Even More Than You Think | More Life | Pastor Joe Coffey

Ephesians 3:20-21

Ephesians 3:20–21

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly

than all that we ask or think,

according to the power at work within us.

To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus

throughout all generations, forever and ever.

Amen.

Everybody, good morning and welcome to Christ Community Chapel.

My name is Joe. I'm one of the pastors here.

Thanks for coming.

We have a great morning and a full morning,

because we're going to be baptizing people.

We're going to baptize 40 people over the course

of all the services this weekend, which is awesome.

I have to tell you one story quickly.

Thanks for the overwhelming applause.

Lost my train of thought there just.

Right.

Let me tell you this story, though.

At 8:00, the baptism there one one of the people that got in was out,

a young man, his wife, who is obviously pregnant,

was waiting for him, with a towel.

Found out afterwards she is going to be induced tomorrow.

So he was getting baptized before his daughter was born.

And then the next guy that got baptized

was a grandfather whose grand grandkids were watching.

I just thought, how awesome is that?

All right.

Yeah.

Now you're going to be.

Now you're going to be applauding. All right.

This is the last message of our four part series

where we're setting the theme for 2026,

and our theme is simply More Life, More Life.

And we're taking it from John chapter ten, verse ten,

where Jesus gives us his reason for coming.

Jesus says, "I've come that they might have life and have it more abundantly".

Jesus wants you to have more life,

a fuller life, abundant life.

The passage we had read to us comes at the very

end of a prayer in Ephesians chapter three.

It's my favorite prayer, probably in the whole Bible.

I actually prayed for it.

I prayed it for you early this morning.

Let me read you the prayer and then we'll get to this final part.

The benediction.

And this is what it says beginning at verse 14.

For this reason, I bow my knees before the father, from whom every family in heaven

and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory

he may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit

in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

That you, being rooted and grounded in love,

may have strength to comprehend with all the saints

what is the breadth and length and height and depth,

and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,

that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

And then this ending, this crescendo, he says, Now to him

who is able to do far more abundantly than all that

we can ask or think, according to the power at work within us.

To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus

throughout all generations, forever and ever.

Amen.

What an awesome prayer.

Paul.

Because oh, by the way, we did a this is a four part series.

We started with John chapter ten, verse ten.

That's the Gospels.

The next week I preached on Psalm 19.

Last week Zach preached using passages from Genesis and Revelation,

and now we're using a passage in Ephesians.

And the point is that from cover to cover, the Bible is about more life.

God has always wanted you to have more life.

And here in this passage,

he tells us that more life is found in the middle of three things.

And these are my three points.

If you want more life, it will be found in the middle of a God

who is greater, a power that is stronger,

and a glory that lasts longer.

A God who is greater, a power that is stronger, and a glory that lasts longer.

First, a God who is greater.

Paul begins this by

stacking like superlative on top of superlative.

Sweat, he says now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask

or think, another version says, all we can ask or imagine.

Paul says, you want more life.

You don't start by looking at yourself in the deficiencies in your life.

You want more life.

You start by looking at God, at a God who is greater.

Let me tell you a few things that God is greater than.

The first is God is greater than your past pain.

God is greater than your past pain.

I read a good book last week.

It was called Make Sense of Your Story by a guy named Adam Young.

Adam Young is a counselor.

The premise of the book is that

we experience a lot of his experience, pain

as a child that then become the wounds that we organize

our life around as adults because we haven't quite healed that pain.

And I

that's there's some truth to that's why I say it's a really good book.

But I also believe that God is greater than the pain of your past.

You are not defined by the worst chapter of your life.

And I say that because every great story, every great book,

every great movie is the same kind of arc.

There are some dark and in Lord of the rings, one of my all time favorite books.

There are some really dark chapters, but it's the darkness of those chapters

in the middle that make what happens later is so incredible.

I think of the story of Joseph in the Old Testament.

Joseph at the age of like 16, was sold into slavery by his own brothers.

Are they find

something more traumatic than that?

And we catch a glimpse of the trauma in a single verse,

kind of tucked away in that story where the brothers who sold him,

they feel like the judgment of God is coming,

and they're talking to each other about why it's happening.

And they say, did we not see his distress

when we sold him?

But we did not heed his cries.

You could just imagine Joseph screaming, crying,

begging to not be taken away and to no avail.

He ends up alone, sold as a slave.

And just when he's getting used to life as a slave,

he gets wrongly imprisoned.

For what?

In what seems to be a life sentence.

It's enough to make anybody angry and

and hostile, violent.

But by the end of the story, what we find is

Joseph is full of wisdom and compassion

and forgiveness

and integrity. Why?

Because God is greater

than your past pain.

God can redeem your past.

That's just true.

The second is God is greater than our present needs, than our present needs.

It says that he's able to give more than we can ask or think.

You know, there's a verse in the book of James

that says, you do not have because you do not ask.

And I was thinking, what?

Why don't I ask for more from God?

To be honest,

I mean, there's some things I don't ask God for because they seem so small.

I don't want to bother him.

And then there are some things that are so big.

I don't want to put God in the awkward position of saying no and seeming

like he didn't come through for me.

But the Bible says, go ahead and ask.

There's a there's a story about Alexander the Great.

I really like

where Alexander the Great had a general that served him for many years,

and the general came to Alexander the Great and said, I want to ask for a favor.

Would you pay for my daughter's wedding?

And Alexander the Great said, okay, y'all do that.

Just go to the court treasurer and ask for what you need.

Like three days later, the court treasurer came to Alexander the Great

and complained.

He said, This general has come and he's asked for an enormous amount of money.

And Alexander the Great thought about it, and he said, go ahead and give him,

give him it. Give him all of it.

Because by asking, he has paid me two great compliments.

One, he thinks I'm rich enough to give him such an exorbitant amount.

And two, he thinks I'm generous enough to give it to him.

And by paying me these two great compliments, he honors me.

Listen, God loves you.

God is a generous God.

Go ahead and ask and trust him.

If if what you're asking for seems like it, it's the best thing for you.

But God knows it's not.

You have to trust him that he'll say no, but ask him

he is greater than your present needs.

And finally, God is greater than your future.

Fear.

In John chapter 11, it's the story of Lazarus

John 11 · chapter mention

where Jesus has a friend named Lazarus who gets sick.

By the time Jesus gets to where Lazarus was.

Lazarus has been dead for four days.

Seems like that book is as close.

Jesus makes one of his most iconic statements.

He says, I am the resurrection and the life.

Whoever believes in me, though he were dead, yet

shall he live.

And then, as if to prove his point,

he goes to the grave of Lazarus and calls him out.

And Lazarus is raised from the dead.

Amazing.

You know, there are certain stories in the Bible where I can't

wait to get to heaven and hear kind of the rest of the story.

We don't hear much about Lazarus.

After I would like to know what Lazarus life was like

after that, because I just think he would be a tough guy to rattle.

Don't you?

I mean, what are you going to make?

How are you going to make him afraid?

You're going to say Lazarus, you may get laid off next year.

You know, he's like,

seriously, that's going to shake me, right?

Because Lazarus knew beyond a shadow of a doubt

that the best was yet to come.

Listen, Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life.

Whoever believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.

And I believe in Jesus, which means I may not know

what's going to happen next week or next year, but this I know

the best, is yet to come for me,

and the best is yet to come for you.

If you believe in Jesus, that's the first thing Paul says.

You want more life.

You find it in a God who is greater.

Then he says, you want more life.

You find it in a power that is stronger.

He says this now to him who is able to do far more abundantly

than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us.

What Paul says is that that

that power is not a power I have inside of myself.

More life isn't found with more stuff or more experiences.

It's found in the the power of God that is actually in me.

In you.

If you belong to Jesus.

And that means that it's a power that is stronger than certain things.

Let me tell you what it's stronger than.

It's stronger than.

Sin's grip.

Let's be honest.

Some of us don't have more life because of sin,

because we're involved in sin and you may feel stuck,

but you are not powerless.

If you are stuck in sin.

And the reason I say that, you know, we sing songs

that say that through Jesus every chain is broken.

We sing songs like that because over and over in the Bible

it says that we are no longer slaves of sin.

Romans six says sin will no longer have dominion over us.

John chapter eight Jesus says, here the sun sets

free, is free indeed.

Listen, sin is you are not a slave to sin anymore because of the power within you.

And I always think that the power that I have with self-discipline,

and I like to think of myself as a self-discipline person,

is like the power of like a triple A battery compared to what?

What Paul is saying is I have access to a power that could power an entire city.

That's the power that is yours.

It's greater.

It's more powerful, stronger than sin's grip.

It's also stronger than shames boys, shames boys.

In the movie good Will hunting.

Matt Damon plays a young man named Will.

Robin Williams is his counselor.

And there's this moment in the movie where,

Matt Damon, he.

As a boy, he was abused, and he felt like it was his fault.

And you got Robin Williams as a counselor saying, well, it's not your fault.

It's not your fault.

It's not your fault.

You keep saying it over.

And finally, Will breaks down sobbing because he finally believes it.

Some of you need that.

So you, you know in your head that Jesus has forgiven your sin,

but you still feel the shame

and you need to hear Jesus said, taking your sin.

But I've also taken your shame.

I've taken your shame.

I've taken your shame.

The power that we

have is stronger than sins.

Grip. It's stronger than shame.

Voice is stronger than Satan's attacks.

I always think my.

If my life was like a like a chess game

and I was playing against Satan, he would crush me.

But if Jesus is on my side,

then every time Satan makes a move, then Jesus counters.

Paul says, you want more life.

You're going to find it.

The God who is greater power that is stronger, and finally a glory

that lasts longer.

This is what he says to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus

throughout all generations, forever and ever.

Amen.

How is it?

I'm surprised at how quickly glory fades

in our kind of current culture.

It's so fleeting.

The older I get, the more I realize that.

I just read about a mom who is trying to explain to her daughter

who Robert Redford was,

right.

Her daughter had no idea.

So the mom said, oh, Robert Redford was like the Brad Pitt in my era.

And her daughter said, Who's Brad Pitt?

That's how quickly it goes.

I remember reading a poem years and years ago.

I made such an impression on me.

It was written by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

It's called as Amanda's, and it's a it's a poem about just about the futility

of whatever you are pouring your life into right here, right now.

And I memorized I think I can still remember it.

This is the way it goes, says I.

I met a traveler from an antique land who said to vast and trunk lists

legs of stone, stand in the desert near them, half sunken.

A shattered visage lies, whose frown and wrinkled

lips stamped on those lifeless, lifeless things.

Tell. Well, it's sculptor.

Read the hand that mocked them.

And the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear.

My name is as Amanda, King of kings.

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.

Nothing beside remains.

Round the decay of that colossal wreck.

Boundless and bare.

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

What?

That says once was a king who had built a massive kingdom.

His name was Asmodeus.

He was so confident of his glory that he built a statue to himself,

with an inscription that challenged anybody who thought they'd done something

with their lives, to look on his kingdom and despair of what they had accomplished.

And the only irony is, the

only thing that was left was this broken down statue.

It's my question.

What are you spending your life on?

What do you think will go with you forever and ever?

It's not what you do for a living.

It's not what you accumulate.

What this says is there's a glory that will last forever.

And it's connected to Jesus and his church.

And that goes back to what Zach said last week, right?

That we want to be a church where God is big, we are small.

We love each other so well that people keep coming

and they keep coming to find Jesus to get baptized,

because that's what lasts forever.

Listen, you want more life in 2026?

That's what Jesus wants for you.

If you want more life in 2026, you will find it

in a God who is greater.

Greater than your past pain, your present needs, your future fears.

A power that is stronger

than sin's grip and Satan's attacks and shames voice

and a glory that lasts longer.

Choose life

now to him who is able to do far more abundantly

than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us.

To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus

throughout all generations, forever and ever.

Amen.

Would you pray with me?

Father in Heaven, I am so grateful

that you are for us and not against us,

as you've always wanted us to have more life, and you want every person here

to have more life in 2026 than we did in 2025.

I pray that we will find that, find that right

in the midst of what you want us to be.

Lord, I pray that you will,

pull everyone in this room closer to yourself.

We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.