This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to day five of our look through Ephesians chapter 3. We
are going to be looking today at verses 17, the last part of that verse through
verse 21. We began a look yesterday at how to live with a new sense of spiritual
confidence, of God's power in your daily life.

I find myself struggling with this, many people that I talk to who are believers
in Christ struggling with this. How do I live with a sense of God's power in my
daily life? Yesterday we looked at the fact that it begins with prayer, an
attitude of prayer in your life, an attitude of humble intensity.

Today we're going to look at two other places where spiritual power comes from
in our lives, grasping how much God loves you and giving glory back to God. When
you get those three things together, an attitude of prayer, grasping God's deep
love for you, giving glory back to God, that's where true power comes from for
the servant of Christ. Power comes from prayer, we looked at that yesterday.

Power comes from grasping how much God loves me. That's what verses 17 to 19
talk about. Let me read those verses.

"And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power
together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the
love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be
filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. " You see, the more you
understand God's love for you, the more confidently and the more boldly you live
out your faith. Someone's told me recently that these verses about love,
grasping how wide and long and high and deep is God's love, they write these
verses in their every note to newlyweds because they want them to realize that
it's not human love.

As great as that might be that's going to give us the power to live, it's God's
love. Never get that backwards. Never try to draw upon human love to help you to
love God more.

Always draw upon God's love to help you to love the people in your life more.
And Paul says, "I want you to grasp it. " The question is, how do I do that?

How do I grasp the love of God? It is so big. How do I get my arms around it?

It is so huge. It's like standing next to a weightlifter who's holding 500
pounds and he says, "Here, hold this for me. I'll be right back.

" I mean, how am I going to do that? How do I get a grip on God's love for my
life? Well, here's where it starts.

In verse 17, here's where it starts. Paul says, "I pray that you, being rooted
and established in love. " It starts by realizing you're already rooted and
established in love.

You're not trying to get God to love you. In Christ, God has loved you. And if
you've opened your heart to His love and accepted His love for you, you're
rooted, you're established in His love.

Rooted and grounded. Those are two words that have to do with plants, rooted,
and established or grounded buildings. Whatever it means, you can't pull them
up.

You see, when we talk about grasping God's love, it's not a matter of getting
God to love you more. It's just a matter of recognizing the love that's already
there. It's not a matter of getting God to love you more.

It is just a matter of recognizing the love that's already there. How do I grasp
His love? I realize I'm already rooted and grounded in it because of Christ, but
I also realize I grasp it together.

Jesus Paul says that you may have power to grasp it together with all the
saints. This is crucial. You cannot grasp God's love for you alone.

I know people who say, "I'll just love Jesus and I'll forget about the people in
the church because they're not perfect and Jesus is. " And honestly, I feel
sorry for those people because they will never see the complete picture of God's
love. It's like all of us have just one little puzzle piece when it comes to
what God's doing and picturing God's love.

And it's only when we get together and put it together, grasp it together, that
we see the whole picture, that we see the beauty of what God is doing. You want
to grasp God's love? You realize I'm rooted in it, I grasp it with other people.

And Paul says then you can start to measure it. How wide and long and high and
deep. Four dimensional love.

Love that goes in all dimensions. He wants us to grasp it personally. That's
what these words are all about.

He's talking about love that's not just appreciated, but that is in one sense
apprehended in our lives. It comes into the depth of who we are in four
dimensions. Look at the breadth of the universe.

Look at the endless horizon. Look at the skies above. Look at the depth of the
ocean.

None of them come close to the greatness of God's love. Look at the forearms of
the cross, pointing up, pointing down, pointing outward. The dimensions of God's
love.

Paul writes and says I want you to grasp it. I want you to get it. I want you to
make it real, to give it substance, to measure it out.

You'll never fully express his love. You'll never fully grasp it. But Paul is
saying here, try.

He says it's a love that surpasses knowledge. Now left brain people hate this.
But there are some things that you can know without completely understanding
them logically.

Because they're bigger than your capacity to understand. Do not limit God's love
to your intellectual understanding, because you're going to sell God's love
short. It is greater than you can understand.

Paul says when you begin to do these things, the result is you are filled to the
measure of the fullness of God. That is power. Now man filled with God, how does
that work?

That's like putting a jet engine in a Hyundai. It would blow us apart. I mean,
there's a whole idea of God filling us with his power.

A lot of people file this in their minds under Paul, requests of, unrealistic.
This will never happen for me, maybe for Paul, but never for me. He's writing to
all of us here.

He's writing to all of us. And that is exactly what God does in our lives
through his Spirit. You may not feel it, you may not see it, but it is true.

God's Spirit is God. And God's Spirit comes into us the moment we become a
believer in Christ. And that means you are filled with all that God is, the
measure of the fullness of God.

That's God's gift to you. That's how much God loves you. You want to live with a
confident faith, you realize how deeply God loves you.

You want to live with a confident faith, you do one final thing. Power. Power
comes from prayer.

It comes from God's love. Power also comes from giving glory to God. The most
significant servants, the people who live with what others would say at the end
of their lives was the most powerful kind of faith.

They are the people who live lives to give glory to God. Paul says it this way
in Ephesians 3, 20 and 21. "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than
all we ask or imagine according to his power that's at work within us, to him be
glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and
ever, Amen.

" Now to him who is able be the glory. God is able, I am available. Don't get
those turned around.

It's not like God's available to me to make me able to do what I want. No, God
is the one who's able and he wants me to make myself available to him. In these
verses, as Paul talks about more than we can ask or imagine, these are not
verses about us achieving our selfish dreams.

These are verses about God doing his incredible will through us. The glory in
these verses is not, get this, this is important, it's not in the immeasurably
more that we can do. The glory is to him who is able.

You see, as we read these verses, there is glory in some things, but there is
glory to only one person. Notice, there is glory in me. God's glory is in me
through his Spirit, according to this power that's at work within us.

And in verse 21 he says, "To him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus.
" There is glory in the church. There is glory in Jesus Christ.

There's glory throughout all generations. There's glory in, there's glory
throughout, but there's only one to whom there is glory. Glory to God.

To him be the glory. God is doing great things, but don't miss this. To him be
the glory.

Don't make that just lip service. To him be the glory. To God be the glory.

Because that is what's going to happen. Whether we get on track with that or
not, whether you get on track with that or not, that is what's going to happen
in the end. To God be the glory.

And if I want to live with a confident faith, that's how I live my life today. A
life that's focused on how can I glorify God through what I do today. And when I
live that way, then God is doing more than I could ask or imagine.

Then I'm living in genuine power. More than you could ask or even think to ask.
And that's according to his power, not our power.

But look at where this awesome, this more than power is deposited. It is at work
within us. Now that translates not into fame for us, it translates into genuine
greatness.

The greatness of living a life for God's glory. So when you feel your spiritual
confidence waning, what do you do? Well, you do what we've talked about the last
couple of days.

You talk to God. You don't try to regain your confidence by listening to people
or speaking to people. It never works.

It's like a drug that you need more and more of to keep you satisfied. That's
not where you build yourself up. You talk to God.

And you look to God's internal power, not your external circumstances. And you
do everything that you can to deepen your understanding of God's love for you.
His never failing love.

And you give glory to God. As we pray today, I'd like to do those very things.
Lord, we begin by talking to you.

And we pray that our opinion of ourselves will not be based on others opinion of
us. But instead, it would be based on what you say about us, what you say about
me today. And you see me as a you see me as a love child.

And you're my father. And I focus on that. God, today, instead of looking at my
external circumstances, I want to look to your internal power.

I need you to teach me how to do that, teach me day to day how to do that. And I
want to begin by understanding how deeply you love me. So instead of holding
your love at arm's length, I pray that I invited in.

And even though I can't completely understand it, I pray that I would try to
completely grasp it. And God, in all of it, I want to give glory to you. I want
to let the world see a little of what you are like through my life.

God, would you do that? I pray for that. In Jesus name, amen.

Well, be sure to join us next week. We're going to launch into a look at
Ephesians, chapter four. It seems like every chapter of Ephesians, I say it's my
favorite chapter in Ephesians.

But this really is one of my favorite chapters of Ephesians. We'll see you next
week for Ephesians chapter four.