Better...Praying

This podcast of the Ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church.

Helping people know.

Enjoy and glorify God.

For more information about Grand Parkway, visit GrandProkway.org.

Multitasking here this morning.

If you're our guest today, today's a different day for our church.

Pay no attention to the bouquet of flowers in my hands.

Today's uh what we call a family worship day.

There's no children's uh activities or student ministry activities uh unless you're three years old or or under, uh, and then they're over in the preschool part of our children's building, which means we have some little people in the room right now that aren't normally aren't in here.

And so if I was you and I was in here, I would think to myself, man, I wish I had a lollipop.

So if your parents say it's okay, I want you right now to leave your seat and come get one of these and go back to your seat.

And so uh just make yourself at home.

You can grab two or six, I don't care.

Uh the rest of you old people, look at me.

Here's what I want to do today, okay?

Uh yes, yes, don't run.

Yes, yes.

No, sir, you're 60.

Stay in your seat.

Uh uh look at me.

Here's what we're gonna do.

Uh I want to talk to you.

We're starting a new series today called Better, uh, and we're just gonna talk about things you want to get better at.

Uh and uh here, hang on a second.

Y'all are being way way too.

Here, take all of those.

There you go.

Take all of those.

Uh y'all, y'all are being way too religious.

You're like, just grab a handful.

Uh yes.

Your parents are looking at you kind of like, my parenting's on display right now.

Yes, yes.

There you go.

You got it, my man.

Just one handful will be enough.

You can go now.

Thank you very much.

Uh said one handful, and they were just two fists in it down here.

So here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna talk about uh y'all aren't hearing a word I'm saying right now, are you?

You're like, we don't care what you're talking about.

Just let us uh here here you go, sweetie.

Here, double your hands here, cup your hands like this.

There you go.

Eat all those in church and then go home and have fun.

There you go.

All right, did you forget some?

There you go.

Yes.

Hey, hey, hey, you forgot these two.

They want to come with you too.

They're they're cousins, they're related to those other seven in your hand.

There you go.

Yes, did you forget some?

Here, here, there you go.

All right, there we go.

Here's what we're gonna do.

If I was a kid, I'd be in church.

I gotta listen to this guy talk.

Are you giving me?

I want some candy.

Uh, here's what we're gonna do.

Uh, I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you what we're gonna talk about today.

Uh, then I'm gonna give you some different forms of what we're gonna talk about today, then we're gonna look at what we're gonna talk about today in the Bible.

And during the whole thing, I'm gonna just give you questions.

Some of the questions will come up on the screen, some of the questions just kind of pop into my head while I'm while I'm talking, and I'll just give you a question.

You can write them down or you don't have to.

And at the end, uh I'll be quiet.

Everyone says amen.

And we'll just say, hey, let's think about what we've talked about today.

Because the Bible is not a feeling we try to maintain, it's a truth that shapes the way we think.

Which is why we give you space at the end of it.

We don't think you're little kids, we think you're you're you're adults.

You have a mind and you have a heart and you have hands.

And the Bible, the gospel appeals to all of those.

And so at the end, I'll say, let's think about what we've heard today.

And Clyde, our worship pastor, come, he may sing something over us, he may just play.

That's to give you some soul space to kind of say, Hey, what do I do with what I've heard today?

And after that, I'll speak a blessing over you, and we'll get out of here.

And your new year's is begun.

Amen?

Let me voice a prayer.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for the truth of the gospel.

We ask for courage for the living of these days.

Uh our our culture is ripe uh for the gospel.

Because what they've heard so much that's not true, that's a half-truth, that's no truth.

And so we get to be uh salt and light in a culture that's slowly kind of coming unfrayed at the core.

And so, Lord, our confession today is our hope is not in humanity or people or the government or the next president or this president or four presidents from now.

Uh, because the issue is not who's in the White House, the issue is who's leading my house.

Uh I got to father my kids and lead my family spiritually.

Uh, and so I'm not looking to blame anybody for my life today.

I'm looking to understand how it gets better.

And so, Holy Spirit, say something today that has our name on it, from the Bible, so we know it's authoritative.

We didn't shave our legs to come hear a religious speech from a man.

We want to hear the truth because the truth is what sets us free.

And so, set us free with the truth today, we pray in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

You can have a seat.

I want to, like I said, we begin a new series today.

We're calling better and better.

And we'll do this series for about six or eight weeks, and then we'll get we'll preach through the gospel of John.

We just finished the book of Exodus, but uh, when I talk about better, uh, the thing I want to talk to us today, because hey, these are things we want to get better at in the new year.

And so today I want to talk to you about getting better at praying.

Praying, not prayer.

Uh, let me distinguish and define what I'm talking about.

When I say praying, I'm not talking about prayer.

Prayer is a noun.

Uh prayer for a lot of people is kind of like your grandpa's recliner that your grandma gave you when he died.

Uh no one really, it's not really comfortable, no one really uh sits in it, and and but you're too sentimental to throw it away.

And so you kind of hold on to it.

That's not what I'm talking about.

When I'm not talking about prayer, I'm talking about the noun.

I'm talking about praying, the verb.

Uh, and so I want to distinguish it.

And then, secondly, I want to define it.

So let me just begin with the definition of what I mean when I say praying.

Praying is the actual physical exertion of my thoughts, fears, emotions, understanding, sins, requests, and willingness to and towards God.

Let me say that again.

There you go.

Praying is the actual physical exertion of my thoughts, fears, emotions, understanding, sins, request, and willingness to and towards God.

Praying takes many forms, okay?

This may be your big takeaway today, okay?

Uh and I'm okay with that.

But let me just mention three forms of prayer.

The first one is singing.

It's singing.

Uh like here's a question I'd like you to think about.

If you could sing one song as a prayer to God right now, what would it be?

Because that's what the Psalms are.

The Psalms are prayers that in the book of Psalms in the Bible are prayers that people sing to God.

Uh and I find myself sometimes, I just, especially when I'm just feel overwhelmed, I'm just like, I don't know what to pray.

I find myself singing songs, okay?

Uh, my friend Josh, uh, this Josh Felposh used to be a part of this church, and his family moved back up to Michigan.

Uh, Josh lost his 22-year-old brother uh this past weekend.

Uh, they don't know what happened.

The guy was recently married, he he died, and Josh and his family jumped in in their suburban and would get into the hospital, and he passed away right before they got there.

They said, You need to hurry.

But right before he got there, and so his family circled around his bed, and his brother is gone, and his body's just laying there, and no one said anything.

No one said, Hey, why don't you do this?

Josh just started singing because this is a form of prayer.

He started singing these words when peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows row.

Whatever my lot thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.

And without he didn't, everyone started just singing.

He got like th the first four words out of his mouth, and his whole family just started singing.

And so a worship service breaks out as a prayer.

And so singing is a form of prayer.

Uh let me give you another form of prayer.

What's what I call musing.

Musing.

You say, what do you mean?

It's kind of where I just kind of think things towards God.

I don't ever say it out loud.

I just kind of aim my thoughts and and towards God, and I just say, Hey, I want to think about this in light of you, against the backdrop of you.

What do you think about this?

Uh, what's going on?

And it's that's this word I use for musing.

If you looked up the word musing in the dictionary, it would say a period of reflection or thought.

And so what happens a lot of the time is that the the I'll be driving, especially, and I'll just kind of muse about something.

I'll just turn off the radio and I'll just kind of say, God, I want to think about this.

And I'm open to whatever you want you you want to say about it.

And what happens is the next time that I muse about that, I have different, better, and more spiritual thoughts about it.

Here's an indication that we don't practice the verb praying enough.

If you find yourself in life, you get to the point where you have the same response to everything.

That's an indication that something's missing in your life, this intimacy uh that comes out of prayer.

And we'll talk more about that uh next week.

Uh but forms of prayer.

Number one is singing, number two is musing, and then the one we're most familiar with is just spoken prayer.

Uh and here's what I'm laboring towards this morning, talking about this.

I want you to have a prayer life, but I also want you to have a life that's produced by prayer.

And today we'll talk about a prayer life.

Next week, we'll look into the Old Testament and we'll see a picture of a life that's produced by prayer.

It's not as cloistered and serene as you may think it is.

It's pretty juicy and fascinating.

And and but we'll get to that next week.

Ephesians chapter 1.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

Uh, if you got your Bible, I'm gonna start reading in verse 15.

Because in chapter one of Ephesians, Paul tells these people, hey, you're chosen by God, you're redeemed by Jesus, you're sealed by the Spirit.

And then he says, here's starting in verse 15, down to verse 23, he tells them, Hey, but here's four things that I'm praying for you.

And and in the name of getting better at praying, I want us to pray this for ourselves.

I want us to pray this for our church going into the new year.

Let's look together.

Ephesians chapter 1, starting in verse 15, Paul says, For this reason, uh, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

Remembering you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.

Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ, when he raised him from the dead and seated him at the right hand, at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

And he put all things under his feet and gave him as the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Now, it's easy to read something like that, a section of the Bible like that, and kind of get lost, like, okay, what just happened?

And so I want to just break it down.

There's four things that Paul says that he's praying for these people in the city of Ephesus, the church there.

I want you to pray this for yourself.

I want you to pray that for the person on your right and the person on your left.

If you don't know the person on your right or left, you're gives a good chance, unless you're by yourself.

You're sitting next to somebody you know.

And if you don't know them, just kind of say, hey, before you leave this morning, what's your name?

Because I want to pray for you by name.

Four things.

The first thing Paul says he prays for these people is a growing knowledge.

A growing knowledge.

Look at verse 17.

He says, I don't cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.

What does he pray?

First of all, he says in verse 17, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom, of revelation in the knowledge of him.

If you've got a pen or pencil, circle the word the.

We'll come back to that.

He says, in the knowledge of him.

Now the Bible uses little words to make a big difference.

And this is one of those situations where he uses a little word to make a big difference.

Uh, Christianity is kind of like marriage.

You never want to stop growing in your knowledge of the person you're in the relationship with.

Does that make sense to anybody but me?

Some of you are kind of like, I thought this was about prayer praying, not about marriage.

Like, I when I when I got married, I was married a couple years, and my wife was kind of like, Well, you know, I just feel like I'm no longer a challenge.

When you met me, I was a challenge and you conquered the challenge, and now you're off to conquer other challenges.

And I was like, Oh, okay.

Now this conversation took place at 11:30 at night.

I had to get up the next day and catch a plane at six in the morning to go preach somewhere.

And so I was just like, uh, uh, uh, and she's like, oh, just go to bed.

Never mind.

And I'm like, hey, this is free, ladies.

If you want to have a profound soul-searching conversation, let's have it at 10:30 in the morning.

Not 10:30 at night.

Because I am out of gas.

I'm just like, I got nothing.

I I don't feel like I'm gonna challenge you anymore.

Do you still find me challenging?

I find this conversation challenging.

And so the next day I got up, like 4:45, I creep into the bathroom, I'm getting ready, and I'm thinking back on the conversation.

I'm like, I didn't, that wasn't good.

I didn't.

Because she said to me, I remember this, she said, I feel like that I was a challenge, and now I'm not a challenge anymore.

And so before I left, I got a sticky note and I just wrote my wife a little note.

Marcy, you are not like a mountain that can be climbed, and I can climb and then move on to other mountains.

You're like the ocean.

You have unfathomable depths, and I want to spend the rest of my life swimming in your ocean.

Stuck the note on the on the mirror in the bathroom and left.

Didn't call her when I got to the airport.

Didn't call her when I landed where I was going to preach.

I just let her just marinate in those juices all day long.

About 11:30 that night, I called her and I said, Hey, I just wanted you to know I'm okay.

Thank you for my note.

Why?

Because in marriage, your wife wants to know that, hey, you didn't just capture me and then it's all okay.

I need somebody to cook and clean and mind these kids.

No, no, no.

You have this growing knowledge in your relationship with me.

It's the same way.

God intends it to be in your relationship with him.

That's what Paul prays and says, hey, I want you to be growing in the knowledge of him.

Now, why do I have you circle that?

Because I want you to realize that he didn't say our knowledge, my knowledge.

I want you to grow in your knowledge of him, because a lot of us, our knowledge of God is comfort, but it's not consequential.

And here's why: because we make it subjective.

And the Bible says it's objective.

When he says, hey, you grow in the knowledge of God, that's objective.

That's outside of us.

But when we make it subjective, what happens is that God becomes more and more like us.

We don't become more and more like him.

You say, what do you mean?

Being subjective conforms to our appetite.

So you say, well, my God's a God of love.

For that person, God loves everything that you love.

Have you noticed that?

That's what I mean by subjective.

Oh, but the Bible, Paul says, hey, grow in the knowledge of God, but when we grow in my knowledge of God, what we do is we consume that upon our lust, upon our desires.

And my God's a God of love.

What that means is God loves what I love.

So if I love to be in this relationship, if I if I love to just move in, just hang out, we're not married, we're just kind of figuring this thing out, and we're gonna move in together, and and and hey, we're gonna save money or whatever.

If your God's a God of love, then your God has to love that.

What happens though, quietly and without much fanfare, is you become less and less like God.

And no one loves you enough to say, hey, like we had a waitress when we were in Florida last week.

She's 20 years old, and I said, So you got a man in your life?

And she goes, Yeah, we just bought a house together.

I was like, who buys a house when they're 20?

You remember being 20?

And you were dating.

Remember the people you dated when you were 20?

Would you want to buy a house with them?

And I was just kind of like, uh, so how does this work?

And she goes, Well, you know, I think it's gonna work.

I think we're just gonna go to the JP and get married at the courthouse, and then later we'll have a big celebration.

And I said, Okay, you might want to.

I said, Well, so what does he do?

She goes, Oh, he's a waiter at this bar and grill across town.

So you're you're both waiters.

You you how well do you know each other?

Pretty good.

And I had my in-laws and my wife and kids at the table, and they're like, Oh, dad, please, not another conversation with a waitress.

And I said, Pretty good.

Half good is pretty good.

Pretty good.

You want to base the rest of your life on pretty good?

Well, I mean, he seems like a nice guy.

Why and I by the way, I'm not making fun of her.

I wasn't mad at her.

I tipped her big old fat tip and I said, hang in there, Annie.

Annie was her name.

Why do I say that?

When the Bible talks about this growing knowledge, it's not, it's inviting you to this place of certainty.

It's not like, well, pretty good, kind of sort of.

No, no, no, no.

When Paul says, hey, I want you to, I pray that God gives you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in your knowledge, in the knowledge of him.

Because, hey, when when it's subjective, that what happens, it conforms to our appetites.

When it's objective, it conforms to God's attributes.

Said differently, when it's subjective, God becomes more like us.

But when it's objective, when it's the knowledge of God, that's God inviting us to be more like him.

A man named Ja Packer wrote a book called Knowing God years ago.

It's a classic, highly recommended.

In the book, he says this knowing God is more than knowing about him.

It is a matter of dealing with him as he opens up to you and being dealt with by him as he takes knowledge of you.

Knowing about him is a necessary precondition of trusting in him.

But the width of our knowledge about him is no gauge of the depth of our knowledge of him.

This is the kind of knowledge that he's talking about when he says this growing knowledge.

It's Paul's subtle way of telling us that there's more to God than what we know right now.

There's more to God than what we know right now.

If you how many in this room have been married more than 20 years, could I see your hand?

Now put your hand down.

Based on the way you know your spouse right now, when you first knew them, it's almost when you first met them and got married, it's almost like you didn't know them at all.

You could have gone here on the interstate and picked up a hitchhiker and just said, You want to get married?

Sure.

Now, when you got married, you you you thought, hey, I know this person, I know them, they know me, this is gonna work.

But what happened?

Your knowledge of that person grew.

Like, you didn't realize they snore, did you?

That would have been a deal breaker.

You'd have been like, there's no way.

This is inhuman.

Do something about that.

And that selfish pig is like, well, I've never heard myself snore.

What?

But see, you grow.

You grow in the same way.

The Bible says, hey, this is most people, their knowledge of God, their relationship with God is not ruled by knowledge, it's ruled by necessity.

Let me say that again.

Most people, most Christians, their relationship with God is not ruled by knowledge, it's ruled by necessity.

And you say, What do you mean?

Uh they they they don't enjoy it.

The longer they're a Christian, the less they enjoy the Christian life.

The less they enjoy things like church, the less they enjoy things like worship.

Because it's a necessity.

Well, I gotta do this in order to get to heaven.

But it's not ruled by this ever increasing sense of just awareness and knowledge and intimacy and enjoyment.

So ask yourself today, hey, is my relationship with God ruled by knowledge or necessity?

Because Paul prays for them this growing knowledge.

I pray for you as your pastor that this year that you would have this growing sense of understanding about the knowledge of God, who God is and what God is like.

Secondly, he prays for intimate hope.

Intimate hope.

Verse 18.

He says, and having the eyes of your hearts enlightened that you may know the hope to which he has called you.

Now, think about it for a second.

He says, and having the eyes of your heart enlightened.

This is so beyond just intellect.

He didn't talk about the eyes of your head, he talks about the eyes of your heart.

Having the eyes of your heart enlightened so that you may know the hope to which he has called you.

Now, now when the Bible talks about this hope to which he has called you, that that word call, that's not legal language, that's relational language.

Let me say that again and I'll demonstrate.

Having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that's not legal language.

That's not like, like I got a jury summons last month.

Anyone had jury duty?

I was just like, when I got that thing in my mailbox, I was like, why do you hate me?

I don't have time to go do this.

This is oh, can somebody else do it?

And so I called them up and gave them my little excuse.

Oh, I need a deferment.

And they said, okay, we understand.

You got a lot going on.

You can't make that day.

We'll put you back in the pool for some other time.

Three weeks later, I got another one.

I was just like, what?

They're conspiring against me.

And they give you this little thing about the civic duty and blah, blah, blah.

And I'm like, and so I they they give you the little, hey, after five o'clock the day before, call because it may have got, you know, settled.

And so I called at like 5 30.

And they had all these different pools.

Group, pool A, your court, your case has been settled.

You do not report.

B, C, got to me.

We'll see you in the morning at 8:30.

So I got there, and I'm walking.

I got a book, because always take a book to jury duty.

I got a book and my reading glasses, and I got my little form.

I get up to the window and she says, What case are you here for?

And I handed it to her, and she looked up at me, she smiled, and she said, The case got settled this morning.

You don't have to report.

I dropped to the floor and did snow angels right there on the floor.

She's like, Take the Lord.

Ran to my truck before they changed their mind.

Now, why do I tell you that?

Because he says, I want you to know this hope to which God has called you.

Call when God calls you to this hope, it's not a jury summons.

It's not that, okay?

It's not legal, it's relational.

What do you mean?

It's not a it's not like, hey, report your jury duty.

It's an invitation to a feast.

That's what the word in the Greek literally means.

It's like if you could eat, like my man right here in the front in the second row.

What's your name?

You right there.

What's your name?

What's your name?

Josh?

What's your favorite food if you said, hey, I can eat this the rest of my life?

I love this.

What would it be?

Spaghetti.

Come here, Josh.

Here's what I want you to do, Josh.

I want you to find a place that serves spaghetti here.

And I want you to get some spaghetti, okay?

Put that in your pocket.

Now look at me.

Hey, hey, well, don't take the money and run.

This is like a country music song here all of a sudden.

Now, do you have a place, like a restaurant, where you like to go get spaghetti?

No?

Does your mom make spaghetti?

Yes.

Take your mom to the grocery store and just get is that enough money to buy stuff for spaghetti?

Probably.

Okay.

I want you to get some spaghetti and maybe a tattoo while you're there, okay?

We're done, right, Josh?

Okay.

Josh is handing the money to his mom, like, here you go, mom.

We'll be going to HCB on the way home.

Now here's the thing.

When the Bible says, I want you to know the hope to which he's called you, this hope is not a figment of your imagination.

It's not something that you engage in to escape the present moment.

It's not like, hey, this isn't really real, so let's just play pretend for a little bit.

No, no, no.

This is more real than the chair you're sitting in right now.

And he says, I want you to know the reality of this hope that he's called you to.

This is why we refer to as this intimate hope, because the eyes of your head can't take it all in.

The eyes of your heart have to be enlightened for you to understand that.

Ask yourself this question.

If your heart was enlightened today and you understood the hope to which God has called you, what would you be more hopeful about?

If the eyes of your heart were enlightened, and you understood the hope to which God has called you, what would you be more hopeful about?

Because here's my concern that for a lot of people, the longer you're a Christian, the more jaded and cynical you become.

You should ask yourself today, what does that cynicism protect you from?

Ryan Hold Nieber said this.

He said, if you scratch the surface of a cynic, you find an idealist who's been disillusioned.

That's some of you in this room.

Nothing surprises you.

You got it all figured out.

I bought a guy's meal the other day, and he goes, There's no such thing as a free lunch.

What do you want?

Wow.

We should do this again next week.

I'll pay.

Well, why would you do that?

Because I'm loaded, that's why.

I married a rich girl.

Holland Oats wrote a song about her.

And he said, Who's Holland Oats?

So I unfriended him on Facebook.

Anyway.

Third thing Paul prays for.

And I want you to pray this for yourself.

I want you to pray this for our church.

He sees he prays for them, this rich inheritance.

Look at verse 18.

You still with me?

He says this.

He says, uh, after he says, I want you to know the hope to which he's called you.

He says, also, I want you to know what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.

Now, I want you to circle that little word his.

The riches, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints?

Not yours, but his.

A good prayer to pray at the start of this year is for you to learn to see yourself the way God sees you.

Because the Bible says right here in black and white, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints?

In other words, there's something about when God inherits you that he finds glorious.

You can't take that out of the Bible.

Okay?

Let me explain it like this Judgment Day, that day when this all goes down and the God of justice rights all the wrongs people think they're getting away with, okay?

Judgment Day is also gonna be Father's Day.

Think about it for a minute.

Judgment Day is also gonna be Father's Day.

You say, What do you mean?

Don't turn there, but write it down.

Revelation chapter 5, about verse 9.

Revelation 5 · chapter mention

It's a picture of heaven.

They're around the throne of God and they're singing praises to Jesus, and they say, With your blood you purchased men for God.

So what does that mean?

That means, let me say it again.

Judgment Day is also gonna be Father's Day, and all the people that Jesus the Son purchased for the Father with his blood, he's just gonna pick them up and say, Here you go, here go, Dad.

This is David Beal.

I bought David Beal for you to enjoy for the rest of eternity.

Yes.

That's exactly right.

He's gonna say, Here go, God, this is Amy Burgess.

I bought Amy Burgess with my own blood because I wanted you to present her to you as a gift.

This is your inheritance.

The Bible says that when Jesus died, God inherited you.

Some of you are like, Well, that's anticlimactic.

I have a friend, his name is David.

I told him in the first service because it was a small intimate gathering of people who were not hungover like the rest of you.

I told him, I said, I'm gonna tell you this, I'm not gonna tell the secondary, but I'll tell you.

Uh I have a friend, Dave Busby.

He David died of cystic fibrosis.

He had polio in his legs as a kid, cystic fibrosis in his lungs.

He's just struggled his whole life.

I mean, he had this, he always went through life because when I got to know him, uh he always thought people felt sorry for him because he was a cripple.

As he said, I'm a cripple, people feel sorry for me.

They don't really like me, they feel sorry for me.

And I was like, Dave, I don't feel sorry for you.

I treat you like everybody, well, you treat me like everybody else, but I'm sure you you have pity.

I don't not have pity for you.

Now, if you ask David, because it came up, I asked him, I said, Dave, what was one of the most pivotal turning moments in your relationship with God?

And he said, Well, he said, uh, it was our staff Christmas party.

We had a wild elephant gift exchange, and and we were all sitting around, and and and I I was the guy that had the number that I got to go last and pick the gift that everybody wanted.

And he said, and the gift that everybody wanted, somebody had found this, I don't know where they found it, but it was the back half of a squirrel mounted onto this plaque, and the tail was up in the air.

I'll let you fill in the rest.

And he said, everybody just wanted it because I mean, every he said, I never heard the phrase, I want the squirrel's butt so much in my life.

Because people were stealing it from each other.

And he said, I got to go last.

I just walked over and said, you know, I'll take the squirrel's butt.

And he said, I walked over and I sat down and I was just looking at that.

And he said, and I just thought to myself, mused.

I just thought to myself, boy, God, this is probably what you felt like when you got me.

And he said, in that moment, Neil, just clear as a bell, God said, You know what, David?

I never thought that about you.

I enjoy you so much, David.

You don't have, you, you don't, you cannot fathom how much I enjoy you and love you and cannot wait to spend eternity with you.

And at his his church staff, white elephant Christmas party, my friend Dave Busby burst into tears and sobbed uncontrollably, holding a squirrel's butt.

And his wife got up and came over and just started consoling him, and he couldn't get it together.

He said, I tried to stop, and the more I tried to stop, I was making noise.

I was like, And she was just like, Okay, you guys go ahead and get punched, we'll be right there.

But if he were alive today, he would tell you that was a turning point in his life.

And some of you in this room, look at me.

I'm gonna meddle with you for a little bit.

Some of you in this room have such a low view of yourself, you think that's the way God views you.

But the Bible says that Jesus died for God to inherit you.

And so on judgment day, it's gonna be Father's Day, and you're gonna be one of those gifts that Jesus says, Hey, I bought this for you, Dad.

Here you go.

Enjoy.

Maybe a question you should ask yourself today is, how do you think God sees you?

And is there a discrepancy between the way God sees you and you see you?

Because this thing gets into the realm of enjoyment when you start understanding how God sees you.

Last thing Paul prays for the church at Ephesus is it is great power.

Look at the latter part of verse 19.

He says, and what is the, or verse 19, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power towards us who believe?

And what is the immeasurable greatness of his power towards us who believe?

Now I have a question for you.

If you're a thinking person, for all the engineers in the room, how do you measure that which is immeasurable?

That's what he says.

I want you to know this great power.

He says, hey, uh after all this other stuff, the hopes which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power towards us who believe.

It's almost like he says, hey, before you try to quantify this and clarify this and kind of get this into some metric that makes sense, it's immeasurable.

You can't get your head around it, your brain would just snap if you tried to explain it.

And yet, he says that this immeasurable, this prayer for it that he prays for these people, this prayer that I pray for you, it is that you would understand this immeasurable, the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe.

It cannot be measured, but it can be compared.

He gives you a frame of reference.

He says, he points to the resurrection.

And he says, if you want to understand this power that's available to you, he says, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him in the in his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that can be named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

And he put all things under his feet, and he gave him as the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who feels all and in awe.

You ever go to a meeting with somebody and you're a little bit nervous?

Or you have people in your life that intimidate you?

You don't know why they intimidate you, but they just intimidate you, and you're just kind of like, the thought of talking to that person, like I was talking to somebody the other day, and it was a lady, she made an appointment, she came to see me, she sat down, and I said, Are you nervous?

And she goes, Yes, you scare me.

And I said, Imagine how that makes me feel.

And she goes, I don't know why.

I hear you're a really nice person and you're gracious, but the thought of talking to you makes me want to throw up in my purse.

This is not getting better, lady.

So to help her be relaxed, I said, shut up.

And she said, What'd you say?

And I said, Hey, hey, I said, I'm gonna talk about this to my church next month.

But but and I told her, I said, anytime you get ready to meet with somebody that you're you're like, I'm intimidated by this person, just think about what Paul says in Ephesians 1.

He talks about God, his in this incomparably great power that's for us who believe.

And he says, hey, it's the same power that he raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the heavenly realms.

And here's the part that gets where you live, far above all rule and power and dominion and every name that can be named, not only in this age, but in the in the age to come.

When people intimidate you, you need to subject them to the power of Jesus.

And she goes, Oh, that's good.

I need to write that down.

Let me get a pen out of my purse.

I said, Do you want to throw up in it first and then look for the pen?

And she said, I don't know why.

I don't know why.

I've asked people who've come and talked to you, what is it like?

And they're like, You're very gracious.

And this morning I almost called and canceled.

That's no way to live.

But here's the reality: all of us in this room have something that makes us nervous.

Something that we're afraid of, something that we're just a little bit, mmm, I don't know about that.

So anytime you get ready to be exposed to that, you just need to subject that.

You need to take this power that's available to you if you're a Christian, if you're a believer, this incomparably great power, and you have to subject these people and these things to that.

Some of you, it's being around your family that you were just around.

You're so glad that New Year's is here and Christmas is over and they left.

You don't have to give people power like that.

Why?

Because there's this incomparably great power, this immeasurable greatness of power that's available to you who believe.

It's so powerful that all authority, every power, every name in this age, as well as the one to come, are subject to him.

So the last question I want to give you this morning is simply this.

Do you understand the power that is available to you as a Christian?

Do you understand the power?

Or maybe this helps us get it better.

Do you experience the power that is available to you as a Christian?

And if not, why not?

Let's think about these things for a minute.

Let me pray.

Father, thanks that your word is very clear.

It kind of lays out, hey, prayer's not just kind of throwing words in the air and hoping some of them stick to the ceiling and God picks them up on it.

The Bible gives us specific things to pray for and about and towards and to.

And so, Lord, today we want to begin our new year by thinking about prayer in terms of great power.

This rich inheritance that you find in us.

So I pray for my friends in this room today who view themselves very unlike the way you view them.

That maybe their prayer today would just be, I want to see you, I want to see me the way you see me.

I pray, God, that you would infect us as a people with intimate hope.

That when we get that call, it's not a jury summons, it's an invitation to a feast.

It's mom saying spaghetti's ready.

And God, I pray finally for this growing knowledge.

This not for the sake of information, but for the sake of intimacy, for the sake of closeness and proximity and enjoyment.

We want a relationship with you that's just ruled by a right knowledge of you.

Because you have a right knowledge of us.

You know us completely.

Everything we've ever done and why we did it.

And you remain unquenchable in your desire to know and bless and forgive us.

And so, Lord, let us just think for a moment here and ask ourselves, what do we do with this?

What do I do with what I heard today?

So, Lord, we want to think about that question for a few minutes before we get out of here.

So, Holy Spirit, just brood over your people.

We're gonna just muse in our minds about you.

We're gonna think about this in relation to you and against the backdrop of you.

Because that's the safest place for us to think.

And so we want to do that now.

And so just speak, Lord.

Your servants are listening.

Lord, when we sing songs like that, it reminds us that you're gentle in the way you come to us.

You don't overwhelm us, you just kind of breathe on us, just to kind of remind us.

I'm real, I'm not going anywhere.

You done?

You're done trying to do this your way?

You're done trying to find salvation in your job.

You're done trying to earn enough money to provide enough cushion.

And so, Lord, I pray that you would just uh breathe on us today.

We don't need to be beat up, we just need to be breathed on.

That's enough.

That's a reminder, and it's an invitation.

So, Lord, give us ears to hear.

And give us a clear mental image of what responding to you looks like today.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

If you're our guest today, let me say thanks for being part of our church.

When you our service, when you came in, you were given a worship folder that has information about things going on in our church.

We'd love for you to take that with you.

Also on the far right side is a little tear-off portion, ask for some information.

If you've had a chance to fill that out, if you would just drop it on these wooden boxes by the doors.

And for those uh who are a part of our church, uh, if today's the day you worship through obedience or generosity and giving, that's where you do that as well, okay?

Uh, myself and some of our pastors and elders will be available down front.

If you have any questions about anything you heard today, we'd love to dialogue with you about that.

We can pray with you.

We can practice this thing we want to get better at of praying.

We'd love to do that as well.

If it's your first, second, or third time in our church, all we want to do is meet you and put a name with a face.

So come up to one of us and just say, hi.

We're the Joneses.

These are our Braddy kids, and we just want to know your name, and you can get out of here, okay?

Fair enough.

Stand to your feet.

Let me speak a blessing over you.

Hold your hands out.

Your kids are messy.

But you grow in your knowledge of God to the point where it's enjoyable.

And so enjoyable that when you and God commune, they're suckers on the ground.

In the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you.

You're dismissed.