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.
I want to begin with our confession.
We're going to actually wrap up the first half of Ephesians
today. Somebody's excited and that's
good. You know, we've talked about the
first half really really of the letter.
Paul really lays down the theological foundation of what's
going to come next. And I just want to again, thank
you. Like I acknowledge like it's
been heavy lifting. We've been digging through some
stuff. It's not always comfortable,
it's not always easy, but we're getting into the good stuff.
So I just want to thank you for continuing to come, continuing
to press in. We're going to wrap up the first
half today, which again with again, it's good news and it's
exciting, but we begin with our confession and our confession is
just the truth that we tell about the reality that we live
in. And so our confession, as his
church is we are badly broken. Yes, you are.
Grace and peace to you last. Week as Johnny kind of moved
into chapter 3, he started he said really it's like this
interlude. Paul began to pray for the
church. He began to pray for the
Ephesians, but then he's as he started to praise like did you
hear that I was in jail. I want to tell you about me
being in jail because the idea of him being in jail has been
difficult, right? Like you can imagine if somebody
had come to you and then started talking about all the things
that God was doing and God in their life and all these changes
and then you're a while ago like he's a.
Criminal. He's a criminal.
Well, that would maybe cast a shadow on it.
What? Paul says is things aren't what
they seem. And what we said is Paul's
ability to see this, where he talks about like this prison,
these chains that I'm in, it's actually God's presence.
It's actually God's goodness what allowed him to see this,
What we've been calling since the beginning, the apocalypse.
An apocalypse is not like mushroom clouds on the horizon.
The apocalypse is a revelation. It's the open secret.
It's the pulling back, the falling off of the scales.
It's the ability to see reality as it is.
Reality as it's gathered around the throne of Jesus, the throne
of God where Jesus is seated at the right hand.
And what Paul has been saying kind of over and over throughout
is that. We're seated there as well.
That's an actual reality that we can experience now and not fully
now. And so this apocalypse, this
reality that Paul saw of God on the throne, Jesus risen and
resurrected in his church, reigning with him without
division, without separation. That's what enabled Paul to stay
grounded when many, me included, would turn back.
I know for me it's a hard thing to just go like man, like I'll
serve you Jesus and I like, and it's easy to go now, like I'll
give everything for you. But when they come start
throwing the cuffs on, maybe it changes.
I mean when it gets. Really, really difficult.
We wonder how would we endure? How would we hold on to that?
But what Paul shows us is that when we align correctly with
reality, God is our ultimate reality.
Jesus is resurrected Son, risen and seated at the right hand of
Father. That's where ultimate reality
and powers. And when we engage in that and
when we begin to live out that truth and that reality, like
Johnny says, it makes us humble, is purposeful, it makes us
confident, and it connects us with this power, which is his
Holy Spirit. O next week we're going to see
real practical. Lots of ways over the next
several weeks of what that looks like.
But today I want us to not rush past what Paul started last
week. Last week, Paul started to pray
for the Ephesians before he started talking about his rap
sheet, right? He started talking about about
praying, right? And he started to pray with all
of this insight behind him, right?
And it's funny, if you look in the Greek at the first 3
chapters of Ephesians, it's like this structure right where he
sets up this point, the the chapter one begins with a prayer
and it ends. With a prayer it begins.
With all these things that he shows us, he wraps back up and
underneath it all is this reality that God has been making
through Jesus, through the cross, a new humanity.
But we're not separated and divided by the things that we
think separate us and divide us. And the reason we keep coming
back to this, you know, Paul went over it and over it, and we
are really kind of slowing down and dialing in on this and
really focusing in like a laser. Because my belief is that you
want this. You're here today on a Sunday
morning. You got this is first service
for crying out loud, right? Like, I mean, you got up, you
got the kids ready, you came here.
I believe that you absolutely want this.
And also, I believe that it eludes most of us.
Me included, right? I have to acknowledge I'm weak
towards temptation. It's not hard to tempt me to do
things. It's not hard to get me to pay
attention to the demands of my flesh, Things that I want to
make me feel good or make me hide from the pain.
I am weak towards those things. But the problem is when I give
in to my desires, what my desires do is make me an enemy
of you eventually, right? Because what I want is something
that ultimately you or someone else has.
And so my inability to stand up towards temptation, it creates
separation and division. In the world, we'll have moments
of spiritual vitality. Have you ever had that?
Or you just wake up and you're like, this is it, I may never
sin again? They've seen the Lord high and
lifted up. And that is so good for like 14
seconds. Then a kid runs in the room
like, no, and you're running after him and you want to fight
him, right? And you're like, I don't think.
Jesus would do that. I have these moments of great
spiritual intensity followed by what seems like long seasons of
wilderness, doesn't it, where we pray and it seems like the
ceiling catches everything and bounces it off.
And what happens then is we begin to compartmentalize our
lives. We just go know the, the, the
spiritual part works here in church.
But man, what does that have to do with my marriage?
Like marriage is just getting along and figuring it out how to
go. What does that?
What does that have to do with my job, with my work, with my
money? And so we build these
compartments in our life, sacred and secular and God's stuff and
human stuff, and we let God handle the God stuff, but we
want to handle the human stuff. And we just wonder, why doesn't
that work? We believe that we're saved by
grace. You believe this.
We know what Ephesians 289 tells us.
For by grace, you're saved through faith.
And this is not on yourself. It's a gift.
We know this. We know that we're saved by
grace. And yet we root ourselves in
culture. We turn on the TV, we go to
places with, tell us that our value is in our performance.
And So what happens is we believe that sure, maybe we're
saved by grace, but we live down here by work.
And so we walk around here, rooted and overwhelmed by shame
and guilt and fear and anxiety. Is it just me?
Am I the only one? One more good.
I feel better. We're driven to consume.
We turn on the TV and every advertisement tells us that
we're one thing short. We're about to be in the holiday
season where every good husband must put a red bow on a Lexus
for his spouse, right? Only then will we be OK.
But the thing that we get after we consume, right?
Like when we when we buy the car, the new car, the bigger
house, the new outfit, we take the trip, we go to the thing, we
do the stuff. And what we realize is that more
always wants more. And so the more that I get, the
more that I'm driven to consume, the emptier my life gets.
And it just looks more like chaos and chaos and chaos
instead of peace. We know we heard a couple weeks
ago Johnny said that we are unconditioned, that we are
unconditioned. He loves us without a condition.
He just comes to us. But we're still anxious and we.
Want to root our identity and all kinds of things in the place
that we live or the people that we love or wealth or image.
And what Paul tells us is that these fears, as real as they are
in our life, they're opposed to the reality seated at the right
hand of Father. This revelation that Paul is
about to pray for his church is a prayer for us because there
are many things about the Ephesian church that were very
different from us, but there are also many things that were the
same. They were still people that
lived in a world dominated by the powers, not the powers
family, but by these dark forces that would draw us away from the
truth and away from the light. And so in light of this, in
light of a church. Striving, desiring, wanting to
see what God has for them and yet unable to follow it out and
to walk it out just like us. Paul praise this Ephesians
chapter 3 starting in verse 14 for this reason and that's one
of those words like therefore or so that right where we just want
to make sure that we go back and we and we look at all of the
things because of what Paul's seen in his his apocalypse for
that reason, because he knows what God is doing.
I bend my knees before the Father from whom every family in
heaven and on earth derives his name.
Paul says. I've experienced God's work.
And So what I do is in these moments when I face the things,
I bend my knee. I bow my knees.
It's a picture of submission, and it's a picture of humility.
And again, notice how he identifies this person to whom
he bows his knee. He calls him a what Father
before God was anything he was a father before he created the
heavens and the earth before he was just before he made the son
before he divided the day and night.
He was the father of Jesus, which means that loving his
children is the most natural and inescapable aspect of his life.
But what he says is he says he's he been sends these prayers up
to the father from who every family gets his name.
This ability to name things is a picture of authority.
Now what we see is God. Tells Adam in the Garden of Eden
to go what? Name the animals, right?
So you can imagine Adam standing there and say go, that's an
aardvark, that is an anteater, that is a duck, right?
Like all of these things. And that is a reflection of
God's command, Adam to go have dominion over the animals.
Adam didn't get the name day and night.
Adam didn't get to name sun and moon and stars.
God named those because God has authority.
So when it says, we pray to the. Father, we see his.
Character, he says, pray to the Father.
From whom every family gets its name, We.
See his authority. But what's interesting here,
right, is because one of the things that we've been talking
about is how God does tears down these walls, right?
Like there's no division between Jews and Gentiles, right?
Between, you know, them and us. But what another division that
we seem to miss, it seems to show up here is it says every
family in heaven and on earth. So we understand that down here,
whether you're black or white, whether you are rich or poor,
whether you live in Asia or Europe, that we all derive our
names from him, our identities from who.
He is, he tells us, who we. Are and how He created us?
But we find that that's not only true on earth, but also in
heaven. Listen to Psalm 89.
This is the Psalm. This is way back in the Old
Testament. He's getting a picture and I a
glimpse into heaven, right So I'm 89 verse 5.
The heavens will praise your wonders Lord your faithfulness.
Also listen in the assembly of the holy ones, this is a picture
into the heavens where God is seated on his throne of these
surrounded by these holy ones, these heavens.
For who in the skies, right? Talking about the heavens, for
who in the skies is comparable to the Lord?
Who among the sons of the mighty?
So if you kind of look for that phrase, that's a weird one,
right? Sons of the mighty Some
translations say the sons of God that takes us all the way back,
like to Genesis 6. Right when these sons of God and
the daughters of mankind, God greatly feared in the counsel of
the holy ones, and awesome above all, those who are around him.
Lord God of armies, who is like you, mighty Lord, your
faithfulness also surrounds you. This is a picture of the Host of
Heaven. The host that holds up in the
throne that worships the Father day and night that that are his
messengers. We read about angels and
cherubim and seraphim and what Paul calls them in Ephesians is
the families of heaven and listen, This is why this is
important, right? Because what we find about God
is this in this idea, this fatherhood is he is personal, he
is intimate. He doesn't treat you like like a
slave or a servant. He treats you and in his love
as. Family as His people and what
He's showing us is what He showed us in verse 9, Ephesians
one, verse 9, He made known to us the mystery of His will.
Mystery is not a thing that nobody can see.
The mystery now is like the open secret.
It's the thing that God had been doing for a long time, but now
everybody sees according to His good pleasure, which He said
forth in Him regarding His plan of the fullness of time.
Listen to bring all things together in Christ, things in
the heavens and things on earth. So when we read Paul praying to
this God from whom everyone derives his name, things in
heaven and things on earth, what Paul is telling us is this
summation, this bringing together.
It's already a reality. It's a.
Truth and a reality that we can live in.
And that's his prayer. He prays to the Father whom
everything bows to. And this is an important thing
because what Paul sees that we sometimes miss is there is a
person, a person, place for everything in your life.
And that place is under the heavens.
And I want to talk about now the things that threaten you, that
challenge you, that scare you, that make you afraid, that drive
you away. I want to talk about your
addiction. I want to talk about your fear.
I want to talk about your identity.
I want to talk about that thing that you lost, the daydreams,
the things that you think are gone forever.
And what I want to tell you is Paul places all of those things
under the authority of God, and what he tells you is God has the
ability to make your life exactly what he wants it.
What that means is there's no newscast identifying our enemy
that can remove what God has planned for his people.
That means the people that you're most afraid of are the
same in in the same family as the God who served.
Here's the great thing, right? When my kids start duking it out
right, I'm not powerless here. I just guess stop.
Break them up, right? Why?
Because we're all family here. And what that means is that you
serve a God who is able to do good to you in the midst of
this. That's the ultimate reality.
And so when Paul begins to pray, he's but praying things in their
proper place. And what I want you to begin
doing is to begin praying things into their proper place.
When you pray about that addiction that you haven't been
able to quit, to give up, to move past, you begin your prayer
by saying, Lord, this addiction is under your authority.
I'm struggling with it right now.
It's killing me right now. But this ultimately is under
your authority, and I am under your authority.
And if I'm under your authority, then I have the ability to walk
in or walk away from whatever it is that you tell me.
So Paul is painting this picture of a power that is derived from
the Father. So he's like, hey, and he kind
of just sets himself right. This is like Jesus.
How did Jesus teach us to pray? Our Father in heaven, hallowed
be your name, holy, powerful, set aside your Kingdom come, He
said your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
So Paul begins with that focus. You are a father and you are the
father of all. And because he knows this power
that he has from Father, he begins to pray for his friends.
What does he pray for them? In verse 16, I remember where
Paul is. Paul is in prison and he knows
that his friends are going through.
He knows what they're facing. Verse 16, he says to bend my
knees in prayer, that he would grant you according to the
riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power through
his Spirit in the enter in the inner self.
Paul doesn't pray to get out of prison.
I just want to leave that with you.
Paul doesn't pray for his circumstances to change.
Who doesn't pray for it to get easier for the Ephesians to
recognize him and to align with him?
We always want to align with power.
We always want to align with the one who's out of jail.
We always want to align with the one right?
Like who seems the strongest? Who seems like he's going to
fight who? Seems like he's going to win and
Paul doesn't pray that he prays for strength, for a settled
strength to reside. Where says you?
He says so that Christ may dwell in your hearts.
Now we've been doing some exegesis work, some language
work, right? Who is you in the book of
Ephesians? Y'all, all y'all.
I pray that He would settle in all y'all's heart.
He would dwell there. See, that's the problem too many
times, right? Like we get here and we hear a
message. Yeah, man, I'm going whoa.
And we run out and we get out there and there's someone out
there, right? And so like Jesus, like touches
down in our heart and he gives us his taste and he takes gives
us a glint. But then we go out and
somebody's driving too slow and they've got their carted HEB and
it's sideways in the middle of the aisle and you can't get past
it. And then you're like, Lord, I'm
taking them out, I'm getting them, right?
And he's like, and so like this piece of Jesus that we're told
can transcend every understanding, right?
Like it, it gets gets in the way.
And So what Paul's like, I pray that that kind of power would
dwell in your heart, that it would reside in your heart, that
this strength that comes from Jesus would reside not just in
your heart. The problem is if it was just
that if this was singular an individual you like, we usually
read this. I could do it in my house.
I'd prefer to do it in my house. It's so much easier to love
people. When there aren't any people
around but what Paul is praying, are you listening?
Is that in the community gathering there would be a
settled sense of Jesus's presence.
So here's the question that I'm asking you.
In times of this, does your mob make it harder or easier to
follow Jesus? Does the people with whom you
spend the most significant part of your time make it harder or
easier for you to gossip about somebody that you shouldn't?
Does your mob make it harder or easier to forgive someone who
has hurt you? Do.
They tell you. Are they the ones that are just
like? Well, I'll burn their house down
with you. Or do they look you in the eye
and say, hey, that hurt, I can tell that hurt you deeply.
I want you to know Jesus sees your pain and the path to the
goodness that he has for you is through forgiveness.
Does your mob make you more or less hopeful?
Does your mob make you more or less generous?
What Paul prays is that in the community, in the gathering of
the Saints. Wherever two or more are.
Gathered in his name. Pauls prayer is that Jesus would
dwell richly in there. That would be strengthened
inside, not external. There's different kinds of
power. There's an internal power and
there's an external power. The internal power, we praise
that you would have internal strength to deal with this,
right? The internal power is the
ability to endure. It says no matter what it says,
I'm going to come through this. I may smell like smoke when it's
done and the whole house burning down, but I'm coming through it.
And we see this in the stories of people surviving from the
Holocaust. We hear stories of triumph of
the Spirit from slavery, from all over the place.
We hear this. That's the internal strength,
the ability not to control others, but to control the self,
to continue to stay rooted and grounded.
And this is the kind of power that breeds unity.
Do you know why? Because when you hurt me, when
you display your brokenness, inevitably you display your
brokenness. Internal power is able to look
and say, for Jesus's sake, I'm not striking back.
I'm not going to return. Fight for fight, you know, I
fight all the time because we want the game to be as soon as I
get my retaliation, the game stops.
And so the hope for our world is for Christ to give the internal
fortitude to respond to retaliation with forgiveness, to
have a settled internal peace as his church.
And this doesn't work anywhere but in the church, right?
As his church to just. Say, yeah, man, they said those
things about us, what our mission is to serve them.
I find the hope and the comfort that I find in this place.
External strength is different. External wants to control
people. It wants to manipulate.
It wants to move. It wants to coerce.
That's the way that Jesus never moved.
He never fought, he never argued, He never struck back.
Says he's like a handled bruised reeds gentling Jesus in his
gentleness. He gives strength, but he gives
strength to all y'all. And I include me in that as well
because I'm part of all us, right?
And so he gives his strength, but he gives us this internal
strength to endure now until forever comes.
See, this is the big idea. God invests his spiritual
strength in the church. I want God to give me his
spiritual strength. Do you know why?
Because then I don't have to wait on all y'all.
Then I can do what I want. Then it doesn't matter what you
think. But when he gives his strength
to us, to the church, right? Because that's what he said
again, it's, it's all y'all. So here's the thing, right?
Like we go to Jesus and we go Jesus.
Please help me quit drinking. And what we wanted to do is
remove all the desires from you. Like Lord, make me not want
this. I know I've been doing this for
years and for decades, but I want to wake up tomorrow and not
desire it and not one. And we say so God, please take
this desire away. And instead what God says is go
to a A and confess to someone and tell them that you're an
alcoholic and submit yourself to A to a.
What do they call it? A who?
The higher power? Jesus.
Right now I'm talking. About your partner, your guy,
the person sponsored. It's been way too long trying to
figure that out. But you see the power, right?
Like this. Yeah, the higher power, right?
Like we acknowledge that I don't have control over this.
I can't even want to do, right? The thing that I want to do ends
up destroying everything, right? So he says, great, if you want
power, you need to go be a part of something that's bigger than
you. We call that the church, right?
And guess what? It's this church, and it's Epic
Life Church, and it's Resurrection Church and it's
Compass Church, and it's all the places where the name of Jesus
is lifted up and people are told to follow him.
The strength that you want is in here.
This on Sunday morning is not enough.
What you need is someone who's going to call you tomorrow and
go. Did you smoke today?
You did. That's OK.
We're ready to quit. Oh, did you drink today?
Oh, that's right. Hey, I saw that thing that you
posted on Facebook and you just go.
They deserved it. And you go.
They did, but you're different. You exist in a reality where
there are no walls, where there is no us and them, or there is
only life. We need the church, not just the
preaching, not just the songs. We need the gathering.
That's why it says in Hebrews, right?
Don't forsake the gathering together, a group of people who
will see you and know it, know you and look at you and remind
you who God says that you are. So this is now a cultural thing
and we talk about the church as having his spirit and his power
and his strength in in US, not just in me, but in in US.
Well that becomes a culture. Now we begin to have a culture
of spirit shaped power. And he tells them why, why this
is important, right? He's saying, hey, I hope that
you'll have this power that every time you get together,
there's a power that moves like it's and it's spiritual and it's
bigger and it's the power to overcome.
It's the power to heal. It's the power to to teach, it's
the power to do good. Verse 17, he says this so that
right? I pray that you have power so
that this is what the power is for Christ may dwell in your
hearts. Who is your all y'all?
See the hardest thing and I have to remember when I was studying
this, it took me days to make. I'm reading this like OK, power
in my heart. Yes Lord, I don't have power in
this. Like all y'all, you have the
power that I need you do. I need you.
I can't escape. From you I've tried, trust me.
You too, I know, right? Like I see the attendance
numbers, I get it, right? We know and that's OK.
But we've got to come through this reality that it's not just
what I'm attending, attending, it's who am I committed to?
It's who is working in me. Who's going to verse 17, right?
So he may dwell in your hearts through faith.
And what that means is that I believe that when I come to that
moment, I'm going to see it. When I come to that moment of
confrontation, I don't know what I'm going to say to that right
now. Because I'm not in the moment
right now, but the Spirit in me and the Spirit with me may be
able to comprehend with all the Saints.
That's all y'all. What is the width and length and
height and depth and to know the love of Christ, which surpasses
knowledge. Notice that what he says right?
I want you to know Christ's love, but Christ's love is so
big, high and wide in every direction.
It's like it's a totally unknowable, but I want you to
know it. You see what Paul's praying and
what brings all this home love, the love of Jesus.
Not a general warm feeling towards right.
Like we say love like I'm like, oh, I watched a movie and made
me feel so good and I just want to go out and let him know the
kind of love that when they're nailing him to the cross, he
says forgive them because they don't know what they're doing.
He doesn't blame them. He loves them.
So he says, I pray that you would have this power so that he
would dwell in your hearts that you may be able to comprehend,
to understand and to know this love, this kind of power, this
power to transform, this power to reveal the Father's hearts.
This kind of power should be the norm in our gatherings.
The problem is we have gotten lazy maybe with defining what
church is, and we say church is this.
But what I would say is when you run into somebody at HEB and you
know they're a believer, what I'm going to say is church is in
session and the power of God is available to you there.
Prayers offered in the HEB aisle may be some of the most powerful
prayers because they're out of this context, because you have
to have courage and bravery to bring it up because you have to
believe that prayer works. When you go to your booster club
and you find someone and you, you sit with someone who is a
follower of Jesus and you begin to pray for your students
sports, you begin to pray for your students activities.
And you gather there and you've got a group of people and you
say, hey, when it's me and two other people here and listen,
everything in you is going to. I want to go to the coach and
go, why isn't Johnny pray playing?
And I want to say stop, stop, gather with your people and pray
for a move of God. Pray for his love to be evident
in their hearts. When you go up to the school to
meet with your kids, when you go in to meet with your boss, have
somebody pray with you. Because what we're told is the
power of God resides in those moments.
And so the question is in those places, in the HEB aisle, in the
booster club, in the principal's office, at your kids school, in
the staff meeting where you are, does our behavior in those
places welcome Jesus or push them away?
And there's a couple things we know.
We were just told that every family in heaven on earth
derives their name from the Father.
So any of your behavior or any of our behaviors or perspectives
that dehumanize or minimize another soul, those are not
places where Jesus is welcome. And in fact, if those practices
and policies and behaviors, those become now things that
Jesus has to oppose, we become enemies of Christ when we
dehumanize the very ones that he's trying to love and serve
and save and call forward. So like I said earlier, is it
harder or easier to not gossip with your mob friends, right?
Is it harder or easier for you to stay sober when you're with
your people? Is it harder or easier to live
simply when you're with your people?
And I just want to introduce you a powerful cultural phrase,
right? Because what do you do when
somebody goes crazy and they does something like this?
Here's a powerful phrase. Are you ready?
Lovingly, gently, you just say this.
Oh, we don't do that here. Say it.
We don't do that here. Oh, man, you should have heard
about oh so and so man, Jason, he's the worst, terrible man.
I saw him at AGB and he was doing that and I got, that's a
terrible right. Like oh, hey man, let's.
Hey, we don't, we don't do that here.
We, we don't, we don't destroy people here.
Can I, can I pray for you? Can I love you?
Can I hurt you? Right.
We begin to create a culture where people are seen and known
and elevated. And you don't have to shame
anybody. We're not criticizing.
We just know like, hey, there's not like what you tell your kids
they're throwing balls in the house.
We don't do that here. It protects things that are
important, right? We don't do that here.
It's an invitation into a new kind of power and a new kind of
life. But again, all of this sits on
us. You only experience the fullness
of divine love when you express it freely to others.
See, I want to sit in my room and have God love me hard, fill
every hole in my soul with His love.
And what he says is, oh, I'll do that, but not in your room.
This is challenging to me because what this tells me is
that my personal devotion isn't enough.
However fiercely intense it may be, however committed, however
many times I show up here and do this and stand up and preach, my
personal devotion isn't enough. If I have my personal devotion
and I look at pictures coming out of Gaza and I just go, well,
that's fine. It's not enough.
If I'm not grieving at loss and pain and hurt and death, it's
not enough. If I tolerate prejudice in my
own life or in my own perspective, if I walk around
self-righteous and feeling like in some way, for some reason I
am more worthy or deserving of the goodness and the things that
God has for me, it's not enough. We'll know that we're in step
with the Spirit when we we choose love and service over are
you listening, winning and being right.
And what that means is that we may have to lay down some of our
priorities. We may have to lay down some of
our privileges. We may have to walk in step with
someone who is not who is not right.
And you may look at your mob and you go, no, no, my mob does not
make it easier for me. My mob makes me want to cuss
very much. And and all of the things, what
I'm not asking you to do is hate them, reject them, turn away
from them. What I am inviting is an
acknowledgement. They're walking a different
direction than you. They're going a different way
than you are. And So what you do is you begin
to love them and you begin to serve them, but you begin to
look for a group of people who will encourage you in that.
Who will help you? Walk in the strength that you
need to love that person. Well, And so I look at my friend
Jacob here, and I'm like, Jacob ain't got it, man.
Like that. We can't.
Sorry, bro. We ain't got that right, you
know, over here, right? Well, I see my friend Tony and I
just go, Hey, Tony, I need you to pray for me in my
relationship with Jacob. I want Jacob to find Jesus and I
want him to get it. And my job, I've got to love
him, but I've got to figure out kind of how to have some
boundaries in a way that loves him, but allows me to, to show
him the life and the leading and the leaning of, of Jesus, right.
And so there may be some organizational realignment that
needs to happen in your life to experience this power, to
experience this goodness. But it comes from us.
It's us. And what it looks like is what
Caitlin and Johnny talked about it last week is tables.
It's the gift of hospitality. It is practicing in our spaces,
the bringing of the church and inviting of those into it to
experience his goodness. So we're talking about now, now
a radical infusion of power into the church.
And here's why that is hard. Because now your willingness to
pursue that kind of power effects my experience of that
power. What that means is I need you.
I can't experience everything apart from you.
And so now I better not yell at you.
I better not chase you away, right?
I better not make you feel terrible about yourself because
I need you, because I want you. Because I hope that you will
come, right? And I want to say that is hard.
That's a hard thing. So notice how Paul ends now.
To him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask
or think, Paul just knows that he's made a big ask.
Paul just knows that he's just laid it all on the line.
Lord, you got to bring all this. It's got to be new power.
And it's like to him who is able to do far more than all we ask
or think according to the power that works in US.
To him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to
all generations, forever and forever.
Paul's reemphasizing again, our hope isn't in ourselves.
Our hope isn't in our ability to be good.
Our hope isn't in our ability to be right.
Our hope isn't in our ability to exclude all the wrong people and
bring in the right people. That's not where our hope is.
Our hope is that God is at work in a powerful way in the
movement of this as we walk out from here and submit to each
other and love each other other and learn from each other.
Our hope isn't in US. And the question is if he's able
to do more than we ask or even think, why don't we ask for
more? Why don't we ask him to do this?
Why don't we ask him more? Make my small group the most
spiritually powerful place in this city.
I'm. Going to have to go more often
probably. That's going to be tough, so
give me the strength to go. Lord, I need your power in my
marriage, so I need you make to make me humble enough to serve
my wife, to commit to her and to love her.
Paul prays that the church would be the glory of Jesus.
Tim Maki defines glory, right? That's a hard word as honor
revealed. Look around this room.
But some of you are. That's like, I mean really like
it's OK. Look around the room.
Funny looking group of people, huh?
This is what the almighty all wise God decided was going to be
the gotcha or the spiritual powers that divide us.
See, the powers out there want to tell you that you are as good
as your job. You know how?
You know how Jesus answers that? No, you're accepted here.
They want to tell you you're as good as your ability to do good.
And you know what Jesus says? You're not good.
I love you. I can transform you.
I can change you. So why don't we ask for more?
Paul prays for honor for the church.
Not that things would be easier. Isn't that wild?
Yeah. It's interesting to talk about
easy things in the church because there's a lot about this
church. It's not easy.
Our chairs, Right, Man, they're terrible.
I know your back hurts right now.
I can feel it. I can see it on your faces.
Right. We're too crowded here.
We're sitting on each other's laps, standing in the back.
You got Baby Land back there, like just stacked up, right?
We don't have enough room in children's ministry.
You got to go up the stairs and down the stairs.
And we got a nice play space outside.
That's good, right? But it's hard to go to church
here. And yet almost 100 people this
year have found Jesus and have started to follow him.
And listen, those people weren't baptized.
Remember, baptized means to immerse.
Those people weren't baptized into Johnny, they weren't
baptized into Jesus name. Do you know why people find
Jesus here? Because the Spirit and the power
of God dwells in us. When people come here, they feel
loved. That's you and the purpose and
the plan is to take that out. You have never encountered a
person that Jesus doesn't want to just love deeply and
passionately and powerful. You have never met a person in a
behavior system that Jesus didn't want you to give your
life to serve and to love them. You've never met that person.
And that's the apocalypse. That's the thing that Jesus,
that Paul saw, right? Christ's power on earth is
expressed in a community of committed individuals, rooted in
His love and strengthened by His Spirit.
That's what the church is. That's what we're about.
And so here's what you do. Couple things.
You ready? First thing, pray for capacity
in your life, not comfort. Pray for capacity.
Pray for the ability to endure. Pray for strength.
Pay for the ability to overwhelm.
We don't pray God get rid of the troublemakers in Washington, DC,
all right? We do that in November when we
vote. Put your vote, then get about
the business of loving and serving people.
Do your thing and then get about the place where you have access
to We pray, Lord, help me love my political enemies and
encourage others to do the same. I think more of us sometimes are
more worried about being on the wrong side of history than being
on the wrong side of Jesus. That's the wrong side to be
afraid of being on the wrong side of or something.
Pray for the capacity to love people like.
Jesus loves you. Second, pray for you, for your
community to be rooted and grounded in love.
Pray that your small group, pray that you're gathering.
Pray that your mob, that your group of people would be open to
all people and able to show them love in a way that they can
experience and know for themselves and keep Jesus's love
and power at the center of it all.
Remind each other as often as you see them, that your God and
your King is the father and power of all.
God is not a victim of your moods.
He's not a victim of sociological quirks of the
generations. He just loves and serves and
gives and he is King. Paul closes out this first half
of the book with praise and prayer the same way that he
started it. So next week we're going to get
real practical, I mean real practical about what it means to
live out this new humanity that Jesus has created.
But today I want to wrap this up as Paul did, with a prayer and
with a benediction. You close your eyes and join me
in prayer. For this reason, Father, I bend
my knees before you, the King, from whom every family in heaven
on earth derives its name. And I pray, River City, that
that God would grant you according to the riches of His
glory, that we would be strengthened with power through
His Spirit and our inner self, so that Christ may dwell in our
hearts through faith. And that we, being rooted and
grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the Saints
what is the width and length and height and depth, and to know
the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that we all
may be filled to all the fullness of God.
In the name of Jesus we pray these things.
Amen. And now I send you out the way
that Paul sent the Ephesians. And now to him who is able to do
far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according
to the power that works within us, To him be the glory in the
church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and
ever. Amen.
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.