Further Up, Further in: Holy Discontent

Introduction

Growing up we were indoctrinated with maroon and white propaganda. Living in the back yard of the aggies and having a family of aggies led to this. So much so that when I told my family I would in fact be turning down a scholarship to TAMU to pursue my dreams of playing soccer and leaving CSTAT that there were some slanderous prayers. I love A&M. I remember my first time stepping into Kyle Field. I had seen it on tv and been around it but had not experienced a game before. The environment was electric and so much more than I could have imagined.

This is the kind of feeling we get in the story of the The Last Battle by CS Lewis.

Quote from Narnia Last Battle:

The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can’t describe it any better than that: if ever you get there you will know what I mean.

It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed, and then he cried:

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that is sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!”

During lent and beginning last week we are working through a series where we discuss the different parts of the journey with Christ. A couple of years ago George Barna conducted a large scale research of Christians and their experiences on the faith journey and what he found was fascinating.

During lent and beginning last week we are working through a series where we discuss the different parts of the journey with Christ. A couple of years ago George Barna conducted a large scale research of Christians and their experiences on the faith journey and what he found was fascinating.

Distribution of Adults along the Transformational Journey

Stop 1: Unaware of sin……........…1%

Stop 2: Indifferent to sin…............16%

Stop 3: Worried about sin...............39%

Stop 4: Forgiven for sin…................9%

Stop 5: Forgiven and active……….24%

Stop 6: Holy discontent……............6%

Stop 7: Broken by God…….............3%

Stop 8: Surrender and submission…..1%

Stop 9: Profound love of God……     0.5%

Stop 10: Profound love of people..0.5%  

Now some of you may be thinking to yourself, this sounds familiar. Well we have been through this series a couple of years ago. We went through the all of the stops. During lent we felt drawn in this season of your church to press in once more on this second half of the journey.

I want you to see why these numbers are so significant. Today we talk about Holy discontent. This feeling of there has to be something more than what I am experiencing. For most of us there is a season where church participation and serving in different capacities seem to just be shallow or insufficient.

(and that makes sense because our relationship with God does not have a direct relationship with things we do at church)

Our text

In our passage this morning, Paul is speaking to the believers in Ephesus and he has already established the faith by which they are saved, the instruction for living and the power God gives us to live that way, but then he lays down this deep prayer and petition for them. He calls them deeper and further than they can even imagine.

For us today this is the calling to be discontent. To survey our lives and our walk and consider how we might too pray this prayer for ourselves and for our community, is what this is all about.

And friends, this prayer is asking for a lot. It requires us to lay down some things, to sacrifice, to deny ourselves.

The Message of Ephesians 2. The Substance of His Prayer (Verses 16b–19)

I like to think of the apostle’s petition as a staircase by which he climbs higher and higher in his aspiration for his readers. His prayer-staircase has four steps, whose key words are ‘strength’, ‘love’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘fullness’. More precisely, he prays first that they may be strengthened by the indwelling of Christ through his Spirit; secondly that they may be rooted and grounded in love; thirdly that they may know Christ’s love in all its dimensions, although it is beyond knowledge; and fourthly that they may be filled right up to the very fullness of God.

Strength in the Spirit

And the first step/petition in this prayer is; that you may be strengthened by the Spirit:

Ephesians 3:16–17 NIV

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love,

Ephesians 3:

Christian, the invitation is to not just be active in church and do stuff, it is to allow the Spirit of Christ to live in you so that you might know His strength!

Paul says when we have strength it is evident that Christ dwells in our hearts.

And get this, the reverse is true as well… in order to know the strength of the Spirit of God then we must give Christ His right place in our hearts.

What does that mean? What does it mean to have Christ dwell in our hearts? That is somewhat mystical isnt it? Well Pauls chooses a specific greek word here:

‘The word selected (katoikein) … is a word made expressly to denote residence as against lodging, the abode of a master within his own home as against the turning aside for a night of the wayfarer who will be gone tomorrow.’ Again, it is ‘the residence always in the heart of its Master and Lord, who where he dwells must rule; who enters not to cheer and soothe alone but before all things else to reign’. Thus Paul prays to the Father that Christ by his Spirit will be allowed to settle down in their hearts, and from his throne there both control and strengthen them.

 Stott, J. R. W. (1979). God’s new society: the message of Ephesians (pp. 135–136). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Illustration?

Illustration?

Rooted and grounded in love:

verse 17: and I pray that you, being rooted and established in love.

The second petition is that they would not just be church goers but that they would be “rooted and grounded in love.” The language here is botanical and architectural. The NEB puts it this way, that you might have “deep roots and firm foundations” so that you might be well rooted trees that can grow and flourish and a well-built house.

This prayer from Paul: that love would be your source of life and what is the fundamental building block to which everything else comes.

I hope you see how communal this petition is. This is about relationship and loving one another.

Jenny Anderson wrote a fascinating story about what she learned in losing her brother to cancer. She a former writer for the NY times discovered that perhaps life is more about loving relationships than anything else. She reflected about the day of the funeral:

Jenny Anderson wrote a fascinating story about what she learned in losing her brother to cancer. She a former writer for the NY times discovered that perhaps life is more about loving relationships than anything else. She reflected about the day of the funeral:

In seeing his community, I became acutely aware of the feeling that I did not have my own. I had friends and a loving family. But as Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” And I spent my days focused on optimizing myself: Endlessly working and improving, on a permanent quest to do as much as possible in the unforgiving confines of 24 hours. It was the only way I knew how to be. Compete. Excel. Win.

Before Robbie got sick, if you had asked me if community mattered, I would have said yes. But I wouldn’t have thought about it much. Nor would I have spent much time working out what it meant.

But after many nights in emergency rooms and too-long stays in hospitals, of watching my nieces slowly lose their father, I got a glimpse of what community looks like. It was the people who turned up before they were asked, to do things they didn’t have time to do. Neighbors who collected kids from school and came to hospitals to sit. Friends who stayed. Groups of people who materialized to make lunch for four kids for months because their parents couldn’t.

This was community. And what I would come to learn, slowly, is that community is about a series of small choices and everyday actions: how to spend a Saturday, what to do when a neighbor falls ill, how to make time when there is none. Knowing others and being known; investing in somewhere instead of trying to be everywhere. Communities are built, like Legos, one brick at a time. There’s no hack.

Rooted and Established in love

Knowing Christ’s love:

The third petition here is about the source of love. Knowing the depths of Christ’s love for all of us. I love the expansive language Paul uses:

Ephesians 3:18 NIV

may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,

Ephesians 3:

The Message of Ephesians c. Knowing Christ’s Love

Ancient commentators went further. They saw these dimensions illustrated on the cross. For its upright pole reached down into the earth and pointed up to heaven, while its crossbar carried the arms of Jesus, stretched out as if to invite and welcome the whole world.

There is no greater place to grasp the weight of God’s love than the cross of Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact....

Coming to the cross of Christ. Notes of the ancient commentators that even compared the height, depth, width, length of the cross of Christ. I remember a child asking me one time why there were so many different crosses in a VBS lesson. Some rugged and some smooth, some violent, and some plain, some graphic and some decorative.

The Message of Ephesians c. Knowing Christ’s Love

Ancient commentators went further. They saw these dimensions illustrated on the cross. For its upright pole reached down into the earth and pointed up to heaven, while its crossbar carried the arms of Jesus, stretched out as if to invite and welcome the whole world.

That is probably unneccessary to force

Coming to the cross of Christ. I remember a child asking me one time why there were so many different crosses in a VBS lesson. Some rugged and some smooth, some violent, and some plain, some graphic and some decorative.

VBS example:

I remember a child asking me one time why there were so many different crosses in a VBS lesson. Some rugged and some smooth, some violent, and some plain, some graphic and some decorative.

I told this perceptive young lady, well what Jesus did for the cross is such a big thing for us that sometimes we experience it in different ways.

Friends, this prayer is that you would fall in love with God. In my best days of marriage they are the ones when love for my wife and son consume me and I desire nothing else but to know the height and depth and breadth of who they are. Sometimes our own discontent is created by an inability to fall in love with God.

“The great obstacle to spiritual progress is a lack of the will to love in response to the love of God.” - Teresa of Avila

Filled up to God’s fullness:

The final petition is that we would be filled.

Ephesians 3:19 NIV

and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Ephesians 3:

ok this one is fascinating. This is not just meaning that we are these vessels and that God fills us with love or even God’s Spirit though it involves that.

The greek preposition denotes that probably the best translation for this is that we would be filled unto the measure of all the fullness of God. Meaning, the fullness of God should be that which fills us. This is getting at perfection and holiness.

John Stott puts it this way:

Another way of expressing the prospect is that we shall become like Christ, which is God’s purpose and promise, for Christ is himself the fullness of God. 

 Stott, J. R. W. (1979). God’s new society: the message of Ephesians (p. 139). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

This is the fullness of God himself. That the characteristics of God: love, unity, justice, righteousness, would fill us.

Conclusion

Are you in a season of discontent? Wondering if there should be more? Hold on and lean in. For many on the transformational journey, this becomes as far as they get in the journey. Stricken by discomfort and driven back.

Now, two things from our text that I want to close with.

This is audacious as is the steps before climbing to this prayer petition. This can leave us light headed like we have climbed to far, too high, this is too much, or not possible.

he is kneeling

The closing of his prayer, is to the one who can do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us....