God Is Able

Ephesians 3:14–20 (NKJV)

14 For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

15 from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,

16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man,

17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,

18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—

19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

20 Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us,

Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament based on Semantic Domains 76.10 κραταιόομαι

to become strong psychologically—‘to become strong, to become powerful.’

comprehend - To lay hold of.

Sermon outline

God Is Able to Lift Us Out of our Toughest Moments

The way God lifts us up in our times of grief is by pouring into us His Spirit which we have abundantly.

Ephesians 3:16 KJV 1900

16 That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;

Notice that the strengthening God provides is for the inner man, not the external.

Why is that of more valuable for each of us? Why the inner person?

Sometimes we seek healing externally. We dont like to feel pressure and its hard to cope with external things coming at us.

Share about my childhood and being picked on.

So much of that past hurt had really changed me as a person. It caused me to become bitter and angry.

I felt violated because I accumalted my worth by what people thought of me. The problem is people don’t always think and say nice things about us.

How do you deal with that kind of suffereing?

James 1:2–3 KJV 1900

2 My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; 3 Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.

You can try to hide. But life will teach you that no matter how good your are at hiding people still get to you.

You can try to retaliate, but all you do is push people away from you hurting them and yourself.

You can try to be nice to people even when they are mean, but this doesn’t stop the hurt.

No matter what happens we cannot hide form people.

God knows this.

This is why He gave us Jesus.

When we are in Christ, even though people hurt us, He gives us strength of character to be gracious and merciful even when people do no deserve it.

When we are in Christ, even though people reject us, He gives us strength of character to rest not on people’s opinions of us, but rather rest in the worth God loves us with.

We can be ourselves, even though we are a working progress. But we must not rely only on being ourselves. We have to allow God room to work and change us.

But let me be an encouragement… dont let your worth be defined by people. If you do that you enable them to have power over you.

The power you need is from God, and when you understand your worth to Him, the sky is the limit in what he will do over your life.

Be Strengthened!