A Prayer For Glory in the Church

Amen. It’s great to see you at Gospel City Church this morning. Let me just welcome you real quickly. If this is your first time here, thanks for worshiping with us on a snowy day. You braved the snow. We prayed for you on your way here that you’d have a safe time getting here and you did. And so glad that you’re here today. If this is your first time here, my name is Micah. I’m one of the pastors here. And I’d love to invite you to go to our meet and greet after the service. Pastor Tyler Downing is usually there or a pastor is there and they would love to answer any questions that you may have or put a gift in your hand and thank you for being here.

At some point during the service go to mygospelcity.org/sunday. Let us know that you were with us today. You can let us know how we can pray for you, what you’re praising God for, and we would love to get that done this week. You can always give on that page too. Thank you for your generosity to fund the mission of glorifying God and making disciples here at our church.

But go ahead and open your Bibles this morning to Ephesians chapter 3. Ephesians chapter 3. And we are finishing the first three chapters today of our wealth in Christ as Paul has been unpacking. That’s the last time I’ll ask you to turn to Ephesians for a short season. So we’re going to take a break next week. Starting a new series next week called “His Name Shall Be,” and that will take us through the Advent season. So very excited to set our hearts on Jesus together through the Christmas season.

But today we’ll finish this great chapter. I also want to let you know at the end of the service today we’re saving time for a great conversation with our friends from Africans Reaching Africa. And my heart has been anticipating that discussion at the end of the service. So I want you to save some brain capacity at the end of the service. I realize that like the human brain capacity is like seven seconds or something; a goldfish is nine seconds I read recently. And so you’ve got to use your goldfish brain today a little bit. I’ll try to preach a little shorter and save some brain capacity for that conversation at the end.

But today’s text in Ephesians chapter 3 is the second prayer of petition that the apostle Paul goes to as he’s unpacked all this glorious doctrine and truth. You remember the first prayer was in Ephesians chapter 1. It was open the eyes of our hearts to know the power of God toward those who are in Christ.

And I’ve got to just share with you personally, that prayer God really used Paul’s first prayer in Ephesians in my own personal life. I spent an afternoon in the woods praying that prayer kind of in desperation and asking God to reveal Himself. And I believe the Lord spoke to me through His Word, through that prayer, in just a very vivid way as I left. And it’s just helped my attitude. It’s helped me in my ministry. It’s helped me in my family and in my walk with Christ.

And I share all of that with you to just simply say this. There is power in prayer. We believe firmly in the power of prayer here at this church. And it’s why Paul continually goes to prayer after unpacking these mountains of truth. Because as people we don’t just need information. We need transformation. And it’s only the power of God that can take mere information and turn it into transformation that ultimately moves us to worship and doxology. All of that comes from the power of the spirit of God. Therefore we must pray with boldness and with expectancy. And so the big idea for us today is this. The power of God in and through believers ensures there will always be glory in the church. The power of God in and through believers, in and through you, ensures that there will always be glory in the church.

So why don’t you get your eyes on a copy of Ephesians chapter 3 starting in verse 14. Let’s read Paul’s prayer. As I’m reading it, as I’m preaching today, understand that I’m praying and you should be praying too. Now hear the Word of the Lord.
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.
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. (Ephesians 3:14-21)
That’s our prayer for this morning. That is our text for this morning. And let’s pull it apart as we go today. So he starts in verse 14, “For this reason.” I told you last week that he kind of started his train of thought in verse 1 of chapter 3 and then he sort of kind of had that squirrel moment where he went on all those things, re-explaining some of the truths that those in Ephesus needed to know.
So if you look back at verse 1 when he started, “For this reason,” you’ve got to ask yourself when you’re studying your Bible, “What reason is Paul talking about?” Well it’s all of this glorious truth about the believer who was dead in their trespasses and sins being made alive in Christ Jesus.
But I think ultimately the reason can be summed up in Ephesians 2:22. Just jump back up in your Bible. Paul wrote this after describing that there’s no longer a wall of hostility between the Jews and the Gentiles. There are no longer strangers and aliens. He writes in verse 22, In Christ you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
So as glorious as all of that sounds, the fact that you as a believer who is a sinner is being built into a holy dwelling place for God. As hard to comprehend as that truth is, Paul says it’s for that reason, for this reason, that I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. Sounds impossible, but I’m going to pray to God that you would understand it. And church family, I’m going to pray to God that we would understand the power of God toward us in uniting us together so that we could become His holy dwelling place, a new humanity on the earth.
Now notice as Paul goes to prayer it says he bows his knees. Understand this wasn’t common for Jews to bow their knees. And so he’s giving us a posture of humility and desperation before the God of glory. Most often Jews would stand and pray, maybe with their arms stretched wide. But Paul falls down to his knees and begs God to move on behalf of these believers in Ephesus. And he calls him His Father. He bows his knees before the Father.
Paul never shies away from the reverence of God. But he calls Him a familial name. And I love that song that we just sang. “Your goodness is running after me.” And one of the lines in that song: “I know you as a Father. I know you as a friend.”
Notice that Paul doesn’t call the God of glory a tyrant or a king or a dictator in the sky. Paul goes before Him humbly and in a familial way he says, “You are my Father because I’m your chosen and beloved child.” That is the way that you can come to the God of glory. You have full access. You come with boldness and confidence because of what Jesus Christ has done.
And then Paul, he bows before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. Paul never missed an opportunity to magnify the sovereignty of God. God’s in control. God created all things. God is scouring the earth looking for those who will worship Him in Spirit and in truth. God is going around the world and He is drawing people to Himself of every tribe, tongue, language and nation.
And Paul bows his knees in desperation and praise that these believers in Ephesus who are being joined together would understand, that they would comprehend all that God was doing. He’s worshiping the God with whom all things are possible.
Psalm 95:6-7. Come let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our God our maker. That’s the attitude that the believer should approach the throne of glory with anything that we would bring to His feet.
Now as he begins to pray, I think he prays four sequential prayers for the life of a believer. I’ve got five points for you. Four of them are sequential steps in your life, in your following Christ. Things that he’s praying that the believer would grasp and understand. And the fifth one is how we should continue to pray these prayers. So really practical. I would encourage you to take these four sequential steps and pray them this week over your life, over your family. But let’s take them as we go.
Number one this morning is this. We must pray, “Make us strong inside.” We must pray, “Make us strong inside.” Understand this. The believer’s greatest problem upon receiving salvation from the Lord is that he is spiritually weak on the inside. All of culture is shouting at you that you should be concerned with your outward appearance- what you wear, what your status is, what your job is, what things look like in your life. And understand that Scripture says man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.
And so in verse 16 of chapter 3, Paul begins to pray. All of these prayers begin with that or so that. And so you kind of see the sequential order as he begins to pray. They’re building upon one another as Christ is building in us.
So verse 16 says, “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 this is the truth about your Christianity. This is the truth about your faith this morning. What you do on the outside pales in comparison to who you are on the inside. And undoubtedly what is on the inside will eventually come out. For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. Out of the abundance of the heart you will act and you will do. And so there is no secret place for sin. God sees all things. God already knows all things. And so until you are a man or woman of integrity (integrity is doing the right thing or in God’s case doing the honoring thing, God honoring thing, when no one else is watching), until you are a man or woman of integrity, you desperately need to be strengthened in your inner being.
We need our inner man to be transformed and reformed by the Word and revived by the Spirit of God and renewed day by day. And here’s the truth. Justification, the act of God declaring you the sinner righteous, that happens in an instant. You call Jesus Lord, you believe in your heart, the Holy Spirit intersects your life. You can be saved in an instant.
But sanctification is a process that happens over a lifetime. I read in my Bible…I grabbed a Bible off the shelf yesterday, one that I wrote in probably ten plus years ago. And it said in the first page, I had written, “Sanctification: a divine process of sinning less and becoming more like Jesus.” And I thought, that’s exactly why we need our inner man to be strengthened because we are in this process of sinning less and becoming more like Christ.
So when the Spirit of God is put in your life, what’s on the inside is going to begin to be revealed. And this is the process of strengthening your inner man. It’s like trying to put pure water through a pipe that’s rusting from the inside out. Think about that. If you have a pipe, it’s rusting from the inside out, you put pure water through one side. Coming out the other side is a rust-colored water. It’s going to pick up the filth. It’s going to pick up the dirt. It’s going to pick up the rust particles, and you’re going to get this reddish water coming out the other side of the pipe.
The Spirit of God wants to clean out your pipes this morning. The Spirit of God in your inner man will begin to reveal the things that are not of God on the inside, and the Spirit of God is able to strengthen your inner self to love what God loves. That’s what Paul begins to pray for those in Ephesus. It’s the process of putting on righteousness and putting off sin.
Paul talks about it in Colossians chapter 3. Once you’ve set your mind on things that are above, you’ve got to put off the things of this world and put on Christ. If you’ve walked a lot of years building up strength in sinning, then you’d better believe it’s going to be a stronghold in your life that’s going to have to come down. The Spirit is going to have to do some work inside of you. And you’re going to have to do some surrendering and letting go.
You think about getting in the gym. I think about muscle atrophy. Have you ever heard of that term? So if I was to have a cast on my leg for six to eight weeks and I walked around on crutches, when that cast finally came off I’d have this really skinny leg, right? My one leg would have some muscle on it because I’ve been using it, but I’ve rendered the power of my right leg useless because I haven’t exercised it at all.
That’s how sin should be in your life. The temptation may not go away. The sin desire may not go away. But you need to render the power of sin useless in your life and you need to strengthen the desire for the righteousness of God. Only the Spirit of God can do that in a sinner. Only the Spirit of God can do that in your life. But you desperately need to pray that you would be strengthened in the power of God in your inner man to render the power of sin useless so that you could live unto righteousness.
2 Corinthians 4:16: We do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.
It’s why you can admire somebody who’s walked with the Lord for 60 years. They might not be as strong as some of the 20-year-olds in the room. They might not have all the hair that some of the 20-year-olds in the room do. But man, they are strong inside because of what the Spirit of God has done in their life over time. That’s what Paul is praying.
And then he moves quickly on to the second prayer. We must pray, “Make our hearts a home.” First we pray that we would be strong inside and then we must pray, “Make our hearts a home.” Look at verse 17 as Paul continues. “Be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being (here’s the second “so that”) so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.”
The Spirit of God is strengthening your inner man. Christ is renovating you and your heart into His home. Paul uses pretty specific language here because he is praying that these believers would continue in the faith. He doesn’t pray that Christ would inhabit their hearts like a renter or a temporary resident. Paul uses much stronger language. In the original Greek word he uses a compound, which is “dwell” in our language. But it’s a compound word that unites the word “down” with the word that means to inhabit a house.
So Paul is not simply praying that Christ would inhabit your heart. He’s praying that your heart would become a place where Christ delights in settling down, where Jesus Christ becomes a permanent resident inside of your heart. Christ wants to make your heart His home. And as your inner man is strengthened to love what Christ loves, you will know more and more that Christ is dwelling inside of you.
I couldn’t help but think about Chip and Joanna Gaines, the show “Fixer Upper.” Every now and then my wife gets me to watch that show. And it’s enjoyable. And what happens in that show? You’ve got a couple and they’re looking for a house and they go and look at some kind of old dilapidated houses. And they have a budget and they go in. there’s not a lot of potential. It just kind of lacks. They’re having a hard time seeing what it could be. Right?
And so they bring in Chip and Joanna Gaines and they pick a house. And then in goes Chip and his favorite day is demolition day, right? He’s going to strengthen the inner house. So he goes in and he strips. He guts it. He gets out with the old so that they can bring the new in. and they start getting new structure in place and new flooring and new walls and fixing pipes and all the things.
And then Joanna comes in and she starts to make the house a home. She starts to make it look beautiful. She starts to make it have these fine touches so that people can settle down in it and make memories in it.
That’s what Jesus Christ wants to do in your life. Christ wants to make your heart a place where He can come and settle down so that He can create new things in you who were once dead in your sins but now are alive in Christ. Christ wants to cultivate growth inside of you, which is what happens inside of a home. Christ wants to make lasting memories of you as you walk with Him throughout your life and you have a testimony to tell about it.
D.A. Carson. I wanted to read this quote to you. He says it better than I probably can. He says this: “When Christ by His Spirit takes up residence within us, He finds a moral equivalent of trash, black and silver wallpaper and a leaking roof. He sets about turning this residence into a place appropriate for Him, a home for which He is comfortable. When a person takes up long term residence somewhere, their presence eventually characterizes that dwelling. When Christ first moves into our lives, He finds us in bad repair. It takes a great deal of power to change us, and that is why Paul prays for power. He is transforming us into a house that pervasively reflects His own character.”
Isn’t that awesome? You are becoming a dwelling place for Jesus Christ. What seems impossible, but through Christ all things are possible. And Colosisans says that your hope of living your life in a God-glorifying way is the hope of glory. Your hope of glory is Jesus Christ in you. Christ in you. He is the hope of glory. And as Christ settles down in your heart, it comes through your faith in Him alone. Continual faith in the work of Christ. Continual faith that moves you to believe. Christ is enough.
Your inner man is strengthened. You’re getting rid of sin. You’re letting go of temptation and sin. And Christ is showing you that He is enough. Continual faith that moves your belief to action for the Lord will prove that as you abide in Christ He will abide in you. That’s Paul for these believers.
And then he moves on. Point number three is this: We must pray, “Make our foundation Christ’s love.” Make our foundation Christ’s love. As you are strengthened in your inner man and as Christ makes His home in your heart, you will begin to be rooted and grounded in the love of Christ.
Look at verse 17, the second half. “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.”
So much of Paul’s prayer, and it was kind of this way in his first prayer, is that we would have comprehension and true knowledge of what has already been given to us as believers. Remember it’s the inheritance that you’ve obtained. Many people are living their life looking for something they’ve already obtained in Christ Jesus. This world doesn’t have it. Christ has already given it. Every spiritual blessing is upon those who are in Christ. We just have to understand it. We’ve got to live as if it’s true, as if His resurrection power is toward us now.
The same power that raised Jesus from the dead lives inside of you. And now Paul prays that this love and this power would take root in your heart, that you would be grounded in it. That you would fully comprehend and know, that you might live and love as Christ has loved you.
And perhaps, you know, Paul didn’t think that those in Ephesus had enough gratitude or awareness of the love of Christ that was toward them. Maybe he just wanted to remind them. But I think it could totally be said of us that we often fail to live in the gratitude and the awareness of Christ’s love on us as believers. Would you say that’s true?
I mean, if you could grasp the love that Jesus had for you in sacrificing Himself in your place on a cross, if you could just grasp Christ’s love toward you, the believer, every hour of every day could change. I think we would sin less. I think we would worship more. I think we would have joy in our sorrows, knowing that nothing can pluck us from our Father’s hand. I think we would accept others as Christ has accepted us. I think we would live sent in the world without fear of rejection.
We talk about it so often. How can we live sent as a people? How can we go from this comfortable seat on a Sunday morning, hearing this truth time and time again and then walk into a world that desperately needs Jesus? And often the greatest reason that we don’t walk across the street and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with our neighbor is because we’re fearful of rejection.
But the Bible says there is no fear in love. And so man, we need to understand the love that Christ has for us, and it should exude and spill over in our lives as we try to tell others what Christ has done for us. The love of Christ has the power to change everything about the way we live our lives. And Paul prays that this love would be our foundation.
It makes me think about a tree. Think about Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who delights in the Lord. He’s like a tree planted by streams of water whose roots run deep. He bears fruit in due season. You think about a tree, a big tree, whose roots run deep. It’s almost immovable. You can’t budge the tree. And it stays standing through every season and through storms of life, and it grows upward. And it grows outward. The believer whose roots run deep into the love of Christ can do all things through Christ who strengthens him.
The theologian John Stott, he said this: “Love is to be the soil in which our life is rooted. Love is to be the foundation on which our life is built.” So the love of Christ that should compel us to be ambassadors on the earth, the love of Christ should begin to control us as we reform our lives and our behaviors to God’s Word.
Don’t just say you’re a believer. Actually live it out. Don’t just say that Christ has saved you. Live as if He’s saved you. Live as if His perfect, unconditional love has counted you righteous. And so how could you not live a holy life? You need your inner man to be strengthened. You need Christ to dwell in your heart. You need to understand the love that God has for you because you fall so short of His glory and love.
The love of Christ should remind us every day that we’ve been forgiven much, so we can always forgive one another. You’re never more like Christ than when you choose to forgive someone. So who in your life are you having a hard time with right now? Who can you extend forgiveness to because of the love of Christ that has been toward you?

SPLIT HERE

And Paul as he goes on in verse 18. He tried to capture the magnitude of Christ’s love that surpasses mere head knowledge. You can’t think about this enough and get your brain wrapped around the love that Christ has for you. It’s massive. And Paul writes in verse 18 that we would have strength. So it takes strength from the Spirit to even comprehend with all the saints. So there are saints all around the world. The power of God, the Spirit of God, is empowering them to comprehend what is the breadth and the length and the height and the depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.
What in creation do you stand in awe of? When you go on vacation, when you go to beautiful places, what do you stand in awe of? For me it’s the ocean. I love the ocean. It’s mysterious. It’s wide. It’s deep. It’s amazing. Some of you it’s the mountains. But higher than any mountain, ok? Think about that. Higher than any mountain that as you stand in awe at the mountainscape that you’ve gone and seen. Deeper than any canyon. You’ve gone to the Grand Canyon. You’ve stood in awe.
Deeper than the canyon. Wider than any ocean is the love of Christ for me. That should move you to worship God this morning. That’s massive truth. Some of you feel unloveable. Some of you feel as if God should not love you. Some of you feel as if you’ve done too many wrong things for God to love you. Some of you feel like you don’t deserve the things that you’re walking through.
But the love of Christ is so rich and so deep and so wide for you. Paul prays that you would understand it. It makes me think of an old hymn, “Here is Love,” by William Rees written in 1876. Do you know this hymn? “Here is love, vast as the ocean. Loving kindness as the flood. When the prince of life our ransom shed for us his precious blood.”
I love stanza two, the second part of it. “Grace and love like mighty rivers poured incessant from above. And heaven’s peace and perfect justice kissed a guilty world in love.”
Isn’t that the truth that the love of Jesus Christ was most perfectly displayed at the cross for those who were dead in their trespasses and sins? Those who had done nothing to earn His love and His forgiveness. And yet sinless Savior died so my sinful soul could be counted free. Jesus died on a cross in your place as a substitute for your sins. And He was buried with the wicked but He rose three days later in love, stealing the power of death, stealing the power of sin.
And what do you have to do? You just have to bow to the Father from whom family on heaven and on earth is named and you need to say, “I don’t have what it takes. I don’t have anything to bring to you, a holy and righteous God. And so I repent on my sin and I turn from this world and I receive the free gift of grace and salvation through Jesus Christ. I have faith to believe in the love that Jesus has had for me. And that’s where I’ll choose to anchor my life from this day forward. That’s where I’ll choose to live.”
The love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. We can comprehend it through faith. And it was most perfectly displayed at the cross.
And the fourth prayer that we can pray from this text is this. We must pray, “Make us fully mature.” We must pray, “Make us fully mature.” Paul wraps up verse 19, “To know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
So as your inner man is strengthened, as Christ makes your heart His home, as you begin to comprehend the love of Christ more and more, the height and depth and width and breadth, understanding what love has been made toward you, you begin to be filled with the fullness of God. You begin to become a mature follower of Christ.
You are becoming what you are already are. That’s so much of the theme in Ephesians. You are in the already but not yet. You are already a child of God, but you are becoming a child of God. You are already holy and blameless to God the Father, but you are becoming holy and blameless as these steps play out in your life. You are already welcomed into the fullness of God, but you are becoming fully mature as you trod toward eternity.
And here’s the truth. This is why I think it’s important that they’re sequential in the text. Because there are too many people who claim to follow Christ and you want the fullness of God now without your inner man being strengthened. You want the benefits of feeling full of God. And you see somebody who is walking with the Lord and they look like, man, their life is so joyful. Their life is so abundant. They’ve got the abundant life that Jesus was talking about.
You want that now, but you don’t want the Spirit of God to renovate your heart. You don’t want to give up the passions of your flesh. So you can’t have the fullness of God until He’s taken everything, until you’ve let go of everytown that this world has to offer. You need the Spirit of God to strengthen your inner man. Because only then will you step toward the full maturity that comes from those who trust and obey and follow Christ at His word.
Turn your back on this world and lean into the Spirit of God alone. Only then will you be able to comprehend the love of Christ. Only then will you be filled with the fullness of God. Don’t try to skip the step of repentance in order to have the benefits of the fullness of God. That will not happen in your life. So it is the difference between someone who has walked with God for one year versus fifty plus years.
And my heart goes out to those young believers in the room. I know that some of you are struggling with sin and it feels like an impossible battle. And the temptation feels really strong and you’re like responding to the gospel and Jesus is doing something in your heart. And yet you keep falling and it’s just discouraging and it makes you feel like you should give up. And you start to wonder, “Am I even saved?”
The Spirit of God wants to strengthen your inner man. That’s a hard process sometimes. We’re stubborn people. We need to continually and desperately model what Paul is as he bows his knees to God, begging God to have His way in our lives.
But you think about the people who have walked with the Lord for sixty plus years. I just wanted to share my gratitude for the older generation at Gospel City Church. I’m so blessed. I sat down with a couple. I won’t call you old. You’re just the older generation than me. But I sat down with a couple this week and I’m so blessed that they come to this church and that they love this church and that they’re opening their Bible in this church and that they sense that the Lord is moving in this church.
And you know what they said? It’s so great to see so many young families in the church. It’s so great to see so many kids in this church. And my heart was, “Hey, please keep coming.” Because I love that there are young families in this church. But my, we need the older generation. Because the maturity and the fullness of God is on display just in your presence and being here. There’s a steadiness that’s seen in your walk with Christ as you’ve walked with HIm in steady obedience over time.
The fullness of God is on display when you come here and you open your Bibles. And I understand that in a young church, in a big church, it can be harder to find your place. Like where am I best used? How can I serve? I used to do this but now it doesn’t seem like there’s a place for that.
And I am just so thankful that you’re here. And so many of you encourage me. So many of you are prayer warriors in this church. So many of you are the people that I know the young people in this room are craving your wisdom and your steadiness and your desire to follow the Lord. And they’re watching you whether you know it or not. They’re modeling their lives after you. They need help with parenting. We all need help with parenting, and you’ve walked that journey.
But those of you who are younger in the room, don’t expect to have what the person who’s walked with Christ for fifty plus years has today. You’ve got to allow the Spirit to do some work in you and through you as He presents you fully mature in the faith.
And the longer you walk with the Lord the more you will see that the world has nothing for you. I think the older generation could tell you that. The longer I’ve walked with the Lord, the more I understand that nothing I tried to hold onto in this world was worth it. So let it go now and allow the Spirit to have full effect in your heart and in your life so that you can live your life to the glory of God today.
It’s why you’re still breathing on this earth. For some of you where you sit right now, it seems impossible to be filled with the fullness of God. It seems unrealistic because you’re having trouble getting over sin, getting victory over sin. But God who raises the dead is able to do all these things and even more. So desperately go to Him in prayer and ask Him to do it.
That leads us to the fifth prayer this morning and it’s this. We must pray, knowing God is able to do even more. You pray these four prayers with desperation, with humility, with boldness. But we must pray knowing that God is able to do even more. And often we give up on praying for God to do these sorts of things in and through us because we lack faith to believe that He actually can or that He actually will or because our discouragement is greater than our faith.
Or perhaps we don’t pray these things because we’ve not given Christ full rule and reign of our hearts. But the Christian life is proclaiming Galatians 2:20. I’ve been crucified with Christ, therefore it’s no longer I who live, but it’s Jesus Christ who lives through me.
And look at what Paul says in verse 20 of chapter 3. “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we could 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 and ever. Amen.”
The first truth that you should grasp here this morning is that God is able. God is able to present you complete and mature before His throne in glory. God is able to strengthen your inner self. God is able to give you victory over sin today. God is able to help you to see the love that He has for you.
Second, He is able to do far more abundantly than anything that you could ever ask or think. He’s that great. He’s that good. We often just go to God asking for like the first thing on our mind. God wants to blow your mind with His love and His generosity and His kindness and His goodness toward you, the believer.
And third, it’s according to the power of God that’s at work within us. To not live in this reality is to diminish the glory of Christ on the earth. But to live and pray, knowing God is able to do anything and more in and through us ensures that there will always be glory in the church.
God’s glory is on display in every person that He calls. God’s glory is on display as you get victory over sin. God’s glory is on display as you grow in maturity. God’s glory is on display as we are being built into His holy temple in the family of God. and all of that is because of Jesus, the One and only Jesus, our greatest victory, our greatest reason for worshiping Christ.
And so I want to encourage you that God wants to use you. He doesn’t want you just floating about this world as a Christian. He has work for you to do. You won’t get busy on that work until you allow the Spirit of God and the power of God to have full effect on your life. So stop resisting what He may be trying to do in your inner self. Stop resisting. Stop hiding things in the closets of your heart. As Jesus goes in and renovates them He already sees them.
You’re just going to have to let go and allow Him to have His way in you. And only then will you comprehend the love of Christ. Only then will you be filled with the fullness of God. Only then will you believe that there is glory in this thing called the church. And you’ll run to the world that desperately needs Jesus, proclaiming Him that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
So come on. Stand to your feet. I’m going to pray for us. And we’re going to sing a declaration of hope, a declaration of the power of Christ. And then we’re going to lean into a small talk together this morning.
Father, we come. And Lord we just admit that we’re poor and needy. And God I pray for my friends in this church. There are people from all different walks of life here. There’s people at all different stages that we’ve talked about in this sequence of Paul’s prayer. My heart is burdened for those who can’t seem to get over their sin issues. My heart is burdened for those who aren’t experiencing victory in their lives. God, would Your Spirit and Your power be toward them. God, would You help now change the fall? Addictions to break. Lord, would You give them victory from this point forward as You, Jesus, make their heart Your home.
Lord all of us, would You help us to understand the love that You have for us, the power of God’s love? God on our worst days it’s our failure to not see the love that Jesus has had on us. So Lord, would You help us each and every day in our hardest moments to comprehend the height and depth and love of Christ?
Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think. To You alone be glory in the church now and forever. Amen.