More Than You Can Imagine Ephesians 3:14-21 A Sermon Preached by Ernie Thompson Westminster Presbyterian Church Greensboro NC May 6, 2017 14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. 16 I pray, that according to the riches of his glory, God may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, 17 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. 18 I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20 Now to God, who by the power at work within us, is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21 to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen. Not long after I graduated from seminary, when I was serving my first church in Virginia, I attended a Presbyterian Pilgrimage retreat. Pilgrimage, which goes by different names in different areas, is a short course on Christianity. It contains a series of talks, mostly by lay people, about what it means to be a follower of Christ. There is also time for worship and prayer and quiet reflection. Attending a Pilgrimage retreat often has a powerful impact on people they seem to understand the Christian gospel in a deeper way.
2 In Wilmington our church was involved in the Kairos Prison Ministry which is a version of the pilgrimage designed for prisoners. A retired pastor who worked with us said that in all his forty years of ministry he d never seen the Holy Spirit at work so powerfully as he did at these weekend retreats that took place in the state prison. The men in the prison who participated in the retreat were changed and that change rippled out through the whole prison. I think one reason these retreats are so powerful is that you don t just hear about God s grace but you also experience God s grace. They don t just talk about God s grace but they act out God s grace, in all sorts of ways. But maybe even more important, Pilgrimage works because the weekend is immersed in prayer. People are praying for you before the weekend and during the weekend. For each of the short talks, there are always two people in the prayer room praying for the speaker and for those who are listening. I ve always thought that would be a powerful thing to do in the church too for our worship, to have two people in a prayer room praying for me while I preach and praying for you while you listen. In our Scripture lesson this morning, Paul prays for the Christians in Ephesus. Paul knows that he can do all the preaching and teaching he wants, but it won t have an impact unless he s also praying with and for the people. And so at this turning point in the letter, after he has explained the gospel and before he exhorts them to lead a life worthy of that gospel, Paul begins to pray. Paul is praying for the Ephesians, but he s also a prayer for the church as a whole. We here at Westminster are a very active church. If you were at the Mission Celebration last night you got just a small glimpse of how much we do here in our community and in our nation and in our world. But Westminster is also a praying church. We pray with each other and for each other. And we pray for the mission and ministry of the church. And so I want to think this morning about Paul s prayer for us and about how his prayer might shape our prayers and shape our lives. 1. Paul says, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.
3 Jesus taught his followers to call God Father. This is not about God s gender but about God s nature. It s a reminder that God knows us by name, that God cares for our needs, that God claims us as his children. Paul is not praying to an anonymous power, but to the God who knows us and loves us and claims us and his own. Paul also prays to the God from whom every family in heaven and on earth take their name. There is a play on words here between the Greek word for father and the Greek word for family which come from the same root and also sound alike. But that word for family can also mean a tribe or a nation. So Paul is not just praying to his own personal God, but to the God from whom every family and tribe and nation take their name. Joe Harvard writes, This is no tribal deity, not just the god of our ancestors. This God is not just committed to the flourishing of a particular culture, country or family. This God is the God of all the families of the earth, the God of all things. Praying to the Father, from whom every family, tribe and nation takes its name, changes our prayers it broadens our prayers, it deepens our prayers. 2. Paul says, I pray that God may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I m trying to start every morning by doing a seven minute workout with an app on my phone. You do three upper body exercises and three lower body exercise and three exercises to strengthen your core. I know it s not much, and I d rather be out riding my bike, but I keep hearing about how important it is to do at least some strength training. Paul prays that we might be strengthened of our inner being. He s not talking about our core but about our soul that deepest part of us. Paul prays that the part of us that connects with God might be strengthened by God s Spirit.
4 Paul prays that Christ may come to dwell in our hearts by faith. Some of your know that we moved into our new house this week. So we re very clear that there is a big difference between showing up somewhere for a visit, and moving into a place where you will dwell moving into a place that you will make your home. Paul prays that Christ will not just come for a visit, but that Christ may come and dwell in our hearts by faith. Faith here does not mean believing things about God. Faith means trusting God. Faith means trusting Christ s promise, I will be with you always, even to the end of the age, even when we can t see Christ, even when we can t feel Chris s presence, trusting that Christ still comes and dwell in our hearts. And as we are strengthened in our inner being, and as Christ dwells in our hearts, then we become rooted and grounded in love. Love becomes the lens through which we see the world and love becomes the foundation of all our actions. 3. That what Paul as God to do, but Paul also has a prayer for us. Paul says, I pray that you may have the power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. When I was in college and wrestling with my faith, I read a book called Your God is Too Small by J.B. Phillips that was very helpful. Phillips served as a campus minister, and he says that students would often come to him and say that they did not believe in God. He always responded by saying, That s fine. Tell me about that god you don t believe in. And after listening he would usually say, I don t believe in that god either, but let me tell you about the God I do believe in. Phillips says that sometimes our conception of God is too small, that we need to discover the bigger God who is revealed through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Paul prays that we might comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth [of God], and that we may know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge. 5 That may sound like a contradiction. How can we know something that surpasses knowledge? I think Paul is reminding us here that there are different ways of knowing. There is head knowledge, theoretical knowledge, and there is heart knowledge, experiential knowledge. It s one thing to know all sorts of facts about rollercoasters. It s something different to know what it is like to actually ride the rollercoaster. Knowing information about love is different than experiencing love. Paul wants us to know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge. And then Paul makes his boldest prayer of all, that we may be will be filled with all the fullness of God. In his letter to the Colossians, verse Paul says about Christ, In him, [in Christ,] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile all things to himself Paul prays that the same thing will happen to us that as the Spirit strengthens us, and as Christ dwells in hearts, and as we experience the love that surpasses all knowledge, that we too will be filled with all the fullness of God. And then, we too can be a part of God s great work on reconciling all things to himself. There is a scene in the movie The Shack where Mack is talking with Sarayu, who represents the Holy Spirit. Sarayu is trying to explain the Christian life is not about following rules but about a transforming relationship God. She says to him, Mack, the Bible doesn t teach you to follow rules. The Bible is a picture of Jesus. The words may tell you what God is like, and even what God may want from you, but you cannot do any of it on your own. You didn t think you could live the righteousness of God on your own, did you? Mack says, I guess I did. And sometimes we do too. But Paul knows that we cannot do this on our own. And so Paul closes his prayer with a benediction, Now to God who is able, by the power at work within us, to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can
ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and in Jesus Christ, to all generations, forever and ever Amen. 6 We cannot do it on our own, but God is able, by the power at work within us, to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine. And so we can join Paul in his prayer: That we may be strengthened in our inner being through God s Spirit; That Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith; That we may know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge; And that we may be filled with all the fullness of God and that may be a part of God s great work of reconciliation. Lord in your mercy, hear our prayers.