A reading from the Apostle Paul's letter to the Ephesians.
This is why, since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and
your love for all the Saints, I never stopped giving thanks for
you. As I remember you in my prayers,
I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Glorious
Father, would give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation
in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your
heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of
His calling, what is the wealth of His glorious inheritance in
the Saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His
power toward us who believe according to the mighty working
of His strength? He exercised this power in
Christ by raising Him from the dead, and seating Him at the
right hand of the heavens, far above every ruler and authority,
power and dominion, and every title, given not only on this
sage, but also in the One to come.
And he subjected everything under his feet, and appointed
him as head over everything for the church, which is his body,
the fullness of the One who fills all things in every way,
the word of the Lord. Would you pray with me?
Father, we do thank you for these precious words of Jesus
calling us blessed when we are going through difficulty and
trial, when we're hungering for justice and mercy, when we're
longing to be fed, when we have needs that are unmet, when we're
poor in spirit. We thank you, Lord, that there
is a blessing no matter what our circumstances are, because your
Holy Spirit is with us. Your plan is irrevocable.
Your love is complete. So we pray now, Lord, that as we
open the book of Ephesians, that the Holy Spirit would now open
our eyes to the incredible love and hope you have for the people
of God. And we pray that as we are
filled with your love, we would be richly and deeply connected
with all the Saints. In the name of the Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, Amen. All right, please be seated and
you can turn in your Bibles or bulletins to Ephesians chapter
1. What a joy it is to be here on
this feast of All Saints and to be able to witness three people
receive the sacrament of baptism.
We're we're going to celebrate with Paul and Conrad and Violet.
We're going to receive new members.
We've got Nick, we've got Esther, we've got Peyton and
Emerson and Karen and Warren and Michaela.
And I just want you to know, friends, that as I've been
preparing this message and praying for you, you've been on
my mind and heart. And this, this message, this
homily is for you, for your spiritual formation.
I want to give you a way to pray because even as you are being
welcomed into the fellowship of all of the Saints, being
baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit wants a relationship with you
that's deepened. And there's a way for you to
approach each member of the Godhead in ways that are unique
and rich for your souls. And I want to talk about that
today from Ephesians one, because Paul gives us a
wonderful model for how to relate with the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit. I want to invite all of the
Saints to listen in as as we talk about how to build a rich
prayer life with the Trinity. It's going to be transformative
for each one of us. And so if you would like a
relationship with God, if you're here today and you would like to
have a relationship with God, or maybe you're here and you would
like to deepen your relationship with God, this is for you as
well. This is an invitation for you.
We're going to do this catechism style, which is question and
answer. So let's start with the first
question. How do we relate with God the
Father? And the answer is with
Thanksgiving. With Thanksgiving, Christmas is
about two months away and it really is time for us to begin
the process of thinking through that right gift for the people
in our life. And I just a question for you,
for those of you who celebrate Christmas, has there ever been a
time at Christmas where you got a gift that was so like uniquely
perfect for you that like, it just filled your heart with
Thanksgiving? Not so much because even the
specific gift, but the intentional love and care and,
and just overflowing connection that the person had when they
were picking that gift out for you.
Sometimes I've not even known what to say besides thank you
when I've been receiving an incredible gift.
God the Father. One thing we just need to know
about Him is that He is an incredible gift giver.
He's thoughtful. He's intentional about the gifts
that He gives to each one of us and the gifts that He gives to
all the Saints. He thinks about it.
He sacrifices for it. And one of the best ways that we
can build a prayer life with God the Father is just to start with
Thanksgiving and to recognize His gifts, to name His gifts
aloud. Paul does this in verses 15 and
16 of Ephesians one when he says this, This is why, since I've
heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all
the Saints, I never stop giving thanks for you as I remember you
in my prayers. We can ask, who is Paul
thanking? And he actually mentions in
verse 17 the glorious Father, the the Father of glory, the
glorious Father from whom all blessings flow.
Paul thanks the Father for two specific gifts.
And that is #1 the faith that the early Christians had in
Jesus and #2 the love that these early Christians had for one
another, faith and love. Now this might sound trite to
us, like faith and love. This sounds like the socks and
underwear of Christmas gifts where you have to say thank you.
But you know, it's a given and I was thinking about this leak
like why, why does Paul thank the Father for for faith and for
love? And I realized that in God's
plan, like faith, hope and love are the things that are going to
outlast all the gifts of this world.
And when you actually look at the value of faith in Jesus and
love for the Saints it it is amazing to think about all the
other backsplash benefits that flow from faith and love.
I recently read this week I read about City first.
City 1st is a church plant within Hardy Correctional
Institution in Illinois and faith in God and love for the
Saints was born there through this church plant and then that
led to many other gifts. Jeffrey is one of the inmates at
Hardy Correctional Institution and he wrote this to the leaders
who planted the church. In his letter he says when I
arrived here in November 2021, this was a camp for closed
management, inmates, lifers and the violence was everywhere.
With the city first teaching and your volunteers and prayers.
This camp has seen a revival where fights, death and
stabbings were rampant. Compassion, love and fellowship,
love for the Saints has prevailed.
I am sending you this letter to testify of the changing power of
the Lord. You, my city first family, have
taught me to forgive, understand and love.
What a difference the Lord has made in my life.
And can you hear the faith and the love and all of the benefits
that flow from faith and love You need to think about.
You know, I've been thanking God for the faith in Jesus and the
love for the Saints as evidenced by New Life Community Church in
our city. Right now with all of the
federal agents, all the ICE raids, New Life, and especially
Pastor Paco, you guys know Pastor Paco, he's right now he's
simply leading out with faith and love.
And it's giving me so much hope and so much goodness is flowing
from their faith and love. I'm giving thanks to to the
Father for this faith and this love.
Now many, many gifts follow faith and love like peace and
creativity and hope and purpose. And this is the Father's way.
You know, God the Father, he's very generous, He's very
abundant. And when we say thank you,
Father, for your gifts, one of the things that we're doing is
we're beginning to participate in his abundance.
We're moving toward his abundance, and then our
relationship with him deepens. This is really, really helpful
when we find ourselves in situations like Jeffrey.
You know, Jeffrey felt stuck in an environment of scarcity.
If you ever felt stuck in an environment of scarcity, where
you feel stuck and you feel like there's no hope.
And all of a sudden, Jeffrey felt the overflowing generosity
of the Father God in his circumstance, and his anxiety
and his hopelessness gave way to joy.
So Paul Conrad, Violet, there's going to be situations after
your baptism where you will feel desolation, worried, anxious,
weighed down. Maybe it'll be about friendships
or money. Maybe it'll be about work, maybe
it'll be about society, or it could be about safety or just
little things or big things. Our Father knows in those moment
what your needs are. He's going to provide for you,
and He loves you. And he's actually already given
of his precious son his most precious gift, to bring you to
him so that you never have to be without his generosity.
So in your suffering, I want to like tell you now that in that
moment you can lift up your heart in Eucharistic
Thanksgiving to the Father, and He will draw near to you and He
will overflow with faith and love for you.
This is especially helpful for all of us.
When we end our day, we can end our day with gratitude.
It's a wonderful way to end our day with God the Father.
We can begin our days with gratitude.
This, you know, it sets our entire trajectory of our day to
be in communion with God the Father, Thank him Thanksgiving.
That is the first way we can enter into communion with the
living God. One of the best gifts the Father
can give is his Holy Spirit. So second question, how do we
relate with God the Holy Spirit? The answer we ask him for
spiritual sight. We ask the Holy Spirit to give
us spiritual sight. Verse 17, Paul continues, I pray
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father,
would give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the
knowledge of him. And you'll notice that the word
Spirit in verse 17 is capitalized.
That's because it's about a, a person, the Holy Spirit, and
he's named here as the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the
knowledge of him, the knowledge of God.
Now, my son Sam knows a lot about sports.
He knows about all the players and all the plays.
He knows all the nuances of what's happening on the field.
And for that reason, I really love watching sports ball with
Sam because anything that happens, I just turn to him and
I'm like, what's going on there? What's happening on the
sidelines? And he'll just, he'll just
explain it to me. He knows me, but he also knows
the sport, and so he can translate it.
The Holy Spirit does something similar as we walk with God in
this life. The Holy Spirit knows the mind
of the Father and the mind of the Son really, really well.
He knows them perfectly. He loves them deeply.
But also the Holy Spirit knows our heart.
He, Paul says in Romans that the Holy Spirit searches our hearts,
He searches our souls, and he knows how to translate what's
happening in our life with God's purposes.
And we can simply turn to him and say, Holy Spirit, would you
help me understand? Would you give me wisdom?
Would you give me insight? Paul, Violet, Conrad, new
members, all the Saints. Here's a prayer that you can
utter to the Holy Spirit at any time.
You can ask him, would you help me see my life through God's
eyes? Spirit, would you help me see my
life through God's eyes and you can substitute anything in that
little chunk there of my life like my past.
Sometimes we it's hard to understand why God loud certain
things in our past. Can you help me understand my
present? Can you help me understand my
future? Can you help me understand this
trial? Can you help me understand this
blessing through God's eyes? And there are there.
There are times when all we can see is our pain and the Holy
Spirit can actually transform that moment and help us see
beyond the pain. What is God's plan?
What is God's purpose? What is God's goodness?
What is God's love? He can open our eyes to the hope
that we cannot see. Verse 18 tells us, I pray that
the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know
what is the hope of His calling is.
Anyone here needs to know hope, the hope of your calling, the
hope of Our Calling. That's word.
The hope of His calling on us is for all of the Saints.
The Holy Spirit can help us see that hope.
Is there anyone here who's ever felt unworthy?
Unworthy. Unworthy for your to stand
before God, unworthy to stand before others.
You feel like I'm not enough? If we ever feel unworthy, the
Holy Spirit can open our eyes to our worth in God's eyes.
The second-half of verse 18 says this.
What is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the
Saints? In other words, the Holy Spirit
can help us see that we, the Saints, are God's precious
inheritance. We are his inheritance.
We're his treasures. He holds us as like, like prizes
and precious sons and daughters. That's how he sees us.
And the Holy Spirit can help us see ourselves through God's
eyes. Is there anyone here who's ever
felt overwhelmed, like the challenges ahead of you and
before you are too much, it's too much.
If you ask the Holy Spirit, you can say, Holy Spirit, open my
eyes to God's incredible strength.
Verse 19. Here's what he'll help us see.
What is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us
who believe according to the mighty working of His strength?
There's four different Greek words for strength in verse 19,
and they're all about God. And Paul is praying that the
Ephesians and the early church and all of us would like our
imaginations would be baptized so that we could see how strong
God is. Now look, if it were easy to
hope, if it were easy for us to see that we're God's treasure,
his inheritance, if it were easy to see that God is powerfully
working on our behalf, maybe we would never pray to the Holy
Spirit. Maybe we wouldn't talk with him.
But as, as it stands like we have a lot going on right now
and we need the Holy Spirit and be encouraged like the Holy
Spirit is, is is right here ready to open our eyes, the eyes
of our heart to see how much God loves us, how powerful he is,
how much hope there is in our life and to give us wisdom and
revelation in the knowledge of God.
So next time, baptismal candidates, incoming members,
Saints, anyone with an earshot, the next time you face a
situation that feels hopeless, the next time you feel
overwhelmed, the next time you feel caught in a storm of shame
and anxiety, remember that the Holy Spirit stands ready to help
you see your situation through God's eyes, which will bring
hope and which will bring peace, and which will bring an
incredible sense of God clothing you and His love.
How do we relate with God the Son, Jesus Christ?
Final, final Q&A. How do we relate with Jesus,
God's precious Son? The answer is this.
We follow him. We follow him from weakness to
fullness. We followed Jesus from weakness
to fullness. Notice how Paul describes
Christ's position in verse 20. Verse 20.
Exercise this power in Christ by raising him from the dead, the
dead. You can't get more weak than
dead, you know. You can't make anything happen
for yourself. You can't talk, you can't
breathe. You would notice Christ is, you
know, referred to as dead in verse 20, but look at verses
verse 23. He's called the one who fills
all things in every way. Is that astounding?
Christ is filling all things in every way by the time you get to
verse 23 and and that the beautiful thing is that he's not
just strong for his own sake, He's filling the church.
He's filling all things. He's reigning over every power
and authority in heaven or on earth, not just for his own
benefit. But actually verse 22 talks
about how it's for our benefit for the sake of the church.
Christ did not go from strength to strength, which is how I like
to go. I like to go from compound
interest to compound interest in life.
And don't we all, you know, from success to success, nothing
succeeds like success, am I right?
I don't know. I wouldn't know.
But but that's the promise, isn't it?
That's the lie that you, you, you just keep winning and that
winning begets winning. And The thing is, I think all of
us know like nothing fails, like false success.
You know, Jesus went from weakness to strength.
He went from weakness to fullness.
This is his way where he defeated sin, He defeated death,
He defeated the devil. And this is the way that he
leads us. He leads the Saints.
Violet Conrad. Paul, he's leading you in his
way of weakness to fullness. In your baptism today you'll be
united with him. And from this day forward he's
got he's got a cloak for you to wear.
Remember the hobbits, they got a cloak for their journey.
You're going to get a cloak for your journey.
It's the robes of righteousness. It's the close of Jesus and He's
going to lead you through weakness, through valleys and
into fullness, into heights that are unimaginable.
And He's got a cross for you to carry.
He says anyone who wants to come after me needs to pick up their
cross and follow me. The cross isn't to hurt you, by
the way. It's it's to lead you into
glory. One day you'll be seated with
Him in heaven. You'll be ruling and reigning.
In the meantime, He's He's simply asking you to just step
by step, follow Him in your weakness.
Some days in this journey are going to feel like the
beatitudes that Father Samuel read.
You're going to find yourself weeping, torn spirits,
misunderstood. It could be like you.
Maybe your best friend moves away and you feel lonely and
sad. Or maybe you don't make the team
for the sport that you love. Or maybe the medical tests come
back with a scary diagnosis and you're not going to know what to
do on those days. Remember that weakness was
Christ's path too, and He's with you, and you can always, always
OfferUp your weakness to Him. Now.
Other days, friends, you're going to find yourself rejoicing
and seeing, seeing breakthrough in your life and seeing growth
in your life and it will be from strength to strength and they'll
be healing and they'll be open doors and you'll see how God's
using you and your spiritual gifts and your call to bless
other people on those days. Remember that was also Christ's
path. OfferUp your fullness to him.
And in all of this, friends, baptism candidates, incoming
members, people of God, anyone with an earshot, stay as close
to Jesus as you can in his path from death to resurrection, from
weakness to fullness, and do so with confidence that the same
power that raised Christ from the dead will raise you also and
will raise all the Saints. Here's one way that as a church,
we're following Jesus in a time of weakness.
Our city really is in pain and turmoil right now from the ice
raids taking place in our communities.
And just the basic fact is that we're seeing vulnerable people
get harmed and we're noticing that kids don't go trick or
treating and sometimes don't go to school and families are
hiding because they don't want to get tear gassed.
They don't want to get arrested. They don't want to get taken
away. And we're just seeing vulnerable
people get harmed and we're crying out to God to bring
justice and healing to our city. And yet we can't pull some lever
and make it all stop. You know, God hasn't given us
that power right now, but what has he given us?
He's given us his way of death and resurrection right now.
And so even as we pray for this, this time of pain to come to an
end, we're we're, we're like Jesus.
Where can we pray? Where can we love?
Where can we bring healing? And so we're collecting coats
for migrants and we're showing up to new life centers where
they're like putting food together for families and
hiding. And on lessons and Carols, when
we come together in lessons of care, we're going to raise money
for new life centers so that they can give groceries and
clothing and medical care and wrap around care for families on
the South and West sides right now are just in terror from
what's happening. And we're not doing that to be
like, Yep, we're the good guys, you're the bad guys, we're the
good guys. That's not the story of grace.
That's not the story of Jesus. The story of Jesus is
sacrificial love to the glory of God, to the one who gave us all
things from whom all blessings flow.
We're going to let that flow through us in a loving,
sacrificial way. That's the story that we're
living. And we're asking God to make all
of this right, to make all this new.
And we're we're waiting on the day of the Lord where he will do
that. It might look weak, might feel
weak, but in God's wisdom, that is the faith, that is the love,
that is the strength that will endure.
So baptism candidates, members being received and all within
earshot, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit welcome you into
their fellowship. Welcome all the Saints into the
fellowship, the invitations there.
And the there's love for you, there's delight for you, there's
healing and forgiveness for you. And so I want to ask all of us,
let's this morning lift up our hearts in faith and thanks.
Let's open our hearts up to the Holy Spirit's wisdom, and let's
follow Jesus into his unshakable Kingdom.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.