How Grace Gets You to GO: A Study of Ephesians 3:1-13

Pastor Josh opened with The Lord of the Rings, his favorite trilogy of all time (and The Return of the King his favorite movie of all time). What makes stories like that so compelling is a group of weak, fallen people who don't always get along, sent on a seemingly impossible mission to face the evil in the world and to suffer so that there could be a better future. We love watching stories like that. But even more compelling than watching one is living one — and that is exactly what God invites us into. He does not call us to settle onto the couch of comfortable Christianity. His grace is meant to get us moving.

In our verse-by-verse series through Ephesians, Grace for You, we come to Ephesians 3:1-13. The big idea is simple but life-changing: the same grace that saves you also sends you. Here are three ways grace gets you to go.

1. Grace gets you to go even if it means suffering

Paul wrote Ephesians from prison. He had been jailed, stoned, and beaten for sharing the gospel, and eventually gave his life for it. Yet he never recanted. Why? Because he understood that his calling was pure grace, and that calling was worth any cost.

"For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles... I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are for your glory." (Ephesians 3:1, 13)

Notice the reversal: the prisoner is the one doing the encouraging. Paul tells the church not to be rattled by his pain, because his suffering is for their glory — so that people could come to know Christ and share in the hope of heaven. He had a heavenly mindset: heaven is real, hell is real, and forever is a really long time. So he shared the gospel like people's lives depended on it, because they do.

Here is the honest truth: sharing Jesus widely is impossible without a willingness to suffer. Our impact for the kingdom is limited by our threshold for pain. The gospel runs against the grain of the culture. The world says truth is whatever is true for you; Jesus says, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). Swimming against the current isn't easy, and sometimes going against the grain leaves a splinter. But when eternity is at stake, that cost looks small. God doesn't call us to be comfortable. He calls us to be faithful.

2. Grace gets the worst sinners to go share the Savior

After a challenging first point, this one is a little more comforting.

"Although I am less than the least of all the Lord's people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ." (Ephesians 3:8)

Of all the people God could have made His leading messenger, He chose Paul — a man who, before he became a Christian, had Christians killed. In Pastor Josh's words, Paul was "a religious terrorist." If we are honest, we might struggle to trust a person with a past like that. The early church did, at first. It took Barnabas vouching for him, and some time, before they welcomed him. But this was God's guy.

That raises the first of two questions Pastor Josh answered: why can the worst sinners share the Savior? Because grace is about His love, not your worthiness. God does not choose people because they are worthy. He chooses by grace, and grace is getting what you do not deserve. If you've ever thought, "How could God use me? I'm not good enough," Pastor Josh's answer is: "Friend, it's not about you... it's about God and His grace choosing and forgiving unworthy people." He admitted that one of the things he wrestles with most is Sunday morning, when he thinks about the ways he has fallen short that week and asks God if he is really qualified to preach. And normally, he said, God tells him something like this: "Josh, it was never about you in the first place. It's by grace. Go and do it." God specializes in taking broken, imperfect, sinful people, filling them with His grace, and sending them out to pour it into a world that desperately needs it.

The second question: why should the Savior be shared? Because the Savior is boundless in riches. And what a grace it is. Paul calls it the "boundless riches of Christ." Boundless means limitless. We all live with limits: physical, emotional, financial. Even credit cards have limits. But God's love has none. No sin is larger than His grace. That is not just good news to receive — it is good news to share. Paul later wrote that Christ saved him, "the worst of sinners" (1 Timothy 1:15-16), as an example so that others would believe. Even your sin can become some of your greatest material, because you can say, "If God could save me, He can save you." Your testimony is what God wants to use. You don't need every answer to share the gospel; you just need to know how God saved you.

3. By grace you can go to God freely and confidently

Before grace sends you out, it draws you in.

"In him [Jesus] and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence." (Ephesians 3:12)

Why do we so often avoid this? Sometimes we are simply too busy. Other times we have put limits on God's love and assume He will reject us at our worst. But through Jesus you are forgiven, fully known, and fully loved — which means you can come to God with total honesty. You can bring Him your deepest fears, your darkest failures, and your most distressing doubts, without pretending.

And you can come not just freely but confidently. Pastor Josh said that if he knocked on the King of England's door at 1 a.m., he wouldn't expect a welcome, because he isn't family. But one of the king's own children could knock with confidence. Through faith in Christ, the Creator of the universe is also your Father. The writer of Hebrews puts it this way: "Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need" (Hebrews 4:16). That confidence isn't reserved for your good days after a quiet time and a cup of coffee. It is especially for your darkest days, when you've done what you knew you shouldn't. In those moments, you can still run to Him, because you belong to Him.

A takeaway to carry with you

God loves you exactly where you are — and He loves you far too much to leave you there. So the question for this week is simple:

• Who is grace calling you to go to?

• What is grace calling you to go and do?

Maybe it's going to Arroyo's Connect Class and starting to serve, asking forgiveness from someone you've wronged, inviting a coworker or neighbor to church, or sharing the gospel with someone in your life. Maybe it's going to God for the first time. You don't have to earn it or deserve it; go to Him and He will freely forgive you. Or maybe it's taking the step of baptism (five people were baptized after this message). Whatever your next step, take it by His grace.

If you're anywhere in Livermore or the Tri-Valley and looking for a church family to take that step with, we would love to welcome you at Arroyo Church. Come as you are — this can feel like home.

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Can God Restore a Broken Relationship? (Ephesians 2)

Have you ever broken a bone? Pastor Josh honestly isn't sure whether he has. Years ago, in a pickup basketball game, he tried to out-rebound a 6-foot-6 guy who had played college basketball, landed awkwardly on his foot, and refused to get an X-ray. His foot was purple for two or three weeks and took a few months to fully heal; it was either broken or a high ankle sprain. Either way, the point is this: just like you can break a bone, you can break a relationship, and sometimes a broken relationship hurts even more. But here is the good news: just like a broken bone can heal, so can a broken relationship. That was the central hope of his message this week, "How God Reconciles Broken Relationships," as our Grace for You series continues verse by verse through Ephesians. Our God is a God of relational restoration — not just between us and Him, but in our relationships with the people around us.

The Backstory: Two Groups at War

To read Ephesians 2:11-22 well, we need a little context. Paul is addressing one of the early church's deepest divisions: the tension between Jews and Gentiles (a Gentile is simply anyone who is not Jewish). Israel had been chosen by God to receive His promises and to be a blessing to the nations, but over time many developed a sense of superiority. By the time the early church formed, Jewish and Gentile believers often clashed over culture and theology. If that sounds familiar, it should — conflict in the church is not a modern invention. People are messy, so relationships get messy. The good news of this passage is that God brings peace to hostile groups through Jesus, and what He did for them He can do for us.

Truth 1: No One Is Too Broken to Be Restored

Paul begins not with human relationships but with the one that matters most — our relationship with God.

"Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth... remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ." (Ephesians 2:11-13)

If you have ever felt far from God, it is worth naming why. God never runs away from us; we run from Him — often because we are running toward something else we hope will satisfy: a relationship, a substance, success, a screen. But Scripture paints a picture of a Father who runs after wanderers. Think of the story in Luke 15, where the son squanders everything and heads home expecting to be a servant. "But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son" (Luke 15:20). God is not a reluctant rescuer rolling His eyes at your mess. He runs with joy. And He does something only He can do: He gives hope to the hopeless. Apart from Him, there is no ultimate purpose or destiny. But because God is real, you were created on purpose, with intention, and through faith in Jesus you have a greater future: the hope of heaven. None of this is earned. We are brought near "by the blood of Christ," who paid a debt we could never pay.

Truth 2: Peace With God Creates Peace With Others

Reconciliation with God naturally spills over into our relationships with people.

"For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility... His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility." (Ephesians 2:14-16)

Notice that the cross does two things: it reconciles us to God, and it "put to death" the hostility between people. Why does peace with God produce peace with others?

• The record has been ripped up. When you place your faith in Jesus, you are fully forgiven — God "remembers your sins no more" (Isaiah 43:25). As 1 Corinthians 13:5 puts it, love "keeps no record of wrongs." The trouble is, we love being forgiven but struggle to be forgiving. Some of us keep a detailed spreadsheet of someone else's wrongs. Real forgiveness is not sweeping sin under the rug or pretending the hurt never happened. You can choose to forgive someone whether they ever admit what they did or not, because your job isn't to control them; it's to have a forgiving heart. True reconciliation takes two: the person who was hurt forgives, and the person who did the hurting owns it. And as Pastor Josh pointed out, relationships are often more complicated than one person being right and the other wrong; normally both people have something to own. Once it has been dealt with, real forgiveness moves forward and chooses not to dig it back up later as ammunition.

• Your sin has been seen. Coming to Christ means admitting you are a sinner who needs a Savior. Once you truly see your own brokenness, you can no longer look down on others; we are all in the same boat. Some people do set out to hurt others, and Pastor Josh said so plainly: that is a reality in this broken world. But a lot of the time, people who hurt us are hurting themselves, and out of their hurt they hurt us. Seeing that in ourselves first helps us respond with empathy instead of a judgmental spirit.

Truth 3: Jesus Turns Us From Tension to Togetherness

Finally, Paul shows that Christ does not just stop hostility — He builds a new family.

"Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone... And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit." (Ephesians 2:19-22)

Christians share four things worth building on: the same citizenship (we belong to heaven), the same family (we are brothers and sisters in God's household, which is one reason the church is meant to be lived in community, not just streamed alone), the same foundation (the apostles and prophets God spoke through, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone), and the same Spirit. When we disagree over non-essentials, we can remember that we agree on the essentials — and that is enough to stay united. Pastor Josh offered what he called a bold statement: he believes it is impossible for two Christians who are both walking in step with the Holy Spirit to be divided from one another. The trouble is that many of us are filled with the Spirit but not walking by the Spirit, and when one of us follows the flesh instead, we end up walking in different directions.

A Takeaway and a Reflection Question

Here is the question the sermon left us with: What relationship in your life right now feels completely beyond repair? Maybe it is a spouse, a sibling, an in-law, a coworker, a friend — or maybe it is God Himself. The gospel reminds us that we could never rebuild our relationship with God on our own; Jesus did it for us at the cross. The same God who reconciled you can work through you toward others. It isn't about your strength; it's about His strength working through you. You can't control how another person responds, and reconciliation takes two, but your part is a forgiving heart. And forgiving someone never means you have to go back to a person who is abusing you. Pastor Josh put it as God's invitation to each of us: come to Him with the empty hand of faith and say, "God, I cannot reconcile myself to You. I cannot by myself reconcile myself to this person. But Lord, I can't, You can. Will You by Your grace help me?"

If this encouraged you, we would love for you to keep growing with us. If you are anywhere in Livermore or the Tri-Valley and looking for a church family to belong to, there is a seat for you here at Arroyo Church.

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What Does It Mean to Be Saved? A Study of Ephesians 2:1-10

Think about the last time someone said, “You really saved the day.” It feels good to hear it. But flip it around: how do you feel when someone says, “I really saved your skin today”? Suddenly it stings. That little reaction reveals something true about all of us: in our pride, we don't like the idea that we need to be saved. We would rather be the one doing the saving. Yet the central message of Christianity is exactly the opposite: you are not the Savior. You are the one who needs saving.

In our series Grace for You, we are walking through Ephesians verse by verse. This week we landed on one of the clearest passages in all of Scripture on what it actually means to be saved: Ephesians 2:1-10. If you want to understand salvation, this is the place to look. The passage answers three questions—what we are saved from, what we are saved by, and what we are saved for.

Saved From Sin

Before we can celebrate the rescue, we have to be honest about the danger. Paul does not soften it:

“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.” (Ephesians 2:1-3)

Two words here help define sin. “Transgression” means crossing a line, and “sin” means missing the mark. Picture the limit line at a red light. That line is there to protect you and preserve your life. God has drawn limit lines for our lives too, and the command is there because He cares. Sin is seeing the line God has drawn for our good and saying, “God, I know what You say, but I don't care. I'm going to cross it anyway.” It is also missing the mark, missing the bull's-eye: anything short of perfect is sin. That includes the good we fail to do, and even sins we commit without knowing it, because every one of us has blind spots.

Why do we sin? Paul points to three forces that surround us: the world (“the ways of this world”), the devil (“the ruler of the kingdom of the air”), and the flesh (“the cravings of our flesh”). The world is the value system pressing in on us. The devil is a real, personal spiritual force seeking to separate us from God. But the greatest enemy is not the devil or the world. It is you: the flesh, your own sinful nature. You are the one with the freedom to make your own decisions. You can move across the country, but you take yourself with you. The result of sin is sobering: we are spiritually dead, separated from God, and unless we turn to Him and are forgiven, deserving of wrath—a death that does not end here on earth but lasts forever. You don't need a life coach to fix that. You need a Savior to raise the dead.

Saved By Grace

Then the whole story turns on one word. “But.”

“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.” (Ephesians 2:4-5)

This is the unexpected twist that changes everything. We were dead; He made us alive. Paul keeps going:

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

Grace is God's unearned love in your life. It means He loves you because He loves you, and He is loving toward you even when you do unlovable things. This is where Christianity stands apart from every other religion. Other systems say, work your way up to God and maybe He will accept you. The gospel says God worked His way down to you. You don't climb a ladder up to heaven; He came down the ladder to you.

If you are a believer, hear this: you are just as loved on your worst week as on your best. If you start to think that even one percent of your salvation is based on your works, it will crumble you and wreck your soul. It is one hundred percent His grace and zero percent your works. And grace is received through faith—not achieving, simply receiving. Faith is coming to God with empty hands, trusting Him and saying, “I believe that You are Lord, that You died and rose again. I need You. I'm a sinner who needs a Savior, and I'm giving my life to You.” Imagine throwing away a plain-looking card that held a million-dollar check inside. That is what happens when people never truly place their faith in Christ: the greatest gift ever offered gets thrown away unopened. This grace gives you a confidence and a humility, at the same time, that you could never have any other way—confident because it is finished and you are God's child, humble because you were a dead, lost sinner deserving of wrath, and apart from God you would be completely lost.

Saved For Good Works

Grace does not leave us where it found us.

“For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10)

A lot of Christians love verses 8-9 and quietly erase verse 10. But good works are not the root of your salvation—they are the fruit. Trying to save or change yourself by your own power is like cutting the tops off the weeds in your backyard and hoping an orange tree full of fruit sprouts up. The weeds just grow back. God does something deeper: He uproots the old, plants His Spirit within you, and over time produces real fruit. The motivation is not fear or obligation. It is gratitude and trust. Picture a boss who loaned you a billion dollars, money you could never pay back, and who then forgave the whole debt freely and offered to let you work for him for the rest of your life. You would never want to work for anyone else. Out of gratitude you would want to be the best employee you could be, and you would trust that whatever he wanted for you was what's best for you. That is how grace reshapes a life.

A Closing Reflection

In Batman Begins, young Bruce Wayne falls into a deep well, hurt and unable to climb out. The movie's famous line asks, “Why do we fall?” and answers, “So we can learn to pick ourselves up.” That is essentially what every other religion teaches. But the irony is that Bruce did not pick himself up. His father had to come down and lift him out when he could not save himself. We fall so we can learn that only our Father can lift us. So wherever you are today, the question is simple: have you reached up an empty hand of faith to the One who has already come down for you?

If you are near Livermore or anywhere in the Tri-Valley, we would love to welcome you in person and talk more about what it means to be saved by grace through faith in Jesus.

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Grow in What You Know: A Study of Ephesians 1:15-23

Picture standing on the shoulder of a freeway, tire blown, flight about to leave, and a customer service line that will not send help. That is exactly where our pastor found himself on a recent trip — stuck, frustrated, and running (literally) to find a way forward. Nobody likes being stuck physically. But the deeper truth is that nobody likes being stuck spiritually either.

Continuing our verse-by-verse series through Ephesians, Grace for You, this message closes out chapter one by walking through Ephesians 1:15-23. The big idea is simple but life-changing: God does not want you to stay stuck spiritually. He wants you to grow in what you know. It is entirely possible to be 40 years old physically and 4 years old spiritually — to become an adult in body while remaining an infant in faith. One of God's greatest goals for your life is that you keep growing into the person He created you to be.

1. God Wants You to Truly Know Him

Paul opens with thanksgiving and prayer for the Ephesians, and the heart of his prayer is startling in its simplicity:

"For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God's people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better." (Ephesians 1:15-17)

Notice the assumption underneath that prayer: God is knowable. Maybe you have wondered how you can know a God you have never seen or touched — a God who sometimes feels hidden or far away. Here is the good news: God is not playing hide-and-seek with you. We are the ones who wandered off in our sin; He is the One seeking and saving the lost.

God has made Himself known in two unmistakable ways. First, through Jesus. Earlier in the chapter Paul says God "made known to us the mystery of his will" (Ephesians 1:9). Like an author writing himself into his own story, God entered human history in Christ, revealing Himself as a God of grace, truth, and power — welcoming outcasts, speaking with unfiltered authority, healing the broken, and defeating death by rising again. Second, through creation. "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge" (Psalm 19:1-2). A garden points to a gardener; a building points to a builder; the staggering complexity of the universe points to a Creator.

But knowing God is not merely intellectual — it is experiential. You can quote a thousand verses and still not know Jesus. He does not want head knowledge only; He wants heart knowledge. The question is not whether God knows you — He knows everything about you. The question is whether you know Him.

2. Everyone Needs Growth, But Only God Causes It

What is remarkable about Paul's prayer is that the Ephesians were already a healthy church — full of faith and genuine love. Yet Paul still prayed for them to know God better. That tells us two things.

You always have room to grow

None of us are finished projects. On this side of eternity, growth is never a destination; it is a step you take every day. The moment you think you have God figured out, you discover there is more of His love, grace, mercy, and truth to know. Even our pastor confessed a season of stagnation this year — a quiet pride that whispered, "I already know this." The Holy Spirit's reply was gentle but clear: you still have much to learn. Humility shields you from apathy; pride pulls you away from growth. Stay low, and God will grow you over time.

Growth only comes from God

Paul does not thank God that the Ephesians are strong in their own effort. He asks God to grant them "the Spirit of wisdom and revelation." Interestingly, Paul never prays for their circumstances to change — he prays for their character to change, that they would draw closer to Christ. What if your prayers shifted from "God, fix my problems" to "God, change my heart and reveal more of Yourself to me"? Jesus assures us this is a prayer the Father loves to answer: "If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Luke 11:13). Before you open your Bible, before a hard conversation, before a big decision — ask the Spirit for wisdom. You have a part to play, but apart from Him your efforts amount to nothing.

3. Grow in Hope and in Power

"I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe." (Ephesians 1:18-19)

Every Christian has equal access to the same hope and power, yet not every Christian experiences it. Why? Because the eyes of the heart have not yet been enlightened. Imagine a debit card with a five-million-dollar limit that you believe holds only five thousand. The wealth is there; you simply are not accessing it. So ask God to open the eyes of your heart.

Your hope rests on your inheritance in heaven — a confident expectation of a better future. Because of Christ, even the worst things can be redeemed for good, and death itself becomes a doorway rather than a dead end. Suffering is not the end of your story; it is one chapter in a story that ends in eternal joy.

Your power flows from God's presence. The same resurrection power that raised Jesus and seated Him "far above all rule and authority" (Ephesians 1:20-21) now lives in you. And here is the beautiful part: that power is not against you — it is for you. You are not stepping into the ring alone against a heavyweight champion; the Champion Himself stands beside you, fighting for you. That means you no longer have to walk in defeat over addiction, anxiety, or fear.

A Takeaway to Carry This Week

God loves you exactly where you are — but He loves you far too much to leave you there. So ask yourself honestly: Do you know Him? And if you do, how well do you know Him? The ball is not in His court; He has already made Himself known. The move is ours. This week, before you read, before you decide, before you worry — pray, "God, open the eyes of my heart. Grow me in what I know."

If you are anywhere in Livermore or across the Tri-Valley and you are longing to get unstuck spiritually, we would love to grow alongside you. Come as you are.

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What Is God’s Will for My Life? A Study of Ephesians 1

Many of us get stuck on the same question: What is God's will for my life? We wonder who to marry, where to move, which job to take, whether to say yes or no. We treat God's will like a sealed, private document we are not allowed to read. But what if God's general will for your life is not hidden at all? What if it is clear, written down, and available to anyone willing to open the pages of Scripture?

In this message from our Grace for You series through Ephesians, we looked at Ephesians 1:8–14 and discovered four steps for walking in God's will. This is not about predicting your specific future — it is about the general will of God that is true for every believer, everywhere. And the reason it matters is simple: deep down, all of us want to be happy, fulfilled, and at peace. That kind of life is only found when we stop chasing our own will and start walking in His.

1. Walk in Unity

Paul writes that God made known to us the mystery of His will, which He purposed in Christ — "to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment, to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ" (Ephesians 1:9–10). Part of walking in God's will is walking in unity with others.

But unity is not the same as uniformity. We often break relationships because we demand that people look, think, and act exactly like us before we will be close to them. That is a recipe for more division, not less. True unity comes not from looking the same on the surface but from sharing the same foundation: Jesus Christ. Two houses can have different doors and windows and still rest on the same foundation.

Jesus prayed for this the night before He was crucified:

"I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one — I in them and you in me — so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." (John 17:22–23)

When Christians genuinely love one another across their differences, the watching world takes notice. It may be the most powerful evidence that our faith is real.

2. Walk for His Glory

Paul continues: "In him we were also chosen... in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory" (Ephesians 1:11–12). We were created to display God's greatness, not our own.

Some hear that and bristle — isn't it egotistical for God to want glory? But God is the ultimate embodiment of goodness and greatness. When we live to display Him, it is actually for our greatest good and the good of the world. The difference is whether you want the spotlight on you, or you want to get behind the spotlight and shine it on Him. Even a pastor can preach for his own applause. The point of life is not to get people to see how good you are — it is to help them see how good God is.

3. Walk by the Spirit

"When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit" (Ephesians 1:13). Notice: the Spirit was promised long ago. Six hundred years before Ephesians, Ezekiel wrote:

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees." (Ezekiel 36:26–27)

When you trust Christ, He gives you a new nature — a heart of flesh in place of a heart of stone. This does not make you instantly perfect. If you find yourself struggling against sin, take heart: that struggle is a sign of new life, because a slave to sin does not fight it. The Spirit also assures us of who we are: "The Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, 'Abba, Father'" (Romans 8:15). And practically, walking by the Spirit means letting Him govern your mind. "The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace" (Romans 8:6). You do not have to believe every thought or follow every feeling. As Martin Luther is often quoted, you cannot stop a bird from flying over your head, but you can stop it from building a nest there.

4. Walk with Confidence

The Holy Spirit "is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession — to the praise of his glory" (Ephesians 1:14). Your future with God is not a maybe; it is a guarantee. The Spirit within you is a down payment — a foretaste of heaven now, and a promise of the full inheritance to come.

Because God keeps His promises, you can walk confidently rather than fearfully. As Paul wrote, "being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 1:6). God does not abandon unfinished work.

A Takeaway to Reflect On

The greatest barrier to walking in God's will is our stubborn preference for our own will. The Titanic was warned about the icebergs; the crew simply chose their own way. Choosing our will over God's always leads somewhere we did not intend. But God, in mercy, sent Jesus — the only one who walked perfectly in the Father's will — and "by his wounds we are healed" (see Isaiah 53:5). Through Him we can be forgiven and put back on the path we were made to walk.

So ask yourself honestly: Am I walking in the will of God? And if not fully, what would it look like to give my life more completely over to Him today?

If these questions are stirring something in you, we would love to walk alongside you. If you live in Livermore or anywhere across the Tri-Valley, come join us on a Sunday — there is a place for you here at Arroyo Church.

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Grace That Keeps Giving: Peace, Identity, Forgiveness

Have you ever received a gift and only later realized how much more it held than you first thought? Pastor Josh opened this message with a picture like that: being handed a book, setting it aside, and then discovering an envelope tucked inside with a check far more valuable than the book itself. You can receive a gift and still not understand or experience its full benefits. That, he said, is exactly how many of us live with the grace of God.

This message kicks off a new series called Grace for You, a verse-by-verse walk through the book of Ephesians. Written by the apostle Paul from prison to a church he had personally planted and loved, Ephesians is often called Paul's masterpiece — three chapters on who God is and what He has done, followed by three chapters on how we should live in light of it. We began at the very start, Ephesians 1:1-8, where Paul bursts into what reads like a single, breathless poem of praise about grace.

Grace gives you peace

Notice how Paul greets nearly every church: "Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" (Ephesians 1:2). The order matters. Grace always comes before peace, because you cannot have peace with God until you first receive His grace by faith in Jesus.

So what is grace? It is God's unearned love. So much of life teaches us to earn affection — to be attractive enough, successful enough, useful enough to be loved. God is different. As Romans reminds us, "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." He does not love you because of who you are; He loves you because of who He is. God is love. He loves you because He loves you.

And this grace, though offered to everyone, does not come from everyone. It does not come from any human founder or philosophy. Every other system says, "Do, so that God will accept you." The gospel says, "It is done — now receive it." When you do, you gain peace with God: the barrier of sin is removed, and the relationship is restored. You also gain an inner peace the Bible calls a peace that surpasses understanding — the kind that steadies you in the middle of the storm, even when nothing around you says you should be at rest.

Grace gives you a new identity

Paul keeps going: "For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ" (Ephesians 1:4-5). Through Christ you receive "every spiritual blessing" (1:3) — not necessarily material comfort, but everything your soul actually needs.

Two blessings stand out. First, in Christ you are seen as holy and blameless. None of us can claim that on our own. But Jesus lived the perfect life we never could and took our blame to the cross, so that God now looks at us through the flawless life of His Son. Second, you are adopted into God's family. We were spiritual orphans, but grace brings us home as beloved children with real access to the Father.

This changes how we define ourselves. So many of us build our identity on money, success, sexuality, or worst of all, on our own worst failures. Pastor Josh pointed to the difference between saying "I am an alcoholic" and "I am a child of God who struggles with drinking." One chains you to your struggle; the other equips you to walk in freedom. When you know who you are in Christ, it transforms how you live — not the other way around.

At Jesus' baptism the Father declared over Him, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased" — before a single miracle. Through Christ, the Father says something similar over every one of His children.

Grace gives you forgiveness

Finally: "In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us" (Ephesians 1:7-8). Redemption is the language of a debt cancelled. Our sin left us with a debt we could never repay by good behavior, church attendance, or being nice. It was paid in full — not with money, but with the blood of Jesus.

Two things keep believers from experiencing this freedom. The first is constant guilt. There is a godly kind of guilt that leads us to God and then lets us move on; it should not become a rain cloud we carry everywhere. The second is putting limits on His grace, whispering "He can forgive others, but not what I've done." Yet the passage says He forgives according to the riches of His grace, not according to how bad our sin is. You cannot outrun a God who is rich in grace. The only sin that cannot be forgiven is the sin of unbelief — refusing the gift entirely.

A gift that keeps on giving

Grace is not a one-time transaction. Lamentations reminds us His mercies are new every morning. Picture two waterfalls: Yosemite Falls can run dry by late summer, but Niagara never stops pouring. God's grace is like Niagara. You are not asked to work your way up the falls — only to sit beneath them each day and let them fill you, then overflow to bless others, just as Paul blessed the Ephesians with peace while he sat in a prison cell.

A question to sit with this week

When you look in the mirror, do you see yourself the way God sees you — holy, blameless, adopted, and fully forgiven? Where have you been living under guilt or self-made limits that grace already erased?

If you are near Livermore or anywhere in the Tri-Valley, we would love for you to join us in person and keep exploring this series with our church family.

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