The Fullness of God

  This is the spiritual journey—to live into the fullness of Christ’s life within us.

Phileena Heuertz

Pilgrimage of a Soul (2010)

Phileena Heuertz

INTRO: Today we’re going to take a deep dive into something we touched on last Sunday. Something the bible says we can know but paradoxically says “that surpasses knowledge.” This is the love of Christ, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God. Lets take a look at Paul’s prayer for us.

Eph 3:14-19 “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 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 all the fullness of God.”

So what is the fullness of God? What does that mean? The short of it is it means to that He would enable us to have all His light, love, wisdom, holiness, power and glory

The Sources of Our Enablement

a. It is channeled through the invincible Holy Spirit

At the moment of salvation, the believer receives The Holy Spirit, you have the Spirit in your inner man, your heart. Paul’s prayer was that you be strengthened by The Holy Spirit that now lives in you, because its God’s plan for you.

b. It is channeled by the Indwelling of Jesus Christ

Col 2:6-7 “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”

Rooted and grounded in love.

Paul uses 2 contrasting spheres to illustrate the right start: We must be rooted in love. A plant doesn't grow unless it is planted in proper soil. Paul viewed love as the soil in which all Christian experience must grow.

He also tells us we are to be grounded in love. The greek word themelioo relates to to the foundation of a building. We are to be always growing in Christian experience, but no matter how incredible our intellect is and no matter how talented our worship group is, if our efforts are not grounded in God’s love, they will amount to nothing.

1 Cor 13:1 “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”

3:17 “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.”

Jesus left us our example. Jesus, filled, anointed, led by the Holy Spirit, joyful in all things and wholly yielded to The Father, demonstrates the life God has in mind for us, Holiness and a life filled with love for God and other people. We are to live our lives in the power of The Holy Spirit and in constant communion and cooperation with Him.

The transmission of Christ’s indwelling hinges on faith

that is our willingness to believe and turnover the control of our lives to Him

Col 1:27 “ Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

It is God’s plan for us to become “Christ like.”

From the moment of our salvation, God’s plan for us is to grow to mature Christians.

1 Cor14:20 “Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.”

God’s love examined: To know the breadth, and length, and depth and height

The breadth of God’s love.

God demonstrated just how wide His love is, when He sent His only begotten son to earth to die on a cross for the remission of sins for you and me.

The length of God’s love.

Let me ask you a question. When did God start loving you? Was it when we got saved? Was it when we were born or when He created us? The answer is He has always loved us, it always was and will forever more be. Let me ask you another question, when will God stop loving you? if we are disobedient, fall into sin, what if we keep on sinning will He just eventually quit caring about us? The answer is God will never stop loving you. Th length of God’s love stretches back beyond our farthest thought and forward on and on forever

The height of God’s love.

That even though Jesus has ascended to the right hand of the Father, He will never leave us or forget about us. remember promised

John 14:3 “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”

The depth of God’s love.

How deep is God’s love? From Heavens glory to a manger in a horse stable in Galilee. From galilee to gethsemene where He wept His heart out and sweat drops of blood from the horror that He was about to endure for becoming the sacrifice of our sins. From Gethsemene to Gabbatha where He would be beaten, bullied, falsely accused in a mock trial and crowned with thorns. From Gabbatha to Golgotha where He was nailed to a cross endured the eerie midday darkness when as the bearer of our sin He was abandoned by God and crushed beneath the weight of the world’s sin. So let me ask you, Just how deep is God’s love for you?

To know the love of Christ, which passes all knowledge.

Here’s the scoop, Paul prayed that we would have strength through the Holy Spirit to comprehend The breadth, length, height and depth of God’s love, but then says that it surpasses knowledge?? That’s because with mans wisdom it cannot be comprehended, but remember, with God, all thing are possible. You can’t know the love of Christ without the Holy Spirit revealing it to you. It must be experienced not learned.

“That ye be filled with fullness of God.”

It is channeled through a supremely sufficient God

In the garden of Gethsemene we learn the secret to being filled with the fulness of God

Matt 26:39 “And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.””

Surrendering your will to do the Fathers will. To become more and more like Christ, that when we will know His love and experience “The fullness of God.”

John 6:38 “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.”

3 words come to me that sum this up.

1. Maturity, growing up in Jesus.

2. Obedience, to do the will of God, not your own.

3. LOVE LIKE JESUS!! Agape.

“Now, remember, you will never know the fullness of Christ until you know the emptiness of everything else but Christ!”

Charles Spurgeon

“This is the spiritual journey—to live into the fullness of Christ’s life within us.”

Phileena Heuertz

Pilgrimage of a Soul (2010)

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In Closing: The Fullness of God , is to be so full Jesus, that there’s no room for self. Through Jesus we are complete. I told you all last Sunday that crazy love and crazy gratitude, and I’m gonna add maturing in Christ, are what God wants from this Church its just that simple.

PRAY!!!!!