“Discouraged”

 “You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God” Ephesians 2:19

Imagine yourself a child, feeling abandon on the streets of the projects within the inner city. Your parents are on the brink of divorce/separation. Your mom is diagnosed with critical cancer disease. While she is being treated temporarily you are left to fend for yourself in an orphanage so you aren’t a burden to other relatives. You want to scream but you can’t speak because of the noise of ethnic chants. So, you are left to defend oneself every day from the mental blows of intolerance. While on this path you adapt with harshness and run head first so that you may obtain the prize of being, “Discouraged” and Fear!

As many as 30,000 orphans found themselves in that comparable dilemma in 1850. They slept in alleys, huddling for warmth in boxes or metal drums To survive, the boys mostly stole, caught rats to eat, or rummaged in garbage cans. Girls sometimes worked as “robbers in a panel house” for prostitutes, slipping their tiny hands through camouflaged openings in the walls to lift a watch or wallet from a preoccupied customer.

Immigrants were flooding New York City then, and no one had the time or money to look after the orphans-no one, that is, except Charles Loring Brace, a 26-year old minister. Horrified by their plight, he organized a unique solution, the Orphan Train. The idea was simple: pack hundreds of orphans on a train heading west and announce to towns along the way that anyone could claim a new son or daughter when the Orphan Train chugged through.

The Orphan Train was so successful by the time the last one steamed west in 1929, 100,000 children had found new homes and new lives, some became governors, one served as a United States congressman, and another was a U.S Supreme Court justice.

“In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will”

Ephesians 1:11

As you run aimlessly an inordinate length of time. Remember, for the Discouraged, our lives in light of our identity in Christ are filled with a heavenly Father, a large, loving family, and the understanding that we are citizens of another kingdom and not of this earth.

Though all Christians share similarities in their story races, the Lord gives each of us a unique race to run. And not everyone’s weights are the same. The news above provides a vivid parable of the message of Ephesians. To capture Paul’s enthusiasm in the book, imagine one more stage in your life as a street kid. You have learned to survive and fight off undesirable echoes. But one day, someone takes you and puts you on a train jammed with hundreds of other foreign-speaking hooligan kids. It’s 1961 you are in a prejudice situation where you are treated with so many detrimental categories of race noise that makes you hard-hitting, intense and often impossible to love self; while lugging around that Faithless stuff of intolerance 

"There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called—one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all."

 Ephesians 4:4-6

My questions for you today are:” Who are you? Who do you belong to? And what is your purpose?”

But one day, someone choses you and quietly explains that you are now part of their family, our child, by grace you have been saved, blessed, redeemed, a new creation, united to Him, forgiven, have hope, no longer slaves to sin and with belief marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; the pledge of our inheritance. To the praise of his glory. If you feel discouraged or wonder if God really cares or question whether the Christian life is worth the effort, read Ephesians. 

You will no longer feel like an abandoned soul orphan, Paul describes the “riches of Christ” available to all and points to us, God’s adopted children, as his sparkling “Exhibit A” in all the universe. Everything they have is yours to use and enjoy. At long last, by some miracle, you have a family, “the family of God” and a home- what a home! Ephesians contains staggering inspirations. Paul wants us to seize “the breadth, length, height and depth” of the love of Christ. Be activated to express that love, with not one low, grief-stricken note that sneaks in with fearing God as judge; we have the great privilege of coming to Him as our Father!

We are made alive with Him (Ephesians 2:5) we are conformed to His image (Romans 8:29) we are free from condemnation and walking not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit (Romans 8:1) and we are part of the body of Christ with other believers(Romans 12:5) The believer now possesses a new heart(Ezekiel 11:19) and has been blessed “with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 1:3).

We might wonder why we so often do not live in the manner described, even though we have given our lives to Christ and are sure of our salvation. This is because our new natures are residing in our old fleshly bodies, and these two are at war with one another. The old nature is dead, but the new nature still has to battle the old “tent” in which it dwells. 

When we are in Christ, “we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us” (Romans 8:37) and can rejoice in our Savior, who makes all things possible (Philippians 4:13). In Christ we are loved, forgiven, and secure. In Christ we are adopted, justified, redeemed, reconciled, and chosen. In Christ we are victorious, filled with joy and peace, and granted true meaning in life. What a wonderful Savior is Christ!

God Bless You and This Ministry!