God's Power at Work

Introduction

This morning, we are going to be finishing up the third chapter of Ephesians by looking at how God’s power works within us. We’ll try to tie up some of the loose ends from the past few weeks before we move onto the next section of Ephesians. Let’s turn to chapter 3:20-21

Ephesians 3:20–21 ESV

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

If you remember from last week, we ended on the highest peak of the Christian faith which is to know the love of Christ that surpasses understanding, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. We can often look at something like that in the Scriptures and walk away from it unmoved and unchanged but in these verses that we read today, we are able to see the proper response to something as majestic as the love of Christ and this incredibly gracious offer to have the fullness of God dwell within us. In summary, the response that we see here from Paul can be simply described as faith leading to worship.

Body

Let’s first talk about faith and why it seems so lacking in our churches.

These verses are what is known as a doxology which is typically a hymn that ascribes praise and glory to God for who He is and all that He has done. A true contemplation of God’s love and His eternal purpose must lead to worship based on faith before it can bring transformation to our lives. (This middle point is what seems to be lacking in our current spirituality.) Now I do think we need to be honest with ourselves and evaluate the level of faith that we currently possess because that will reveal the measure of how much of God’s Spirit occupies our lives.

And this is not to make you feel guilty but if you have built your life on the timelss truths found in the first three chapters of this letter and the rest of the Bible, you have to be drawn to this conclusion that God is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or think. It’s one thing to read this, maybe sing it as part of a song, but do you actually beleive in faith that God can do immeasurably more and far exceed anything that you can ask of Him or dare to imagine.

For many in this generation, we have lost trust in God and in the church and so we are unable to experience this level of faith. Some of this is due to the scandals and accusations of abuse that we hear about and that is certainly understandable. If you have been personally impacted by abusive leadership or some kind of church scandal, I just want to encourage you to reach out for some help, whether it’s the pastoral staff here at Radiance or a good Christian counselor. Trauma from a bad church experience can have a devastating impact on your spiritual and emotional health. Healing is something that is required in those situations.

However, I don’t think the existence of some bad leaders in the church is the sole reason for the decline of faith. This is happening across churches even those with good solid leadership and one of the main contributing factors is the deconstruction of the Christian faith that is happening right before our eyes and sadly I think even well-intentioned pastors add to this deconstruction without even realizing it.

In trying to win over the souls of believers and non-believers alike, we mainly target the intellect and get them to accept Christianity on the grounds that it is reasonable. Which is all good and necessary except when we get to parts of Christianity that go beyond reason like this particular passage. Holding onto Christianity because it’s resonable and the best option doesn’t really grow the type of robust faith that we see Paul proclaiming here. Sadly, we may even think that this degree of faith is just not relevant for our everyday modern lives and only reserved for those wierd type of Christians. In some regards, we have taken all the excitement, all the joy, and all the reasons to worship out of Chrisianity. It is mundane, ritualistic, and lacking not becasue there is anything inherently wrong with orthodox Christianity but becasue of the way we choose to practice our version of it. We can’t simply lay all the blame on the church, some of this responsiblity is on us as individual believers.

Having said that, not all deconstruction is bad, in fact it is a necessary part of growing up into adulthood. I recently heard a podcast from John Mark Comer, who is a pastor in Portland, who does a good job of laying out the process of construction and deconstruction that happens as people naturally mature in life. Up until our young adult years, we all construct a worldview based on what our parents, teachers, and church taught us. This construct tends to be quite black and white and unaware of it’s own blindspots. Then we go off to college, find work in a place like San Francisco, meet people with different views on life, and suddenly we find our worldview being challenged. That is what leads to deconstruction. Christian parents who are deathly afraid of this will send their children off to private Christian schools or homeschool them but they are only delaying the inevitable.

Eventually, everyone should deconstruct the worldviews that they have held without thinking about them but the way Christians do this should be very different than how the secular world does it. When you look at the New Testament, Jesus did challenge the prevailing religious views ot the time but the way He did it and the way we are choosing to do it seems very different. This is my version of what Joh Mark Comer said in his own very nice pc millenial way but this the bottom line:

1. Jesus deconstructed the religion of his time by using the Bible to challenge how the world has penetrated the church.

2. We deconstruct the religion of our time by using the World to challenge how the Bible has penetrated the church.

It’s very subtle how Christians challenge the Bible and its importance to the church. We’ll think things like, “No one really knows what the Bible is saying, there are so many different interpretations out there.” While this may be true, this is not something new to Christianity, you have to be able to discern what is a credible interpretation in line with the doctrines of the historic faith and what is a fabrication of the human mind. This is been going on for 2000 years and the reason why we have the Gnostic Gospels and hundreds of heresies throughout the course of history. There is nothing new under the sun.

And in the end, we have to realize that being in a state of perpetual deconstruction is not the end goal. At some point, you have to choose to recontruct in the place of what you have torn down. And we can either allow the world to dictate how we reconstruct something as important as our faith or we can rely on the Bible, other believers in the church, and the Holy Spirit to help rebuild our faith. This is the only path that will lead to being filled with the fullness of God so that His power begins to work in us.

I know that whenever we hear something like be filled with the fullness of God, it can sound very mystical and there is certainly a supernatural element to being filled with the Holy Spirit but there is also some very practical measures of what it means to have God’s power at work in us. Through His Spirit, God’s must begin to occupy the way we think, the way we feel, and the way we act. In other word, his presence must fill our:

1. Minds

2. Emotions

3. Will

First of all we are called to have the mind of Christ and there is a spiritual battle for your mind. Once you remove the truth and authority of the Scriptures, you remove the foundation that is required for faith to grow. Ultimately, faith grows as we come to know God more and to know God more, you are dependent on the revelation of the Scriptures.

2 Corinthians 10:4–5 ESV

For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,

Unfortunately, we can unknowingly deconstruct the Christian faith without realizing that what we really need to do is destroy is the arguments and lofty opinions raised against the knowledge of God and to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. (Surveys show that the average Christian about 20 hours of social media per week of which only about an hour is used to view Christian content.) If that is the case, what material is really shaping your thoughts?

Second, there is the matter of your emotions. Do the inclinations of your emotional state lean towards love, joy, and hope or are you filled with fear, anxiety, and anger? This is a simple measure of what is really occupying your heart.

Galatians 5:22–23 ESV

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

Third, what is the bulk of your will power being spent on. Is most of your will spent trying to accomplish your own dreams of success and to control the variables of your life to meet those goals or is it important for you to accomplish the work of God as Jesus tells us in the Gospel of John:

John 4:34 ESV

Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.

If these three areas of your life (mind, emotions, and will) are occupied more and more with the presence of God, the type of faith that we see being described by the apostle Paul begins to emerge in us. If you look at some of the most important figures in the Bible, a small measure of faith appropriately applied to their lives led to results that exceeded anything that they could have ever imagined.

Let’s look at jsut one example, the story of Abraham as it is summarized in the book of Hebrews:

Hebrews 11:8 ESV

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.

The first step to applying faith is a simple act of obedience. Abraham began his relationship with God by leaving his home, leaving his comfortable life, and allowing God to lead him step by step into a new place. A life of faith begins with these simple acts of obedience based on the leading of God’s Spirit. But the question that I have heard many times is “How do I know if it is God leading me somewhere or if it is simply my own desires?” Many people come to a place like San Francisco chasing their dreams and it’s easy to think that God opened the doors of opportunity, God led me here, and that I’m doing God’s will. And it’s easy to confuse faith with wishful thinking but there is a way to discern the difference between the two. If you look at Abraham’s motives, you can clearly see a person whose motives are driven by faith:

Hebrews 11:10 ESV

For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.

Abraham didn’t neccessarily know where he was going but he knew exactly what he was looking for. He didn’t want to leave the life built by his own hands simply to go somewhere else and do the same thing. He wanted to go to a place and be a part of something that God was building. And I wonder how many of us have this orientation in our lives? I want to be a part of something that God is doing, where he is the designer and architect. Sadly, we often have this backwards and we’re simply looking for God to help us build our own lives. That is not a life of faith, it’s actually the exact opposite. Abraham was looking for the City of God, which we will all be a part of in the life to come but that Heavenly City has it’s beginnings right here in the church. This is why Jesus says to us, “You are a city on a hill!” But you might be thinking, “This is just all pie in the sky, how does this make any difference in my life right now?”

The answer to this question is crucial to understanding how God does immeasurably more than what we could ask or think. Let’s look at the conclusion to Abraham’s life of faith:

Hebrews 11:12 ESV

Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.

If you remember the story of Abraham, we know that he and Sarah were unable to have children and in a culture where having children was the measure of success, this desire to have at least one son would have been one of the deepest desires of their hearts. Abraham and Sarah were barren well past the point of being able to conceive, they were as good as dead in terms of their chance of having a child but God made the impossible possible. But here is the crazy thing, not only did God promise Abraham a son in his old age but that his descendants would be as many as the stars in heavens and as numberous as the grains of sand by the sea. And we know that the nation of Israel and much of the middle East was born out of this promise.

Even from an earthly perspective, God did more for Abraham than he could have asked or imagined. And what is even more amazing is that God didn’t just stop with the earthly blessings because in Abraham’s lineage, there would be another impossible birth, a son born to a virgin, who would not only give rise to one nation but people from every nation and every tribe would trace their spiritual birth to Him.

We have to realize that God doesn’t negate our desires but He aligns them with His will because our desires are not big enough to match His greater purpose. The sweet spot that we all want to find ourselves in is where our desires intersect with the will of God. And the worst place to be in is where our desires simply don’t align to God’s will. There is a famous quote from CS Lewis that hightlights this point:

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Conclusion

But there is one simple way of getting our desires in line with God’s will and that is found in the Psalms.

Psalm 37:4 ESV

Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Those who delight in the Lord, who love Him, and enjoy Him will naturally have their desires come into alignment with God’s purpose and God will gladly give you more than you could ever ask for. This is why faith that leads to worship is so vital becasue this is how we learn to take delight in the Lord? And by worship, I don’t mean the 25 minutes of singing during Sunday service but your own personal worship of God. Does your heart desire for God to be glorified in the church? Do you long to see Him exalted from generation to generation for all of eternity?