Contending for the Focused Life: Intimacy Part 2 - Contending For The Focused Life

You're listening to this edition.

You know what happens when our inner man are strengthened and Christ is manifesting his presence in our hearts.

Then we love God the way that Jesus loves God.

Jesus is a great love for his father.

And when Christ manifests his presence in our hearts, we're strengthened to give the love that Jesus wants to give to his father.

Through us to his father.

We're strengthened to obey his father.

As Jesus would obey his father.

That's the gift of the Holy Spirit beside us.

At the road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on the road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message.

Contending for a life, for a focused life of intimacy with God, round two.

Is that okay?

And we're just going to jump right back into the book of Ephesians.

So we spent some time in Ephesians 1, and we got to learn and hear and meditate that we're blessed with every spiritual blessing, that we're sons of God, that we're not orphans anymore, that we have been given the mystery of the ages, that God is going to bring all the leadership of heaven and the leadership of earth together under his son.

And that we've been redeemed, we'd been sealed by the Holy Spirit.

And then we were reminded that Paul was praying these things.

Paul knew these things.

Paul knew these things from the book of Isaiah, from the book of Jeremiah, from the book of Ezekiel, from the book of Daniel.

He knew there was a kingdom coming that would crush the other kingdoms and that would grow into a mighty mountain, and this kingdom would have no end.

He knew that from the book of Daniel.

He knew that the Messiah was coming, the one in Isaiah 11, who is anointed with the spirit of counsel and the spirit of might and the spirit of wisdom and the knowledge of God.

And he knew that this Messiah was going to make every wrong thing right.

He just didn't know.

It was Jesus Christ, born of a woman, came from God, died from him, died for him, and was risen from the dead.

He persecuted this one.

He persecuted, he said, the Lord of glory.

And then later he follows him and he experiences the rich mercy of this king who's going to rule the ages.

I mean, think of Paul's life.

He said, I was the chief of sinners.

Paul wasn't, that wasn't just kindness.

He wasn't just like, oh, I was a pretty bad sinner.

He was like, no, no, no, no.

I am the chief.

I've stored up many sins.

He wasn't lying when he said that, but he said, but God, rich in mercy, but God entrusted me with this gospel.

But God shone his light in my heart, the light of the knowledge of God in the face of Christ.

And he was transformed.

He was filled with the Spirit.

And he went to Arabia, and I bet he opened for three years just the scriptures.

I bet he just opened the prophets and said, It's Jesus.

It's Jesus.

He's the servant of Isaiah.

He's the king of Isaiah.

It's Jesus.

He's the prophet that Moses talked about.

It's Jesus.

It's him.

And he just learned from the scriptures.

Jesus of Nazareth is at the right hand of God with the resurrected body and is coming again.

And then, okay, we don't have to get into the life of Paul, but it's exciting.

It's wonderful.

It's good news.

And Paul said, and now I want you to experience it.

I'm praying for you to experience revelation in who this man is.

I'm praying for you to experience that the way he thinks about you, that you are his inheritance.

And I'm praying for you, Church of Ephesus, that you would walk in the same power that Paul encountered in his ministry.

The same power that kept him going when he received the 40 minus one lashes five times in his ministry.

I mean, just think about that.

If you were to preach the gospel, if it cost you that of a Jew being angry with you and tying you to a post, the synagogue tying you to a post, and you were either kicked out of the synagogue and you couldn't preach to the Jews anymore, or you received the 39 lashes.

And Paul chose the 39 lashes five times.

He said, I am being empowered and filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit to bring the Word of God, who the real Messiah is, to my people.

He did that five times.

Three times beaten with rods, ship-dreaked, and fasting often.

I was telling my wife, we were in the bathroom getting ready, you know, for to come and to bring the children.

And I was just, I just had that moment of like, oh wow, this schedule, this is this is pretty tough.

And then I remembered 2 Corinthians 11, Paul's sufferings, and I was like, ugh.

I don't think Paul would say this is pretty tough.

Oh, you get to come preach to wonderful believers who love the Lord in an air-conditioned room with a sound system with lights, and you just got to work all day in an air-conditioned room with and the the main trial of your day was that one argument you got in with your coworker and he frustrated you.

I'm just saying.

Okay.

But Paul found hope, he found peace, and found life in Jesus.

And then he continues in Ephesians 2.

So open your Bibles, and we are gonna pick up right where we left off in Ephesians 2.

This is a powerful passage of Scripture as well, because Paul begins Ephesians 2 with reminding us not where we are now in Christ, but where we came from.

And he begins, he says, this you who were once dead in trespasses.

Listen to this passage.

We're gonna read verses 1 through 3.

You who were once, or 1 through 4, excuse me, you who were once dead in trespasses and sin, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now, that now works in uh who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as others.

Now let's just break this down.

This is like five really bleak things that you and I once had a part of.

If you're a believer in this room, if you're not a believer, you still have a part of these things.

Okay?

It says this you were dead.

That if you would have died, your spirit was dead.

There was no life of God inside of you.

You were already sentenced to death.

An eternal punishment for not acknowledging the God of all the universe, creator, as sustainer, and as a Lord, and believed in him.

We were dead without Christ.

We followed the world without any weapon against the influences of the world.

Not only that, we were influenced by the enemy and by his angels.

Some churches don't like to say demons.

We'll say the enemy's angels in darkness.

But at the end of the day, you had no power from the influence of the Prince of the power of the air and his kingdom.

He goes on.

You had no power against the lust of your flesh.

And you had no power, and you would have received the wrath of God if you would have died.

That is the condition of all those who do not know the Lord.

That should fill us with compassion.

And that should cause us to understand the crazy decisions that people who don't know the Lord make.

They're influenced by the one who has come to kill, the one who has come to steal, the one who has come to destroy.

They're influenced by the usurper and by the liar.

They have no power.

Have you ever, you know, have you ever counseled an unbeliever?

I remember counseling one of my family members one time, and he wasn't a believer at the time, and he came and spent some time with us, and he was just out of drug rehab.

And and I was just telling him about Jesus and the power and the and the grace of God that is available to him.

And there was just like this glaze.

It just made no sense.

And the decisions he was making, he knew they were terrible for his life, but he had no power not to make them.

So Paul's reminding us, he's saying, Church of Ephesus, this is what you once were.

Now, the Church of Ephesus experienced the greatest revival that we have recorded in the New Testament.

Did you know that?

The three main revivals of the Old Testament, or four of the Old Testament, New Testament, of the book of Acts.

The four main revivals of the New Testament are Jerusalem, the revival of Jerusalem.

That was a good one.

Tongues of fire.

Apostles preaching in the streets with tons of fire on their head.

I'd gotten saved.

I would have gotten saved.

I'd have been like, what sure.

Amen.

Now, who is Jesus?

Or I would have ran for my life.

And then there was Antioch.

The gospel took root in the first Gentile city.

And the first missionary movement was born out of Antioch.

Well, out of Jerusalem too, but it was born out of Antioch to the Gentiles.

And then it was Corinth.

Paul preached the gospel in Corinth.

Corinth was a wicked, wicked city.

It had the temple of Apollos and the temple of Ephrodite, and you worshiped through sexual immorality with temple prostitutes.

And it was the most sexual and moral city.

It outranked Bangkok.

It outranked some of our cities today.

And to be a very immoral person was, you were actually called, oh, you're behaving like a Corinthian.

The gospel took root in Corinth.

And Gentiles came to know the Lord and came to be free from that.

Then Paul goes to Ephesus.

And Ephesus, if Corinth was the seedbed of sexual immorality, Ephesus was the seedbed of witchcraft and sorcery.

So no one ever tells me that the gospel can't take root in Manitou Springs, because Ephesus was the capital of the world in witchcraft and sorcery.

The term abracadabra came from Ephesus.

You know what an abracadabra was?

It was a curse.

They would call it a prayer to their God, but it was a curse that you would write on you.

And you would wear it under your clothes, and it was normally a cloth under your clothes, and it would invite demons to come fill you for, and they would experience like temporal healing.

They would experience some pretty dark, some benefits, but some very dark things.

And they were written by these sorcerers who would just be filled with demons and talking to Satan.

They didn't know that.

They called him other gods.

So when Paul went to Ephesus, guess what he did?

Those rags that he would give?

It's like if you have faith for an abracadabra, here, I'm gonna pray over this, the Holy Spirit can heal you.

And they would put it on, they would experience healing from the Holy Spirit.

Isn't that awesome?

That Paul just took their culture and like said, Hey, hey, Jesus can do something like this.

I just think that's amazing.

So Ephesus, he's speaking to them.

He's speaking to men and women who were dead, who were following the world, and who were influenced by the devil.

Now I think when he told that to them, they were like, Oh yeah, oh yes, we were.

I remember getting delivered of demons that I had invited, but when Jesus Christ came, I had peace, I had hope, I had life.

But he goes on, what does he say?

But God, so this was our state, but God, everyone say, but God, but God who is rich in mercy.

Listen to this.

Because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ.

God loved us when we were dead, when we had nothing to offer and nothing to give.

The New Testament says another place, when we were his sworn enemy, but God who is rich in mercy.

Think of that the next time you think of the Middle East.

The sworn enemies of the gospel.

But God who is rich in mercy.

He can do it again.

Guys, the Bible prophesies actually have a great coming revival to the Middle East in many places.

Amos chapter 9 says that the tabernacle of David will be restored.

Amos 9 · chapter mention

And that the interpretation is that, and the Middle East will experience the authority of God, and they will come into submission.

Did you know that?

But a God who is rich in mercy.

And he made us alive.

I love confessing this over myself.

Remember those things that we said?

We stop when we see this promise and we say, Thank you, God, for making me alive.

Thank you, God, that I am now alive to you, to your thoughts, to your emotions, to your counsel.

I'm alive.

How many of you guys have you had those moments and you felt that life of God?

You used to be dead, but you felt the life of God.

And in your quiet time, you feel the life of God on a passage.

Or you're in a bad situation and there's breakthrough.

That's the life of God being given to us.

We've been made alive to God, but guys, it's gonna be great.

We're gonna be made alive forever.

Resurrection power.

He is a priest before his father, and he has the power of an indestructible life, and he's gonna give us the power of an indestructible life.

And it's a it doesn't go there, it doesn't just stop there.

He made us alive and he raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

He's not only made us alive, but he's given us authority.

All authority has been given to me.

Go make disciples.

We have been given authority, and I love what Steve says.

We don't exercise that authority too much, but we can exercise that authority to take back the land.

We can exercise that authority to take back our families.

We can exercise that authority in our city.

They're dead, they're in sin, they're controlled.

We can exercise the authority of Christ and speak the word of God with confidence that we are alive to God, and they can be alive to God too, just like we were, because we were just like them.

Let's go on.

That in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us in Jesus Christ.

Now this blows me away.

How does God want to show, let's read that again, the exceeding riches of his grace, or instead of the word grace, put in the word power.

How does God want to show the exceeding riches of his power for all eternity, for the ages that are to come?

He wants to show it through you and I.

And God wants to show how kind he is and he is powerful as powerful as he is, through redeeming us.

And the whole cosmos is gonna go, and the angels and the demons, and they're gonna go, he did it with them.

Look where they are now.

Oh my goodness, his kindness.

Oh my goodness, his grace.

Let's go on.

For by grace we have been saved through faith.

And that not of yourselves.

It is the gift of God.

Amen.

How many of you can testify it wasn't because of anything that you did?

Amen.

It was the gift of God opening our eyes.

It was the gift of God, sending the messenger.

It was the gift of God that you were born into that Christian family, but one day your eyes were opened.

Oh, he's worthy of everything.

It was the gift of God that that coworker spoke to you and invited to church.

It was the gift of God.

No matter our situation, it was the gift of God that we were saved.

He's so generous.

And he says this not of works, lest anyone should boast, but we are his workmanship.

Or the word I like to say here, and I confess over my life, we are his masterpiece.

Think of a master craftsman making, uh, maybe like a master wood or wood craftsman making something with wood, or a master sculptor.

Think of like Michelangelo and his David, and he carves it out of marble.

Guys, God's a pretty good craftsman.

And he calls you his workmanship.

Isn't that powerful?

You're his masterpiece.

He loves the way he's made you.

He loves the way he has formed you.

And he's so creative because he forms us all a little differently, right?

And he says, and there's room in my heart for every single one of you.

There's power and resource for every single one of you.

You're my children.

He says, We're his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.

So we're not saved by good works, but we're remade.

And in that remaking, guess what we get?

And guess what we he starts to put desire in our heart for?

For good works.

Now he just countered it.

We used to do evil works.

We used to do the works of the flesh.

We used to do the works that we would have received the wrath of God.

But now we're doing good works.

I mean, Paul juxtaposes it in Galatians 5.

I'm studying the book of Galatians right now, and I'm just loving it.

I've never really studied the book of Galatians.

And I even felt grace this last couple of days, even to open it up and study, just as we've been praying for the Word of God.

I felt I felt not like it was like, you know, oh, and there's glory coming from the page, but I just felt a measure of like there wasn't a wrestle in my soul this morning to study the book of Galatians.

It was just like, and there was a little excitement.

There was just a little like, oh, it's my it's it's my Bible study time.

That's grace.

And I guarantee you that wasn't the enemy.

Anyone who doesn't want to see in the Word of God at all.

But He's given us grace.

Galatians 5 talks about the works of the flesh, and it gives a wonderful, terrible list.

Terribly wonderful.

I don't know how you say that.

And then it talks about the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

We get to do good works out of love, out of joy, out of peace, out of patience, out of kindness, out of gentleness.

We get to have the gift of self-control so that we can do good works that glorify his name.

I love the Sermon on the Mount.

It opens up with the Beatitudes.

We we love the Beatitudes, you know, bless her, the poor in spirit, and all the other ones I can't remember right now.

But and then it goes into and you are called to be a city set on a hill.

And that your good works would glorify and bring the knowledge of God, would glorify God in the earth.

But then in the Sermon on the Mount, he goes into, but it's found in the secret place.

These good works that are going to be public to all, he said, you're going to be empowered when you go to pray and you shut your door and you pray.

And your father in seven who sees in secret will reward you openly.

Or you fast, and your father in heaven who sees in secret will reward you openly.

Or you give.

So we do all these things in secret.

And we tend that garden as God begins to dwell in us.

And then he gives us strength and power for good works to glorify his name in the earth.

So we are his workmanship and we're remade through the power of the Holy Spirit for good works.

And then Paul, he digresses again.

So he kind of goes back and forth in Ephesians 2, showing us where we came from, showing us who we are, and then showing us where we came from again and showing us who we are.

Let's go to verse 11, I think that's where we're at.

Therefore, remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision made in the flesh by hands, that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world.

Now that's another like devastating list.

You're like, okay, wait, I was what?

I call this like our five-fold alienation before we come to the Lord.

And it's this at that verse 12, at that time you were without Christ.

You were Christless.

At that time, you were being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel.

All that means is you didn't have a kingdom or a home or a state to call your own in God.

You were stateless, you were citizenless.

You were kingdomless.

You had no stake in the kingdom of God.

Let's go on.

You were strangers from the covenants of promise.

This is probably the worst one.

Well, not the worst one.

They're all pretty bad.

You were promiseless.

You had no promises.

You know how Steve said all the promises of God, all the commands of Scripture are yes and amen.

We had no access to the promises of God.

We had no access to the hope that was the people of God.

We were hope or we were promiseless.

And then the next one, and you had no hope.

So you had no Christ, you had no state, you had no promise.

Kind of produces you were hopeless.

You were hopeless.

Sorry.

And you were without God in the world.

You were godless.

So that's another pretty bad list.

But then Paul goes right into it.

But now in Christ.

So first it's but God rich in mercy.

Now it's verse 13, but now in Christ, this is one of my favorite verses in all of the Bible, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

Isn't that a wonderful confession?

We've been brought near to the throne of grace.

We've been brought near to the presence of God.

We've been brought near to our Father in heaven.

I mean, Jesus said, when you pray, pray like this.

Say, actually use words, say, our Father who art in heaven.

Now I think that would have put like the apostles on tilt just for a second.

That was my example for tilt.

I didn't get a cricket all of a sudden.

Okay?

They just would have gone on tilt.

They would have, like, their hard drives just would have crashed for a second, you know?

Maybe that's a better analogy for us technologically advanced people.

Because they're thinking, did he just say our father?

No, no, no.

Aren't we supposed to pray to his father in heaven?

Because he's the son and he has the father.

He did he just say pray to our father?

Like he's my father too?

I mean, this is the God that Israel feared and revered.

This is the God on Sinai that he spoke the commandments, the Ten Commandments to his people, and the people were trembling in fear.

And the voice got louder and louder.

And they begged Moses, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Have him talk to you.

Don't have him talk to us.

I mean, this was the God they feared.

Wait, wait, wait.

The God that created the universe.

He's not just your father, he's my father now.

And then just read the rest of the Lord's Prayer.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Give us this day our daily bread.

Just like a father would want to feed you daily.

God wants to do that with us, you know?

And he was bringing in into this intimate relationship.

We have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

Guys, don't ever live far away.

Repent and return to the Lord.

Don't ever live far away from the promises of God.

Repent and return to the Lord.

He has resource.

He has love.

He has acceptance.

He has peace.

He has guidance.

He has counsel for your life revealed in the Word of God and revealed through His Holy Spirit.

Let's not live at a distance.

Let's not let any of 2017 be said that we lived at a distance, that we let sin creep in and cause us shame and we turned away.

Let's remember the story of the prodigal son.

Where when the father saw him, he just saw him down the road.

That the father ran.

And he was fully in the family again.

The robe was put on his back, the ring put on his finger, and the feast held.

Don't go a week with thinking what you did.

No, repent.

You've been brought near.

You've been brought near.

Now I love this verse, and a story popped into my mind as I was preparing today.

We've been brought near by the blood of Christ.

And it goes on that to say in verse 17 or verse 18 that we have access to the Father by we have access to the Father by one Spirit.

So we've been brought near and we have access.

We have access.

He hears us.

And I was in Washington, D.C.

I was leading an internship for Every Home for Christ.

And we have a prayer room right across from the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.

And while we were there, they have actually started church services in the basement of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C.

Again, they have a weekly church service that a lot of congressmen and a lot of senators they go to every week.

And we were invited to minister at the church service at the Capitol Building.

I was like, well, how cool is that?

Of course I'm going to say yes to that.

Like, I want to lead worship and preach from the seat of power of probably the earth right now, you know, where decisions are made and affect people.

Like, yeah, I think I'll say yes to that.

So, and I met this lady, and her name is Ruth Mazell.

You can look her up, R-U-T-H.

That's probably how everyone's supposed to read Ruth.

R-U-T-H, but the last name is M-I-Z-E-L-L.

M-I-Z-E-L-L.

And she's this unique 92-year-old woman, and they wheeled her in.

And you know when kind of like people are like just giving someone respect?

And you just kind of go, I don't know who that is, but everyone, like a senator, just like shook her hand and prayed with her and had her pray for him, and then a congressman does the same thing, you know, and you're just like, who is this 92-year-old woman, you know, in a wheelchair?

Well, Ruth Fazell, Ruth Mazell was in President H.W.

Bush.

So she was in his uh administration and in his uh and helped get him elected.

And she's she was a godly woman and a woman of prayer and a woman of the word.

And he sits her down in the Oval Office and says, Ruth, how can I repay you?

Like, what do you want?

Do you want a role in the administration?

Do you want, like, do you want a job?

You help me get elected?

We're sitting here in the White House.

What do you want?

You know what Ruth Mazell said?

She said, I want access to every room in the Capitol building whenever I want it, so that I can pray whenever I want for our nation in the Capitol.

And I got to be with Ruth Mosell.

And we, after the church service, just like walked around the entire Capitol and just prayed.

And we went into the main meeting room, you know, that I think they call it the Retundra, where Congress and meets and the laws are made, and we just prayed.

And then we went up above it, and we there's this little hole, and you can look down over the whole thing, and we just prayed.

And we got to worship at the very top of the Capitol building because Ruth Mazell had access.

Guys, what if you knew you had access to the throne room of God?

You had access to all the power, you had access to all the peace, you had access to all the authority.

You've been brought near, and you have access.

And it was just hitting me as I'm with this lady.

I'm like, and she has it for as long as she lives.

She has this special card, and she even showed us it, this special card, for as long as she lives.

She can come in and out of the.

I mean, she's not in any of these administrations, but she's been praying through all of them.

Is that not unbelievable?

And she's known as, they don't know the word intercessor, but she's known as that old lady that just walks around here at night and praise.

Is that not incredible?

Aren't you grateful for those little gifts of God he gives our nation?

You know?

So anyway.

For we have access.

Now let's move on because I want to get back to prayer.

Oh, guys, Ephesians 2 and Ephesians 3 are just powerful, wonderful.

It's so hard not to talk about this stuff just because it's so fun.

But let's move on.

So Paul, he goes back.

You have access, he's put, he's separated the wall of enmity.

He's uh in verse 19 through 22, we're citizens of a kingdom now, we're part of a family now.

Now we're the temple of God where God is living in us, and he's forming us as a temple of the body of Christ.

That the body of Christ in the earth is housing and containing the presence of God.

Aren't you glad for that?

That the guy right now in fountain that we don't know that is pursuing the Lord is actually because of his pursuit of the Lord, he's increasing the presence of God in our city and in our area.

And that we up here that we're the body of Christ, and as we pursue the Lord, the Lord's presence is dwelling within us.

And when another person gets saved, his presence increases.

That's why we want so many people to get saved.

We want a greater presence of God in our city.

Amen.

And then Paul, he opens up chapter three for this reason, and he opens up chapter three and he says for this reason twice.

And it's almost like he's about to go into the prayer, but then he says, I Paul, I Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ on your behalf, and then he kind of digresses and he describes his ministry.

And the reason he's doing this is to give an example that he was once an alien of the promise, but now, or he was once, he was once a sinner, but now he's under Christ, and now he's been entrusted with the gospel, the good news to preach to the Gentiles, and his preaching fits into the manifold plan of God.

That plan to give all power to the His Son, and His Son will rule heaven and earth forever.

Paul says, My preaching is a part of that plan.

And he says that to the Ephesians to encourage them that their ministry is a part of his plan.

And then he goes into the second prayer in the book of Ephesians.

Now I love praying what I call the apostolic prayers.

Anytime you find a prayer in the New Testament, and actually after this week, Steve, if it's okay, I'd like to put up on our website just access to all the prayers of the New Testament that people could go and pray.

Because we prayed one in Ephesians 1, we prayed one in Ephesians 3, but there's John 17, and then there's the Lord's Prayer in Luke 11, and then there's Philippians 1, and then there's Colossians 1, and there's so many prayers.

And guys, I love positioning my prayer request.

I love to pray the way the apostles prayed, and I love to pray the way that Jesus prayed.

One, I think it's like taking a check to the bank.

I think it's like a blank check that's signed.

Whatever you want, whatever request, it's already answered because it's in the Bible.

And as I put that request down, like what we what we said uh a few nights ago, spirit of wisdom and revelation.

And I cash it in, it's gonna get, I'm gonna get that withdrawal.

Amen.

And there's we can pray revelation of scripture, but I even like just praying the prayers and and it reforms me, it reshapes me.

So Paul gets into his second prayer in Ephesians.

He says, so guys, verse 14 in chapter 3, he said, for this reason, because you were godless and now you know God, and because you were now invited because you are now invited into your ministry being a part of his wonderful plan.

He says, I'm praying for you.

He says this.

He says, I'm kneeling before the Father.

He describes the Father as from whom every family in heaven and earth derives its name.

That's a wonderful phrase that has so much to unpack, but we're gonna go on.

He says, I'm kneeling before the Father, whom all things came from.

And he says, and I'm praying that out of the glorious riches, out of his glorious riches, he may strengthen you through power with power through his spirit and your inner being.

So Paul said, Ephesus, I'm asking God that you would be strengthened, that you would be given power, that you would be given the helper.

When I think of strengthen, when I think of power, I also think of the word help.

That God would give us help.

Amen.

Now he sent us the helper, that he would come alongside us and help us and strengthen us.

And Paul's gonna go on.

The reason why he's praying is that Christ would dwell in their hearts through faith, or that Christ, another way to think of that, that Christ would manifest his presence in their hearts.

You know what happens when our inner man is strengthened and Christ is manifesting his presence in our hearts, then we love God the way Jesus loves God.

Jesus has a great love for his Father.

And when Christ manifests his presence in our hearts, we're strengthened to give the love that Jesus wants to give to his father through us to his father.

We're strengthened to obey his father as Jesus would obey his father.

That's the gift of the Holy Spirit inside of us.

But we're kind of leaky, amen?

We're a little bit leaky.

We get filled with the Spirit, we go, and then a few days later we're tempted again.

And Paul's teaching us here cry out for strength and power from God in your inner being in a consistent way.

You know, it's that verse in Ephesians, he brings it in.

Don't be drunk with wine, but be filled with the spirit.

And the phrase there, as most of us know, some of us know, some of us don't, is that the phrase is it's go on being filled with the spirit, which communicates it's not just a one-time thing.

We are a little bit leaky and we need that fresh infilling of the Holy Spirit.

That's what Paul's praying for here.

He's praying, God, strengthen them in their inner man, which is our like moral center.

It's where our emotions dwell, it's where our conscience dwells.

It's what Steve's gonna preach on in loving God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

I really think that Paul was thinking about that here because guess what he goes into?

He goes into the very next phrase is that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and that you, being rooted and established in love, may be may have power together with all the Lord's people to grasp how high and long and how deep and how high is the love of Christ.

I mean, the main commandment all the scripture, love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Paul is praying that for the Ephesians in Ephesians chapter 3, that they would be empowered by the Holy Spirit and their moral center, and that Christ would be manifested there so that they would have the same affection that Christ has for the word, the same affection that Christ has for good works, the same affection that Christ has for the lost, so that they would be rooted and grounded in love.

Ephesians 3 · chapter mention

Now we don't feel this all the time.

It's not like I just go around.

I'm I'm a pretty positive person, I'm a pretty like upbeat guy.

But it's not like I go around all the time just like overflowing and like gushing love.

And every time I see an unbeliever, I'm just like, oh, God loves you, and I run and I take off their shoes and I wash their feet.

Like I don't do that all the time.

I've never done that.

Let's just say that.

Okay.

But when we cry out for this, I do find that I have a little easier time getting in the Word of God.

I do find that I'm quick, a little more quick to close my mouth when I want to say that thing to my wife.

You know what I mean?

You know that thing, man, that you just want to say sometimes to your wife, and you're just like, huh.

Because Christ is manifesting in my heart, and I want I want to love her.

Or you you want to really respond negatively to your children.

And you're reminded, because Christ has been manifesting in your heart, of the patience that Christ had with you.

And you go, oh, okay, thank you for your patience.

When we pray for strength in our inner man that Christ would do in our hearts through faith, we begin to think it's Christ's things, love is Christ's loves.

And we begin to, as Paul says, be rooted and grounded in the love of God.

And then he describes this love.

He says it's deep, it's high, it's long, it's vast, and he wanted him to experience all aspects of it.

The idea here is that it's actually endless.

There's endless supply for strength, and there's endless supply for the love of God being manifested in our hearts.

Verse 19, that you may know the love that surpasses knowledge, and that you may be filled.

Now, this is a crazy phrase.

This is why I love praying these, because I would never pray that I may be filled to the measure of the fullness of God.

I'm just like, wait, what did I just say?

No, that I would have a vision for fullness in God, a vision for fullness in God in his word, fullness in God in obedience in my assignment, the fullness of God.

And Paul praised these crazy prayers.

He says, in another place, that we would have a walk worthy of the Lord in Colossians, fully pleasing him.

Now I'm just like kind of rejoiced when I please him in one area in my life, amen?

Where you're just like, oh good, I'm conquering that one area.

Paul says, no, no, no, that you would fully please him.

But they're nothing like what Jesus prays in John 17.

Jesus prays that the same love that God has for the Son, that God has for us, or that God has for him, the Son, that that would fill our hearts and we would have that same love for Jesus as God loves Jesus.

That's what he prays for in John 17.

And that we would be with him where he is, beholding his glory.

Those are wonderful prayers.

And when we take these prayers and we pray the prayers of the Bible, our that inner code in our hearts begins to be rewritten.

You know how code is written in a program and how you can rewrite a program with different code?

That's what I kind of feel sometimes.

Like the coding of my heart is being rewritten.

I'm being reshaped and reformed as I pray these prayers.

Now, it takes a little consistency, it takes a little a little uh discipline, but it's a worthy request.

Amen.

You've been listening to the road.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

To connect with us further, visit theroad.org.

If you are walking through a difficult time, we want to pray for you.

Go to theroad.org, click on the ministries tab, and go to our prayer page to send us your prayer request.

Thank you for tuning in today and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road.