Where are you? The beginning of a New Ye

Where are you?

The beginning of a New Year!
Ephesians 1
The year is around AD62, Paul is under house arrest with a Roman guard. He is contained, limited and not free to travel like he has been. He is restricted to reach the many churches he still wants to visit.
Do you know this kind of place? A place of containment?
This is where Paul was.
But he disagrees.
He says, v3 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ”.
“I am not sitting in this prison, I am living my life in the heavenly realms!”
The heavenly realms is the unseen world of spiritual reality where we are one in Christ.
a. I am under arrest but I am at the horizon. The point of the physical and spiritual, the visible and the invisible.
v1 I am a servant, called, an apostle (sent!), set apart. How is this possible?
Because the physical circumstances will not define me. I will find a way because I live at the horizon.
The horizon is a sitting place, v20 and in the next chapter 2:6. It means you are not moving forward. We are so used to hearing messages of breakthrough, advancement, growth and it is all good. But here is a New Years message: sit down!
Stop trying to make things happen. Stop getting tired from your own efforts. Learn how to relax in God. Learn how not to carry the weight of your problems, but give Jesus your burdens.
Let God work for you not you work for Him.
You are seated with Christ.
b. v18 I am under arrest but I have hope. This is not hope so. This is a real, tangible, guaranteed hope in Jesus. You have not been put on this earth to go under and stay under, to be overwhelmed and eaten away at the predicament you have found yourself to be in. You were created for something much better! Our hope is in His resurrection, v20.