The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

AllanStanglin.com

Category: Ephesians (Page 1 of 19)

Family: By Jesus

March 10, 2026 / / 0 Comments

“I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law–a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” ~Matthew 10:35-37

Why does our Lord Jesus talk this way about family? Jesus had no problem splitting up family businesses, separating sons from their dads with a (snap) “Follow me.” He told a disciple who had just lost his dad to let the dead bury their own dead and get about the urgent business of the Kingdom.

When Jesus was teaching inside someone’s house, he was informed that his mother and brothers were outside looking for him. “Who are my mother and my brothers,” he asked? Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother!” (Mark 3:31-35)

Why does Jesus talk like this about family? Jesus treats family like he treats money and possessions. He talks about family like he talks about the government and the traditions of men. Why? Because to Jesus, every single thing we hold dear must be submitted to him and his Kingdom. Nothing comes between us and following Christ Jesus. Not even family.

You know, Jesus has this weird knack for harpooning the things we treasure the most. He devalues what we overvalue and calls us to something bigger and better. He points us to something holy and eternal. Like with our families.

We probably put too much emphasis on our biological families. I mean, our natural families are notoriously undependable. Unstable. Unreliable. Our families are divided by ambition and selfishness. Our families are separated by geography and greed. Our families are destroyed by divorce and death. You can’t count on your biological family. Yet, if we’re not careful, we can get drawn into idolizing the family. We get sucked in to prioritizing family over God.

We put our kids in sports camps and sign them up for traveling teams at alarmingly younger ages and at increasingly frantic paces like they’re going to be playing baseball and volleyball their whole lives. Their spiritual formation takes a backseat to their athletic formation. We’re more concerned about our kids being popular and successful than we are about them being like Christ. We’re investing more time and money and energy and emotion into our children and grandchildren than we are into the Kingdom and mission of God.

When we do that, we send the wrong message. We distort the Gospel. We communicate the wrong things inside our families and to everyone who’s watching.

Because not everybody has a family.

There are more and more men, women, and children in this fractured world who grow up without moms and dads. Fewer and fewer people are getting married and having kids. You know lots of people who are single–some because they choose to be and some against their will. Some people have tried to make family work, they’ve tried to keep it all together, but it just doesn’t. They don’t have a family. And we hold up biological family as some kind of spiritual ideal, as something to attain to as one of God’s top priorities, and it’s just not! We wind up excluding more and more people from the Gospel.

“Here are my mother and my brothers!” 

Jesus devalues what we overvalue and calls us to something bigger and better. He points us to something holy and eternal.

“As God has said, ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God and they will be my people.’ The Lord Almighty says, ‘I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters.'” ~1 Corinthians 6:16, 18

Jesus is showing us a forever family conceived in God’s love and grace and birthed by his precious blood. God’s eternal family is not based on genetics or DNA or last names, but on his compassion and Christ’s sacrifice. Romans 9 says it’s not the natural children who are God’s children, but the children of the promise. The promise is that God will create an eternal family, where everybody belongs together and everybody’s related–no barriers, no restrictions, no distinctions–where everybody belongs and everybody’s equally loved and nurtured and cared for. That’s the promise. That’s the mission of our God.

When you become a Christian, when you give your whole life over to Jesus, you are joined into God’s family. An eternal people born of water and Spirit, a family bigger and better than your biological family, a worldwide barrier-breaking family where we eat and drink together and share and accept and carry each other’s burdens. Together. Where we rejoice and mourn together. Where we support and encourage and grow and work and bless and love. Together.

“He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he adopted us as his children through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.” ~Ephesians 1:4-5

If you say “Yes” to being adopted, if you’ll give yourself to it and really embrace the Church as the family of God, it’ll be the best thing that’s ever happened to you.

“I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the Gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and fields) and in the age to come, eternal life.” ~Mark 10:29-30

Peace,

Allan

Praying on Mission

January 30, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Interesting tidbit to begin this post. Eight teams qualified for the divisional round of the NFL playoffs this year: Rams, Seahawks, Bears, Pats, Broncos, Texans, ‘Niners, and Bills. Seven of the eight quarterbacks who started those games weren’t even born the last time the Cowboys won a divisional playoff game! The lone gray-hair, Matthew Stafford, was seven-years-old in January 1996–a cute little 2nd grader in Highland Park with a Troy Aikman jersey. Sam Darnold, the starting quarterback for Seattle in next Sunday’s Super Bowl, wasn’t born the last time the Cowboys made it to the postseason’s third week–and he’s already played for five NFL teams!

This 30-year drought is moving out of the realm of a generational thing and into oblivion.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In Ephesians 3, the apostle Paul prays this beautiful prayer for the church. He prays about transformation, that God may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, that Christ may dwell in your hearts, that the church may be rooted and established in love, that we would have power together with all the saints to grasp the love of Christ, to know the love of Christ, to be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen!” ~Ephesians 3:20-21

The prayer is for God to do a whole lot, for God to do incredible and unimaginable things with his power that is at work in the Church. This prayer is not a wide-open request for God to demonstrate his power in random ways. This is a specific request for God to act in spectacular ways through us, through his Church. The transforming power of God belongs to us. So, we’re not asking God to do great things while we sit in the pews and wait on it. And study it. And talk about it. And agree that it’s good. The Kingdom of God is not a matter of talk, but of power!

In Matthew 9, Jesus tells his followers to pray for workers to send to the fields. Pray about it. This is what we want the Father to do: raise up workers. Then in the very next verse–one verse!–he’s giving them the authority and giving them the power and sending them into the fields to do the work! Have you ever noticed that?

Be careful when you pray. The answer to your prayer might be God moving you into his mission.

If you pray for God to use your church, or to work through your church, you’d better be prepared to get off your pew and into the mission. If you pray for the hungry and the sick, if you pray for God’s will to be done in your town just as it is in heaven, you’d better open your eyes, your ears, and your heart to how God wants to work through you to do it.

Peace,
Allan

 

The Transforming Church

January 14, 2026 / / 0 Comments

“The closer we draw to the Church, the closer Christ draws to us.” ~ Kenneth B

I’m still posting some excerpts from this past Sunday’s sermon on how we are transformed more into the image of Jesus in and through the local church. I am also sharing some lines from the excellent article I found Monday–a few days too late!–written by Kenneth B on Substack about the same topic. You can read his outstanding piece here.

The main point of Sunday’s sermon is that the differences we have with one another in our churches are precisely the areas where our Father shapes us into his image. It’s in those differences and disappointments that the Spirit changes us to more consistently think like God and more regularly and predictably act like Jesus. We have different ideas, different preferences, different buttons and triggers–there’s never going to be anything we all agree on together within our churches.

And that’s okay.

If we had to agree with everybody in our churches on everything, Carrie-Anne and I would be at two different churches.

If unity means uniformity, a bunch of us are going to have stop thinking. Nobody wants that.

God’s people are messy in community. But I think that’s the point.

“You are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people, and members of God’s household… In him, you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” ~ Ephesians 2:19-22

“In fact, God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.” ~ 1 Corinthians 12:18

I believe that every man, woman, and child in your church is there because God placed them there. You are a part of your congregation for a reason: God’s reason. We need each other if God’s going to work in us and through us the way he intends. Our mindset must be: We are together in this church because of what God is doing in Christ. If that’s the mindset, then we commit to one another. We vow to make it work.

We were watching a TV show a couple of weeks ago in which two of the characters work together, and they’re dating. They’re in a relationship. He did something at work she didn’t like, something that messed up what she was trying to accomplish, and it made her angry. So she broke up with him. It’s over. And he said, “So, that’s how it is? You don’t get your way and you sever the relationship? You’re going to be a sad and lonely woman.”

Some people leave their church when they don’t get their way. They just leave because something’s not going the way they want.

No! That misses the whole point of Christian community! It’s a family, it’s like a marriage. You work it out. You don’t leave. You work through it. And it’s hard and it’s painful and sometimes it’s disappointing and sometimes it hurts. But this is precisely what leads to spiritual growth. This is what facilitates increased Christ-likeness. You don’t treat your church like you treat your car or your shampoo. Your mindset is: I am all in with these people in this place because God has put me here and he’s doing something.

“In Christ, we, who are many, form one body. And each member belongs to all the others.” ~ Romans 12:5

We belong together in our church communities. And it’s in your church community where God’s grace transforms you. Being together all the time with people you don’t necessarily agree with, worshiping and serving together, living and dying together with people you didn’t choose, forces us to grow in Christ-likeness.

Love one another. Build one another up. Encourage one another. Honor one another. Be in harmony with one another. Pray for one another. Be devoted to one another. Instruct one another. Greet one another. Accept one another. Serve one another. Be patient with one another. Be kind and compassionate to one another. Submit to one another. Forgive one another. These biblical commands can only be obeyed in community. We can only follow our Lord’s instructions if we’re together, if we really belong to each other. And when we do these things, by God’s grace, when we commit to this way of being together in Christian community, we’ll find that we are more consistently thinking like God and more regularly and predictably acting like Jesus.

This is how God works. And where.

I’ll end today with this paragraph from the Kenneth B article. Again, I urge you to read the whole thing here.

“A personal relationship with Jesus Christ is real, but it is not solitary. It is lived through the Church. You do not discover Christ by escaping the community, but by joining it. You do not grow closer to God by seeking exceptional moments, but by entering the ordinary pattern of worship, repentance, fasting, and love that has formed saints for two thousand years… We meet him as members of his Body. We are saved together, healed together, shaped together, and restored together. Even our most personal experiences of grace arise from the shared life of the Church, it’s sacraments, its Scriptures, its prayers, its elders, its martyrs, and its saints… In the ancient world, to speak of knowing Christ personally was to speak of being united to his Body, standing shoulder to shoulder with the community he founded, and learning from the people who had already learned to pray, to repent, to love, and to die with hope.”

Peace,
Allan

Grace is a Calling

June 3, 2025 / / 0 Comments

“God chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he adopted us as his children through Jesus Christ, to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves… the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.” ~Ephesians 1:4-8

God’s amazing grace gives us an immeasurable amount of everything we need most: forgiveness, restoration, reconciliation, peace, joy, hope, salvation–all of that and a million blessings more. But that’s not our primary focus. A lot of the church songs we sing and, frankly, a lot of the church sermons we hear are centered on those blessings. But that can’t be the center of it for us because the grace of God is a calling. It can’t be just my salvation or my peace of mind or my eternal hope or my blessed assurance. Grace is a calling.

Paul says he was called by God’s grace so that he–in order that he–might preach Christ to the Gentiles (Galatians 1:15). We are changed by Gospel power and called by God’s grace for a mission, the mission of our Lord.

And I know it’s not the same for everybody. Not everyone called by God has a blinding Damascus Road experience. Some do. Some people are converted and called–BOOM!–immediately. I’m ready to minister! I’m ready to serve! With some people it takes several years and lots of different experiences. Some people can’t really point to where and when it started. But you are called by God’s grace to minister.

“It is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” ~Ephesians 2:8-10

This helps, too, when those weird, random, bad things happen to you. I posted about this yesterday. When something goes wrong in your life, you don’t face it with a determined self-reliance: “I can overcome this! I can fix this!” And it’s not fatalistic doom and gloom, either: “I’m never going to get through this. My life is over.” 

No, you are called and grabbed by Christ Jesus to be his minister in that mess, to be his witness. And you have his power and grace to do it. Your primary calling is not to be a successful salesperson or a successful surgeon or a successful oil man. You are called first to be a Christian. A Christian witness. So you can relax and rest in that. You are free to love and proclaim, you’re empowered to witness and serve.

You have received the grace of Almighty God. You have received his calling.

Peace,

Allan

His Glorious Riches

April 9, 2025 / / 0 Comments

The Stars lost a heart-breaker last night in a way no team has ever lost before. Dallas was leading the Canucks 3-0 heading into the third period and, after Vancouver scored two quick goals to pull to within one, the Stars scored two more, including an empty-netter with 2:20 to play, to go back up by three. With one minute left in the game, Dallas led 5-2. One minute later it was tied and headed to overtime. For the very first time in NHL history, a team trailed by three in the final minute and scored three goals to force overtime. It’s never happened before. It was stunning. I’ve never seen anything like it. And it hurt bad.

Dallas has lost three straight now for the first time all season and they had a third period lead in all three games. They’ve left a lot of points in the standings on the table the past week or so. Instead of being one or two points behind Winnipeg and tomorrow’s game against the Jets being for first place in the division and the number one seed in the Western Conference, it’s only for how far behind Winnipeg they’re going to finish. Whitney and I bought tickets for tomorrow’s game, hoping it would be for the division title and the top seed. But the Stars are four points down and reeling. Whit and I will see in person tomorrow how the team responds to the historically impossible meltdown. It all but guarantees a first round matchup with the Avalanche in a week-and-a-half, and nobody wanted that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The prayer at the end of Ephesians 3 is loaded with hefty theology. It’s packed with soaring adjectives and lofty descriptions of God’s eternal promises and our unshakable confidence. I’d like to focus today on one simple phrase at the beginning of the prayer that sometimes goes overlooked.

“Out of his glorious riches…”

The prayer asks God to strengthen us with power out of his glorious riches. The literal Greek words in the original text are “his wealth of glory.” It could be translated “glorious wealth” or “the riches of God’s glory.” One translation says, “God’s unlimited resources.” Either way, what it means is that God is never going to run out.

God is never going to run out of what he has for you. Do you think God’s going to run out?

He is never going to run out of love for you. It’s part of his glory, his nature. God is not going to run out of mercy or goodness or comfort or peace for you. Knowing that should give you strength. Having direct access to all of who God is and his glorious riches for you gives you power.

But he won’t keep forgiving me for the same thing over and over, not for this long.

Yes. He will. He won’t run out of forgiveness for you.

But God won’t take me back again. He won’t let me come back after what I’ve done.

Yes. He will. You can’t use up God’s goodness toward you, his desire to be in relationship with you. His love for you is without limit. Out of our God’s glorious riches, he strengthens you with power.

Peace,

Allan

A Gift from God to Receive

November 18, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Christian unity is a big deal to our Lord Jesus. At the end of his beautiful prayer recorded in John 17, on the last night before his sacrificial death, Jesus prays for the unity of all future disciples. He asks the Father to give all future followers, all future Christians, the same unity that he and the Father share. This unity, this oneness, Jesus says, is a critical component for world evangelism.

“…so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” ~John 17:21
“…to let the world know that you sent me.” ~John 17:23

Our badge of discipleship is not baptism. The world doesn’t know we’re disciples and that Jesus really is the Savior of the world because we’ve been baptized. And the world isn’t convinced by our doctrines or worship practices, either. The world doesn’t really care about those things at all. Jesus says the world will be changed when we show them our unity.

It’s important to know that Christian unity is not something for which we have to work. Christian unity is a gift from God to receive. It’s not something we create; we don’t cause Christian unity. It’s already been given to us; it’s already the eternal reality. It’s just a matter of whether we recognize it or not, whether we choose to live into it or not.

“I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one.” ~John 17:22

It’s a gift. Ephesians 4:3-6 makes it very plain. It doesn’t say make every effort to create the unity. It’s not make every effort to cause the unity or bring about the unity. It’s “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit.” Make every effort to acknowledge and guard and practice the unity of the Spirit. Because there is one body and one Spirit. Not there needs to be or there should be–it’s there is! It’s already done!

There is one body and one Spirit, there is one hope and one Lord. There are many expressions of the faith, but just one faith. Guard it. Maintain it. Keep it. There are different expressions of baptism, but only one baptism. Not just one expression of Church–there are many expressions–but there is only one Church. And one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all!

That’s the reality. It’s the same blood of our Lord Jesus Christ that courses through our spiritual veins. It’s the same one Holy Spirit who lives inside all Christians. We’re all related to all Christians. It’s already a done deal.

Through the Spirit, we have been given by God an eternal unity that encompasses the Father with the Son, all disciples of Jesus with them both, and all Christians, in turn, with one another. It’s not anything we have to create. It’s what God has already given us. Unity with all Christians is a gift from God. The only question is whether or not you’re going to accept it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Dallas Cowboys are the only professional sports team in the United States without a home win in 2024. Look it up. NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA–every single team has won a game at home except for Jerry’s Team. Look for that to continue tonight against C.J. Stroud, Joe Mixon, and the Houston Texans. The Cowboys have not scored a touchdown at AT&T Stadium in 57 days. During their current four game losing streak, Dallas has been outscored 138-60. I don’t think this will be an explosive blowout like the past five games in Arlington in which the Cowboy have given up at least 21-points before halftime and trailed by three scores. But the losing streak should continue. And whatever has been ailing the Texans in November should get fixed.

Peace,

Allan

« Older posts

© 2026 The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑