Praise the Lord for this new day. I trust you
all had a blessed weekend of rest, renewal, worship and witness and fellowship.
The Lord blessed us with a very full weekend. The Saturday evening of worship,
witness, food, and fellowship at the First United Methodist Church was a blast.
The Lord of the Church visited us and blessed us with His very presence and
grace. It was a great blessing to be in worship with His people in His House
yesterday. I preached from Ephesians 3.
The Lord of the Church, wants us more than just
merely saved. Paul’s prayer was that Christ would dwell in our hearts. Dwell
literally means, “to settle down and feel at home.” Jesus wants to be more than
just a guest in our lives; He is the owner, or ruler. Christ wants our home to
become His home.
Robert Munger wrote a fascinating booklet entitled “My Heart Christ’s Home,” in which he pictured the Christian life as a house. Jesus comes into the house and goes from room to room. He goes into the library of the mind and begins to clean up the trash found there. He replaces it with His Word. He enters the dining room of the appetite and finds many sinful desires listed on a worldly menu. He replaces things like materialism, pride, envy and lust with humility, love and purity. When he finally comes to the closet, the owner of the house hesitates to open the door to all his dark and secret sins. He can’t bear to have Jesus look inside. But Jesus does come inside, only after He’s invited, and cleans it up. Jesus then settles down and feels at home.
In Ephesians 3, Paul contemplated and pondered on the thrill of experiencing God’s power, plumbing the depths of God’s love, trying to grasp all that He has for us, and striving to be filled with the fullness of the Lord Himself. Paul burst forth into a glorious doxology of praise towards the end of the chapter. In this beautiful benediction, Paul used every word possible to convey the vastness of God’s power that is available to us today.
In verse 20 we read that God is able... He is able. There is nothing that God cannot do. He is able to do. God is not idle or asleep, but active in our lives.
He is able to do immeasurably more. His expectations are higher than our requests. He is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask. He listens to our prayers. He is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. God reads our thoughts. He is able to do this according to His power that is at work within us. God does all this through the power that is already in us.
The phrase translated “immeasurably more” is the same word for the abundant grace of God in Romans 5:20: “…But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.” It literally means, “Superabundantly, with more added to that.” Verse 21 shows us that the glory of God is displayed in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Paul saw the church as the means by which much glory can be given to God. In other words, as we utilize the power given to us, God receives the glory.
Robert Munger wrote a fascinating booklet entitled “My Heart Christ’s Home,” in which he pictured the Christian life as a house. Jesus comes into the house and goes from room to room. He goes into the library of the mind and begins to clean up the trash found there. He replaces it with His Word. He enters the dining room of the appetite and finds many sinful desires listed on a worldly menu. He replaces things like materialism, pride, envy and lust with humility, love and purity. When he finally comes to the closet, the owner of the house hesitates to open the door to all his dark and secret sins. He can’t bear to have Jesus look inside. But Jesus does come inside, only after He’s invited, and cleans it up. Jesus then settles down and feels at home.
In Ephesians 3, Paul contemplated and pondered on the thrill of experiencing God’s power, plumbing the depths of God’s love, trying to grasp all that He has for us, and striving to be filled with the fullness of the Lord Himself. Paul burst forth into a glorious doxology of praise towards the end of the chapter. In this beautiful benediction, Paul used every word possible to convey the vastness of God’s power that is available to us today.
In verse 20 we read that God is able... He is able. There is nothing that God cannot do. He is able to do. God is not idle or asleep, but active in our lives.
He is able to do immeasurably more. His expectations are higher than our requests. He is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask. He listens to our prayers. He is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. God reads our thoughts. He is able to do this according to His power that is at work within us. God does all this through the power that is already in us.
The phrase translated “immeasurably more” is the same word for the abundant grace of God in Romans 5:20: “…But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.” It literally means, “Superabundantly, with more added to that.” Verse 21 shows us that the glory of God is displayed in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Paul saw the church as the means by which much glory can be given to God. In other words, as we utilize the power given to us, God receives the glory.
May He Praised.
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