SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you guys for letting me be here.
SPEAKER_00: Um I am not capable of doing something and being convinced of it without knowing why.
SPEAKER_00: So knowing that I was gonna have to be like, hey, this thing, this gathering together is important, I had to do a lot of time on figuring out why is something like this, the gathering of the church, important and what we do here in worship is actually really cool and really sacred because we all have thoughts about God, meaning we are all in some way theologians.
SPEAKER_00: The question is if we have accurate thoughts about God, do we say about God what God would say about Himself?
SPEAKER_00: And that is the huge part that this gathering together plays for a church family.
SPEAKER_00: It creates a space where the whole church family can develop our biblical thoughts about God, or in other words, our biblical theology.
SPEAKER_00: And so I say that to express the honor I feel being invited here to help develop the biblical theology, the Bible-based thoughts about God for this church.
SPEAKER_00: So thank you, church elders, for inviting me, and thank you, church family, for enduring me.
SPEAKER_00: Um you are currently in a series called Made for More, and maybe it you come up with questions like, Who am I?
SPEAKER_00: Or does my life really matter?
SPEAKER_00: And Ephesians offers a very powerful, hope-filled answer that you are made for more than just the mundane, for just more than the chasing of more other more and more things, more freedom, more purpose, more joy, so then let's live the life that God intended for you.
SPEAKER_00: We should be built up, it says in Ephesians, in love, united with Christ as the head, growing in maturity, becoming more like Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And today, you'll notice that Paul's emphasis for both the Ephesians and for us is on unity as a church family.
SPEAKER_00: With that being said, I'm going to start by reading the passage that we're going to be in this afternoon.
SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible, you can open it to Ephesians chapter 3, verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have a Bible, it will be on the Sky Bible behind me.
SPEAKER_00: Now brace yourself.
SPEAKER_00: This is Paul's third longest run-on sentence in the entire book.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to know the first two, because as I was saying this out loud, I was like, this is going along, this is going for a while.
SPEAKER_00: So, verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: For this reason I bow my knee before the Father, from whom every family in heaven on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he would grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, so that you, who have been rooted and grounded in love, may be strength may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with the fullness of God.
SPEAKER_00: Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray really fast.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, help us to have ears to hear what is true.
SPEAKER_00: Help our hearts to be open to what you want us to hear and know, and help our minds to be dead set and our hearts to be dead set on being shaped in the ways you want us to be shaped today.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So you can tell the priorities of a Christian by what they pray for and by how intently they pray for it.
SPEAKER_00: People can claim to prioritize something in words to others, but never pray those priorities in words to God, revealing them to never be priorities at all.
SPEAKER_00: And even non-Christians can do this.
SPEAKER_00: For me, before meeting Jesus, a fight with a girlfriend in college would usually end up with me praying vehemently for the mending of our relationship as though my very life and future depended on it.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because in my heart of hearts I believed that this was the absolute most important thing in my life.
SPEAKER_00: And when the ultimate thing to you is jeopardized, you can't help but pray and pray intently.
SPEAKER_00: Often, the first time people pray passionately in a long time is when they're faced with the loss of someone they love.
SPEAKER_00: We pay pray passionately about our deepest priorities.
SPEAKER_00: So here, Paul is likely pacing around speaking this out as someone writes it down, and he gets to this point in the letter, and he must stop to pray.
SPEAKER_00: Something is deep in Paul's heart for every follower of Jesus then that is still true for every follower of Jesus now, and he had to fall to his knees just to get it out.
SPEAKER_00: I had to pray.
SPEAKER_00: And he says in verse 14, For this reason I bow my knees before the Father.
SPEAKER_00: So what reason?
SPEAKER_00: If you look back at chapter three, verse one, he says the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: For this reason, then he goes on a side tangent for just a minute and then comes back right now.
SPEAKER_00: For this reason, what reason?
SPEAKER_00: God has done something positionally that is very difficult to live out practically.
SPEAKER_00: God has done something positionally for the world that is very difficult to live out practically.
SPEAKER_00: There was something true about the church then that is still true about the church now, but it is very difficult for each of us to live out individually.
SPEAKER_00: In chapter two, Paul is reminding everyone in the churches that Jewish and Gentile believers, we would be part of the Gentile believers, non-Jewish believers, that we have all been united into one new humanity, which is the church.
SPEAKER_00: So positionally, these two opposing groups have now become one humanity.
SPEAKER_00: And now he prays that that would be true of them experientially.
SPEAKER_00: So for this reason he prays not just that Jews and Gentiles would stop hating each other, but that they would actually start to love one another.
SPEAKER_00: And that idea is one so far outside of their realm of imagination.
SPEAKER_00: It would be like imagining the farthest right Americans and the farthest left Americans not only ceasing negative speech about each other, but actually speaking kindly and honoring about one another, which this would have been worse in their minds.
SPEAKER_00: The gap between the two would have been worse than that.
SPEAKER_00: So for Jews and Gentiles to be united as one would have been outlandish.
SPEAKER_00: But God has made it possible for the whole world to be reconciled into one humanity, one body, one bride to the one God.
SPEAKER_00: And it is this great reconciliation, this great bringing together, that when Paul started to think about it and retell them about it, it overwhelmed him and brought him to his knees in prayer because he wanted not it not to for it to just be a positional reality, but an experiential, lived out reality.
SPEAKER_00: Being in a made for more series, you can't help but notice this part that every single one of you and me are invited into this new humanity that God is trying to create, this new family of God.
SPEAKER_00: And you have to imagine that he was saying, when he was saying chapter two out loud, he could probably barely contain the excitement.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to resay some of it because it applies to us.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're not a follower of Jesus yet, this can apply to you.
SPEAKER_00: He said in chapter two, at that time you were without Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You were excluded from the citizenship of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: You were foreigners to this covenant and promise without hope, without God in the world.
SPEAKER_00: But now, because of Jesus, you who were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ, for he is our peace, who made both groups one and tore down this dividing wall of hostility.
SPEAKER_00: You and I were a part of the this group that could not pass this wall, literally in the temple, there was a wall, and non-Jews could not cross it.
SPEAKER_00: There was a point where only Jews could go in, and that's as close to the presence of God in the holies of holies that they could get.
SPEAKER_00: And he's saying, I have torn this down.
SPEAKER_00: And so he says in verse 19 in chapter two, so then you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of God's household.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm saying it like this is normal for us, because this has been normal, a normal reality available to us since we've all been born.
SPEAKER_00: But this, he has been on both sides of this, seeing that when they were enemies and could not come together, and now they can.
SPEAKER_00: He probably couldn't contain it.
SPEAKER_00: This new reality to him is incredible.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus made it possible for you and I to no longer be enemies of God, not just not enemies, but a friend of God, brought into his idea of this world-altering way of life.
SPEAKER_00: And so he bows his knees to pray.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because while one new family and new humanity sounds great in rhetoric, it is very different to live out in reality.
SPEAKER_00: Having a happy, big, unified family sounds good in rhetoric till each child you have is uniquely gifted at provoking each and uh all the other ones.
SPEAKER_00: There is a gap between the rhetoric of unity and the reality of it.
SPEAKER_00: Meaning we can declare the unity of Table Bot Taylor Bible Church because of what Jesus has done for us on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul's heart is gripped by the need for us to demonstrate that unity practically.
SPEAKER_00: And it is for that reason, this gap needing to be bridged, that he falls to his knees and prays.
SPEAKER_00: And he says in verse 15 to the Father, I pray to the Father from whom every family in heaven on earth is made.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this little section is just a play on words.
SPEAKER_00: It's likely coming out of his instinctual knowledge as a training rabbi from the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: He's essentially saying that God is the Father, the one who creates and names every family in heaven on earth.
SPEAKER_00: He is the God who is alive and still acting today.
SPEAKER_00: He is not a God who has died and is no longer active in history.
SPEAKER_00: He is the only one capable of making this positional reality into an experiential reality for all of us.
SPEAKER_00: Which takes us to the substance of his prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: This is where he starts getting into what he's praying for.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with the power through his spirit in your inner being.
SPEAKER_00: So, before me before making a request, he appeals to something.
SPEAKER_00: So if my kids did it, this is what it would sound like.
SPEAKER_00: It would sound something like, Dad, according to the vastness of your strength, may you open this apple juice for me.
SPEAKER_00: You see that?
SPEAKER_00: You have strength, Dad, that we cannot comprehend.
SPEAKER_00: So according to that strength, we request the opening of our juice.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul says, according to this one great wealth, he's saying, There is one great wealth.
SPEAKER_00: This was a singular word he's using, one great set of riches, and it is your glory.
SPEAKER_00: So glory is referring to the weight or impact that someone has because of who they are.
SPEAKER_00: So kind of like someone's reputation precedes themselves, they walk into the room, there's weight, there is glory to them.
SPEAKER_00: And so he's saying, the greatest wealth in the whole world is who you are and the weight that carries.
SPEAKER_00: So he's saying, God, the greatest wealth in the world is your character, your perfect, good, selfless character, who you are, the weight of who you are, your glory, and according to your character, I make this request.
SPEAKER_00: Your church, he's saying that you would grant them power, your church needs the strength to act.
SPEAKER_00: We don't simply need motivation and inspiration, we need execution.
SPEAKER_00: There is something that you want for your church, God, but we need the strength to actually live this out.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul knows that God positionally made these two groups one family, but practically living one family is difficult.
SPEAKER_00: So God, you've made this new family.
SPEAKER_00: According to this great wealth of who you are and what you're capable of, give each person in your church the ability to actually live this out.
SPEAKER_00: And then he specifies that this isn't something to do with your physical or mental capabilities.
SPEAKER_00: This is not an outer action problem, this is an inner person problem.
SPEAKER_00: So when he says in your inner person, in your inner being, this is referring to the core of who you are or elsewhere in Scripture, your heart, the seat of all of your decisions.
SPEAKER_00: There is something that the core of you lives for.
SPEAKER_00: We are all living towards something.
SPEAKER_00: And at our core, we are living either deeply and we are living either deeply and completely for God or for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Paul passionately wants the thing we love most to be Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: If we love us most, our wants matter most.
SPEAKER_00: Wants like family or comfort or status or recognition or success, pleasures, experience, the avoidance of suffering, whatever it may be, by praying for this, Paul is trying to unearth this connection between this goal of unity and this ultimate goal in our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Because if this goal isn't set right, this goal can't be accomplished.
SPEAKER_00: If I am the king of my life and my desires carry the most weight, then unity cannot work.
SPEAKER_00: Unity requires sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: And if I'm my greatest priority, then sacrificing for others will not work.
SPEAKER_00: Or a sacrifice that gives back to me in some way will work.
SPEAKER_00: Or the only sacrifice that feeds my ego or feeds my emptiness or feeds my sense of meaning will work.
SPEAKER_00: The greatest barrier to unity in the church is usually always a focus on ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: It's not something outside coming in and hurting us.
SPEAKER_00: It's ourselves being focused on ourselves, hurting everyone else because of it.
SPEAKER_00: When there is a disunity problem, there is always an inner person problem happening.
SPEAKER_00: So we need to be strengthened by the Father through the Holy Spirit in our inner person for what?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what the inner person needs, the core of each of us, is for Jesus to make a permanent home in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Meaning, we need Jesus to take over authority of our home.
SPEAKER_00: Your heart, your inner person longs to be given back over to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: For Jesus to settle in and to make your heart, your life, his home.
SPEAKER_00: And when you entrust your life over to Jesus, you bring him into the throne of your heart.
SPEAKER_00: But often we don't want him to wander around too much.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, you can save me from hell or sin or whatever is out there on the porch, but don't mess with what's inside the house.
SPEAKER_00: I have it the way I want it.
SPEAKER_00: I have my career where I would like it.
SPEAKER_00: I have my schedule the way it pleases me.
SPEAKER_00: I have my ideals for life, the way I imagine them.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, you can stay, but just don't change anything.
SPEAKER_00: Paul knows that either love for Jesus directs your life, or unity will fracture, because we have no real motive for sacrificing for it.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is meant to make his home, his dwelling place, his permanent home in our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Or how?
SPEAKER_00: Through faith.
SPEAKER_00: So through trust.
SPEAKER_00: What he's saying is that as you entrust more and more of your life over to him, the more your home, your heart, your life becomes fully his.
SPEAKER_00: The more he settles into it permanently.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, he indwells you because you gave your life to him, but the question is, does he have complete authority to change anything he would like in your home?
SPEAKER_00: What Paul is praying for is that Jesus would become the controlling factor in your heart and in your inner person.
SPEAKER_00: That when something comes into your life, you look over at Jesus and say, Is this what you want in your home?
SPEAKER_00: Not is this what I want in my home, but Jesus, do you want this thing in your home?
SPEAKER_00: Is this the decision you want for your home?
SPEAKER_00: Out of all of the enormous wealth of who God is, this is what Paul wants to ask for you.
SPEAKER_00: In all of the problems and difficulties that you and I face, this is what he's saying we need.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus would permanently make his home in us, that we would begin to entrust more and more of our life to him.
SPEAKER_00: You are made to belong to him, to be his.
SPEAKER_00: And when only part of you belongs to God, there's going to be this inner tension going on with you because you can't truly be satisfied by the things of God, because pieces of you are withheld from God.
SPEAKER_00: But you can't just live into what the world says is good because this pull on your heart that you know Jesus is the only good thing.
SPEAKER_00: So instead, entrust yourself more and more over to Jesus, being unwilling to take any of it back.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he's saying for, that Christ would dwell in your hearts more through faith, that he would make his home more as you entrust more to him.
SPEAKER_00: So then he says that you being rooted and grounded in love, this is just an identity statement.
SPEAKER_00: So here, this love talked about earlier in the book, it simply means that it's the kind of love that seeks the highest good of the one being loved.
SPEAKER_00: So, love means seeking the highest good of the one being loved.
SPEAKER_00: For example, I know Jesus because of a man named Zack Hansen who was seeking the highest good for my life.
SPEAKER_00: And everything Zach did was so that I could have this reality of knowing Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The thing that was best for my life was for me to entrust it over to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So in college, when he met me, everything he invited me to, every time he wanted to hang out with me, it was for my good, not his.
SPEAKER_00: It kept him away from home and his family to hang out with me, but it was for my good that he hung out with me and spent time with me and discipled me.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's what this is saying, that I have now been rooted and grounded in love.
SPEAKER_00: My life with Jesus started from unselfish love from another poured out from me.
SPEAKER_00: Make sense so far?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So to summarize where we're at in this prayer and run on sentence so far, we'll say it this way.
SPEAKER_00: Paul is saying, I pray that God would give you the strength in your inner person to entrust more of your life over to Jesus, so that he lives in your heart in greater and greater ways.
SPEAKER_00: So that verse 18, you may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul wants God to strengthen your inner person so Jesus can make his home more fully in your hearts for this.
SPEAKER_00: This is what he wants the result to be.
SPEAKER_00: This is the result he is praying for, that you and I can grasp, can comprehend, can begin to understand the vastness of the love of Jesus with all the saints.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'll get to all the saints in a second, it's important.
SPEAKER_00: When he says, What is the breadth and length and height and depth?
SPEAKER_00: He is trying to convey that there is this vast thing I want you to comprehend.
SPEAKER_00: This is, I'm just, I don't know how to convey the vastness of this thing.
SPEAKER_00: I need you must comprehend if you're going to live this out.
SPEAKER_00: He is saying, the love of Jesus is so dense, so vast, so solid.
SPEAKER_00: It is wide enough to reach every culture, deep enough to exhaust every intellect, and high enough to reach down into anyone's broken down place in life and bring them back up into this new humanity.
SPEAKER_00: Paul is digging deeper and deeper into the source of what can make this rhetoric of a new unity in humanity into a reality for them and for us.
SPEAKER_00: God must strengthen your inner person and mine so that we entrust ourselves more over to Jesus and more by surrendering to him, so that then you would be more capable of grasping and comprehending the vastness of the love of God expressed through Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But I skipped something that is wildly important and emphasized throughout this whole book, and you'll see that next week as well.
SPEAKER_00: He says that you may have strength to comprehend with all the saints.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is super important, so please hear this.
SPEAKER_00: Your growth cannot occur in isolation.
SPEAKER_00: And I say that with people I love deeply and dearly, who on the phone the other day were like, nope, all I need is uh my wife.
SPEAKER_00: All I that's the only community I need.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I don't know if you read Ephesians, but you know we'll get there another time.
SPEAKER_00: Um I don't think they'll listen to this, but it's okay.
SPEAKER_00: They'll know you'll know who you are if you are.
SPEAKER_00: Um your growth cannot occur in isolation.
SPEAKER_00: It must be done in the context with other believers.
SPEAKER_00: Even further, true growth cannot occur by selective association with certain believers, the ones that we prefer because they are of the same socioeconomic or intellectual or professional or EQ status as us.
SPEAKER_00: Paul prays that you would grasp the love of God in association with every and any follower of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Over the last few weeks, it dawned on me how ironic it is that the Self-proclaimed Christian nation not anymore, but self-proclaimed clear Christian nation of the world is the most individualistic when the Christian kingdom of the Bible is deeply others-oriented and one another focused.
SPEAKER_00: Our homes are designed with bigger rooms where only I am present.
SPEAKER_00: Our front yards where we interact with others are shrinking, and our backyards where we interact only with our families are growing.
SPEAKER_00: The busyness of our lifestyles means it's so difficult to live in community with anyone who is not on the same sports team, has the same personality type, has the same personal interest, or has the identical family rhythms as us.
SPEAKER_00: The fabric of the West is subtly trying to shrink you and your family into itself outside of maybe Sunday, so that it's impossible to grasp the love of Jesus with all the saints.
SPEAKER_00: We can't present a new humanity and a new unity if our lifestyle makes us solitary.
SPEAKER_00: Worse.
SPEAKER_00: Not only is our societal culture trying to pull you more into your own privacy, but sin in our hearts seeks to pull us and shrink us into more of ourselves, more of our wants, more of our preferences, and more of our plans.
SPEAKER_00: Always a me, me, me focus.
SPEAKER_00: And society has shifted in such a way over the centuries here that it only is making it worse and easier.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul wants so desperately for the church to grasp the love of Jesus because he's saying that when you know and can grasp the vastness of this love, you will be filled with the fullness of God.
SPEAKER_00: When we grasp the magnitude of the love of Jesus, we begin to experience the moral excess of God, the perfection of God, the power of God, the ability of God to completely satisfy the part of our spirit that can only be satisfied by God, Paul knew that if the church experienced this, this one thing, if you will just, if this vastness of the love of Jesus for you is the only real thing you know, that you will entrust yourself more and more over to him in greater ways, all of a sudden, when Jesus said this statement, that all people will know you belong to me by how you love one another, that will actually begin to be real here.
SPEAKER_00: That people look at how you are together, how you serve the community together, and they will know you belong to Him.
SPEAKER_00: So, in summary, for this prayer, this is what Paul was praying.
SPEAKER_00: God, give the people in your church strength, so their inner person will entrust more of itself to you, so you they will entrust more of their inner person to you.
SPEAKER_00: May these people who are here because someone loved you enough to bring you, invite you, plant a church so you could be here, so on and so forth, may these people who are here because of love, together as a community, grasp the vastness of your love.
SPEAKER_00: And when they do, this will fill them so much that they cannot help but reflect that love to each other and to the world.
SPEAKER_00: And all of this leads to the doxology of his prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Now, a doxology is literally just a word that it's called a word of praise.
SPEAKER_00: So that's doxology is a word of praise.
SPEAKER_00: Slightly a run-on sentence.
SPEAKER_00: I'll do that one now.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power at work in us.
SPEAKER_00: To him be the glory in the church and in Christ throughout all generations, forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: For the church is in Ephesus, and for us, Paul is calling the church right here to a magnified view of God.
SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes our view of God is very small, and it's hard to praise or worship something that to us is small.
SPEAKER_00: And here he is re-expanding the magnitude of Jesus and the magnitude of God in your minds, and in their minds, in my mind, because our only response when you see the magnitude of God is to worship.
SPEAKER_00: He says, To the one who is able to do beyond everything, very far, in excess of anything that we ask or think.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, his ability far surpasses not only what you can verbalize in prayer, but also beyond our wildest imaginations.
SPEAKER_00: And anyone who's been a part of Taylor Bible Church since planting it at any point along the way has probably experienced this.
SPEAKER_00: I feel like just a year in, I've experienced this.
SPEAKER_00: Things I wouldn't have even thought to ask for have happened.
SPEAKER_00: Being here and seeing this is more than I could have asked for.
SPEAKER_00: It's encouraging to me.
SPEAKER_00: That is the one who is inviting you to entrust yourself more and more to him to make your home his home.
SPEAKER_00: Earlier, Paul had prayed that they would be strengthened with power through the Spirit, and now Paul gives praise to God for that power.
SPEAKER_00: So as I close, Paul lived on both sides of this.
SPEAKER_00: I mentioned at the beginning, this is all we've ever known, is that this reality exists.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul saw both before the cross of Jesus and after the cross of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Before that, there was no human or angel that could probably ever imagine that Jews and Gentiles would ever function together in one body.
SPEAKER_00: However, when Paul imagines a church so consumed and filled up by the love of Jesus for you, he believes it's possible.
SPEAKER_00: And so this prayer for the churches in Ephesus is the same one for us.
SPEAKER_00: Before Jesus, there are people that we could never imagine being united with.
SPEAKER_00: That political party, that socioeconomic background, that personality, but the more we grasp the love of Jesus, the more we give up this dividing wall of hostility.
SPEAKER_00: They're not only just brought down, but we are actually growing genuine love in our hearts for people we never would have even fathomed I would be willing to be around.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter what the wall is, but the more we grasp the love of Jesus for us, the more those walls come down.
SPEAKER_00: It can be as big as politics or race or hurt against you, or as small as that loud one over there, this annoying one over here, or that awkward one over there.
SPEAKER_00: If we ever look at someone else and think, I can never be like that.
SPEAKER_00: I don't even I can't even be around them.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be around them.
SPEAKER_00: Or they are the problem.
SPEAKER_00: Those people are the problem.
SPEAKER_00: There is a wall.
SPEAKER_00: And where that exists, you know the problem isn't actually them.
SPEAKER_00: Although there's things they're doing wrong.
SPEAKER_00: The problem is actually how little I have grasped the love of Jesus for me.
SPEAKER_00: Because I can't look at someone that way.
SPEAKER_00: No matter what.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying we allow someone that's hurt us to come back in and hurt us again.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying something unhealthy in those ways.
SPEAKER_00: I just mean even the ability to comprehend that we could be united with people that we can't stand for whatever reason.
SPEAKER_00: If I have grasped the love of Jesus, then I should be able to imagine and dream of being in rich friendship with almost anyone, pretty much anyone.
SPEAKER_00: I should be able to have a dream and vision for a wide and diverse church of people I wouldn't have been friends with before meeting Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So this is what this text should lead us to ask ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: What do I pray for most?
SPEAKER_00: Because it does reveal my priorities.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 16 and 17.
SPEAKER_00: What in the home of your heart, in my heart, belongs to me and not to Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, you can tell me anything except what to do with my job, except that my kids are not going to play sports, except that whatever, sorry, my kids are in sports.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing wrong with sports.
SPEAKER_00: But what can you entrust over to him more?
SPEAKER_00: What currently in your mind and heart is off limits to him saying it's his.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: Am I living disconnected from the family of God?
SPEAKER_00: And this is going to be huge, as you get into the rest of the book, where he is presenting this whole body that cannot pieces can't function alone.
SPEAKER_00: Am I living disconnected and what choices are causing this isolation?
SPEAKER_00: If it is extremely difficult for me to live in connection with other family, other people in the family of God, what choices am I making that's making this so difficult?
SPEAKER_00: And then I'll leave you with one practice.
SPEAKER_00: Because doing more and trying harder will not help us grasp the love of Jesus, but gratitude will.
SPEAKER_00: So I suggest to buy a notebook, and every morning, day and night, every morning and every night, you write five things you're grateful for.
SPEAKER_00: Because as you write and notice the things you're grateful for, your mind is expanded and your eyes are reopened to see these are the ways the vast love of God is being poured out on me regularly.
SPEAKER_00: Because usually you're moving so fast, so focused on things, things are going wrong in so many directions.
SPEAKER_00: These things that God is doing to pour out love on us, we don't even notice it.
SPEAKER_00: And so by saying, I will do this, I'm saying I want to notice the ways you're pouring out love on me that I just don't.
SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, I'm comprehending more and more this vast, selfless love of God for an ungrateful, busy child like me who keeps going and going, Thanks, Dad, sweet, more money, where's the card?
SPEAKER_00: I need gas, keep going, gotta go.
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden I'm like, I didn't realize he was doing so much for me and in me.
SPEAKER_00: Because we are made to be a living expression to the world of the love of God for us.
SPEAKER_00: So Taylor Bible Church and mine as well, one day, we were made for a lot more than just a 501 C three and a few food drives or backpack drives.
SPEAKER_00: We were made to be a living expression of this unfathomable vast love of God for us to the world.
SPEAKER_00: We are meant to be a picture when people look at you together of this new humanity God is creating in the future.