and woes of the difficult days because I know I have a wonderful  God who is madly in love with me.  It is the most important thing.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>So, Paul concludes three amazing chapters with this prayer,  &#8220;And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, <sup id=\"en-NIV-29270\">18<\/sup> may have power, together with all the Lord\u2019s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, <sup id=\"en-NIV-29271\">19<\/sup> and to know this love that surpasses knowledge\u2014that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>To know that God loves you is the most important thing&#8230;.and he does&#8230;.he proved it at the cross.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/all-you-needs-is-love.jpg\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-4506\" title=\"all you needs is love\" src=\"http:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/all-you-needs-is-love-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/all-you-needs-is-love-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/all-you-needs-is-love-280x186.jpg 280w, https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/all-you-needs-is-love-90x60.jpg 90w, https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/all-you-needs-is-love-600x400.jpg 600w, https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/all-you-needs-is-love.jpg 720w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just finished teaching through the first three chapters of Ephesians and as we finished chapter three we came to Paul&#8217;s closing prayer for the first three chapters. After some wonderful theology Paul&#8217;s prayer focuses on one thing- that they would understand how much God loves them. Honestly, it doesn&#8217;t seem to fit, but what &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/12\/the-most-important-thing\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read more<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The most important thing&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,25],"tags":[70,54,32,5,98],"class_list":["post-3703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archived","category-mike","tag-atheist","tag-cross","tag-god","tag-love","tag-prayer"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}