Welcome to the River City Church podcast and a message by our
lead pastor, Jason Powers. Our prayer is that this message
would inspire and encourage you, build your faith and point you
to the life changing love of Jesus.
May you enjoy the goodness of God as you follow Him today.
You haven't seen Alicia around. It means you're probably not
around enough because she's everywhere, doing all of the
things, bringing her gifts and talents to River City.
And we love it. So I'm glad that you're here on
this Sunday before Thanksgiving. I hope that your whole week is
filled with gratitude and grace, not that everything is easy, but
that you find a way in the midst of whatever comes to recognize
God's presence and to be grateful.
So we begin each week as we begin today with our confession.
And our confession is important. Really our confession is what's
been behind this whole Ephesians series.
It's really the story behind the whole of Scripture.
Our confession as a churches we're badly broken, badly broken
and deeply loved. Yes, you are and that's why it's
so important. Like where what Alicia said it
comes like the story is that God has been bringing Jews and
Gentiles together. That's this big apocalypse, this
big revelation that that. Paul wrote to this Ephesian
church as a Jewish rabbi, writing to a Gentile
congregation that what God has been doing since the beginning
is what he wants to do in them and today, believe it or don't.
We're actually going to read the.
End of Ephesians, and that's going to be.
Wonderful. I want to say real.
Quick. Though I have an urgency about
this in my soul, right? Like I'm always.
Kind of like I'm high strung, like I I get it, I know, I.
But there's a there's there's more in me today because while
I'm definitely glad for this to to end and I'm ready to move on
to our Christmas series, my concern is that we're going to
take what we've been studying and just move on to whatever the
next thing. And what I want to tell is
Ephesians is the story. Ephesians is the thing.
And my concern is that we're going to take this book that
we've been going and we've been pulling these ideas and these
words and these nuances and these subtleties out of it.
And we've been talking about the way that the church relates to
each other and grows and the way that we're supposed to behave
and belong and all of these things.
And my concern is that after 14 weeks, we're going to hear it
and go, that's nice. And we're going to move on.
And what I want to say is everything that you're ever
going to hear in church is built on this.
There's never an escape from this content because this is
gospel. This is the good news.
Everything that Jesus does in our lives is for this purpose,
to establish us and to restore us to this.
And so my hope is that you have been been able to see over the
last 14 weeks that you really can go deep, You really can get
granular because I promise you, there is nothing that either
Johnny or myself have talked about or taught that isn't
widely available in the public domain.
You have access to every single. Thing that Johnny and I have
talked about and so my. Hope for you is that you will
get a glimpse and a vision of something that makes you go.
I need more of that. Something that Jason talked
about or Johnny talked about or Paul wrote about, I need.
That and I want that and my hope.
Is that as Paul implores us and begs us, that we'll begin to
truly live our. Lives around this truth, around
this gospel. And so I want to take a second
and thank Johnny. Johnny's not in the room right
now, but I want to thank him in front of you for helping me with
this. We've never had a series like
this at River City where we have gone back and forth and we kind
of have alternated a teaching the text.
And I want you to know I'm better at what I do because of
Johnny. I am better at what I do because
Johnny took the time to share his process with me.
He's so smart. He knows so many things and he
has helped me and he has encouraged me and he has, I feel
like, made me better and made us better.
So if you see Johnny around anytime next, however long, just
grab him and hug his bald head and tell him that you love him
and you understand most of the things that he said.
And you know, all right, have him over for a July 4th
celebration. He'll get that.
It's fun. The idea that was a British
joke, by the way, if you didn't get it.
So at the end of the Ephesians, the thing that.
Paul has been. Hammering that he's been coming
back to over and over and over again is this idea that the
spiritual is the ultimate. What is spiritual is most real.
This is real. The things that we can touch and
see and taste. Are real but there's an ultimate
reality even beyond that that this physical reality points to
and the truth and the story of the ultimate spiritual reality
is that King Jesus has won and he sits today enthroned in what
he calls the heavenlies where he reigns over all things now and
forever. And as his church we begin to
experience that partly now but not fully and not entirely yet.
The way Paul talks about that is the ages, the age to come and
this present age. But the message from Paul from
the first to the last is Jesus is.
Resurrected and victorious and seated at the right hand of the
Father. And you're there with him now in
this place. And that is our reality.
And so we saw last week he talked about this armor, and the
armor is this fundamental reality.
And what he talked is he uses these Latin phrases, right,
semper Paradis, right, like always ready and semper fidelis,
right, always faithful. And what he's talking about is
us in the context of this armor that he talked to us.
The idea is for us to always stay ready, to always stay
faithful. He had this idea, right?
Every day is a battle. And you're like, bro, that's
heavy and I'm tired and I just want to nap.
I get it. I love naps.
Sometimes there's nothing more spiritual than you can do but
take a nap. But listen, it's OK to take a
nap as long as we realize that the world in the cosmos doesn't
nap with us. That's why Paul talks about the
armor. The problem with us is we're not
really an armor bearing culture, are we?
None of you I. Suppose have a breastplate at
your house. Maybe some of you chainmail
nerds do, I don't know. That's fine if you do.
But we're not that. Familiar with it?
Right. So what happens then when we
have a situation where there's this biblical metaphor, but it's
outside of common? Our common everyday practice is
we get familiar with something, but we don't really understand
what it means. And what I want to say is this
is good news for you because many of you have been around the
church for a long time and you've heard about the
breastplate of righteousness and the helmet of salvation and feet
with the readiness of the gospel of truth.
And you've heard that. And you're like, that's fine,
but what do I do? With it, do I need to go by
chain mail? Do I need to have right?
So we read about it and we think about it and maybe we do a
devotional about it and we feel mildly inspired by it, but it
doesn't really seem to protect us, does it?
That's OK, you can admit that. We still feel like we get beat
up a lot, right? We wake up and maybe we read the
passage or we do the devotion and we go down by breastplate,
right to the helmet of salvation, like feet, belt,
truth and all. Like all of the things girded
and all the stuff. Like we're ready to go.
And then we walk out the front door and we get our tails kicked
in by all kinds of stuff, right? We gossip or we cuss or we steal
or we get afraid or we do all of these things and we go home and
we're like, I guess the freaking armor doesn't work.
But the next time Jesus calling, it's in there.
Maya Moser's highest, I'm doing it.
So we go. Again and over and over and over
and over again. Spiritual victory seems out of
reach at best, maybe fleeting. We armor up.
But the problem is, and what I'm going to say is the problem is
that we armor up and then we just sit on the couch.
We never go to the battle place. We literally are a bunch of
armored up people cowering in our closets client.
What we're doing is we armor up and then we try to go fight the
battle that our way. What we say is we talk to
ourselves, right? Like if I can just think peace,
right, If I can just figure all of this out, right And we maybe
we've got a verse right, Philippians 4 right, like don't
be anxious about anything. And what happens is when we
start trying to beat our fear to death with the mantra, don't be
anxious about anything. Don't be anxious about anything.
I'm anxious about whether I'm
doing it right. We try to.
Use truth like a cudgel, like a bludgeon, like trying to beat
things to death. But what we don't have is peace.
We talk about if we can just if they would just.
If we can just, but we don't know.
Peace. We work for transformation.
We hear about being transformed into the likeness of Christ.
And so we go to the store and we try to be kind and gentle and
patient, but there are people there and people are the worst.
And So what we find out is wherever I go, there I am, or
more than that. We try to be good and we get a
little bit better. We say 1 fewer cuss word during
the day. And so then we start to go.
I'm pretty. Dang, good at this man.
And what we call that is are you listening self righteousness
when you start looking at your own life and start going.
I measure up pretty good compared to all those other
losers. They don't vote for the right
guy. They don't make enough money.
They don't do the right thing. They're not nearly as handsome
as I am. So all those guys wrong and I
get this Lord, you're welcome for.
Me. And we fail.
We feel it being humble. We feel it being kind.
We feel it being unified. We feel it being powerful.
We feel it being transformed because we're trying to
transform ourselves. We try to argue our way into
unity. We schedule a lunch with those
Republicans. So we can just let them know.
The truth, if we could just make them see, we try to take the
Democrats out so we could tell them or these people just go, if
we could just let them know that Jesus loves them because of
this. And so we go and we're trying to
argue and we're trying to fight our way into unity.
And what happens is we just get entrenched and we just get
angry. And what happens is when we fail
to be able to convert people to our version and understanding of
truth, we begin to get angry and we begin to see the other person
as evil, not just different, wrong and evil.
We can point and go. How could anybody who loves
Jesus think this or believe? This or fight this way and Jesus
points to all of our wrong ideas and wrong notions and goes just
like that. Or we want to be secure and So
what we try to do is we try to control every aspect, not just
of our own life but of our others lives.
We try to control our spouse, we try to control our children, we
try to control our money. We can try to control our bosses
and our coworkers. And what happens is when we
realize that we can't control people, we begin to get afraid.
We begin to get angry because we realize we live in a world that
we can't control. And I'm just going to like tip
your hand right here. Like, like you need to know,
there's very little new information that I'm going to
give you today, but what I am going to ask you to do is
fundamentally alter the way that you live.
I'm going to ask you to throw your entire calendar and
schedule out and to do something different today.
Because the reason that we experience so much of this
powerlessness and some of this kind of futility is because we
got all the armor, but we don't pray.
It's like somebody buying you a BMW and it's all tricked down
and it's got all the stuff, but they forgot to enter the gas
tank. Try as you might, Polish the
Fender as you might, that car's not going anywhere and all of
your best intentions and self righteousness and armored up
self without prayer is nothing. It's nothing.
It means nothing. See, the reason we're good at
the armor is because the armor makes us feel powerful.
I'm doing and I'm the breastplate and helmet, right?
I like I like the armor because it makes me feel like a.
Gladiator next miss just miss Aurelius and I.
Fly, blah blah blah, right? We like the armor because what
it does for us. We resist prayer because it
makes us feel weak. Because in prayer I come to the
Lord and go, Lord, all of this is bigger than me.
So I need you to get involved or I can't change my boss.
You see what a tool that guy is, Fix him.
Or why won't my kids behave? Fix them.
Paul's been praying throughout this letter from them, literally
from the very first chapter. Paul begins in prayer, and he
breaks into prayer spontaneously throughout songs.
And so now what Paul does is he says over and over in all the
books that he writes, follow me as I follow Jesus.
So as he's prayed now he's commending the Ephesians to
prayer. And what he's saying is without
prayer, your armor is worthless. And so I don't want to tell you
River City is without prayer. Your armor is worthless without
prayer. Your good intentions are
worthless without prayer. Your good deeds are worthless.
Your sacrifice is insufficient to gain or maintain the blessing
and favor of God. Your only hope is that God is as
good as He says He is and is as intent on getting involved in
your life as He says that He is. The church without prayer is
powerless. This is nothing.
Nothing. There is no spiritual enemy that
is afraid of this. Now, when we were singing and
worshipping, maybe, but this, you sitting here listening to me
and he's not afraid of that. I'm a windbag dude.
People talk a lot, right? What he's scared of.
Is when truth begins to be partnered with the promise that
God had said I'm going to bless the whole world, Jason and if
you'll take your hot air and your tall bald thing and if
you'll go out and do that then you'll see power then you'll see
it I'm just like. Well, Lord, I don't, I don't
really want to do that. And what Paul says is this verse
18, right? Remember, he's been talking
about the armor, right? The Blessed.
Plate and all that. Now verse 18 says now with every
prayer and request, now what knows what he says about prayer?
Pray at all times in the Spirit. We know what all times are right
all times as compared to some of the times.
Is there ever a moment in your life that you're not supposed to
be prayerful according to Paul? Is there ever a shopping
excursion where you're not supposed to be prayerful?
Is there ever a purchase of a car or a home or groceries that
you're not supposed to be prayerful?
Is there ever an interaction with a person where you're not
supposed to be prayerful? What he says is pray at all
times in the the Spirit and with this in view the alert with all
perseverance and every request for all the Saints.
Who are the Saints? The really good ones, or are the
Saints? All y'all, all y'all.
That means look around the room. That means the people that you
don't know yet. That means the people that look
different from you. That means the people that
ticked you off. That means the person that took
your parking space this morning and made you park behind the
chiropractors over there. So now you're ticked off at them
a little bit. Pray for them as well.
Because here's the truth. Here's the.
Reality. Prayer is the strength.
The voice and the heartbeat of the redeemed Church.
Whatever else we are and whatever else we do, we are to
be the Church of Jesus, not the people that gather in rooms and
in pews. The Church of Jesus are the
people who pray. The church is the beginning
movement of God's renewal work in humanity.
Well, God begins in this room. He's going to complete someday
forever, but we get to taste it here and now and he's when he
comes back, it will be completed.
But for now, this now and not yet this place where we have the
spirit, we have the body, we are the body, but he's not here with
us. And So what he do, how Paul
concludes is like he's told us all this stuff like listen, live
righteously. You having a hard time with
that? I am.
Are you having a hard time? Are there sins that you can't
overcome? There are for me.
Are there things that you wish you did differently?
There are for me, are there people that you were able to be
nicer to? There are for me, like all of
these things are, are truth. But what that tells me is that
we're not done yet, that I haven't got it yet.
And So what Paul does then is say, hey, in light of all those
things, the response isn't out there.
Go buck up, right? Be stronger than you are.
The thing is, the response is pray at all times, in all
occasions, in all places. Church is what we do.
Church isn't how we get ready to do the work of God.
Prayer is the work of God because most everything else is
the work of Jason and the work of Jason is almost destined to
fall. But when we bathe in prayer and
we walk in prayer and we respond in prayer, then things go
different. So what do you say, right?
This verse 18 is just like pregnant with this encouragement
to engage, to go right? And and so this is the question
that we have is how do we move from?
Preparation, right? Like that's the that's the the
armor is how we prepare. But the battle.
We move from. Preparation, right?
We get off the couch. With our armor.
And we got the battle is prayer. We armor up to pray.
We don't armor up and then go take the hill.
We put our armor on and then we go in prayer.
What did he say last week? Over and over again, Prayer that
you might what? Stand, stand, stand.
And having done all this, that you might stand, charge the
hill. Nope.
Own the limbs. Nope, none of those things.
The command is you armor up and you bow before the Father in
prayer. That's.
How we moved. Johnny said it last week.
Every day is a fight and there is no neutral ground.
And so notice this list of all things that Paul says.
All prayer. All.
Types of prayer. Some of it is requests, some of
it is, Lord, make my dog not sick.
Lord, we need rent. But there's other kinds of
prayers. There's lament.
Oh God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
How long, Oh God, will you abandon me?
You need to pray those prayers when you're sad.
We need to reach out. We need to have silent prayer.
We need to have contemplative prayer and centering prayer and
intercession and all kinds of prayer at all times, right?
All prayer, all requests, all times in the Spirit.
Be alert with persons for all requests for all the same.
Here's what that means every moment of your.
Life is a chance to connect with the Father.
Do you feel like the? Father's far away.
Do you feel like God doesn't see you?
Do you feel like God doesn't know?
Listen, we believe that God is here.
He's everywhere. He's saturated and surrounding
you. And that quiet moment in your
car is an opportunity for you to acknowledge and recognize the
very presence of the eternal God sitting in your car.
Maybe he's in the in the passenger seat.
Let him drive. He's a better driver than you
are. But it's important to recognize
that we share space with the Father.
That's the power that we're after.
What we try to do in the church is supplement the power like
we're like. I mean, sure.
Prayer is something, right? But we want other kinds of
power. We want charisma.
I just want you to know there's like a nagging sense in my gut.
I worry about this a lot. I think about all this, that if
I just yell loud enough and pound the table loud enough,
enough of you will go. Yeah.
Whether I'm telling the truth or not, like I think about it
because I'm loud and I'm and I'm boisterous and I'm a lot right?
Like I fill a room and I do all that right, But that doesn't
mean that I'm that I'm infallible.
Prayer is the way that we go. There's a guy in the back of the
room who told me one time he's like Jason, like I just love
you. And he's been very
complimentary. He's my friend.
But he goes, man, I love it when I get to go home.
And sometimes you're just wrong. I know, right?
You should assume that, and you should prayerfully consider what
God is doing in you and in me and and around us.
Not because I'm better or worse than what's, but because
Charisma doesn't get it. Because having a big church
isn't it. That's not.
That's not the point. It's not about the production
value. It's not about smoke machines or
light shows. It's not even about positional
influence. It's not about Jason.
You can tell me what to do because you stand up on the
stage. That's not where the power of
our church comes from. We're not going to have a better
church when we have a big building over there.
We're not going to. That's not a reality.
We will have as good a church as we, and by we I mean me and all
y'all will have as good a church as we pray for.
Do you want us to be a kind of church where people get?
Saved. Pray for that do.
You want to be the kind of church where people get healed.
Pray. For that do.
You want to be the kind of church where like we're what or
God does what? Join God to restore your
relationship to your parents, to your children.
Pray for that. Do that.
That's what prayer is. We armor up so that we don't get
distracted and then we go to the Lord and we just say Lord.
Will you do this in my life? So here's my challenge for us
church and all this I. Love you so.
Hard right now you don't even know this right?
Like I know. Here's my other big concern that
loud sounds angry or whatever. No listen.
I feel like you have left the ultimate power source on the
table and this is good news for us.
This is the best message that you've heard in forever.
And I don't even know because the answer literally access to
the keys of the cosmos are on the table in front of you.
All you gotta do is like. Pick it up.
What I'm asking us as a church, what I'm asking you as a
follower of Jesus, is specifically to repent of
prayerlessness. I mean, call it a sin.
Lord, I have sinned by not praying to you enough.
I have sinned by taking all of these things into my own end.
Lord, I have sinned by trying to listen.
Are you listening to me? Fix my marriage, myself.
Live under a budget by myself. Discipline my kids by myself.
Lord, I'm sorry I've tried to do all that.
I've ruined a lot of it because my spouse ticks me off like you
can't believe. And Lord, I have tried so hard
to have patience, but it's but I don't.
So Lord, I need you to give me patience and you know what I'm
going to do. Lord, I'm going to sit here
silently with you for 20 minutes and I'm not going to say a word
to you and your brains going crazy.
And you just sit there because that's what patience is.
And the Lord begins to infuse and do things, and that is
prayer. And what I want to say is those
things. Charisma A charismatic leader.
A well structured organization, A big.
Loud, big, bright room, A big production that makes your
heartbeat fast. Positional influence, all of
those things, right? What?
Those are the powers of the powers, and those are the things
that divide us. Because listen, I can't get you
to heaven. All I can do is point to Jesus.
You got to follow him yourself, right?
So this becomes about me or about.
Race still or about Brent is Bill or about any of that.
It's lost, it's wrong, it's gone.
It's Jesus. It's about Jesus.
He's the one that we talked about.
And So what we need to do is just simply begin to pray.
So let's acknowledge that many of you maybe don't have a prayer
habit that you just go, no, I'm ready to pray in the Kingdom.
Great. You're in the perfect place to
see absolutely unbelievable fruit in your life.
So what I would say is start in the morning, 15 minutes.
Just set a timer and pray for 15 minutes.
Just start. You can go back.
Listen, a couple weeks ago when was.
I don't know when it was. Before summer, I did a whole
series on prayer, 5 or 6 weeks. Go listen to it, go do it.
Go find somebody else's sermons on prayer and listen to it and
respond. There's a, you can go to
practicingtheway.org, get in a small group and take your small
group. There's a, there's a section on
prayer that will teach you how to pray and what it looks like
and what it means. But here's the deal.
You just got to do it. And some of you are like, I will
go out and buy a prayer book. You should go buy a prayer book.
I have more prayer books than I know what to do with, but just
know you will never find Jesus in a prayer book the way that
you will. Find him in prayer.
So just get down on your knees and go before him and go.
You teach me how to pray. But here's the thing, you're
going to want to miss it. You're going to want to sleep
late. You're going to want to go do
something else. Your mind's going to get
distracted and you're going to think you're a failure.
And what I'm going to tell you is don't quit.
Don't stop. Don't give up.
There's nothing else as a church that we have to do but pray.
And when we as a church pray, we'll begin to hear the things
that He wants to say to us about ourselves and about our
neighbors. If you already.
Pray and you go I. Have a pretty good prayer habit
I. Believe you.
I want you to know I want you to try different kinds of prayer.
I want you to go online. And finally, I want you to try
contemplative prayer. I want you to try Lectio Davina.
I want you to pray the Lords Prayer every day.
I want you to lament. I want you to try centering
prayer. I want you to grow.
I want you to take your your prayer life as serious as you
take your diet or your trips to the gym or your running schedule
or your vacations or your TV shows.
I want you to make prayer more important than those things.
Because when you go to prayer first.
Those other things have a way of finding their place in the
rhythm. I promise you I've over the last
month or so like God is just. He's lit a.
Fire in my prayer and I want to tell you I still watch plenty of
TVI have not missed my TV. But you know what?
I have found the presence of the Lord in prayer in a way that I
couldn't have fathomed or understood before.
So when we. Stop the problem with this is
when we stop praying, we stop drawing strength from the Lord.
And when we stop drawing strength from the Lord and we
start walking in weakness because we don't have the Lord's
strength. All we have is ours.
What happens is we stop getting his strength.
So then we start distorting the message since we, since we don't
have the power of God, we just start talking about things that
we can win, right? Like we just start pointing out
other people's sins as exclusions because, well,
they're not our sins and we can control that.
We start to. Trying to control all kinds of
things that aren't ours, right? But the point of prayer, the
role of prayer, prayer is prayer should bring clarity and
boldness to the message of the church.
The message of the church is one thing.
There is a king whose name is Jesus, who presently and
eternally reigns over all things.
Give your life to him. It's not your life anymore.
Give your life to him. That's that's the message.
But when we get separated from the power and the calling of
Jesus, now we want to start. Talking about your habits and
your behaviors. When Jesus is King, you know
what I say. Go talk to him about that, but I
mean it, talk to him about your sexuality, talk to him about
your marriage, talk to him about your money.
Talk to him about all of those things.
Talk to him about the things that we yell about, that we talk
about because he says Paul says this in verse 19.
Pray on my behalf that speech may be given to me.
Now let me just show you real quick, I just want to hold this
up. This is.
Paul's part bro. Paul knows words.
The problem isn't that Paul didn't have anything to say.
The problem isn't that Paul didn't understand theology.
The problem is Paul knew when he.
Talks. Of his own.
It's a mess. So what he prayed was, Lord,
don't let me say anything that doesn't come from you.
How great would it be if every time we logged in, we said,
Lord, don't let me say anything that isn't from you?
What if every time we saw those posts online, we said, Lord,
don't let me be anything from you because here's a reality.
It's not our message. This isn't our message.
Listen, if you're here and you don't like the message, I don't
have anything to. I'm sorry.
I can't do anything about that. It's not my message.
It's his message. But if you don't like the way
that I say it, if I give a message of love heavily or with
coercion or with force, that's not OK because it's not my
message. I don't get to deliver Jesus's
message my way. If it's his message, it's his
methodology, right? Andy Stanley, Whether you like
Andy Stanley or not, I don't, I don't care.
He says a cool thing. He says this.
He says you do not gain. Are you listening?
You do not gain or maintain the blessings of God.
And I want to stop real quick and ask you what you think the
blessings of God in your life. Could it be?
Could it be a fruitful marriage? Could it be sobriety?
Could it be a relationship with your kids?
What would the blessing of God look like?
Peace in your finances, your children returning home.
You cannot gain or maintain the blessings of God by violating
the principles of God. Friends, I love you.
The reason that our marriages aren't working is because we do
not love and respect each other. It's not because we're not get.
The reason they're broken is because we're trying to do God's
plan, marriage our way with our own strength rather than
submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Husbands, does your wife need something?
Space, healing, covering, encouragement, a new shirt?
Does your wife what? What is it?
Does she need something? Give it to her wives.
Does your husband need encouragement?
Does your husband come home beat down, draggled every day?
Does your husband feel worthless and like he has nothing left?
Be the voice of love in his head.
You give it to him. Who do you think is going to do
it? Jeez, you go to that place at
work that only values you for what you produce and you don't
find a lot of existential encouragement there.
What's wrong with you? You give it to him.
You're the answer. You're the answer.
Give it to him. But he comes home and he's mad.
Yeah, He's had a terrible day at work.
Everybody hates him at work, Husbands, everybody.
Hates you at work because you're a jerk.
You. See how it goes back and forth,
right? You don't gain or maintain the
blessings of God by violating the principles of God.
Paul doesn't pray for escape. Paul doesn't say Get Me Out of
prison. Paul says help me make sure that
when I talk about these chains that everybody knows that these
chains are part of my glory. We will talk around talking
about our spouse like down ball and chains like they're holding
us down, stop. We talk about our kids like
they're terrible, stop. You talk about your job like
it's the worst thing that's ever happened to you, then get out
and go somewhere else. But wherever you go, there you
are. You will be at your next job.
So here's the thing. If you're a terrible employee,
you're going to think all of your bosses are awful.
Maybe the problem is you. Church, I'm just saying like we
got to wake up to this, like we're to the problem is we're
doing the same things that everybody else does and just go,
well, why isn't it working different?
Why do we just keep getting further apart and more divided?
Right, Because we're talking about the wrong things.
We're talking to the wrong people.
We're not praying because The thing is, if, if Jesus hadn't,
right? Like what we're talking about
now with our prayer, with using our words for prayer, is making
sure that the things that Jesus tore down stayed down, that they
don't get built back up, right? But listen, Jesus isn't afraid
of people. Jesus isn't afraid of illegals.
Jesus isn't afraid about where all the Healthcare is going to
come from. Jesus loves people.
Jesus sees people and says that's a person who is created
in my image. And we don't have to wonder how
we look at them. We look at them like that.
Jesus isn't hostile to people. Jesus isn't reactive to
situations. Yesterday my daughter locked her
key in the car and it looked like this in my life.
Man, I'm glad that didn't fall. Right.
That's what I did because I reacted in the moment.
I don't think that's not Jesus. Jesus didn't see my daughter
locker. Couldn't go.
Oh my God, we had bugs and it's Christmas time.
He's like, it's fine, it's fine, pay the bill, I'll cover you
next. Time right see like he calls us
to be this picture of. Grace and peace.
He calls us to represent the reality that we live in a
Kingdom where everything that we need is provided.
For us. The.
Powers want to tell you to be afraid.
Not powers like the powers family.
I mean the powers that are out there, the powers of darkness
tell you that the other side is the problem.
They tell you that you won't have enough because of all the
people that are here. But Jesus is Revelation, the
whole apocalypse, this whole thing about as the whole cosmos
are unified. They're all together.
There's no division, there's no separation.
There's no us and them, there's no you.
And that right the powers are the ones that want to isolate
you. So and listen anytime you're
watching something or listening to something or feeling
something and somebody comes. Out and says be careful of that.
Person, person, people, demographics.
That's not the voice of Jesus. Jesus is not worried about that.
Jesus created them and loved them.
So the question is if the powers isolate and Jesus unifies.
My question is which side do your words work for?
When you walk out of a room and you're done talking, are people
more likely to be unified to other people or separated from
other people? Jesus prayed for his enemies.
He prayed for his enemies. He extended the cup of
fellowship to Judas at the table.
He prayed for the Roman soldier who was driving stakes through
his through his wrists and through his ankles.
And he said, Father, he doesn't know what he's doing.
So if Jesus prayed for his enemies, then anything that you
or I do to foster division or separation between people or
people groups is Antichrist. You want to know the Antichrist
is it's people at work in? The world opposite of His
purposes. His purpose is to bring all
things together in Christ to the degree that we keep things
separate or reinforce separations or divisions.
We are. Working against the power and
the purpose of Jesus so my encouragement and my challenge
to us, I asked us to repent of prayerlessness now repent of
careless speech the. Opposite of careless is.
Thoughtful. This is what Paul said right
before in Ephesians chapter 4. Listen Verse. 29 Let no
unwholesome talk. You thought it was a talking
about the F word, and maybe, maybe that's it, right?
Let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouth.
But if there is any good word for edification, this is what
wholesome talk is. Words that build people up.
For the need of the moment, say that so that it will give grace
to those who are near. You want to know what the words
of Christ are? The words of Christ are You have
enough? You are sufficient.
I see you, I love you. I've got your back, you're with
me. Let's go.
Do the words that come out of your mouth sound more like Paul
who prayed for his ethnic enemies, or like the news?
Are you snarky? Or cynical to people who
disagree with you. If that's the case, then you
have put someone else or something else in front of
Jesus. Listen, I, I can't escape the
what we're doing here in this book as we, as we get to the end
of this book, is we have again, this exhaustively, thoroughly
Jewish Rabbi Paul. And the very last thing that he
does in the book is he commends his Greek friend Titicus to this
gentle Gentile congregation. He says, this Titicus is my
brother. Receive him and let him.
So what he does is he embodies the gospel in this church.
Look verse 21 now so that you also may know about my
circumstances as to what I am doing.
Titicus, the beloved brother and faithful servant of the Lord,
will make everything known to you.
I have sent Him to you for this very purpose, so that you may
know about us and that he may comfort your heart.
That is the gospel, that is the good news, that there is comfort
and a time and a place and in the world.
But that comes from prayer. Paul who prayed.
Paul who taught his. Church to pray and.
For us. So how do we do this?
What does this leave us at the? End of ephesians #1 Start
talking to him. Start talking to him.
Wherever you are, you. Can do this.
Do you have a sin in your life that you're ashamed of?
Talk to him about it. Have you been addicted to
something for a long time? Have you been addicted and then
you quit and got sober but you fell off and you relapsed and
now you're running in shame? Talk to Jesus about it.
You know better than all. People you are.
Powerless unless someone intervenes.
That person is Jesus. Are you scared?
Do you have anxiety? Do you hate?
Don't deny it. Don't run from it.
Pray. Start talking to Jesus about it
now. Armor.
Up for sure and go to Lord and go Lord, I'm praying here about
my righteousness, right? I'm praying about this my, my
breastplate of licenses. I need you to help me, right?
I need you. To take this away because I'm
not righteous, because I'm separated, because I don't like
those people. Pray about it.
Don't study it, pray about it. 15 minutes set a timer. 15
minutes. Set it to go off twice a day.
One in the morning, one. Right when you get home from
work and then just sit there, you'll feel worthless.
You'll feel like you're not doing anything.
Your mind will wander. You'll feel feel like the most
pointless thing you've ever done.
Just keep doing it anyway. Read a book about centering
prayer, about whatever. Just start.
Just go, just sit down and just do it.
Second, stay in the game. Listen, because once you start,
all the powers are going to come against you and they're going to
tell you that you're too bored or it's not working or you're
not doing enough, or you can't or God's.
Don't quit. Don't stop praying.
Just keep going. Just go try new stuff.
If you've been a believer. For a long time.
If you've been following Jesus for a long time, when was the
last time you tried a new type of prayer or a new way to pray?
Try lectio divina. Start praying the scriptures.
Open the Psalms and make the words in the psalms your words
read 1 passage every day for a week.
Whatever it is, try something, Make sure that you stay in the
game. And finally, strengthen your
voice daily, every day practice. Bless somebody again.
Bless your neighbor again. Bless your enemy again.
Speak truth again, speak life again, Pray the Word of God from
the heart of God again, over and over and over again.
Because, listen, we will be as effective and our experience of
Him will be as real. As our capacity for prayer.
And so Paul ends this letter and we end our time in it in the
same place that we started with a blessing of grace and peace
and then the worship of the one who is worthy of it all.
See, behind all of this is this idea.
We give up our way because his way is better.
We believe this because we have tried our way and found it
lacking. So if you will, as we close
today, we're going to close and worship.
But I would ask if you would. Stand with us and I want to
close our time in Ephesians with the closing words of Paul.
And then we're going. To.
Leave after this is over, we'll have some.
Folks that will come up and pray.
If you need prayer, come get prayer.
Ask someone to pray. If you want to pray for someone,
come stand up here and pray for someone.
River City. I want us to be a place that
prays. Peace to you, brothers and
sisters, and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. Grace be with all those who love
our Lord Jesus with incorruptible love.
Thank you for joining us today. River City Church is all about
experiencing and expressing God's love in our lives and
community, and we hope that you've been able to experience
that today. As grateful as I am that you've
spent this time listening in this morning, this podcast is no
substitute for full participation in a local church.
I love it when River City people listen to other pastors, but it
is those who show up week after week faithfully giving their
support and time and resources that make all of this possible.
If we can help you get connected to a local church, pray for you,
or support you in any way, click the link in the description and
let us know. If you'd like to financially
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Thanks so much for listening. May the Lord bless and keep you
in all grace and peace.