Count Your Blessings - Part 1

I grew up in a church that liked to have an occasional Sunday night "hymn sing." We would spend an entire service singing old hymns and letting people share stories of their faith. In almost all of them we would sing a hymn titled Count Your Blessing, which melodies "count your many blessings, name them one by one, count your many blessings see what God has done..." After each verse of the song we would stop and ask people to share the blessings God had given them in life. We would hear people testify giving praise for family, friends, financial blessings, health, jobs, an the joy of church family. All of these are amazing, and well worth out praise. But, there are deeper blessings, the blessings of God related to out salvation and identity in Christ that change the very core of our existence. I can see Paul singing a song like this one as he is writing Ephesians 1:3-14. In this passage he tells us that we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ, then gives one of the most amazing lists in all of Scripture, and he details the amazing things God has accomplished in us and for us. Some of the things in this list have become controversial, because they explain that every bit of our redemption is a result of the sovereign grace of God. But, the goal of this passage is to help us understand the deep work God has done in us leading to our praise. So, today we are going to have the first of two sermons on this amazing passage, as we count our blessings, name them one by one...