There are things that God has he longs to release to us.
He says it's the fullness of God.
But in order you to step into the fullness of God, you've got
to have a revelation of the love of God.
Let's get into the word this morning.
Turn with me to Ephesians chapter one on Wednesday nights.
We are doing a, we're going verse by verse through Ephesians
and I am really enjoying it. I don't know if anybody else is,
but I know I am. And hopefully other people are
getting something out of it, but it's I, I haven't studied, I
haven't taught through Ephesians in a number of years.
We're going through verse by verse.
Matter of fact, the last time I did that was in 2017.
And so we're going to go through verse by verse, and at this
rate, we're going to be done around 2037.
We're on installment 3 last week and we're still in the 1st
chapter. But seriously, it's, it's a
great book. And it's just really good to go
through a book verse by verse, chapter by chapter, because it
forces you to teach the whole councils of God.
You know, a lot of times preachers will get on their pet
hobby horse. I know I do.
So it'll force you to just deal with everything.
And so we're doing that in Ephesians, but I want to, I want
to revisit some of that this morning.
Not because it's just it's relevant to what we talked about
to you 2 weeks ago. Two weeks ago, I was talking
about marriage and how God in his word talks about making
woman for man and man for woman, and the two shall become one.
And then he applies that to his church.
And there's this this a lesson that marriage is a metaphor for
the church and the church is a metaphor for marriage.
And there's some some things that the Lord wants us to get
out of that. And the oneness in marriage is a
key that that God took the man. He said it's not good for man to
be alone. So he pulled something out of
man, shaped it into something he'd be attracted to, presented
it back to the man. Man thought it was a great idea
until he got in an argument with her and he thought, God, why did
you tell me to become one with her and when I was already one
with her? You just complicated matters and
the what the Lord was doing is he was challenging Adam.
It was it was only oneness through mutual sacrifice.
God did make things more complex, but it's more rewarding
as well. And there's an element of the
body of Christ is that same dynamic that there are things
that God wants us to have that will only get through a
relationship with the others. And so that's what we're going
to look at this morning. So let's pray, Father, Lord, I
ask that you would speak to us this morning.
Lord, I ask that your teaching would fall like rain.
Lord, that you would provoke our hearts, stretch us.
God, give us wisdom and understanding that we've never
had before in Jesus name, Amen. All right, we're going to get
into a few verses in Ephesians. Look with me at Ephesians
chapter 1 verses 22 and 23. Those are the 1st 2 verses.
Now just so you know, visions chapter 1 verses one through 14
is 1 long run on sentence. Paul would have drove his
English teacher crazy. There's no period in the Greek
between verses 3 through 14 and it's what's called a Trinitarian
doxology. What we have from the Father in
the Son and what the Spirit has become to us.
It's a glorious thing. And then he begins to unpack a
prayer, the first prayer that Paul gives us in Ephesians.
There's two Apostolic prayers in Ephesians.
And the good thing about that, when you see prayers in
Scripture, it's really good to look at because we, if we can
understand what's being prayed, we can pray the same thing.
And when you pray the word, you know, you're praying God's will.
You know, a lot of people pray prayers that are contrary to
God's will and you might as well save your breath to cool your
soup because it God's not going to answer a prayer that's
contrary to his will. And so we want to make sure that
we're praying according to the will of God.
And so we need to study these prayers.
They're very, very valuable. And this is the first of two.
We're going to look at the other one in a few moments here.
But he prays this prayer and then he lands it here.
Listen to what he says verse 22 and 23 he says and he put all
things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to
the church. So he's Speaking of Jesus, what
Jesus is to the church. He put all things under Jesus
feet, gave him as head over all things to the church.
So he's given us Jesus and Jesus has everything under his feet.
And then he defines the church in verse 23.
Now listen to there's many definitions of the church and
there's a number of them in the book of Ephesians.
He gives us a number of different perspectives,
different pictures of what the church is in the Ephesians
chapter 1, or I mean in Ephesians in general.
But in chapter 1, this is what he says, the church, verse 23,
which is his body, the fullness of him who fills All in all.
So he tells us that the church is his body.
So we are the body of Christ and we're many members.
And Paul unpacks this in several different passages of Scripture.
But what he's telling us is that only together are we the body.
Christ is the head, we are the body, but only when we come
together. Otherwise we're just a severed
member laying in the street. We're a knuckle rolling around
or, or a we're a foot or whatever.
We we need to come to the together to make up the body of
Christ. And then he says this amazing
thing. Put that back up there, would
you? He says his body, the fullness
of him. So what he's saying is the body
of Christ is the fullness of Christ.
And this is a very important thing for us to understand.
We will never have the fullness of Christ in our life without
one another, because only in the body do we have the fullness of
Christ. Otherwise we have a measure of
the gift of Christ. And so God brings us into the
body just like he said in and, and again we talked about this
two weeks ago, but when he created man, it was the first
time in all the creation he looks, he said this ain't good.
It was good. It was good.
It was good for five days. On the 6th day he made man.
He stepped back, said it ain't good that man should be alone.
And so he put man into a deep sleep, took something out of man
and presented it back to him. And now there was the challenge
of becoming one with something. Previously he was already one
with and there wouldn't have been any disagreements.
I don't know how about you, but I've never had a disagreement
with my rib. Me and my rib get along just
fine. My wife and I, there's been
times where we've had some disagreements.
And so it's the challenge of something that God is offering
us in marriage that is inaccessible outside of unity
with another person. And Paul applies this as well to
the church. And what he's saying is the
fullness of all that God has for us in Christ.
The fullness of Christ is inaccessible to you as an
individual. You can only get it in
relationship with someone else. That's why we see this verse
where Jesus says wherever two or three are gathered in my name,
there I am in the midst of them. Jesus will commit His fullness
to a minimum of two people, two or three believers.
There are things that God has for you that He will not give to
you directly. He won't give it to you through
Bible study. He won't give it to you through
prayer. He won't give it to you through
fasting. You can cry out, throw a hissy
fit, you can sacrifice and do all kinds of things, but God
will reserve it through a relationship with another
believer. There are things he wants to
show you that are accessible only in relationship with
someone else. That's what Paul is saying.
The body is the fullness of him. Now let's turn to another verse,
Ephesians chapter 3, verse 19. So chapter 3 he says, if I can
find it here, chapter 3, verse 19.
Well, and, and just so you know this, the context of this is the
second prayer, Apostolic prayer of Paul in the book of
Ephesians. And this prayer he begins to
pray that we would have a revelation of the love of God,
that the Spirit of God would come upon us for a revelation
and that that's the Spirit of God coming upon us was not for
ministry. In this context there, that's a
valid application of the our need for the the Spirit to come
upon us. But in this case, it's more
fundamental, more foundational, more elementary than for
ministry. He said, I pray that the Spirit
would come upon you so that you would comprehend the immensity
of Christ's love for you. And then he says this in verse
19. Look at what it says, verse 19,
and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.
He said He wants you to know something that's beyond
knowledge. That's in the English that
doesn't even make sense, but the Greek is clearer.
It's saying that I want you to have, I want you to experience
something in an encounter with God that you will not be able to
study yourself into. There is a dimension of the love
of God, and that dimension is required for you and I to step
into all that God has for us. Let me say it again that there
are things that God has, He longs to release to us.
He says it's the fullness of God, but in order you to step
into the fullness of God, you've got to have a revelation of the
love of God. And there are several reasons
for that that we can't get into this morning.
But one of them is that you're not going to trust him enough to
give you what you need. You're not going to trust him
enough for Him to take you where you need to go so you can see
what you need to see. You're going to stay in control
if you don't have a revelation of the love of God because the
love of God is essential for you to surrender and give him
control. If you don't have a revelation
of the love of God, you're going to keep God's God at armor link.
I'm not talking about salvation here.
I'm talking about a revelation of his great love for you to the
extent that you can surrender and say God, you take control.
And so he he prays for a revelation of the love of God.
Now the the love of God really has three stages to it in
Scripture. The first stage of the love of
God is the love of God for you and you as the object of his
affection. OK, that's where it starts.
That's the entry level love of God.
If you are not convinced of His love for you, you will never be
able to move into the other stages of God's love.
And all of this has to do with Christian maturity.
You will never become who you're called to be unless you begin
with a revelation of His love for you, because His love is
what defines who you really are. There's not a person in this
room that has not struggled at some level to some degree with
self rejection. And it's the love of God that
begins to restore us. The same love of God that
restores us to God, reconciles us, reconciles us to God, is the
same love of God that reconciles us to ourself.
Because when you begin to see how much God loves you, you, you
can begin to be OK with yourself.
And so this is, this is a huge subject I want to tell you.
The love of God is the primary therapeutic agent in God's
economy. God's love comes to do deep,
deep surgery, deep psychological work in in the human soul.
And when we begin to get that to the roots of our identity,
that's what he talks about in this passage.
He says that the love of God, that you would be rooted and
established in love, rooted, that the roots of your identity
of your how you see yourself begins to latch on and drink
from the love of God. That your roots go deep and that
becomes the nourishment that becomes what shapes how you view
yourself. And when that happens, you begin
to be OK with you. And until you're OK with you,
you got a problem. Because when you're not OK with
you, you still got to take that person with you everywhere you
go. When you don't like you, when
you're struggling with self rejection and you arrive in a
package that you yourself are rejected, then you will expect
what you reject. You're going to expect the same
thing from others and you'll project that into your
relationships. What you expect, you project,
and people will begin to reject you.
They'll begin to agree with you because you will be so
convincing in how you interact with them in subtle ways.
You will actually push people away.
And so the love of God it the foundation of the love of God.
The first stage is for God so loved the world that he gave his
only begotten Son, his his gift to us of his Son is the primary
illustration, the primary demonstration, and that's what
Paul says in Romans 5. God demonstrated his love for us
in this that while we already had sinners, Christ died for us
and if he gave his Son for us while we were yet sinners, how
much more will he not give us all things now that we're
reconciled to him? That's what Paul says.
So the the love of God starts with the revelation of his
affection for us. So in stage one, I am the object
of his affection. I am the recipient of his love.
What that does though, when that really begins to get into us
and, and this prayer is towards that end, this second Apostolic
prayer, Paul is praying that the eyes of our understanding would
be enlightened and we would understand the magnitude of his
love. And then he goes on, he says
that you would know this love that surpasses knowledge.
So he's saying, I want to invite you into something that is
beyond your ability to study yourself into.
You're never going to touch the depths of God's love by a mere
book study. You literally have to encounter
the living God where He reveals His love to you.
And this is the foundation. Until that's nailed down, you
are. You are stuck in a loop of
immaturity because you can't. You can't accept who you really
are. So we've got we've got to have
that happen. So the first stage is the love
of God for us. The second stage is what does
Scripture say? What happens when we see his
love for us? We love him.
Why? Because he first loved us.
So a revelation of the love of God actually pulls us into the
next stage of the love of God in our life.
And that is we enter into the love of the Father for the Son.
We begin to love him. It pulls us into it.
We can't help but love him because we've seen his love for
us. Now Scripture says if you love
him, you're going to do what you're going to obey his
commandments. Obedient believers are those who
have have a revelation of God's love, but that revelation that
that that obedience is not. He's not inviting us into white
knuckled discipline that has a shelf life.
There's an expiration date on your ability to white knuckle
your own obedience. What The real obedient life, the
life and the Spirit is birthed out of a revelation of His love
that it it instills in US. It erupts within us a reciprocal
response to Him. We can't help but love Him and
so the taproot of this whole thing he said that you would be
rooted and established in love. That taproot of the Christian
life is a revelation of his great love for you.
And if you don't have that, you need to continue to ask it and
you need to study this passage. Visions chapter 3 verse.
Was it 14 to the end of the passage and read over that begin
to pray that over your life. Begin to ask God for insight and
there are treasures in that prayer.
And as we begin to encounter His love for us, there is a
reciprocal love that begins to erupt on our heart.
We begin to fall in love with Him.
And when we do that, everything begins to set an order.
We begin to drop our guard and we can trust Him to fill us.
There's no things off limits in our life.
And the tragic reality is that a lot of believers live their life
with Jesus only welcomed into the front room of their life,
where everything is set in order.
Everything's clean, you know, everything's been vacuumed,
polished with the pledge, You know, everything's in order.
They don't let him in the backroom where the real living's
done. And when you really begin to
trust him, you can allow him into every room of your heart.
And that's when the real fun begins.
So stage 2 is our corresponding or reciprocal love for Him.
Stage 3 is that then we begin to be carriers of that love.
The love of God for others begins to flow through us, and
we become the agent of His love. But we'll never get here until
we have the root system in place.
And the tragedy is a lot of people try to muster 2, two and
three and they've never comprehended #1 so we've got to
be rooted and established in love.
The Greek word established, that's an architectural word.
So Paul uses an architectural word and an agricultural word.
And both of them are reflective of the same dynamic, that what
is unseen and beneath the ground is what is responsible and, and
accounts for what is above the ground.
If you want a big building, you got to have a deep foundation.
If you want a healthy tree, you better have deep roots.
And so our root system and our foundation have to be in the
love of God. You following me?
So we need this. Everybody following me.
Everybody awake, OK. It's a little calm in here, OK?
I feel like I need to do some jumping jacks or something.
OK. So, yeah.
So this is what he's pranked. So look, look at what he says.
He says that you may. OK, verse 10 or 19 rather, and
to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, why that
you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
So we just read in chapter one that the body is the fullness of
Christ. And now he's telling us we need
the love of God to have the fullness of God.
And so the fullness of God is extended to those who are in
relationship with others. I'm going to make a case for
this. Look at the very next verse,
verse 20. Now to him who is able to do
far, abundantly more than we ask or think, according to the power
that has worked within us, to Him be all the glory in the
church and in Christ Jesus through all generations, forever
and ever. Amen.
That's the end of chapter 3. Now we're into chapter 4 and
Paul, This is classic Pauline theology.
OK, Paul's books are always like this.
This one is really clear. 3 chapters of theology.
And then the last three chapters are real practical.
This is where the rubber meets the road.
Husbands love your wives. Wives respect your husbands.
Kids obey your parents. Parents don't embitter your
kids. That's simple stuff.
It's just simple commands. I used to spend all my time in
the latter half of Paul's books because I'd read the first half
and I I didn't understand what he was saying these long run on
sentences theology, I didn't understand it.
The problem is this that I can't live the second-half until I
grasp the first half. The revelation of the first half
is what enables me, strengthens me to walk out the second-half.
And so Paul's books always have a transition point where then he
gets real practical. And here's here's Paul's
transition point, chapter 4, verse one.
It's very obvious. Therefore, what's the old
phrase, whenever you see a therefore ask what it's there
for. I therefore a prisoner of the
Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the calling to which you have
been called. So he's saying, listen, I just
unpacked all that you're called to, now walk it out.
So he says to which you were called and listen to how he
begins to unpack the practicality of this thing in
verse 2 with all humility and gentleness with patience,
bearing with one another and love, eager to maintain the
unity of the spirit through the bond of peace.
He's saying, listen, chapter 1. You want the fullness of Christ.
You want more than just the measure.
You have your little perspective and your your revelation.
We we grow in those things. But if we just, if we just hang
out alone with Jesus, we're going to have a very limited
perspective on who God is because God has placed
revelation and truth and other people around you that he will
not give to you directly. He will withhold it to you from
you and we'll only give it to you through them so that we
become interdependent. So the fullness of Christ is the
body. We're going to see in a moment
how he he unpacks this again in chapter 4.
The fullness of God requires love.
Why? Because I'm going to find it in
the body of Christ and I need to love you to get at what you
carry. And here's here's the problem.
God is hidden the the mysteries, God is hidden the Nuggets, God
is hidden the truth that I need in people that are imperfect.
I forget that when people come to me that I'm not perfect, but
I remember it when I come to you.
And the danger is is that we stumble over what that person
isn't and therefore forfeit what they are.
We we forfeit the truth that they carry because we're we're
stumbling over their weaknesses or their immaturity or fill in
the blank. That's why we need the love of
God. And in fact, your weakness and
immaturity is the very thing that kicks mind to the surface.
So not only are there things that God wants to give me that
are in you, there's also things want God wants to get out of me
that are in me. And both of them are
accomplished by the same dynamic relationship with you,
relationship with each other. Because there are things in me
that I don't even know are messed up until I get in
relationship. I've often said, you know, I was
a very, very patient person. Very I, I, I would come home and
I was patient with everybody I lived with when I was a single
guy, because I lived alone, I'd come home.
I was never irritated. I was convinced.
I was very mature as a believer. I'm a very patient person.
Love is patient. Love is kind.
Well, I'm really patient and kind when I get home from work
because there was no one to provoke me.
And then I got married. And then I realized, oh, oh,
there's some unresolved issues here.
There's some things I still need to deal with because now
someone's putting a demand on me that I don't want to deliver on.
And that was my problem. As much as I wanted to say, oh,
that, you know, I was pretty nice person until I got married,
I wanted to blame her. And that wasn't the case.
So my point is, in order for God to grow you up and give you all
he wants to give you, you have to have relationship with other
believers. You can live, you can be saved
alone, but you can never mature alone.
You've got to have a relationship with other people.
And in that relationship, you're going to discover your
weaknesses and you're going to discover their strengths.
And you'll, you'll also discover your own strengths when you get
in relationship with people. There's things that you take for
granted about your very makeup that you don't think's a big
deal, but they do and they talk to you and they're like, that's
amazing how you do that or how you say that or fill in the
blank. And you're like, well, that's
just normal. No, it's normal for you because
that's your gifting. And we don't even know the, the,
the, the, the weight, the strength of our gifting until we
begin to use it in other lives of other people because we think
everybody can do that. And there is a tendency for us
to minimize what we carry. And there's also a tendency for
us to minimize our character weaknesses.
And in relationship, we discover both.
And there are things that God will God wants to give you
things you need to go to the next level in God, the next the
next stage. And and there is other levels in
God. I felt that man, I just felt
that reaction there, there, there are levels in God.
We're to go from glory to glory. There are God wants to stretch
you and take you into new territory, but you're often the
territory that God wants to bring you in is you're going to
be ushered into that. Often new seasons will introduce
new relationships. There are going to be people
that stand at the gate to your new season and you're going to
need them. And so we've got that.
We've got to be able to do relationship.
So again, the foundation is I've got to know that I'm loved by
God and I'm not talking about you thinking that you're OK.
The only way you're going to know that you're you're really
going to come settled in who you are.
You're not all the therapy in the world isn't going to
accomplish that because you're going to see yourself in your
creator and as you know him, you're going to become OK with
who he's made you to be and you will embrace your humanity and
the the process of your maturity.
See, there's a lot of people who reject their humanity and they
want to be perfect today and they won't, they won't embrace
the process. And process is part of your
human condition. And God made you a humanoid
whether you like it or not. That's the state you arrived in.
And so process is part of the journey.
And we've got to embrace that. So we've got to, we've got to
encounter his love. We become OK with who we are.
We bring that into relationships and we begin to grow in our
relationships. And Paul makes a case for this.
He said that you would have, you would well, as you put it, be
filled with all the fullness of God and to know the love of
Christ that surpasses knowledge. Why that you may be filled with
all the fullness of God. You can't be filled with the
fullness of God until you know the love of God, because the
fullness of God is found in relationship.
And if you don't love, if you don't have self acceptance and
enter into God's love for you, you're going to withhold
yourself from a relationship because you're going to be
convinced they will reject you, like you reject you.
And #2 you're not going to put up with the weaknesses of other
people unless you love them. That's why Paul says, how does
he put it? Look, it says, with all humility
and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in
love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit through the
bond of peace. The King James Version says make
haste. This one says, be eager to
maintain, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit.
So there's a unity that we walk in relationship with and keep
the unity of the Spirit through what?
The bond of peace. There's an adhesive that God has
given us and it's called peace. We're not going to allow
conflict to come between us. We're going to deal with those
things because if we're not in unity, it robs us of our
fullness. It robs us of what God really
wants to give us and it's one of the primary things the enemy
does. It's not a coincidence that on
the day of Pentecost they were all in one Accord.
It's not a Honda. It's not a four door Honda, he
says. They were all in.
They were in Unity together and that's where the Spirit fell on
them because God is looking for a people who will deal.
They will walk in Unity together and that we will overlook each
other's weaknesses. And in fact, we'll realize my
weakness is why I need you and your weakness is why I need you
need me. And it becomes an opportunity
for us to fit together and overlook those things and begin
to draw from one another. This whole thing of familiarity
is a huge issue spiritually. You've heard that phrase,
familiarity breeds contempt. I was taught in Bible school.
I remember the the first Bible school I went to the the pastor
of the church every Tuesday night, we'd sit in the boardroom
and he'd teach, there's like 14 of us and he'd teach us.
And he said, never get close to the people you pastor because if
you do, they won't respect you. I was like 20 years old, but I
had enough on the ball to think, wow, if just knowing me makes
you disrespect me, maybe I shouldn't be in ministry.
See, it's that thing to keep people at arm's lengths lest
they know us, when in reality that is the avenue to the
fullness we've got to be in relationship.
And so this thing of bearing with one another in love,
keeping the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace.
It's, it's been many years since I, I looked this up in the
Greek, but if, if I remember right, that word bond, there's
two places in this passage, right in this little compressed
area of this passage where he uses the word bond and, and
having to do with unity. And the Greek word is ligaments.
It's where we get the word ligaments.
Your ligaments are those like rubber bands, so to speak, that
are on the sides of your, your skeletal system that hold
everything together. Remember those little toys when
you were a kid? You there, there's a little,
maybe a skeleton and there's a little button on the bottom and
you push it and it loosened the rubber band that held together
and the whole thing would fall. Then you put it back together.
That's it's, it's picture of ligaments.
And when you don't have the unity of the spirit, we're like
a body that's just laying there. It's not a lot of good.
If we want to stand, we've got to have the ligaments tight.
Ligaments are an amazing part of God's design because ligaments
hold your bones together, but they're flexible.
There's cartilage that so they don't, they don't rub on each
other, but it's the ligaments that hold it close together and
the muscles that move it. And those ligaments can take
stress. They can stretch beyond the norm
for a little while, but if you stretch them too far or too
long, then you injure it and the whole body is affected.
And Paul uses that idea to say the bond of peace.
In other words, the unit of the Spirit through the bond of peace
can absorb the stress of relationships, but if allowed to
remain too long, it will injure it and then it affects the whole
body. And so, and what Paul is saying
is don't allow that to happen because if you let it happen, it
will affect everything and you forfeit the fullness of what God
has for you. And essentially what Paul is
saying is I want to give you a vision, the fullness of God, the
fullness of Christ, all that God has purchased for you through
the cross. But you can't have it outside of
relationship with one another because God has hidden what you
need in human relationships. And this is so very important.
And it has to do with what we were talking two weeks ago for
a, for a married couple. God took out of Adam what he
needed, made it into a separate person with a mind, will and
emotions and brought it back, said become one with her.
And he thought it was great until they had an argument.
And then he said, God, you just made this complex and he did it
by design. It was oneness through mutual
sacrifice. And we've got to have a vision
for this. And This is why the love of God,
his prayer there in chapter 3, is so crucial, a baptism of
love, really walking in the love of God, empowered by love,
enables us to walk together and to to maintain the unity of the
Spirit. And in fact, under those
circumstances, in that commitment of covenant of love,
conflict actually deepens the relationship.
You think back on the people you've had conflict with and you
worked it out. There's a deeper level of
relationship than you had before the conflict.
It's the love of God. So let's, let's read on here.
He says, I got 5 minutes. Oh my goodness, look at verse
four. Look at how many times he uses
the word 1114 through six. There is one body and one
spirit, just as you were called, the one hope that belongs to
your call. 1 Lord, 1 faith, one baptism, one God and Father of
all, who is over all and through all and in all but verse in the
the middle of the verse he says but or that beginning of the
verse verse 7 but or you could say however, he's about ready to
transition. However.
There's all this oneness going on.
However, grace has been given to each one of us according to the
measure of the of Christ's gift. Go ahead and put up that's
that's verse 7 in the ESV put that up in the King James
version. I want to see I want you to see
this. I really think that the
rendering of the King James version is more accurate because
of the flow of thought here. Now the Greek would allow for
either translation and so a lot of times context will drive the
interpretation. I believe this is more accurate
because of what Paul is saying here.
Look it, but unto every one of us is giving grace.
According to what? The measure of the gift of
Christ. In other words, you have the
gift of Christ. Christ has been given to you,
but you have a measure. You don't have the fullness.
Every one of us has a measure, and the only way for me to get
the fullness is to bring my measure to your measure.
We put our measures together and then we have the fullness and
it's by divine design. And what that requires is that
you and I walk in the love of God.
We first have to be reconciled to ourself.
The love of God has impacted us. So I'll bring the whole me to
the relationship because if I'm living under self rejection, if
I have diseased thoughts about myself that I allowed to stay
there year after year after year, I won't even bring myself
to the table. I'm going to keep you at arm's
length because I am convinced you will reject me just like I
have. And so the love of God has to
1st come and reconcile us to our self.
And that's a process. And and if you're struggling
with that, you need to cry out to God and ask Him.
Lord, heal my heart so that I come into self acceptance, so
that you can be OK with the package you arrive in.
And then that same love also makes me fight for relationship
with you. There is a supernatural
affection from heaven that you can feel for one another.
Other believers and many of you have touched it.
Some of you live in it. We need to all be living in
that, so that we have this this perception of one another, that
we have this warm affection that we will fight through the issues
in our lives, otherwise we forfeit the fullness of Christ.
Are you following me? There is so much on the line.
The fullness of God is only accessible through the body of
Christ. And that's why we need the love
of God. Because it's only the love of
God that'll keep you connected. Because often what you need most
is hidden within the person that irritates you the most.
It's God's way because that enables him you to deal with
you. And when we do that, man,
that's, it's a beautiful thing, the body of Christ.
So look at what it says here real quick.
I know we got to go look at look at verse 11 and he gave the
apostles, the prophets, evanders, pastors and teachers.
Why? To equip the Saints for the work
of ministry for the building up of the body until we all attain
what the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of
God to the mature manhood and look at what he says, the
measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
So we've been each given a measure you want the measure of
the fullness and not just the limited measure you carry as an
individual. Then you've we've got to mature
together and the only way for us to mature together is to do life
together, to be in relationship with together so that we're
seeing what needs to change in US.
And I'm covering your weaknesses and we all grow up into Him as
the head that is the fullness of Christ.
So let me close with this real quick.
Some of you have heard me tell us this story, but it bears
repeating in this context. Go ahead and stance.
You know, I'm going to quit 2009.
I was laying on the platform. The platform was over here at
the time. And we were in a soaking time.
And Paul Udall was here. He was one of our external
overseers. And he came and we were, we were
soaking. And I, as I'm laying there, I
felt something walked by me. This power, I mean it was like
this raw power came by me and walked down there.
I looked up and there was nothing there.
And I jumped up and this is what came out of my mouth.
There's grace for unity. And Paul said the do of Herman
will be released. And I thought, what does that
mean? And I just kind of forgot about
it. A year later, Pauls back and
we're soaking again and I was on the verge of snorking, going to
fall asleep. So I thought, that's not good.
If you're the pastor and you're supposed to lead this thing,
snoring wouldn't be good. So I got up and I walked out in
the hallway and I looked out through the glass and as I was
standing there just looking at the land, all of a sudden I went
into a vision and I saw as if someone had put a translucent
bowl over our entire property. And then oil came from heaven
and we were under this Dome of glorious oil.
And I was like, Oh my goodness. And he said, the dew of Herman
will be released. And I was excited by what I saw,
but disappointed by what I heard because I'm a revival guy.
So I thought, Lord, I don't want dew.
I want rivers of out of our belly, John 7, the baptism of
the spirit, wells of salvation, people getting saved.
I want out pouring. But river, I mean dew.
That sounds boring, you know? And the Lord spoke to me.
He said it is my non disruptive way of nourishing the land.
Well, he had my attention and then he said this and I actually
wanted to correct the Lord's theology.
He said outpourings were made necessary by the fall.
And I had to think about that. But if you recall, God didn't
design the earth to have rain. It was watered by hidden caverns
and it began to rain during the flood as an act of judgment.
And so God had my attention. Maybe we'll unpack this again
near in a near future. But so about a year later,
somewhere in there, we're in a conference and there was a bunch
of homeless people that were attending Heartland at the time.
And one of them would always come up to me.
I left a church out in the park lot smoking a cigarette.
Hey, I saw 4 angels flying across.
One had this, you know, he'd tell me and I never knew what to
thought. Think of it.
You know, I thought, OK, let's. That's nice.
And so that morning and during this conference, he went over to
Roger Mckim and he said, hey, Roger, I saw it.
There's 2 angels on this platform this morning.
What? They're standing right over
here. 1 is really tall. His head goes through the
ceiling. Big warrior.
He's got, he's got all this army equipment on.
He was like a Roman soldier kind of guy.
And the other one is a smaller one, but it's got a red, red
Garland around its head or red sash, red garment.
And it's, it's standing in the bigger 1 standing next to it.
Roger comes and tell me. I thought, OK, what do I do with
that? So I just introduced the speaker
and the speaker gets up. It was a gal named Kathy.
She gets up and she says, before we begin to teach the word, I
always ask the Lord about the Angel over any church that I
visit. Now churches have angels that's
in scripture. I don't have time to give you a
case for that, but just look it up.
She said, But what's interesting this morning is there's 2 angels
here and she pointed over here and she said 1 is a very large
warrior Angel head sticking through the ceiling.
And the other is a it's red, it has a red Garland.
She begins to describe in vivid detail just what the homeless
guy said. So meanwhile, I'm on, you know,
I'm repenting. God forgive me my unbelief.
And she said, but she added some.
She said the smaller Angel is an Angel of unity assigned to this
house and the larger Angel is here to protect it.
And then I knew what walked by me that day.
It was an Angel of unity that dropped into this place and is
assigned. So we need to ask her.
So why would God give us an Angel of unity?
I'm telling you, it's what we just talked about.
Because there are things, there are valuable things that are
forfeited without the unity of the Spirit through the bond of
peace. And many, many, many, many
believers live well below their inheritance.
They have their some, some of them very profound revelation,
profound giftings. But we sit and we're just all
alone with our thing. And we think it's the fullness.
And there is a city and a state and a nation and the nations of
the earth that are longing for what we bring to the table
together. Hey, thanks for watching.
At Heartland Church, we love to worship the Lord and we love His
Word. In fact, if you could jump on
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We'd love to have you join us live or in person every week.
See you next time.