The Source of Spiritual Strength

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Tonight we’re going to be in Ephesians chapter 3. Ephesians chapter 3. And a friend recommended to me this week to look at the book of Ephesians, in particular chapter 3.

So I’ve been studying on it this week, and I thought it really applies to some of our needs, especially as we hope to reach more of our friends and neighbors for Christ. We can’t do that on our own. We cannot. .

. We are powerless. Honestly, we are a small group of people, but even if we were a large group of people, we still can’t win people to Jesus Christ on our own, by our own power, by our own brilliance.

I spent years learning arguments and learning all these things to try to convince people. And apologetics is great. Knowing the arguments for the faith and being able to defend the faith is absolutely essential. But that alone is not enough to win somebody to Christ. I’ve never argued anybody into the kingdom yet.

and don’t know that I ever will. But I’ve seen people loved into the kingdom. And I’ve seen God draw people in ways that I thought was impossible.

And as we look at this passage, and we’re going to be in chapter 3 starting in verse 14 in just a moment. As we look at this passage, as I’ve studied it over the course of the last week, I’ve thought about my tendency to go out and try to do work with power tools, whether it be a saw or a sander or a drill or something. I’ll get it all set up and ready to go.

And I have the worst trouble getting them to start and getting them to work. And I start thinking, okay, great. Am I going to have to buy one?

Am I going to have to take this apart and try to figure out what’s wrong with it? I don’t know what I’m doing. And then realize 20 minutes into this conversation with myself in my mind that I haven’t plugged it in.

Any of you all ever do that? I do that about every other time I go to work with some kind of electric appliance. It doesn’t work if it’s not plugged into its power source.

And we, by the same token, do not work if we’re not plugged into our power source. In spiritual terms, we cannot live the Christian life if we’re not plugged into our power source. We cannot be an effective witness for Jesus Christ if we’re not plugged into our power source.

We just can’t get through day-by-day life representing Him in this world if we are disconnected from our power source. And Paul wrote to this church at Ephesus that lived in a world much like we do now. I know things are different.

We have electricity and we have television and we have indoor plumbing. But the culture had some striking similarities. The culture at Ephesus was very given over to worldliness.

Ephesus was a center of pagan worship. And it was kind of an anything-goes culture that looks a lot like our own today in some of those regards. And so you had people who were in the midst of that kind of culture.

And saying, how do we stand for Jesus Christ in the midst of this? And Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he’s teaching them about the importance of the church, about the importance of the body, and how God works through that body to accomplish his purposes. And he starts talking in chapter 3 about his prayer for them that they would have power.

Their prayer that God would empower them. So we start in verse 14, or let’s start in verse 13 actually. He says, Wherefore I desire that you faint not at my tribulations for you, which is for your glory.

He says, I don’t want you to grow weary. I don’t want you to faint at everything that’s going on. He says in verse 14, For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now unto him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church, by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen. And so what he’s basically told them there is, these are some of the things that I’m praying to God for you.

He tells them in verse 14, I bow my knee for this reason. For your sake, I bow my knee before God, and I ask him these things. And he says in verse 14, well, starting there, which we’ve already looked at, in verse 16, he says that he would grant you.

He said, this is what I ask him to grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man. He realized that the church at Ephesus, to do what God called them to do, they needed power, and they needed God’s power. And folks, the same thing applies to us today.

As a church, without the power of God, we are about as useless as a jigsaw that’s not plugged in. We can do about as much spiritual work as a jigsaw that’s not plugged in can do cutting of a board. We need God’s power.

And so the first thing that he prays for them is that they would be strengthened and empowered through the Holy Spirit. Notice this in verse 16. He says he prays that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man.

He says I’m praying for you that you’ll have might, that you’ll have power. And he said not just any power, but that he’ll give you might by his spirit, strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man. The inner man is the part of us that lives forever.

This is the way I’ve heard Brother Tim Green describe it. I hear him talk about the part of me that lives forever. There is a part of us that lives forever.

We talk about, well, I have a soul. No, we are a soul. We have a body.

We are a soul. This will eventually, you know, if the Lord tarries long enough, this will eventually decay and die and be put in a box and be put in the ground north of Shawnee, but the soul lives on forever. And in that part of us that lives forever, he said, that’s where I want you to have the power.

There’s one thing if we can do things physically, that’s great, but he wants us to be empowered in the inner man, in the soul, the spirit, the part of us that lives forever, and he wants us to be strengthened by the Holy Spirit of God. We don’t want power just from anywhere to try to do God’s work. We don’t want the power that comes from good ideas, although there’s nothing wrong with good ideas.

We don’t want the power of the newest marketing ploy or church program. We want the power that comes from the Holy Spirit of God taking up residence inside of us. And if you’re a believer tonight, he has taken up residence inside of you.

And so it’s not that Paul is praying for the church at Ephesus that the Holy Spirit will come and dwell inside them because he hadn’t yet. He had. And his prayer for us wouldn’t be that the Holy Spirit would come and take up residence in us, because he already has.

What he’s praying is that they would be overwhelmed with the power of the Holy Spirit. That they would be driven by the Holy Spirit. That the Holy Spirit, in other words, would be in the driver’s seat.

And would be in control. And so if we’re looking for spiritual strength to do ministry, if we’re looking for spiritual strength to get through the next week and be the Christians we’re supposed to be, If we’re looking for the spiritual strength to go through this next week and be the witnesses that we need to be to the people in our circle that God has placed us in the midst of, people that need to be challenged in their walk with Christ, people who need to be drawn closer to God, people who need to have a relationship with Jesus Christ in the first place, if we are to get through the next week of interacting with those people and ministering to them on God’s behalf, then we absolutely need the work of the Holy Spirit within us. He can give you a capacity to do things you never thought possible.

If you notice at the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, Peter stands up and preaches one of the boldest sermons I’ve ever heard. He would never get shown on TV with a sermon like that. It was too convicting, too hard-hitting.

And as you go through chapter 4 and as you go further along in the book of Acts, he preached that way. He was fearless in declaring the truth of Jesus and his resurrection. But what makes that even more incredible was you look back and you see who he was just a few pages before that at the end of the Gospels.

When he was timid and afraid and he was in hiding with the others. Two things changed. Number one, he saw the resurrected Jesus.

He understood the reality of the resurrection. But the other thing that changed was the Holy Spirit showed up. The Holy Spirit empowered him.

You want to be bold in your witness for Jesus Christ? You need the Holy Spirit. Don’t go to try to do it on your own.

Ask God to lead you by His Holy Spirit. Ask God to strengthen you by His Holy Spirit. And then follow His lead.

The Holy Spirit is absolutely essential. We can’t do anything on our own. If we could, then it’s for no reason that Jesus said, Hey, I have to go. That way I can send you the comforter to be with you.

If we could do it on our own, Jesus would have said, that’s fine, I’ll stay with you. Who needs the Holy Spirit? Who needs the Holy Spirit is us.

That’s why he sent him. And that’s why Paul’s first thing he prayed for was God strengthened them with might by the working of your spirit in the inner man. If we need spiritual strength, we need the work of God’s spirit within us.

Now, we can’t make that happen, but we can open ourselves up to it. We can stop quenching the spirit. We can stop grieving the spirit.

And the way I’ve heard those two things explained, those are two of the things that the New Testament says don’t do to the Holy Spirit, don’t quench the Spirit, and don’t grieve the Spirit. The way I’ve heard this explained, and it makes perfect sense to me, is we quench the Spirit when He tells us and it leads us to do something and we don’t do it, and we grieve the Spirit when He tells us and leads us not to do something and we do it anyway. And we can stop doing those two things and just give ourselves over to the work of the Holy Spirit.

To ask God, to beg God to empower us by His Holy Spirit. And I say this all the time, but ask God to do that, and I believe He will. I’m not going to stand up here and tell you that everything you pray for, God’s going to give you exactly what you ask.

He never promised that. He does promise if we ask according to His will that He’ll answer in the affirmative. He does promise to meet all of our needs.

I’m going to tell you what, some of these things that we spell out, that I explain to you out of God’s Word, these are things that are God’s will. These are things that are spiritual needs, and so I believe if we pray for Him, He’s given us the promise that He’ll answer. the work of God’s Holy Spirit within us.

Ask him to strengthen you. Because God sees down the road, God sees what’s coming later today that you may not even anticipate. And God can prepare you better than you possibly can prepare yourself.

Then he goes on in verse 17. He says that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ, which passeth all knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God. Now, he’s not praying for Christ to dwell in their hearts.

He’s not asking Jesus to come dwell in their hearts. These are believers. These are believers.

And as much as I don’t like the phrase of encouraging somebody to ask Jesus into their heart, if you were led to Christ by somebody who used that terminology, I’m not saying you’re not saved. For all I can remember, my mother may have encouraged me to pray that as well. when I was born again.

I don’t like using that terminology and explaining salvation to people because it can be confusing if we don’t know, if they don’t understand what we’re talking about. I prefer to say things like, trust Jesus, you know, ask God’s forgiveness, things like that. That’s what we usually mean when we say, ask Christ into our hearts.

Said all that to say this, for my lack of being comfortable with that term, it is a term that the Bible uses. I’m not saying it’s an evil term. It’s just one that I would tread very carefully with with a new believer.

But the Bible does teach that Christ dwells in our hearts. Now, how does that work exactly? I don’t know.

But it says he dwells in there, that it’s his home, that he may dwell in your hearts by faith. Well, we’re indwelled by Christ. We’re indwelled by his Holy Spirit from the moment of conversion. This is not Paul asking them, again, asking God to do something new for him.

What he’s asking is that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith that you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints. He’s basically saying that with Christ in your heart and being rooted and grounded in his, that you should be rooted and grounded in his love that you may be able to comprehend his love. And he talks about the breadth and depth and length and height of the love of Christ. So the picture he’s painting there about being rooted and ground it.

I’ve done a lot of work in my yard this year. You can’t always tell it and probably can’t tell it right now with all the rain we’ve had and all the lawnmower problems that I’ve had, but I’ve done a lot of work in my yard this year. And what I’ve discovered is that some of the plants that I have planted, some of the flowers in particular that I have planted and tried to nurture and cultivate, for whatever reason, their roots don’t go very deep.

And the slightest little jostle, they just pop up out of the ground. And there they are. They’re not rooted very deep.

But my goodness, I go to try to pull a weed, and there are some of those weeds that my goodness, they have roots longer than I am tall. Not quite, but getting close. And those things are rooted deep in there, and you yank on them, and you yank on them, and God forbid you get a tree growing in your flower bed and let it go for a week, you’ll never get that thing out of there.

Those roots go deep. They are rooted and grounded firmly in the soil, and they’re not going anywhere. Unlike these stupid flowers I’ve had to go and stake up and try to baby.

These weeds know what to do. We need to be rooted and grounded in the love of Christ. That His love is the soil that we grow in, and that we dig down as deep as we possibly can get, and we hold on for dear life. Not because His love is going anywhere from us, not because His love is going to be ripped away from us, but because that is the fertile ground in which we grow.

If we want to grow strong and tall and if we want to be powerful in his service, that’s the soil we need to dig down deep into so that we can stand tall. I notice I don’t have to go out and stake up the weeds and help them to not flop over on the sidewalk. It’s because they’re deeply rooted.

They’re deeply rooted. And he wants us to be rooted and grounded in the love of Christ. Make that the soil that you grow in. He says, so that you may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height.

He said, I want you to explore all of the boundaries of Christ’s love. And the picture that I get there is he’s talking about comprehending all of these dimensions of Christ’s love, the breadth, how broad it is, and how long, and how deep, and how high, is that it’s immense. Understand this, Jesus doesn’t have just a little bit of love for you.

Jesus’ love for you is immense. And Jesus’ love for the people in this community where we’ve been put here to minister, His love for them is immense. It’s beyond searching out its boundaries.

It’s beyond knowing. We can search for the end of it and never find it. Paul says, go ahead.

I want you to comprehend just how wide it is. I want you to comprehend how high, how tall, how broad, how long, how deep it is. Search out His love and realize how far it goes.

I don’t mean by that put him to the test see how bad you can be and does God still love me that’s not what I’m talking about but to realize how much Jesus Christ loved you Jesus Christ loved you enough that he died for you and I know we say that we talk about that in every church service and well we should the day that Trinity Baptist Church stops talking about the blood that was shed on the cross the day that Trinity Baptist Church stops talking about the death burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the day that we ought to shut the doors. And there are a lot of churches who haven’t gotten that memo and probably should have shut the doors a long time ago. We talk about that all the time.

But folks, I fear that sometimes because we talk about it so much, and because it’s our patent Sunday school answer, you know, I know he loved me because he died for me, that we forget just how awesome a truth that is. We forget what that really means. Jesus Christ looked at you and he looked at me.

And he died for us, not because we were lovable. I mean, it’d be amazing enough if he died for us because we were so wonderful and so awesome. But we weren’t.

He looked at us and saw how sinful we are. He didn’t look at us and see the Sunday morning mask that we put on. He looked at us and he saw everything that we’ve done in our past. He saw everything that we were going to do in the future.

He looked in and he saw all the attitudes and all the conditions of my heart and all the rottenness that’s in there. He saw everything. He saw sin in my heart that I don’t even know is there.

And the same thing with you. And he looked at us and in spite of how wicked we were, how far we’d fallen short of God’s standards, he looked at us and loved us enough that he went through the worst experience that I can imagine. That he was mocked, that he was spit on, he was tortured, He was mistreated in every conceivable way.

Anything the Romans could have done to him in that moment, they did. And then they nailed him to a cross. They raised him up.

They continued to mock him. They continued to heap scorn on him. He went through that for hours.

And he shed his blood and he died. He could have come down at any moment. He had the power to get himself off that cross.

But he stayed up there for us. And we didn’t deserve a second of it. He did that because he loved you.

Find somebody else on this earth who loves you that much. I love my kids enough that I would die for them if it came to that. If it came to that.

I hope that it never does. But I would trade my life for theirs, given the opportunity. But I don’t know that I would.

. . I can’t.

. . I’m not saying I would.

. . I can’t imagine going through what Jesus went through.

And I can’t imagine willingly putting myself in the position to have to do that. Jesus came to earth knowing that his entire purpose was to do that. There’s nobody who has ever loved you like Jesus loved you.

And he said, I want you to comprehend how vast his love is for you. And to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. To know, think about that seeming contradiction.

It’s not a contradiction, but it’s a seeming contradiction. I want you to know this love that passes knowledge. And that gives me the idea that just once I think I’ve got Jesus’ love figured out, I realize there’s so much more.

Sort of like as a child, I went to kindergarten and went all through elementary school, and by sixth grade, seven years at that elementary school, I thought, I’ve got this world figured out. And then you step into junior high, and you realize there’s so much more in the world. And it takes three years to get that world figured out.

And just once you’ve got the world figured out, you go into high school, more of the world to figure out. Then you go to college, more to figure out. And then you get out of college and get into the real world, and whoosh, there’s so much more.

Then you have kids, and there’s more. Just when we think we’ve got Jesus’ love figured out, just when we think we understand it, to realize that there’s so much more, so that you might be filled with all the fullness of God. There’s an element here that if you are looking for spiritual strength, Sometimes the best thing you can do is just sit and abide in the love of Jesus Christ. Now that doesn’t mean that we never get out and do anything else, but we need times where we come and just sit at the feet of the Master.

And this friend I was talking to this week who referenced Ephesians chapter 3, I think our conversation came around to Mary and Martha as well. Y’all remember that story, Martha was in the kitchen fixing dinner. And I kind of think that I would be Martha in the story.

She got mad at Mary because I’m in here doing all the work, and she’s just sitting in there listening to Jesus. And she says to Jesus, are you going to let her get away with this? And Jesus told Martha, you’re troubled about too many things.

You are too busy with too many things. He said, but Mary has chosen well. And what she’s got out of the experience is not going to be taken away from her.

I’m paraphrasing, of course. But sometimes we need to be Mary and just sit at the Master’s feet and just fall in love with Jesus all over again. and to understand the love that He has for us.

We can devise all the programs and all the strategies we want, both as a church and as individuals, to say, well, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that, and that’s how we’re going to reach this number of people. I’m going to reach 15 people. I’m going to reach all of Seminole.

I’m going to reach my whole family. We can devise all the strategies we want. And I tell you what, if you are saturated in the love of Jesus Christ, you don’t need a strategy.

It’s just going to come out everywhere from you. You’re not going to have to figure out how do I tell people about Jesus. it’s just going to come out.

So if we want spiritual power, sometimes we just need to sit and abide in the love of Jesus. And finally tonight, we look at verse 20 and verse 21. Now unto him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us.

He’s talking again about that power that worketh in us, God’s power. And he says God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think. Once you think God can do this much, God can do more than that.

Oh, I think God could do this little thing. Yeah, God can do way more than that. Okay, so God can do this much.

No, God can do more. You never come to the end of what God is able to accomplish and the things that we ask. A lot of times we ask God for really little things.

And I don’t know if it’s lack of faith. I don’t know if it’s because we feel like, well, I’m not being spiritual. Surely he’s got bigger things to answer. You know what?

God can handle your requests and other people’s too. and I’m not saying big requests, God give me a mansion. I’m saying making bold requests for him to do things in your life and in the lives of other people to build his kingdom.

We make such small requests. God bless the lost in our community. God can do more than we ask.

God can do more than we think. Instead of saying God bless the lost in our community, God open the eyes of so-and-so who lives down the street from me. God give me the opportunity.

God, I want to see a miracle in this person’s life. I want to see you melt this heart that is so closed and hostile toward you. God, I want you to change the heart of my friend that I’ve been praying for for 50 years, and I think there’s no way they’re ever going to give their heart to you.

But God, you can do more than I think. You can do more than I ask. Then why don’t we start asking God like we believe he’s got some power?

Because Paul said he can do exceedingly abundantly more than we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us. that power, that God who can do exceedingly abundantly more than we ask or think, wants to work in us and through us. He says that power works in us.

Unto Him be the glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. When we ask God to do what only God can do, when we start praying for things that we know are God’s will, and say, will you bless here? Will you increase your kingdom here?

Will you help me be a witness for you here? When we start asking God for things that are His will, we’re not bothering God. We’re not imposing on God.

We’re asking Him for the things that He wants to do anyway. It is never out of line to make a bold request to God that is for something that is for His glory. And if we want to see Him do truly great things in us and through us, that’s what it’s got to be about.

It’s got to be about His glory. When I started talking to you about strategies, about how to reach people in Seminole, either who have professed Christ at one time but need to be involved in the church, need to be discipled, need to be serving Him, or people who’ve never trusted Christ and need to be led to Christ, when I started talking to you about those things, I made it clear that it cannot be, and I tried to make it clear, that it cannot be about, well, we want a bigger church. We want more people here.

It would be great if we had 100 people here. but not for the sake of, oh, look at what Trinity can do. Look at what great things Trinity’s doing.

It’s got to be for the glory of God. It’s got to be for the advancement of God’s kingdom. It’s got to be so that people will come to know the Christ who died for them.

And I said it just a moment ago, and I’m going to say it again. It is not out of line to make bold requests of God to do things that are in His will and for His glory. If we want spiritual power, we need to yield ourselves to be used for the glory of God.

God desires to work in us and through us. That power that he has. The God who can do more than we ask or think wants to work in and through us.

He wants us to be the tools that he uses. And the selfish part of us may think, well, don’t I get some of the glory out of it? You know what?

We’re just fortunate that he allows us to be involved at all. It’s an amazing adventure being involved in the work of God. And it’s a privilege just to be used of him.

But as I pointed out recently on a Wednesday night, I love art. You can apply this to anything where tools are used, but I love art. I love Van Gogh’s paintings.

He’s one of my favorites. Nobody ever looks at the Van Gogh paintings and says, what an incredible paintbrush was used to do this. Nobody looks at the sculptures of Michelangelo and says, what a great chisel.

He had an awesome chisel to do this. You go up to Bartlesville and you see some of the architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the most famous American architects. You see some of the buildings he built.

Nobody says, oh, what cool paper he must have drawn these up on. No, they were just fortunate to be involved when the master was looking for a tool to use. Folks, if we want spiritual power, we need to yield ourselves to be those tools to be used for the glory of God.

He wants to work in and through you. Am I saying you’re going to see something miraculous every day? Are you going to see the Red Sea part every day?

Not necessarily. I’m not promising you that. But I’m telling you, God wants to work in and through you.

God wants to work in and through you to build his kingdom. And when you start yielding yourself for that purpose and asking him to, folks, he can do more than you ever thought possible. If you want to be used by God, we need spiritual power that comes from the work of the Holy Spirit, comes from spending time abiding in the love of Christ, and comes from yielding ourselves to be used for the glory of God.