Ephesians 1:20

Paul is writing to the church in Ephesus — a major city in what is now western Turkey — around 60 AD. He's describing the extraordinary power of God, and he points to the resurrection of Jesus as the ultimate proof of that power. The resurrection is the central claim of Christian faith: that Jesus, who was publicly crucified and buried, came back to life three days later. In ancient culture, the "right hand" of a king or ruler was the seat of highest honor, reserved for the person who shared the ruler's authority. Paul is saying the resurrection wasn't merely a miracle — it was a coronation. Jesus now holds the position of greatest authority in all of existence.

Father, I confess I often forget the scale of what you've already done. The same power that raised Christ from the dead is not locked in the past — it's present and active. Help me pray with that reality in mind, and stop treating you as if you're limited by what I can imagine. Amen.

We talk about the resurrection at Easter, and then quietly file it away for another year. But Paul keeps returning to it — not as a theological checkbox but as the hinge on which everything turns. He wants the Ephesians to grasp the actual scale of what happened. The same power that pulled a dead man out of a sealed tomb and placed him at the right hand of all creation — that power is not a distant historical fact. It's an active, present reality. Think about the prayers you've stopped praying because they seemed too big, too complicated, too far gone. The relationship broken for years. The grief that hasn't lifted. The thing you've quietly decided God probably won't touch. Paul's point is almost blunt: the God you're praying to has already demonstrated what he can do with actual, finished, irreversible death. And he won. If that's the power behind your faith, what exactly are you holding back from him?