Ephesians 1:19Plain English VersionI pray that you will know that God is stronger and more powerful than anyone, and that he will use his power to do good things for all of us that trust him. God is very powerful. See the chapter |
and you will tell them the true message about me. It will be like you will open their eyes so that they can see things properly. They will come to God. Then Satan, the boss over the bad spirits, he will not control them with his power any more. It is like they are always in the dark now, but they will come into the light. They will believe in me, and they will stop believing lies. And then God will say they are not guilty of the bad things they did, and they will be God’s people.’ Jesus said that to me.”
We have to thank God now. His power works in us, and he does really great things. He can do a lot more than we can ask him for. He can even do more than we can think about. And we are God’s people. We are his church. So we always have to praise God and show everyone that he is very great and good. We have to show them what Jesus Christ does, and that he is really great. And we have to keep on doing it for ever and ever. Yes, that’s right.
You know, after you became a Christian, the church leaders baptised you. You went into the water, then you came up out of it. In that ceremony, it’s like you did what Jesus did. He died, and it’s like that bad part of your spirit died. And God made him alive again, and he came up out of the grave. And now you believe that God has strong power, and your spirit is joined to Jesus, so God’s power makes your spirit alive too, just like he made Jesus alive again.
Remember the time when we told you the good news about Jesus. We told you the message with our words, but the Holy Spirit made us sure that we were telling the true story, and he gave us his power to show you that God was with us. And remember the sort of people we were at the time when we were with you there. We showed you the good way to live.
So we always pray for you. God picked you to be his own people, and he wants his mob to be good people, so we ask God to keep making you better people. You believe in Jesus, and you want to do good things, so we pray that God will work powerfully in you, and we pray that he will give you the power to do all those good things that you want to do.
If you can tell stories to people, then tell them God’s story, and tell it clearly. If you can help other people, then let God make you strong so you can help them properly. Do everything properly so that when people see it, they might say that God is really great. If they know that you follow Jesus, they might thank God for sending Jesus to us. Jesus has really great power now, and he will have that power for ever. That’s true.