Introduction
Outcomes of the current state of the church as seen through the Book of Ephesus
The bride, wife of Jesus is called to relate to Jesus Christ, her bridegroom in four dimensions:
- Jesus as a Suffering Servant,
- Her bridegroom as the Resurrected Lord,
- Her bridegroom as the Reigning Priest and
- Her bridegroom as the Soon Coming King.
In this module which has two parts, we will understand the church, the bride as she relate to the Bridegroom as the Reigning Priest as seen from the book of Ephesus, Acts chapter 18, 19 and 20 and Revelation Chapters 2: 1-7.
In chapter 19, During face to face meetings, Paul encountered some disciples in Ephesus and taught them about the Holy Spirit, he performed miracles and many who practiced magic were delivered, and brought thier magic books to be burned. The word of God Grew mightly and prevailed. In chapter 20, Paul left Ephesus after planting and establishing local, and indeginous leadership.
In the Letter to Ephesus (online and distance discipleship). The outcome in Understanding the King’s spiritual blessings (Kingdom of God ) kept in the heavenly places which has been given to his new community of faith, or community of care or community of grace. In Ephesus we will understand 6 questions that describe this blessed community namely,
- Who are you in Christ ? (identity)
- Where did you come from? (our origin)
- Where are you going? (our destiny)
- Why are we on earth? (our Purpose)
- What are we capable of becoming but we are not yet? (our potential)
- Who is our adversary?(our Spiritual battle and opposition)
Our focus is to understand how the church, or the bride of Jesus at Ephesus was planted, disciple, have leadership raised and finally how it lost it first love as witnessed by Christ in Revelation chapter 2.
We will also discover six postures of a winning church during hostilities and persecution:
- Dead without Christ
- Raised with Christ
- Seated with Christ in the heavenly places
- Walking victorious with Christ
- Standing firm in Christ
- Sleeping with Christ
- Gathering together with Christ (to be covered in other modules)
- Reigning together with Christ (covered in Revelation module)
