Ephesians 1 Explained: Knowing God, Grace, and Your Identity In Christ In Uncertain Times - Part 1

Episode Focus

In a time of global uncertainty, this episode begins a slow, intentional walk through Ephesians chapter 1, uncovering how knowing God personally—and understanding your identity in Christ—grounds your life in hope, peace, and purpose. Rather than rushing past familiar verses, we pause to explore the depth of God’s grace, holiness, and desire to impart total well-being through relationship, not religion.

📖 Key Scripture Read in This Episode

• Ephesians 1:1–2 (TPT)
  Paul’s greeting to the believers—highlighting calling, holiness in Christ, grace, and total well-being.

🧭  Highlights

1. Why Ephesians Matters Right Now

• Ephesians is rich with revelation about who God is, who we are, and what God planned before the foundation of the world.
• In chaotic times, Scripture anchors us in eternal truth rather than fear.

2. Relationship Over Religion

• Paul opens with “dear friends,” reminding us that the gospel begins with relationship, not performance.
• True faith flows from knowing God personally—not from rules, pressure, or religious striving.

Supporting Scriptures:

• John 17:3
• Romans 8:15
• 2 Corinthians 3:6

3. Paul’s Transformation: Grace at Work

• Paul’s journey from persecutor to apostle reveals the power of grace to completely transform a life.
• God doesn’t recruit the perfect—He redeems, restores, and sends the willing.

Supporting Scriptures:

• Acts 9:1–20
• Acts 22:6–16

4. What It Means to Be “Holy”

• Biblical holiness means set apart unto God, not moral perfection through effort.
• We are made holy by being one with Christ, then empowered to walk it out with Him.

Supporting Scriptures:

• Ephesians 1:4
• Hebrews 10:10, 14

5. Grace: God’s Favor Freely Given

• Grace is God’s pleasure, delight, goodwill, and generous intention toward us.

Supporting Scriptures:

• Romans 5:1–2
• Ephesians 2:8–9
• Titus 2:11

6. Total Well-Being Is God’s Desire

• God’s heart is to impart peace, wholeness, and restoration—spirit, soul, and body.
• While suffering exists in the world, God’s will is always redemption and deliverance.

Supporting Scriptures:

• Ephesians 1:2
• 3 John 2
• Psalm 34:19
• Isaiah 53:4–5

7. Jesus Took Responsibility for Our Fall

• Jesus did not die as a martyr—He willingly laid down His life as a substitute.
• The penalty for sin was fully paid so we could live free and restored.

Supporting Scriptures:

• Romans 6:23
• John 10:17–18
• Isaiah 53

🙏 Closing Prayer Themes

• Receiving God’s grace without guilt or striving
• Healing, comfort, and strength through Christ
• Growing in intimacy and friendship with God
• Hebrews 4:9–11
• Matthew 11:28–29
• Romans 8:32

In upcoming episodes, we’ll continue walking through Ephesians verse by verse—uncovering God’s eternal plan, our

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Do you want to know God better, feel his presence, and experience his power? I know how it can be unsatisfying to spend time with God if you think you're invisible or it's foolish to hope. I'm Lenora, mom, Jesus lover, and international trainer. Let's get to know God better together. Pray with confidence and increase the impact of our life. So grab some coffee and let's talk. Hey, I wrote a book to help you. It's called 100 Prayers, releasing 100 Cares. It's full of real stories, scripture, and prayers for about every part of life. A link for the book is in the show notes. I really think you'll love it. Some have said it is the best prayer book they've ever had. There is so much going on on the earth right now. I can't imagine a better time than right now in 2026 to be getting to know God better, getting to know who you are in Christ better, and walking in the amazing plans God has for you. Thanks for joining me today. Personally, I'm spending plenty of time praying over the world's events and all the people who need God, who need support and help from others to have and live the kind of life God has available for us and we are capable of having as we work together and lean on the God who made us. So I'm focused for a while here. We'll see how long some of these episodes go, but the book of Ephesians is so powerful. It's just so loaded with revelation and rich with treasure. So let's talk about just the first few verses today in Ephesians chapter one. I'm gonna read just two verses from the Passion Translation, and we're gonna talk about some common words that are so easy to blow right past. So here we go. Ephesians chapter 1, the Passion Translation. Dear friends, my name is Paul, and I was chosen by God to be an apostle of Jesus the Messiah. I'm writing this letter to all the devoted believers who've been made holy by being one with Jesus, the anointed one. May God Himself, the Heavenly Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, release grace over you and impart total well-being in your lives. Okay, there's so much just in these couple verses. I know what it is to be kind of just religious and you read right past stuff or you're reading it big chunks of the Bible, which can be the right thing to do, but I've read really fast and sometimes miss most of what God is telling me in one word. So let's look at a couple of these. Because I know personally I want my relationship with God to come down to what he told me once, and that is it's all about relationship. So again, in the Passion Translation, it starts off with dear friends. So again, relationship. My name's Paul. I was chosen by God to be an apostle. An apostle simply means a sent one, someone sent, specifically chosen and sent on a mission. Paul had a mission and a calling specifically to the non-Jews, the Gentiles, to share the message of Jesus Christ in a way they could receive it. And it's so interesting because Paul was trained so well in the Jewish ways, and um, he was called a Pharisee of Pharisees. He used to be a man who hated Christians. He thought the Christians were attacking his faith and he was persecuting them. He was attacking them, he actually was having them put to death and thought he was actually serving God. Isn't that religion in the in the worst light? I mean, religion can be such a great word, and and yet being religious can be very dark if you actually find yourself so caught up in rules and performance and regulations that you have lost all concept of a God who's even good. And you're just, I mean, who knows what you can be convinced of and become twisted in your motivations. Paul actually was destroying the people who believed in Jesus, who was sent to save mankind. So here's this man who'd been a very kind of pious, proud leader in his faith. And then Jesus Christ has come along, and the crowds of people are just growing and growing and growing and coming to him because they're seeing the goodness of God. They're seeing God will heal me, God will take care of me, God will deliver me from evil. Here's Jesus casting out demons, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, cleansing the lepers. I mean, it's talked about the maimed were made whole, dead people were raised, and then he lays his life down. It's very clear if you read through the Gospels that Jesus himself says, Hey, the enemy's coming, but he's got nothing in me. And when he's on trial, one of the leaders that is key in making a decision of whether or not Jesus will be crucified, and Jesus stops talking to him, stops answering questions, and the man says, Don't you know I could put you to death? I have the power for you to live or die. Jesus looks at him and says, You don't have any power over me except what my father gave you. Because Jesus knew there was no way the devil, the enemy, could take his life. There was no sin, there was no failure, there was no corruption, nothing that brings death. The wages of sin, the Bible says, the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. And Jesus was sinless. See, death is the foreign object. I don't know how you if you've heard this before, but death was the foreign object if you read in Genesis. People lived very long, and the life comes from God, and God is life. He's the way, the truth, and the life. So death is the foreign object. Anyway, so for Jesus to lay his life down, he did it for our sake. They couldn't take it from him, but he could lay it down. And like someone in a court case that is taking the guilt and the sentencing for somebody else's crime, once they have served that crime for the actual guilty person, when that sentence has been served, I believe they call it double jeopardy. The person who's actually guilty can't be punished for that because it's the punishment's already been paid for. That's what Jesus Christ did for each one of us. He said, I will take the place of the guilty. God made mankind, and God has taken responsibility for the fall of man by sending his own son because he loved us so much. He made us in Ephesians. We'll talk more next week about God made us with a plan to make us his own children, holy and blameless. The only way we could become blameless is by his son coming out of love, laying his life down and it being raised up again, so that we would be made blameless because God Himself took responsibility for our failures. Now that's a God you can fall in love with, a God you can give up everything for and serve with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your mind, and all of your strength, which is the first commandment. And God requires that of us because He's done it first. He made us for a whole amazing, profound, generous, eternal gift of life. God made us with a plan. I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm already jumping farther into Ephesians, but God made us with a plan to adopt us, to make us his own. And he was so excited about it. But this eternal plan had a lot of risks in it. And he planned ahead of time to mitigate those risks. And Jesus came and took on the responsibility of our failures. We have free will, and all of us have failed and been rebellious in various ways, and we fall short of the reflection of God, of the glory of God. So Jesus is then raised from the dead, and then he goes on up into heaven. Again, you read on, read the gospels, something of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And he tells his disciples, his followers, those who believe on him, to go and make disciples get this good news all out into the world. And they went about doing that. And Paul, who was very religious, thought he was serving God by actually destroying the very people that were bringing life, bringing the same amazing goodness of God, making it known. And he was working to destroy them, thinking he's doing God a favor. Now, if you know the story about Paul on the road to Damascus, people have known that as a like a saying, a Damascus moment, a road to Damascus moment, but you can read in the book of Acts, where Paul is on his way to do some more dirty work. This makes me think of what's going on in Iran right now, where there's people so deceived, they actually think some of them think they're actually doing God a favor. We're talking about a belief in a God. You you can't even question a religion that if you leave it in many countries, it's under threat of death. I mean, that to me can be somewhat difficult to understand. And yet I realize people are born into these things and they don't know anything different. And all they've ever heard is that God is something to be scared of. I mean, I can praise the devotion of people, but God, the real God, the God of the universe, the God who made us, the God of the Bible, is a God who is was excited to make us, was excited to adopt us, make us his own. Again, take responsibility for the fall of man, mankind, and give us amazing, amazing grace. That's the name of a song. Someone should write a song called Amazing Grace. But but back to Paul. Paul was on his way to do more dirty work, and a flash of light, I mean, it just pretty much knocked Paul off his horse. And he heard the audible voice of God. And Paul's like, Who is talking to me? And the answer was, I'm Jesus, whom you're persecuting. Long story short, Paul's in shock and ends up knowing by the power of God that this is God, and he submits immediately and calls him Lord. And then Paul becomes a completely changed man, seeks God for numerous years, and then goes about much of that part of the world and writing what two-thirds of the New Testament, and helped change the world for the glory, the reflection of God. See, that's just the first couple words in that first verse. So Paul went from a persecutor and he called himself the worst of sinners, but God's grace was given to him. He was chosen by God to be a sent one with a mission of Jesus Christ, the Messiah. And it says here in verse 2, he was writing this letter to all devoted believers, believers, those that believed the message of Jesus Christ, believed he came for us, believed he's the Son of God, believed he's the Messiah. I want to pause here. Again, he was writing to the devoted believers who have been made holy by being one with Jesus the anointed. I want to talk about holy for a minute. Holiness is a separation to God, a separation unto God, and the behavior that goes with it. To me, the easiest way to think of this is if you're choosing to get married to someone, you are separating yourself from any other partner. You're separating yourself from any other person that could be your spouse. You're saying, no, I'm separating myself. I am choosing this one, and I'm going to behave accordingly with my life. That's the main definition of holiness. Again, please remember, God never asks us to do something he doesn't do first. Scripture says we love him because he first loved us. God is wholly devoted to us. John 3 16 is a very known verse. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes on him would not be lost anymore, would not perish, but have everlasting life. And there's so much in that. But you're made holy by being one with Jesus. Again, it's easy to get, and when I when I say religious, I mean get into a routine or a weight of rules and regulations. Now there are ways to live, to be holy. Again, back to marriage. You're making choices to stay devoted, to choose to be devoted to that spouse. And you continue to make those choices and you continue to give into that relationship and stay faithful to that relationship, to keep that relationship, quote, holy, set apart and with the behavior that matches it. But we have to depend on God Himself for our holiness, because we all have our flaws and our failures. So God not only wants us to walk with him, but he says, you need to depend on me so that you can even be holy. You have to depend on the holy one who became flesh and walked among us and then became our sacrifice, which was Jesus Christ. That's who we're depending on. That's how we become holy in the first place, which was God's plan. But we are actually made holy by being one with Jesus. It's that simple. And then He is our strength to walk it out. And the more we get to know God, the more fun it is to walk it out. And then the last part of that verse says, May God Himself, the Heavenly Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, release grace over you and impart total well-being into your lives. This is so much because again, a lot of people don't know, but it's crazy and sad that so many people don't know that God wants whole, total well-being into your lives. I think some of us are too committed to suffering. Now, suffering happens. We know there's all kinds of ways to suffer, ways to deal with challenges. And that scripture does say, many are the afflictions of the righteous, but God will deliver us from them all. Because back to this verse, he's starting this first chapter of this book to the people in Ephesus. May God Himself, the heavenly Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, release grace over you and impart total well-being into your lives. So we'll wrap this up looking at the word called grace. Grace isn't that common of a word unless you're a Christian. Grace comes from a word cheris. It has various uses. I'm reading some of this out of the Vine's Expository Dictionary. The objective is that which bestows or occasions pleasure, delight, or causes favorable regard. So this starts off with a prayer that God's pleasure, delight, and favorable regard is released over us, which is a normal thing. And you only we're to pray God's will. God wants to pour over us his favorable regard. And on the part of the bestower, it's talking about the friendly disposition from which the kindly act proceeds. God is friendly, God likes to bless you, he gives his loving kindness, his good will in general. God has a good will for you, he delights over you, he likes to be generous to you, he is kind in his actions. And in this, there's also a stress in some verses, and various verses help amplify what this word means. So I'm just going to go on a little bit more from the Vine's Expository Dictionary. There is a stress on the freeness and universality and its spontaneous character. It's it's a natural spontaneous thing God likes to do, and He designs pleasure or joy for the recipient. It's set in contrast with debt. It's so easy for us to focus on all the debt or guilt of everything we've done wrong. Rather than God is generous to say, I want to give you favor, I want that poured out on you. Because Jesus came and paid his own blood, he paid the price for our darkest actions. And if you truly receive him, those debts are paid in full. Religion's not a game, it's a marriage with God. When you surrender to him and say, Jesus, I call on you, I accept you, I believe in you, I receive what you did for me. You're receiving generously what he's already paid for in full. You can let him have your guilt and grief. Because the Old Testament and New Testament talk about he bore our grief, he carried our sorrows. Read Isaiah chapter 53. But a relationship with God is so good. And again, as I mentioned earlier, God's intentions are to impart total well-being into your life, and it comes through direct relationship and abiding in Him, remaining in that relationship, receiving constantly from being made one with God through Jesus Christ. It is that good of a message, it is that good of a truth. And the more that we will in humility yield to God, the more revelation you can receive of how good He is. Now, in the coming weeks, I just want to go through so much more of Ephesians bits at a time because it's so rich in the knowledge you can gain, the revelation, the awareness inside of what God has actually done for us, how his plans for us have always been beyond what you could ask, think, or even hope for. And I don't know about you, but I want to walk life that is satisfying, that is impactful, and is exciting. So let's pray. Father, thank you for the honor of being able to do this podcast and just speak to anyone who is listening. And I pray for them right now. Father, you know who's listening. I ask you to bring people into hearing this podcast that can benefit from this message. As you love them so much, your intentions towards them are good. Your desire towards them is to rescue them. It's our humility that allows you to do it. Father, help us humble ourselves under your amazing power, your amazing hand, and receive Jesus Christ and receive the grace, the good intentions, the delightful desires you have to pour out your good intentions, pour out your power and abilities on us, in us, and through us. Help us receive all the finished work that Jesus Christ accomplished for us. He did not die as a martyr. Father God, open our eyes to how he was and is your son, and how he is our Lord and Savior, the King of all kings, Lord of all lords, and the one who lives to ever make intercession for us. Help us to know you. Help us to become intimate friends with you. You are called the lover of our soul. And help us, God, to love you back with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind, all of our strength, because you first loved us, which is amazing to imagine. You've loved us with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your mind, and all of your strength. Father, we receive it. Help us become established in your goodness to receive rest for our souls, to receive healing in our bodies, because you are a God who cares about every hair in our head. You your Bible says you've numbered the very hairs on our head. You know how much I love my children and grandchildren, but I have never counted their hair. But you know everything about us. And I ask you to bless this person. I ask you to. Comfort them, cause them to rise back up with hope. Father God, fill them with your comfort, strengthen them with courage, and I pray healing in their bodies only and always because you paid for it. And I'm just speaking it in the name of Jesus, only because your word says I can. And I thank you that you watch over your word to perform it. In Jesus' name. Amen. Hey friend, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If so, would you please share it and leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts? That really helps me reach others. The link to 100 prayers, releasing 100 cares, is in the show notes. And thanks for listening. Until then, be kind to you. Because then it's a whole lot easier to be kind to anybody else.