New Expectations

Good morning. One of the questions that I still have that I've never actually worked out is, how does prayer work? Theologically, I still don't understand how prayer works. I wrestled with this quite a bit in college, just being a new Christian at a Christian school. I could not figure out how a God with a perfect will who knows everything is somehow affected or changed by my prayers. How what He's known is going to happen forever is somehow different because I'm praying. This conundrum caused me quite a bit of anxiety, and even worse, Because I couldn't understand prayer, I stopped practicing it. And that led to really a spiritual slide. I thankfully came to realize that while I don't understand how prayer works in the greater work of all things in God and eternity, I came to realize that prayer's most effective power is to change me, not God or my circumstance. The most important thing that prayer does is it helps reorient me and my thoughts, my desires, my hope, my focus. Prayer helps change my value. So as I wrestled with prayer, and I still am looking forward to the day where I'll understand it more, the challenge I had and the challenge I give us is that prayer is a consistent command in Scripture. If you read the Bible every day, it's hard to get through a week without having some command or exhortation or example of prayer. It is throughout Scripture. And I believe that's because it's necessary. Prayer is necessary for us to live as Christians. And it's commanded often because prayer is difficult. Let's just be honest. Prayer is difficult. To avoid the distractions that seem so immediate to us. And to focus in and pursue God and what He desires. As you heard the text read, we're studying a prayer. And I want to go back and kind of back up a moment for the book of Ephesians. We've been walking through this letter from Paul to the churches in Ephesus for a while now. And we're going to take a break for Advent. And we're going to come back in January. But we're at this perfect stopping point because Ephesians breaks up very neatly into two halves. Chapters one to three, those are all the indicatives. Those are the truths of what God has done. That's the doctrine portion. It tells us what God has done. He's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus. We were dead, but God has made us alive. He is now making one new man out of two different kinds of people. Building a church, a holy temple. And then if you look at chapter four, verse one, there's the transition. therefore a prisoner for the Lord urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called." So if we're to think about it, one through three is the calling, four through six is how you walk worthy of it. That's the basic structure. And I remind you of that because here, between all the calling, the grand high weighty calling, And the grand, high, weighty work, there's a prayer. It's going to require a prayer, I believe, to connect that doctrine with our practice. Paul wants to make sure that the love that God has for us is comprehended, that our hearts are full with the power of God, so that all that He's done for us can now be practiced in the way we live. So I see this prayer as an important hinge point. We've stated all the truths. We're now going to pray so that whenever Paul begins commanding us, we're ready. So let's first look at our text. The first thing we see is that Paul prays to God, our Father. For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family on Heaven and on earth his name So the first thing we see here is that Paul is praying to God whom he calls father And before we get into that specific point, let's let's go back and look at verse 14 those first three words For this reason fear that with this last week we had to do this again Checker three verse one for this reason Paul continues to build on an argument Paul is now praying because he has just stated the weighty mission of the church and Look at verse 10 of chapter three. So that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This is according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, but just for your glory. Again, that theme that we've thought about for a few weeks, God blesses us so that we're a blessing. Just as in Deuteronomy 4, God gave Israel the blessing of being his people, he gave them all his commandments, and he said, if you obey, the nations will look and say, how near is your God and how wise are your commandments? And people will come and they will know that I am Yahweh. So too, Jesus calls a church to make disciples. So that when the world comes and they look, they say, wow, how near is your God and how wise are His ways. That's a weighty calling, which leads Paul to prayer. For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father. The first thing I want us to see is that Paul takes a certain posture in prayer. He's bowing his knees. There's a humility here in the prayer. He realizes who he's praying to. It's God Almighty, the creator of the heavens and the earth. He's the Holy One who is worthy of all praise. And Paul declares, I'm going to bow my knees. And every time I read a text like this, it reminds me of the screw tape letters. C.S. Lewis had this brilliant, he was an early Christian, so it's actually quite brilliant, this work. It's two demons corresponding, and the senior demon named Screwtape, writing to Wormwood, one of the advices he gives is, make them think that their posture in prayer doesn't matter. Make the believer think that their posture in prayer doesn't matter. Here Paul is modeling for us how we approach God. There's a posture. There's a desire to lay down before God. There's a humility here. And with that humility, there's also a great confidence. He calls God Father. He's not a distant holy God, he's a near God. This is a unique declaration that we as Christians get to enjoy. We get to know God as Father because He's adopted us in Christ Jesus. We learn that in Ephesians 1. This is a great privilege. Father is not a metaphor used for God. Look at verse 15. From whom every family, patres, in heaven and on earth is named. He is the Father from whom all fathers in heaven and on earth is named. He is the most proper Father. And we have the great privilege of drawing near to Him because He's made Himself known to us as Father. As we think about this, I want us to just contemplate the beauty of the humility and confidence combined in this prayer. He's bowing His knee to His Father. He has complete humility because He knows that it's Almighty God, but He has complete confidence because as we just sung a little while ago, the Father loves us. He has sent His Son to take away our guilt and our shame. He has sent His Son so that we now have perfect and direct access. We just read in chapter 3, in verse 12, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in Him. There's a beautiful confidence we get to have in prayer. What does our prayer life look like? Do we come to God regularly enjoying this invitation? Come and talk to me. Come and help me understand, come and talk to me so that I can hear you and I can speak to you and as we walk through the dilemma of whatever your life is going through, we can counsel. You know, all the psalms are wonderful models of prayer. Where the psalms of despair, they all start out, oh Lord, where are you? Have you left me? Have you abandoned me? And as the psalmist will continue the prayer, oh God, I will exalt you and I will worship you. You are my Redeemer and my Savior. That's the fruit of a humble and confident prayer. We get to pray to God as if children. God, who is our Father, who loves us, He's always got His ear bent towards us. He's longing to hear from us, to speak to us, to engage us. Instead, we treat Him a little bit more like Santa Claus, don't we? Like a child who just has a special request on a special occasion, and so we're gonna ask Him a very special, for a special thing. No, God's always listening. God's always wanting to engage. It's not just once a year where He shows up and gives you something. That's kind of weird. But God is always loving, always listening. If you're not a Christian, to approach God like this, it probably sounds odd to you. I want to affirm to you that God is good. And our main problem as humans is that we have not given him honor or thanks as he deserves. And God, being a righteous God, has a righteous wrath. And His righteous wrath is against all those who disobey Him and reject Him and rebel against Him, but He's also a God of righteous love. So the Father sent His Son to walk among us, to live the life that we refuse to live, to actually give Him honor and give Him thanks, and then to die, not as a sinner, but as if a sinner. Jesus Christ was the perfect righteous one. And yet he died in the place of our sin. God the Son was perfectly loved by the Father. But on that moment when Christ cried out, Father, why have you forsaken me? He felt nothing but the wrath of God. So that we who deserve wrath could now once again know God, but even know him better as the loving Father. If you're a Christian, you can know God. You can know Him who surpasses all knowledge. You can know Him not just as the God who's created, you can know Him as God your Father who you can talk to, who you can delight in, who you can love. But you can only know Him that way if you believe in His Son, Jesus Christ. You can only know Him that way if you see Him through Jesus Christ, as we'll see here in a moment. So Christian, what keeps us from prayer? Prayer is commanded, here it's modeled. This prayer, it demonstrates a humility and a confidence, and I believe what oftentimes keeps us from prayer is a lack of humility and or a lack of confidence. We lack the humility to pray when we think everything's okay. We've got this. When we're apathetic and just say, you know, I know God's love enough, I don't need to pray. I think I love God enough, I don't need to pray. There's a lack of humility that doesn't realize how far we can so easily fall apart from this wonderful relationship and delighting with God. We think everything's okay, and really it points to poor expectations. We're okay with not delighting in the love of God, and that's a lack of humility. Or I think more often oftentimes it's a lack of confidence. We know we're sinners. We know that there's something wrong with us and that we should not be able to go to the presence of God, and so we don't, but that's the beauty of the gospel. Christ died. to wipe away all our guilt. Christ died to stand in the right hand of the Father so that now in Him we can have direct access. It's our pursuit of sin that causes a lack of confidence. And that's why confession of sin is so sweet. That's why confession of sin is something we have to understand and practice. That's why confession of sin is an important part of our worship and our prayer. I ask because I do see this often. Have you ever stopped praying because God presented to you something in your prayer that you didn't want to give up? Think about that. As you're growing in Christ, all of a sudden something comes up and God says, that's not healthy for you, I want you to stop, and you say, I'm not ready to stop. What happened to your prayer life after that? What happened to your walk with Christ after that? It goes into a downward spiral, right? When we pray, God reveals things to us that aren't good for us, and He calls us to repent so that we can know Him better, so that we can know His love better. If you're wrestling with assurance, I would encourage you, can you go back to that moment when you were speaking with God, walking with God, and something came up in your life? And you said, no, I'm not ready to give that up yet. That's when we stop having the confidence to go to Him boldly as Father. So the first thing we see here is that Paul is praying with a confidence and a humility to the Father. And here next we're gonna see three specific requests. He's going to have three requests. And they're in verse 16, 17, and 19, and they're all marked with the word that. Verse 16, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power. At the end of verse 16, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend. And then at the end of verse 19, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. What actually connects all these requests together is they all are connected somehow to strength and power. And even the last point we'll look at, praise to God who is generous. Look at the end of verse 20. According to the power at work within us. We're thinking about power and strength. So first, we're going to look at the prayer for power in our heart. Verse 16. I, Paul, bow my knee before the Father, from whom every family on heaven and earth are named. And I'm bowing my knee. I'm praying 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. Now He's praying for a very specific power. The measure of the power is according to the riches of His glory. The means is through His Spirit who indwells you, and the source, Christ might then dwell in your heart. Let's first focus here, it's the Spirit. This is very much hinged upon the Spirit, that you will be strengthened with power through His Spirit, that is the Father's. And that Spirit who is the Father's, He's going to make it so that Christ dwells in our hearts. As we think about the strength and power, these are repeated throughout. What does power look like for God? At one level, we can think of Mount Sinai, right? That was fearful and trembling. Thunder and lightning, and the people are scared to death, and they run away from the mountain. They can't approach God. That's one way God shows His power. Oftentimes, when we think of power, we think of a great show of strength. You know, a bodybuilder doing a power clean, throwing up a great amount of weight. Or a boxer's uppercut, or just a tank. You know, nothing represents power like a tank. Indestructible, powerful. When we think about the greatest demonstration of God's power, it didn't look very powerful. It's the cross. Think about what the cross looked like. There was a man who was weak and beaten He was nailed to a cross, and he had to keep just barely pulling himself up so he wouldn't suffocate. He looked defeated in every way. But I can assure you, that was the greatest power being, not demonstrated, but being executed the world has ever known. Because whenever he looks defeated, when he is defeated in death, he defeats death. When Christ dies on the cross, He crushes the power of sin and death as He is being crushed by the Father for our sin. So when we think about power, as we think about the strength, it may not be a visible, clear demonstration like a bodybuilder would be. Actually, let's look at the text. What would it look like? Okay, you're gonna be strengthened with power through His Spirit. The Spirit is not seen. He blows where He wills, according to John 3. And He's in your inner being, where you can't see. We're talking about an inner strength through the Spirit. And I want us to be very clear here, this is not a strength that comes from within our gut. It's a strength that comes from outside and is put in our heart. It's not our strength, it's God's strength given to us. So the Spirit is not seen, where this power is placed is not seen, but it causes Christ to dwell in our hearts. This is the one passage that actually talks about Christ dwelling in our hearts. We can go back to Ephesians 1 and Paul talks about how he prays for the Holy Spirit to enlighten the eyes of your heart so that you may know the hope. We've looked at the heart and the importance of it, but here it's different language. That you may be strengthened through the Spirit so Christ may dwell in your heart. What does that mean? I believe here, we're just gonna go back and think about that grand doctrine that's united chapters one through three so far, and that's union with Christ. It is the strength that we have in being united with Christ that makes us beloved, adopted, predestined, chosen, called, forgiven, alive. Now a new holy temple for God. And then when Christ dwells in the heart with strength and power, what that actually is doing, it's us, it's us receiving that. It's us receiving that union that's been given to us and taking hold of it so that it shapes us. You see, here's the truth. If you have believed in Jesus Christ, you are united with him and nothing can change that. If you're a believer in Jesus Christ, He is yours and all the spiritual blessings, the heavenly places are yours in Christ. Nothing can ever remove them. But the sad thing is, is you can actually keep yourselves from enjoying them. Because if you decide that you'd rather enjoy sin than enjoy the blessings of God, you're going to keep yourselves from enjoying God and His many blessings. I believe here Christ dwelling in our hearts is us allowing the work of Christ to shape our identity, our actions, our thoughts. When Christ dwells in your heart, He reorients you. He changes your direction. He changes your love. He changes your hope. He changes your desires. He changes your goals. Our hearts, that's the seed of our thoughts and our desires. Christ is supposed to be the ruler of those. that we grow up in the love of Christ. Think about what happens when you let your heart grow in cruise control. When you stop meditating upon the gospel of Jesus Christ, if you've ever done that, if you've gotten lazy at any point in your disciplines, and you've just let your heart grow in cruise control, where does it go? Does it naturally go after God? When we're not disciplined and letting the Holy Spirit in strength bring Christ to dwell and rule our hearts, we grow anxious. We grow angry. We grow discontent. We grow in love for the things of this world. We don't grow in peace. As I think more of this, I believe this prayer is especially important because one of the most important commands we're gonna hear next in our walk in chapter four. Put off sin, put on Christ. Put off wrath, malice, bitterness, and anger. Put on kindness, tenderhearted forgiveness. That's what it means to let Christ dwell in your hearts. To be able to put off the sin that so easily resides there and let him rule it. It's strength that's demonstrated in our resolve to resist the lies and temptations of the world. It's strength that's demonstrated in our resolve to stand firm in a trial. It's strength that's demonstrated through the fruits of the Spirit. Paul is praising God. He's praying that God would give us strength so that we would be able to obey His commandments. But let's look at the next thing he prays for. So he's praying to the Father that you would be strengthened with the power of God himself inside of you to change your heart. And then he prays for power to know the love of Christ. All right, so let's think about this for a moment. 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 another love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. Now as we're about to engage this, I want you to understand I have the job here of explaining how you're going to know something that surpasses knowledge. Just appreciate that grand paradox before us. But it's a beautiful passage that you may have strength to comprehend. God makes Himself known and God gives us the strength and the ability to know Him. That is the beauty of God. He wants to be known. So He makes Himself known. Not only does He make Himself known, He gives us the strength to know Him. Paul begins by saying that you, being rooted and grounded in love, he's speaking to believers. He's speaking to believers who have committed themselves to Christ and are being rooted and grounded. They're not shaky. They're not unreliable. They're not easily moved. They're the kind of tree that has roots down, that's growing strong, that resists the winds of temptation and trial. You react with faith and wisdom, not impulse. So he's speaking to those being rooted, grounded in love. He's expecting you to already have a knowledge of God's love. What's amazing here, he assumes you know God's love, but he also assumes you have not acknowledged it and attained an adequate grasp of it. So he prays for more. He assumes you know God's love, but he does not assume you've attained an adequate grasp of it. That 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. I believe this is important because what we value shapes what we expect. Right, we need to realize here that Paul is valuing most importantly that we would know God and His love. That is what we should be valuing and pursuing and desiring above all else. Now let's define love, which appears to be fairly great in this passage. There's a breadth, a length, a height and depth. It surpasses all knowledge. It's the love of Christ. So what is love? Well, as some of us hopefully heard yesterday in the wedding, love isn't just a feeling. Love, most importantly, is a promise. It's a volitional choice, it's a commitment. And here we see the love of Christ. Christ has committed himself to come to us to do everything we need, even die on the cross. Let's go back to chapter two, verse four. Because I believe Paul actually gives us some inclination as to what this breadth and height and love is. Chapter four, but God. being rich in mercy because of the great love with which you loved us. God has loved us with a great love. Now, let me just encourage you, church. That should regularly just roll over you. That should wash over you every day. We should be letting that wash over us and encouraging each other in that. It would be very encouraging to me if I knew every day we all woke up and we all spoke to one another Can you believe God loves us? I mean look at us That he's loved us with such a great love And the important thing of this love is it's not deserved Let's keep reading verse 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses You see, we like to love lovely things. We like to love the things that draw our affections. We like to love the things that look and appear lovely and make us happier because we love them. God loves us even when we're dead. That's how we know it's a commitment from God and a choice, like we saw in Deuteronomy 7. I didn't love you because you're big or strong or mighty or many. I loved you because I loved you. One of the sweetest passages in the Old Testament. I've loved you because I've loved you. That's the height, the width, the greatness of God's love. It's His own commitment. It's immeasurable. There is no bound for it. There are no boundaries. He chooses to love whom He chooses. It's a powerful love because it gives us new life. We grow in His love when we realize, I need strength to know who He is. I need the strength to comprehend, to know the love of Christ. And it surpasses all knowledge. You're never gonna get old searching and knowing more of God's love. As we continue to look at the application of this. He's going on and on about the greatness of God's love. It's one of these times where Paul just seems to be going somewhat ballistic with a pen. The breadth, the length, the height, the depth. I do wonder, do we talk about the love of God enough? One of the ways that I believe we truly grow in the love of God is to realize how little we deserve it. Do we talk about this with one another? Do we think about this ourselves? Do we say, it's amazing that God would love us? Or do we often find ourselves saying, I don't know if God could love them? See, that's a self-righteousness. That builds a self-righteousness that does not give us any gratitude. However, if we regularly are reminded, even while we were dead in our trespasses, God made us alive because of the great love with which he loved us. We're a church full of grace and gratitude. The third prayer. He prays to the Father that we would have the strength in our inner being that Christ may dwell there. He prays that we would have the strength to comprehend the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge. And then finally he has this last phrase. That you may be filled with all the fullness of God. The fullness of God seems to always be a reference to the power of God, the strength of God, the mighty presence of God himself. And Paul here says he prays that we would be filled with that. Now, whatever fills you is what comes out when you're squeezed, right? If you have a water bottle full of water and you squeeze it, what comes out? Not chocolate syrup. If you have a container and it's full of something, you squeeze it, whatever's in there comes out. Brother and sister, I ask, when you're squeezed, what comes out? Is it something that demonstrates the fullness of God, the love of Christ, that the power of the Holy Spirit is dwelling in you and has filled you? Is it kindness, tenderness, and forgiveness? Or is it bitterness, anger, malice, and slander? Being filled with the fullness of God is necessary here, and that's why Paul's praying for it. It's necessary for us to be filled so that we can put off and put on in the next chapter. That the fullness of God is His power so that we can actually obey His command. In humility and in confidence, Paul is praying that we would not be full of ourselves and our sin, but we'd be full of the love of Christ and the power of God. So we've seen who he prays to, the Father. We've seen three prayers. Now let's look at the last few verses, last couple of verses. We see a praise to the God who is generous. He breaks into a praise. He stops asking and he praises. 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. This is a very encouraging passage. It helps us with our wrong expectations. It's too easy to get the expectation that the way things are, the way they're always going to be. It's too easy to get the expectation that I need anxiety, or I can't fix all these problems. Here we see Paul, he's appealing to the God who gives generously. He's appealing to the God who gives more abundantly than all we can ask or think. Now, let's just pause here and praise God that he gives us more than we ask for. Now, we could go Garth Brooks, you know, God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers, but we could go that way, we're not. But we look here and we say, all right, think about the things you ask for. And think about how much greater the things God has given you. Did we ask God to not spare his son and send him to die on the cross for us? We didn't ask for that. Did we ask for God to raise Him from the dead and do indestructible life and to share that life with us? I doubt any of us have asked for that. Did we ask God to give us the Holy Spirit, the very power of God, to live within us so that we can know Him as Father? I don't think any of us have asked for that. Those are the things God has given us without us even ever imagining how great those things could be. Praise God, He gives us such wonderful gifts. He's a generous God, from whom every good gift comes. He is not without any good thing, not even His Son. This is a wonderful reminder. We get to trust a good God. We get to know a God who is love, a God who lets us call Him Father, a God who is not without anything. He gives us more than we ask for. He gives us even more than we can ever imagine. This is an encouraging passage. This should help us to ask, alright, what should I be asking for? How can I reorient my prayer? How can I know God how to ask? I would encourage you to do this. Pray Paul's prayer. I too often get into a wishlist mentality in prayer. God, here's all the problems in life. I'd like for you to fix them all. No, I think if we all were committed to praying this prayer for ourselves and for one another, think about the richness the body would have, that we would all be growing in the strength having Christ draw in our hearts, that we would all be growing in the strength to comprehend the love of God, that we would all be filled with the fullness of God. I believe when we pray the will of God, He does it. He helps change us. And here, we have the will of God. It's an inspired prayer for us to follow. It's amazing, He's able to do more than we ever ask. In Romans 8, 27, Paul says the Spirit prays for us when we do not know how to pray. He's a generous God who always cares for His people. Look at the end of verse 20. He does so according to the power at work within us. Again, it's not our power. It's His power. And it's very personal. It's within us. He's always at work trying to change us. Transforming us. Giving us a greater knowledge of Himself. Giving us a greater knowledge of His love. Changing our love. God is not distant. He's near. He dwells in our hearts, if we're a believer. God is not latent or passive. He's at work to bring about a good work in us. And then finally verse 21. To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus. I believe these two are connected. That being in Christ and being in the church. That that glory is going to come as these two things are connected. That as the Christ takes on, as the church takes on that, that identity of Jesus Christ. As we, the members of that body, are being built up into that holy temple, the glory of God will be revealed there. To Him be glory in His body, in the head. To whom? Throughout all generations. All different people groups, all times, forever and ever. Amen. This is why we pray. that our hearts would be changed so that we would be a people living for His glory for all generations. As we think about this, I especially want us to be thinking about all generations. What are we handing over to the next generation? So I want to conclude thinking about this particular passage. What are we teaching with the way we value, the way we talk, the way we prioritize? Are we helping that next generation see the grace of God and the glory of God? Well, we should have a desire to see how are we going to fulfill this commandment to pray like this so that we as a church are being built up and so that that next generation would see the glory because that's His desire, that it's not just us, it's how are we handing over this faith to faith to faith? The first thing we need to do is pray. Pray this prayer for ourselves, pray for one another. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank You that You are a good God who gives good gifts beyond our imagination. We thank You that You've given us Your Son to give us new life. We thank You that You've given us Your Spirit so that we can know You as Father crying out to You. We thank You, Lord, for the access we have to call You, Father, with confidence. Help us, Lord, to have the strength To let Christ dwell in our hearts. Putting in His righteousness in place of our sinfulness. Help us, Lord, to grow, to know this great love that we have received. So that we are filled with it and therefore we pour it out to others. Lord, help us to live for your glory. Always being thankful for how generous you are with all the good gifts you've given to us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.