Powerful Prayers: The One Who Is Able (Ephesians 3:20-21)

Posted on March 18, 2020 by salooper57

(Note: For a few weeks , I will post the manuscript that goes with the audio (posted Tuesdays) from a sermon in the Powerful Prayers series. People have requested the sermon manuscripts many time, but I’ve always been reluctant to make it available for two principal reasons: 1) I never simply read a sermon, so what people read is not exactly what I spoke. The manuscript might be better or it may be worse but it will be different. And (2) because the sermon has not been edited for publication. With those caveats, here is The Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation III (His Incomparably Great Power for Us Who Believe)

The One Who Is Able

(Ephesians 3:20-21) Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. 

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We began the “Powerful Prayer” series eight weeks ago. Each week, we have looked closely into one or the other of the Apostle Paul’s great prayers for the church. What we have seen has been extraordinary. We have had a master of prayer – St. Paul himself – show us why he prayed and what he prayed. Yet our in-depth study of these remarkable prayers will make no difference if it doesn’t inspire us to pray.

If we’ve learned anything, I hope we’ve learned that God expects us to pray for the church, including Lockwood Church. I hope we’ve learned that praying for the church is critical. So, after two months of hearing about praying for the church, are we praying for the church? Have you prayed for Lockwood this week? Have you used what you’ve learned to pray for our church family?

I’ve met people who believe in God but don’t believe in prayer. They think God is going to do what he is going to do, whether we pray or not. That prayer is just a matter of adjusting our attitudes and expectations.

But I don’t believe that. I agree with Henry Emerson Fosdick, who said: “Now if God has left some things contingent on man’s thinking and working, why may he not have left some things contingent on man’s praying? The testimony of the great souls is a clear affirmative to this: some things never without thinking; some things never without working; some things never without praying! Prayer is one of the three forms of man’s cooperation with God.”

God has made room in his creation for us to be involved with him in ways that make a difference, and one of those ways – the most immediate of those ways – is prayer. If we pray, some good things will happen that would not happen if we didn’t pray. Some bad things won’t happen that would have happened if we didn’t pray. St. Paul clearly did not think his prayers for the church would make no difference, other than improving his own attitude and raising his expectations. If you had suggested such a thing to him, he would have thought you were mad.

The purpose of this series was not to stick more information in our heads but to send us to our knees with inspired prayers in our mouths. The church of Jesus – including Lockwood Church – is of enormous importance in God’s plans for the world and for our lives and we should be praying for it. If we do, some things will happen that would not otherwise happen. If we don’t, some things will not happen that otherwise would.

For example: remember Paul’s prayer for the Colossian’s Church. He prayed that God would give them the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding so that they could live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way. How we need the knowledge of God’s will in this time. The elders and the admin board are making decisions about services – we need the knowledge of God’s will. If Covid-19 forces us to move online for a time, we will need the knowledge of God’s will to serve our church family, help people keep growing in grace, meet physical needs, and so on.

When God answers the prayer to fill us with the knowledge of his will, there are four enormously valuable outcomes. The first is fruitfulness in all the church’s work. Think of that. We are always doing work – our children’s ministry, family ministry, and youth ministry, just to name a few examples. We are working hard. To some degree, the fruitfulness of all that work will hinge on knowing God’s will, which in turn hinges on our prayers. The difference between fruitful labor and mere labor resides, in part, with our prayers.

Or what about praying for a knowledge of God’s will so that our people will be strengthened? Strengthened people, according to Paul, can endure. They can be patient. They can remain joyful. Our people are going through tough stuff. I was with someone this week who was suffering intense pain throughout our short visit. She needs to be strong to endure. Paul prayed for that.

Weak people won’t endure. Marriages will end. Church members will leave. Sunday School teachers will give up. Deacons will find something easier to do. If we don’t pray, we are not doing our part to help each other.

Watchman Nee said it well: “Our prayers lay the track down on which God’s power can come. Like a mighty locomotive, his power is irresistible, but it cannot reach us without rails.”

In the prayer in Ephesians 1, Paul asked God to give the Ephesians a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. Have you and I prayed that prayer for Lockwood? For First Baptist, Bethel Gilead, the United Methodists, and our friends in other fellowships? What a difference it makes when I get up to preach, if God has given us the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. Being able to receive revelation, to have wisdom concerning what God is like, what he can do, and what he wants changes everything.

The prayer we have been looking at in Ephesians 3, the prayer for strength to know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ—how important that is in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. What a difference we will make if we have grasped Christ’s love and been strengthened with God’s power. It will increase our courage, deepen our compassion, and make us stand out against the darkness of our society the way stars stand out against the darkness of the night sky (Philippians 2:15).

In one sense, it’s not our prayers that make the difference; it’s the God to whom we pray who makes the difference. He is able to do things that we cannot imagine, things that have never even crossed our minds. His power is beyond comprehension. Our best-case scenarios, our highest ambitions, and wildest dreams don’t come close to the reality of what God is capable of doing.

In Ephesians 3:20, Paul calls God (literally) “The one who is able.” Sometimes we talk about people that way: “She is a very able leader.” With God, we take that to another level.

“Able” translates a participle, the verbal form of the noun “power.” To be able is to have the power needed to accomplish something. The prayer Paul has just made is to the God who has the power to do whatever he chooses to do. His power is limitless, his ability boundless.

There are two other places the Bible speaks of God as “the one who is able” – Romans 16 and Jude 24. In the Romans passage, God is able to establish you – that is, to make you strong; to keep you stable and secure. We are wobbly – both physically and spiritually – but God is able to make us stand firm.

In Jude 24, God is the one who is able to keep you from falling. I have seen Christians fall spectacularly – fall into sin, into despair, into unbelief. What might have happened if they – and we – had prayed to the God who is able to keep us from falling?

Jude goes on: “and to present [us] before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy.” But we know ourselves too well. We are not without fault, but we are often without “joy,” certainly without “great joy.” Sometimes we are miserable. It seems impossible that we should stand before a perfect God without fault and with great joy. We can’t imagine it.

Precisely. Go back to our benediction: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine…” We don’t see any way for things to work out, but we see a hundred ways for them to go wrong – a thousand if we keep looking. We just want things to be okay.

But God is not satisfied with okay. He is planning for perfect, planning for great joy. He is able (literal translation) “to do beyond everything, very far in excess of that which we ask or think.”[1]

You want God to get you out of a tough spot. He’s planning on getting you into heaven. You want to avoid embarrassment. He’s planning on bringing glory down on your head. You just want your kid to be okay. He wants your kid to be amazing. And he is able to do all those things. He is “the One who is able.”

You say, “But how? How is he going to do these things?” I don’t know how. No one knew, no one imagined – neither human nor angel – that God would present us without fault and with great joy through a horrible Roman cross—the cross of Jesus. No eye saw it, no ear heard it, no mind conceived it – except God’s. He is the One who is able!

His ability is very far in excess of anything we can ask or think. Listen to the words of St. Thomas Aquinas: “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” The first step is faith—but not in God’s great power. We start by trusting his great love, manifest in the Christ of the cross.

Vance Havner put it this way: “…we miss so much because we live on the low level of the natural, the ordinary, the explainable. We leave no room for God to do the exceeding abundant thing above all that we can ask or think.”[2]

Look at verse 20 again: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…” Wait a moment… This extraordinary power is not theoretical. It is already at work within us, or “among us,” as the Greek could be translated. In our church, among our people (even in our inner persons) that power is at work. Prayer plugs us into the power.

Philip Yancy was right: “If prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer. Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn’t act the way we want God to, and why I don’t act the way God wants me to. Prayer is the precise point where those themes converge.”[3] Prayer is not only the point where they converge; in countless lives, prayer has been the point where those themes unite to become a story of power and beauty.

And of glory. Look at verse 21: “to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Some scholars have said that Paul could not possibly have written this because of the word order. They say that Paul never would have put the church before Jesus. But this is to ignore what Paul has just been writing about: the church is the showpiece of the unsearchable wisdom of God (Ephesians 3:10), put on display for the great spiritual powers to see.

Besides that, in Paul’s mind, the church is not – and can never be – divorced from Jesus. They are a package deal. People in our day often try to divide the church from Jesus. They say, “Well, I have faith. I’m just not into organized religion.” Or, “I believe in Jesus. I just don’t believe in the church.” Such people’s experience of Jesus will always be profoundly limited for Jesus is one with his church and lives on earth through his church. Yes, the church is unfinished and no one who loves the church is blind to its faults. But Jesus’s love and God’s power are expressed in the church and it is in the church that glory comes to God.

Especially, in times like this. More than ever, we must pray (Colossians 1:9-12) for the church to have the knowledge of God’s will. There is an opportunity in this moment for the church to serve God in the world and we mustn’t miss it. This Wednesday, pastors from our county are gathering to discuss how we can serve God in the church and in the world during the pandemic. We must pray (Ephesians 1:17-19) for the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that we may grasp the hope before us and the enormous value of the each other – God’s chosen inheritance in the saints. We must pray for power (Ephesians 3:14-21) so that we will be strong in this time of uncertainty, so God can fill us – his church – to all his fullness.

Will you pray? Will you pray earnestly, continually, confidently for God’s will in our church and the church in our county and country and world? Will you pray for the elders, deacons, and admin board, that we will be filled with the knowledge of God’s will and so serve him well, so that all of us will live courageously and fruitfully in this challenging time?

I close with the words of the great 19th century preacher Charles Spurgeon. Using a church bell high in the belfry as a metaphor for prayer, he said this: “Prayer pulls the rope below and the great bell rings above in the ears of God. Some scarcely stir the bell, for they pray so languidly. Others give but an occasional pluck at the rope. But he who wins with heaven is the [person] who grasps the rope boldly and pulls continuously, with all his might.”

Let us win with heaven. Let’s pull together and let’s pull hard. Amen.

(If you’re interested, check out a song I wrote about the One Who Is Able. Romans 11:33-36 served as the basis for the lyrics. Click this link https://shaynelooper.com/music/ and scroll down to “He Is Able.”)

[1] Harold Hoehner, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary, © 2002. Baker Books

[2] Vance Havner in the Vance Havner Quote Book. Christianity Today, Vol. 36, no. 14.

[3] Philip Yancey, Prayer (Zondervan, 2006)

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Powerful Prayers: The One Who Is Able (Ephesians 3:20-21)

Posted on March 16, 2020 by salooper57

Covid-19 has people feeling more than a little nervous. My wife Karen went to the store today and came home without some things she intended to purchase – panicky shoppers had cleaned out the shelves. Gratefully, we still have the staples—co ffee and fruit snacks.

History is full of scary times: famines, plagues, and wars. Some of you can still remember the sleepless nights and anxiety you suffered during the Second World War. I was a boy during the height of the Cold War, when our school had occasional “bomb drills.” It was scary stuff. For many of us, 9/11 seems like only yesterday.

History is full of scary times but behind history is a strong, loving God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. When times are at their darkest, that’s when the people who know God shine the brightest. Every crisis is an opportunity for salvation history to leap forward, as the church courageously trusts God and treats people with sacrificial love.

In Ephesians 3:20-21, the Apostle Paul describes our God as “him who is able.” He is able during a crisis. He is able during a pandemic. He “is able to do immeasurably more that we can ask or imagine, according to his power…” That power is already at work among us to accomplish great things. Let’s work with it. Let’s take advantage of every opportunity this crisis affords to trust God and love people.

(Note: we live streamed this sermon on Facebook for our members who could not come or chose not to come because of Covid-19. If you’d like to view it, check out this link: https://www.facebook.com/LCCFamilyMinistry/videos/533190877578050/?q=lockwood%20family%20ministry&epa=SEARCH_BOX. The sermon begins at about 20 minutes in. This is our first attempt to live stream and the video is a little fuzzy at times.)

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The Curious Origin of the Word “Church”

Posted on March 14, 2020 by salooper57

Ask people about the church, and most will tell you where the church is. It’s on the corner of Main and Fourth – as if the church is the building in which a group of people meet.

Some may tell you the denomination of the church. It is a Methodist church, a Presbyterian church, or maybe “a holy roller church.” Don’t bother asking what a holy roller church is. For that matter, asking the difference between the Methodists and the Presbyterians will probably not yield an adequate answer, either.

I once invited a man to visit our church and he immediately replied that he had his own church, which was obviously meant to put me off. It didn’t. I said, “Great! Which church is that?”

He seemed surprised by the question and I could see he was searching his memory for a name. The best he could do was: “Uh, it’s the one on Parkman Road … uh, just before you get to the overpass.”

I said, “You mean the Nazarene Church?”

His eyes lit up, he pointed is finger at me and said, “That’s the one!”

It was like I’d won the prize on “Let’s Make a Deal.”

The word “church” has a complicated history. It is probably derived from Old English “cirice,” which in turn came from the German “kirika,” which likely came from the Greek “kuriake,” which means “of the Lord.” Some scholars dispute this, saying that our English word derives from the Anglo-Saxon “kirke,” which in turn comes from the Latin “circus” (meaning “circle” or “ring”) because early congregants gathered in a circle.

Somehow, the idea that the words “church” and “circus” are related seems fitting. Sometimes, the church is like a circus. However, the oldest word for church is completely unrelated to any of these derivations.

The oldest word for church, the word that St. Paul himself used, is the Greek word “ecclesia,” from which we get the terms “ecclesial” and “ecclesiastical.” The word was in use centuries before the Christian church appeared on the scene. It referred to a socio-political gathering of citizens, who were called together to attend to the concerns of their city.

The term’s political associations probably had little to do with its use by the followers of Jesus. Those earliest followers probably borrowed the word from the popular Greek translation of the Old Testament, where it referred to Israel’s sacred assemblies, called together to worship or conduct business. It was natural for the first followers of Jesus, nearly all of whom were Jews, to borrow the familiar term for their assemblies.

Nevertheless, as news spread across the Mediterranean that a potential rival to Caesar had appeared, and that his followers were gathering in ecclesia, the ancient meaning of the word must surely have come to mind. That the Christians (Christ-ones or Christ-supporters) were meeting in socio-political gatherings across the Empire caused the Emperor and his prefects to see the church as a threat and attempt to abolish it.

Few people see the church as a threat today, though many politicians see it as a resource to be leveraged or an obstacle to be avoided in the acquisition of power. Some within the church have encouraged such thinking as a way to snatch at least the leftover crumbs of power. This betrays a misunderstanding of the church that is based on a category error.

Society at large – the “world” in biblical parlance – is not the dominant category into which the church must negotiate a place. On the contrary, St. Paul would say the church is the principal reality the world and society are called to join. In any biblical understanding, the church is the future.

It is a general election year, which means the church sometimes looks more like a circus than an ecclesia. The best thing the church can do for society is to be the church as Jesus intended and as his apostles instructed. Then the world will see what a just society looks like: a society where people are respected; burdens are shared; talents are used and not exploited; the poor are valued and the rich are helpful. Then the church will become the prototype of what the world can and, by God’s grace, will be.

First published by Gatehouse Media.

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Powerful Prayers: To Know the Unknowable

Posted on March 12, 2020 by salooper57

(Note: For a few weeks , I will post the manuscript that goes with the audio (posted Tuesdays) from a sermon in the Powerful Prayers series. People have requested the sermon manuscripts many time, but I’ve always been reluctant to make it available for two principal reasons: 1) I never simply read a sermon, so what people read is not exactly what I spoke. The manuscript might be better or it may be worse but it will be different. And (2) because the sermon has not been edited for publication. With those caveats, here is The Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation III (His Incomparably Great Power for Us Who Believe)

(Ephesians 3:16-19) I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. 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. 

We have a house plant that is like something out of a science fiction movie. Someone gave it to Karen – this nice, shiny, dark green plant – and she watered it and took care of it and it got bigger. When it was in danger of becoming root-bound, Karen transplanted it into a bigger pot. I think it might have outgrown that pot as well, so she put it in an even bigger one and now it is threatening to take over our house. We recently set it next to my side of the bed. I have dreams that it is going to eat me in my sleep.

Sometimes plants need to be transplanted to be healthy and strong. Sometimes people do too. In this passage, Paul talks about people being rooted in love, and the good things that can come from that.

Some people first took root in soil that has little love in it. It was highly acidic and full of selfishness. They grew up with selfish parents, in selfish schools, around selfish friends, and they were poisoned by it. They can hardly be blamed them for turning inward on themselves, but they can be transplanted them into the rich soil of Christ’s love in the church. That’s what happens when someone comes over to God’s side through faith in Jesus and is baptized into Christ. They are transplanted. The church becomes their family. If it is a healthy church and there is plenty of love in that soil, they will, apart from injury, grow strong.

Being rooted (verse 17) is an agrarian image. Being established, as the NIV has it (also verse 17), is a construction image. Paul loves to mix those two metaphors. He does it here. He does it in Colossians 2:7. He does it in 1st Corinthians 3:9, where he calls the Corinthian church both God’s field and God’s building.

Being rooted implies life. A seed without life won’t root, it will only rot. Being established (better, laying a foundation) implies intention. No human has to be involved in a plant taking root (just ask the teams that pull weeds around the church) but a building’s foundation doesn’t just sprout from the ground. Laying it requires planning, intention, and effort. Both images – agrarian and construction – have something important to teach us.

In the first, we see the necessity of life. Imagine that “spirit photography” (as it is called) was a real thing. (And many people believe it is and think they can capture ghosts and spirits with it). Let’s say you took a before and an after picture of me with a “spirit camera”– before God brought me to himself and after. The principal difference would be that in the “after” picture I would have life. This is the promise repeated throughout the Bible: “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” “The Son gives life to whomever he chooses.” “I have come that you may have life and have it to the full.”

Life is powerful. It grows. It adapts. It changes. We can try to control it but we cannot create it. We can guide it, but we can’t give it – it’s not ours to give; it’s God’s. and because he gives it, we can take root in love, draw it into ourselves, and share it with others.

The other image, the construction image, implies intentionality and effort. This is not about organic growth but painstaking construction, building one block on another. Life grows, like the seed in Jesus’s story, which grew whether the farmer slept or got up. But a building rises because the builders got up and got to work. The farmer doesn’t understand how the seed grows, but the builders understand how the building rises, and they know it won’t rise unless they get to work.

Followers of Jesus need both: to be rooted and innately growing; and to be founded and systematically built. There is, on the one hand, nothing they can do to create life and, on the other, things they must do to build a suitable home for that life.

Notice again that the rooting and the foundation-laying are done in love. Love is the soil in which the growing seed is planted and upon which the rising building is founded. Things grow poorly in the desert and a loveless life is a desert. But love is a garden, where people grow fruitful and beautiful. The church can be such a garden but the love comes from God (1 John 4:7).

People not only grow beautiful in love, they grow strong. (That’s the beginning of verse 18.) People who are rooted and grounded in love are strong enough to weather life’s storms – they are stormproof – and discerning. Paul’s prayer is that they, rooted and established in love, may have power. Being loved is a prerequisite for this kind of power. Being unloved is an obstacle to it.

The Greek word for power here is not the usual one. This one has the idea of being strong enough to accomplish something. It is the word a koine Greek speaker would use to say (for example): “He is strong enough to do 100 pushups.” But, in this case, what is it that we are strong enough to do because we are rooted and established in love? We are strong enough, verse 18, to grasp the width and length and height and depth of the love of Christ.

Some people simply are not strong enough to grasp – to comprehend – the love of Christ.  We tend to think there are smart people who comprehend things and there are strong people who get things done. The smart people wear glasses, walk around with their noses in books, and got beat up a lot when they were kids.

And of course it was the strong kids who beat them up – the kids who didn’t wear glasses and couldn’t find a book in the Library of Congress. And, even if they did, they’d only use it to hit the smart kids over the head.

But this is a false dichotomy the Bible does not support. Smart does not equal weak and strong does not equal stupid. Quite the opposite: there are some things we will never grasp until we become strong. One of them is Christ’s love. That’s why Paul asks God to give the Ephesians power to strengthen their grasp.

This thing Paul wants people to be strong enough to grasp, this knowledge that transforms a life in all its dimensions, is the breadth and width and height and depth of Christ’s love. Paul looks out and as far as he can see is the love of Christ. He looks left and right and he can find no end to it. He looks up and it extends to the heavens. He looks down and it reaches beyond the grave.

If you could travel to z8­­_GND_5296. 6 – the most distant galaxy yet discovered, 13.8 billion light-years away (and remember just one light year is about 5.88 trillion miles) – you would find the love of Christ there. If you could reach the deepest part of the ocean, the Challenger Deep, where the atmospheric pressure is 16,000 pounds per square inch, (which is equivalent to turning the Eiffel Tower upside down and resting the point on your toe), you would find the love of Christ there.

What measure can we use to gauge the love of Christ? We measure breadth and width and height and depth in inches or yards. We weigh objects in pounds and ounces. We measure time from nanoseconds (a nano-second is one-billionth of a second) to millennia. But none of those units are sufficient to measure the love of Christ.

Perhaps other units and systems are needed. What about the Smoot? Every MIT student knows what a smoot is: it is a unit of length equal to five feet seven inches. It is named for Oliver Smoot who, as a fraternity pledge in 1958, was used to measure the Harvard Bridge which connects Boston and Cambridge. After repeatedly lying down on the bridge and having his position marked in chalk, it turned out that the bridge was 364.4 smoots (and an ear) long. Google now offers the option to measure anything in smoots. I, for example, am 1.134 smoots tall. But there are not enough smoots to measure the heights and depths of the love of Christ.

If you try to measure how long the love of Christ will last, you’ll use units of time. How about “the moment”? When somebody asks you to do something and you reply, “Just a moment,” you probablythink you’re giving yourself some wiggle room, but you’re not. A “moment” is quite precise. It was a medieval time measurement, roughly equal to one and a half minutes. Put a billion moments into the equation, and you have not even come close to the end of Christ’s love. Put a billion millennia into the equation and you are still no nearer. That is the love we must grasp.

Paul’s request in this prayer is broken into three parts. The first is that the Ephesian followers of Jesus would be given power to strengthen them. The second is that, being so strengthened, Christ would settle down and make himself at home in their hearts – their command centers. The third is that, being strengthened, they will be able (verse 18) to grasp the dimensions, and so (verse 19, and this is how I translate it) “to know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ.”

Now, before we go on, we need to go back. Paul prays the Ephesians “may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and so to know this love that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:17-18). Don’t miss the words, “together with all the saints.” It is not a throwaway clause.  

We will not have power to grasp how wide and long and high and deep the love of Christ is in isolation from the saints. We need all the saints – all God’s own people – to get a handle on (to grasp) the immensity of Christ’s love. Even though we can never succeed in measuring or quantifying it, we can grasp it; can know it experientially—but only in partnership with all God’s other people. You know things I do not know, see things I have not seen, just as I know and see things you do not. Only together can we begin to get a handle on – to grasp – the unending, overwhelming love of Christ. Only in partnership with all Jesus’s people does being “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (verse 19) become a possibility.

No one ever accused the Apostle Paul of thinking small. What a goal! “…that you may be filled to the measure of the fullness of God.” This is the goal to which Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians has been headed all along. But let’s pause a moment to ask, “Who is being filled to all the fullness of God?” Michael or Abby – the individual believer? I think not. The “you” here is plural and, in this case, that is significant. Paul is praying for the church of Jesus to be filled to all the fullness of God. He’s praying that God will come to the Living Temple – remember the end of chapter 2? – as he did Solomon’s temple, and fill it with all his fullness.

This is not a prayer for Christians in isolation but for Christians in the church. Don’t forget that God wants to demonstrate (verse 10) to rulers and authorities his manifold wisdom through what – individuals?  No. Through the church. The church that knows the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ, that has grasped and won’t let go of that love, is a miracle on earth. The church that forgives, gives, protects, trusts, hopes is a stunning alternative to the what people see in their homes and at work every day. The church that has grasped the love of Christ is both compelling evidence of God’s wisdom and a persuasive advertisement to join God’s people.

Let’s be that church! A church that is fertile soil, rich in love, in which people get rooted and upon which they build their lives.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to becoming that church is the lovelessness that we ourselves bring into it. Many of us were not rooted in love but rather in fear, rejection, indifference, and condemnation and some of that stuff is still circulating through us. We are upset when the church does not love us, but we are not doing a good job loving the church. It is a vicious cycle. When we don’t love, we don’t feel loved. When we don’t feel loved, we don’t love. What can we do?

Well, we can start by praying for our church, as Paul prayed for the Ephesians. How much we need to know this love and how essential it is that we should pray for it! If it were true, as a famous Christian once said, that “God does nothing except in answer to prayer,”[1] would God be doing this? I think that great man exaggerated, but he exaggerated to make a point: God wants us to have a role in what he is doing, and prayer is a major component in that role. Let us pray this prayer for LCC and for all the Church in Brach County!

Next, we can get active – not passive – about loving each other. We can call and encourage each other; go out to lunch together; pray together; go on vacations together; serve together; share hobbies; share sorrows; drive each other to appointments; loan cars, give aid. In other words, we can bless each other and work for each other’s good. St. John said, “Let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:18). Just talking about love is not enough to enrich the soil. People who take root in mere talk are easily uprooted. We need action.

Finally, we must learn to look beyond each other’s imperfect love (we are all so very imperfect) and draw on Jesus’s perfect love. We will let each other down. Yes, we are being purified, but there is still a lot of impurities (and, in some cases, poisons) in our lives that have not been refined out. The love we need is Jesus’s – through each other, yes; a thousand times yes – but also straight from the source.

Jesus’s love is enough for you: enough to fulfill you, change you, and enable you to love, however anyone else may act. Jesus’s love will sustain you when no one else loves you. Jesus’s love will not run out when you mess everything up. Jesus’s love is enough.

Karen and I were at Lake Tahoe for our 40th anniversary. Lake Tahoe is the eighth deepest lake in the world at 1645 feet. The lake is so large that if it were tipped over, its contents would cover the entire state of California in 14.5 inches of water. It could provide every person in the United States with 50 gallons of water per day for the next five years. Just one year’s evaporation from Tahoe could supply Los Angeles enough water for five years. And Lake Tahoe is a small lake compared to Lake Superior (120 times as large) and the world’s largest lake, the Caspian Sea (576 times as large).

Your personal use of water could never exhaust the limits of Lake Tahoe, nor could your need for love could ever exhaust Christ’s limitless supply. Whatever you need, whatever you do, you can never exhaust Jesus’s love.[2]

Sometimes – maybe for you, this is the time – we need to be reminded of that. The supreme image of that love is Jesus on the cross. His head, crowned with thorns, points to the furthest reaches of heaven – to z8_GND_5296.6 and beyond. His feet, to the depths of the grave and beyond. His arms reach as far as the east is from the west. This is the measure of his love.

 “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10).

Take root in that love and you will flourish. Build on it, and you will be unshakeable.

[1] John Wesley

[2] David Finch, “A Picture of Praise,” sermon on PreachingToday.com, http://www.preachingtoday.com/sermons/outlines/2014/november/picture-of-praise.html

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Powerful Prayers: To Know the Unknowable (Ephesians 3:16-19)

Posted on March 10, 2020 by salooper57

George Hood of Naperville, Illinois, a 62-year-old former Marine, just set the endurance record for holding a plank. The plank, an isometric exercise which strengthens the abdominal muscles, is like a pushup, except one rests on one’s forearms and holds that isometric position. I can hold a plank for about a minute. George Hood held it for eight hours, 15 minutes, and 15 seconds.

The former Marine trained for years to set the record. He did 4 to 5 hours a day in a plank position, performed 700 pushups a day, 2,000 sit-ups, and 300 curls. He eventually became strong enough to hold an 8-hour plank.

Some things require strength. In Ephesians 3:14-21, the Apostle Paul surprises us with the revelation that it takes strength to grasp (and, I suppose, hold onto) the love of Christ. Grasping the love of Christ is more important and brings better results than holding an 8-hour plank and – here’s the thing – together we can become strong enough.

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Pastors: Targets to Aim at or Leaders to Follow?

Posted on March 7, 2020 by salooper57
Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

According to the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, there are currently around 380,000 church congregations in the United States. Christianity Today’s Rebecca Randall reports that number was higher in 2006, with approximately 414,000 congregations. From 2006 to 2012, an estimated 30,000 congregations closed.

That’s the bad news. The good news is the church still has the lowest closure rate of any institution in the country. And while 30,000 churches closed between 2006 and 2012, there are still something like 50,000 more congregations in the U.S. than there were in 1998.

Most of those 380,000 congregations are led by pastors, sometimes by large pastoral staffs. How often do these pastors leave their churches? It is difficult to be sure, since study results vary widely, but in 2011, Lifeway Research found the average pastoral stay to be 3.6 years. Other studies show the typical pastoral tenure to be between 5 and 7 years.

What this means is that churches need to find new pastoral leadership more frequently than I need to find a new car. Since pastoral leadership is important to the life and health of a church, what should a local congregation be looking for in a prospective pastor?

Most pastors have a job description. They frequently detail duties such as preaching, teaching, and visiting the sick. In recent years, many job descriptions include things like “strategic leadership and planning” and call for the pastor to be the church’s “lead visionary.”

Such things are good, but they don’t replace the fundamental requirements given by the apostles of Jesus and preserved in the Bible. A key passage comes in St. Paul’s letter to his protégé, Pastor Timothy. He lays out some of the essentials in 1 Timothy 4.

First, the pastor is to be an example for church members to imitate. Paul lists some specific areas in which Timothy should provide the pattern. The first is speech. The Bible says a great deal about speech – it is to be true, loving, gentle, interesting, free of gossip, manipulation, and deceit. How pastors preach is important, but how they speak when they’re not in the pulpit is even more important.

Furthermore, their lifestyle is to be exemplary. What is important to them? How do they spend their time? Do they value people more than money, character more than fashion? Are they hard workers? If church members all patterned their lifestyle after their pastor, would the church be a better or worse place?

The apostle specifically calls Pastor Timothy to model love. Love can be taught from the pulpit, but it is caught in personal interactions. Of all the places in the world, the church should be the place where people know they are loved. The pastor must demonstrate that.

Pastors must also be devoted to Scripture. They must love the Bible, read it privately and publicly. They should teach the Scriptures, not their own pet subjects or their thoughts on the latest news cycle. (I once heard a sermon based entirely on a news story that appeared in the previous evening’s paper.)

Another essential for the pastor is that he or she is growing as a person and as a disciple of Jesus. Pastors like to look like they are completely grown, as if they had already arrived at the optimum level of spiritual maturity. But if your pastor is already done growing, it’s time for a new pastor.

St. Paul counsels Pastor Timothy to demonstrate his growth “so that everyone may see your progress.” This leaves no room for pretending one has already arrived. The church does not need a pastor who impresses them by how far he is beyond them. A faraway leader won’t be followed.

The church should look for pastors who are obviously growing, leaders who openly admit they are fallible and imperfect but whose progress is plain to see. A pastor who has already arrived is not a leader to follow but a target to aim at, as churches throughout history have proved.

Churches must remember that even the best pastor makes mistakes, has flaws, and failings. Only Jesus is perfect. The leaders he sends are not, but still he sends them, and we must do our best to love them and grow with them.

First published by Gatehouse Media

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Powerful Prayers: Make Yourself at Home

Posted on March 5, 2020 by salooper57

(Note: For a few weeks , I will post the manuscript that goes with the audio (posted Tuesdays) from a sermon in the Powerful Prayers series. People have requested the sermon manuscripts many time, but I’ve always been reluctant to make it available for two principal reasons: 1) I never simply read a sermon, so what people read is not exactly what I spoke. The manuscript might be better or it may be worse but it will be different. And (2) because the sermon has not been edited for publication. With those caveats, here is The Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation III (His Incomparably Great Power for Us Who Believe)

(Ephesians 3:14-19) For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. 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.

Why pray? Or, to be more specific, why do you pray? To be more specific still, why do you pray for other people – friends, family, your kingdom comrades from Lockwood or other churches? We often talk about what to pray but seldom talk about why to pray.

I suspect – I know this is true of me – that we usually pray because we are aware of a need, of discomfort, or of danger. We pray when we see a threat to someone’s health or security or faith. And when we are unaware of a threat, we don’t think to pray.

That we don’t think to pray when things are going well betrays a faulty understanding of prayer and probably a false belief: that God left us here to muddle through and keep ourselves intact in the process. When that becomes more than we can manage, then it’s time to pray.

But do you see what this reveals about our view of God? We think he’s like the butler in a Jeeves novel – the smartest, most capable person around – who (for some reason) has nothing better to do in life than to get us out of scrapes and make us comfortable. But to think that is to misconstrue our purpose here and God’s, his role and ours.

The Apostle Paul doesn’t think of God as if he were “our Jeeves in heaven.” It’s not that he doesn’t want us to pray about our need—he tells us to do just that: to present our requests to God. But most of Paul’s prayers in the Bible don’t seem to come out of a sense of discomfort or fear or even need. They come out of a readiness to join God in what he is doing. That’s different than a readiness for God to join us in what we’re doing.

In verse 14, Paul says, “For this reason I kneel before the Father…” We’ve seen this before: Paul likes to explain the reason for his prayers. He told the Colossians that he had been praying for them ever since he heard of their faith and love. He told the Ephesians something similar. He was excited when he heard what these Christians were doing, and he wanted to support them with his prayers.

It’s a little tougher to understand what prompted this prayer. Once again, Paul mentions there is a reason behind it, but it is hard to be sure what that reason is. If you compare verse 14 to verse one, you will see they begin in exactly the same way: “For this reason…” But in verse 1, Paul interrupted himself with what amounts to a long parenthesis. (The NIV conveys this with a dash.) Most scholars believe that in verse 14 he finally comes back to what he stated to say in verse 1.

If Paul is just getting back to what he was poised to write in the first verse of this chapter, then the reason for his prayer must come out of what he said at the end of the last chapter. There, he wrote about what God has done to bring Gentiles, like the Ephesians and Colossians, into his people. He also wrote about what God is doing to build his people, Jews and Gentiles alike, into a magnificent, living temple in which God can dwell and through which God can act. That is tremendously exciting to Paul and it sends him to his knees in prayer.

However, I think Paul’s reason for this prayer must also include the truth he mentions in verse 12: that through Jesus, it is possible for people to bring their requests directly to God “with freedom and confidence.” That is too great an opportunity to miss, so Paul requests God’s help for the Ephesians’ role in the living temple project. That’s why he kneels before the Father.

Kneeling to pray was not all that common in Judaism. The normal posture for prayer was standing, with eyes lifted to heaven and arms raised. When someone kneeled – like Jesus in the garden or Paul on the beach with the Ephesian church elders – it was a sign of submission to God and of deep emotion. Paul was awed by the amazing wisdom of God in bringing Jews and Gentiles together in the living temple project. It was happening before his eyes and it brought him to his knees.

The principal request in this prayer is for God to give – Paul knows he is a giver – the Ephesians strengthening power. He asks him to do this “out of his glorious riches” or, better, “according to his glorious riches.” Paul is not asking God to deplete his riches by giving some of them to the Ephesians. He is asking the Father – the infinitely wealthy, incomparably generous God – to give in a way that is consistent with his famous largesse.

But Paul is not asking the Father to give these Christians money. He’s asking him to strengthen them; to give them power. Did you realize that God wants to empower you? He wants to you to be strong and capable.

Our culture talks a lot about empowering people: women, children, minorities, workers, gays, the transgendered, and, lately, even white men (though it’s usually white men talking about empowering white men.) Our society has a thing about power: it worships it. God doesn’t want us to worship power, but he does want us to use it.

When our culture empowers a person or a group of people, it divides them from other people. That’s how cultural power works: it raises some up by forcing others down. God’s power is not like that. It doesn’t divide. It unites. God’s power does not enable people to get their way. It enables them to walk together with others in God’s way. God’s power does not provoke resentment; it generates love.

Hold onto this thought: God wants to empower you. God, said C. S. Lewis, “seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye.” He empowers us.

But why? What does God want to accomplish by empowering us? Why does Paul ask God to strengthen the Ephesians (literally) with power? Before answering the why question, Paul deals with the where question. Where is this strengthening power going? Paul says it is going to the “inner being” (or, as some translations put it, the “inner person”). It could also be translated, “the inside man.” Other than its lack of gender sensitivity, I prefer that. God has an inside man (or woman) working undercover in you, if you have been born again! And that inside man needs to be resourced, reinforced, and empowered, if the work is to succeed.

Look at verse 16, and let me to give you a more literal translation: “that he might give you, according to the wealth of his glory, to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inside man.” The word the NIV translates “strengthened” is used only three other times in the New Testament, twice of the boy Jesus, who “grew and became strong.” It is very important to God that you become strong – a great deal depends on it.

I’ve met parents who do not empower their children, even when they are twenty or thirty years old. I could almost believe they preferred their children to remain weak so they could control them. God is not that kind of parent. He wants his children to become strong.

There is an important reason for that. Look at verses 16 and 17, where Paul answers the why question: “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being…” Why? So you can be independent? No. So you can be tough? Not really. No, he strengthens you with power (verse 17): “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.”

That has always been the plan. It is “the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints … which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27-28). God is transforming individuals from every race and people group so he can connect them to each other on the deepest level. A people who are strong enough to love, loving enough to sacrifice, and pure enough to become the temple through which God meets, receives, and transforms the world.

Another way of putting it is to say, as Paul did in chapter 2, that God’s people are “being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Eph. 2:21-22). For that to happen, Christ must live in each individual. As verse 17 puts it, “that Christ may dwell in your hearts.”

When Carol Leet’s four-year-old granddaughter, Amanda, went to the Pediatrician’s office with a fever, the doctor looked in her ears and said, “Who’s in there? Donald Duck?”

Amanda, with the forthrightness of a four-year-old, said, “No.” He looked in her nose and said, “Who’s in there? Mickey Mouse?”

Again she said, “No.” He put his stethoscope on her heart and said, “Who’s in there? Barney?”

Amanda answered, “No, Jesus is in my heart. Barney is on my underwear.”[1]

“Jesus is in my heart.” More precisely, Jesus is in our hearts: the hearts (or command centers) of every person who has faith in God and has confessed Jesus as Lord –the world’s rightful ruler and our leader. What we share with each other and with the Tiwi believers in Australia, with Wolof believers in Senegal, Papuans, Inuits, Ojibway, Quechua, Hmong, and every other people group you can name is Jesus in our hearts. He is the connector.

God is building something, something big, something great – a living temple in which he dwells and through which people encounter him – so it is absolutely essential that every believer in the world be linked.

Computing offers a helpful analogy. There is a supercomputer in Barcelona known as the MareNostrum 4. It is comprised of 48 racks with more than 3400 Lenovo computer nodes, each with two Intel Platinum chips, each with 24 processors, which means the main part of the computer has 165,888 processors. Cost to date (because it is continually growing) is something like a quarter of a billion dollars.

Some years ago, Virginia Polytech made its own supercomputer. It cost about 5 million dollars. They used faculty, technicians, and students to design a supercomputer from 1,100 off-the-shelf Apple Macs, and they built it one month. By linking every one of those computers, they made a supercomputer.[2] Similarly, by linking every one of us with the same operating system (Christ, not Intel, inside) God is making a living temple.

There is another kind of distributive computing known as quasi-opportunistic supercomputing, in which the processors are geographically separated, and yet are all connected or networked. The actual work is distributed through the various nodes across great distances.

That’s like Jesus’s people. Jesus unites them and is present in each of them by his Spirit, wherever they are. The network key, if you will, is faith in Jesus. Christ dwells in each person’s heart by faith (verse 17). So these believers are united together even though they may be separated by thousands of miles and have never met each other. They don’t even need to know what the others are doing. The one controlling the network knows that.

The goal, as we’ve seen before, is the universal rule over all things in heaven and on earth under one head, even Christ. That’s big. We are part of something big, the biggest thing in the world. So don’t be discouraged. The architect and builder of this greatest of projects knows what he is doing.

With all these illustrations, we may need to be reminded of the principal request of this prayer: that God will give these Ephesians power to become strong so that Christ can dwell in their hearts through faith. The word the NIV translates as “dwell” is used of a person settling down somewhere. For example, it is used of Jesus moving to Capernaum and making his home there. When we pray this prayer for someone, we’re praying that God will do what is necessary in that person so that Christ can settle in and make himself at home in that person’s heart – the command center.

Why do people need to be strengthened for that to happen? Because genuine conversion is like a spiritual earthquake. Christ is bigger than your heart. If he comes to dwell in you, you will need to be renovated. Walls will be knocked out, the structure reinforced.

Imagine the President of the United States was forced to relocate from the White House to your house. You say yes to having him come. What happens then? His forces come in, evaluate, and start changing things. You’ll need a fiber optic network. The entire house will need to be reinforced and shielded. A wing will need to be added here and another there. Walls moved, ceilings raised, tunnels dug, and on and on.

Do think having the president dwell in your house would require fewer changes than having Christ, the ruler of heaven and earth, dwell in your heart? You need to be strengthened for that. It is a major project.

A moment ago, I used the word “conversion” in regard to this project. Many people think of conversion as an instantaneous thing. I wasn’t a Christian. I converted. Now I am. But that’s not the way it works.

Conversion is a process that begins even before Christ comes to live in us. It begins with the Spirit’s work to prepare our hearts and minds. Then, when we say “yes” to God, the Spirit begins changing us on the inside. That’s what is in mind verse 16, where Paul prays for the Ephesians to be “strengthen[ed] … with power through his Spirit in [their] inner being” – the inside man. Conversion continues throughout a person’s life on earth (and, I expect, in heaven). That is why believers in Jesus keep growing, changing, and – if you won’t misunderstand me – getting “bigger”.

The process itself can be uncomfortable. Knocking out our carefully constructed walls can be painful. Raising the ceiling can be scary. The tools God uses to do that are sharp and disruptive. (But no one ever said that being a Christian is for wimps.)

That’s why God’s inside man or woman needs to be empowered. Paul asked God to give that power to the Ephesians and we should ask God to give that power to us. We’re going to need it!

Let’s take this seriously and start praying this prayer. Let’s try picking out three people we know – friends, pastors, ministry leaders, spouses, children – and pray this pray for them over the next week. Let’s ask our openhanded, power-sharing Father to empower them so they can be and do what God has planned for them. Let’s ask him to make them bigger so that Christ can dwell in their hearts by faith and they can know Christ is dwelling there. Let’s start, though, by praying this prayer for ourselves:

Father, I pray that out of your glorious riches you may strengthen us with power through your Spirit in our inner being, so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith. Amen.

[1] Carol Leet, New York. Today’s Christian Woman, Vol. 18, no. 4.

[2] John Beukema, associate editor PreachingToday.com; source: John Markoff, The New York Times (10-22-03)

Posted in Church, From the Pulpit, Prayer, Sermons, Spiritual life, Theology | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Powerful Prayers: Make Yourself at Home (Ephesians 2:14-19)

Posted on March 3, 2020 by salooper57

Our culture talks a lot about empowering people: women, children, minorities, workers, gays, the transgendered, and, lately, even white men (though it’s usually white men talking about empowering white men.) Our society has a thing about power: it worships it. God doesn’t want us to worship power, but he does want us to use it.

When our culture empowers a person or a group of people, it divides them from other people. That’s how cultural power works: it raises some up by forcing others down. God’s power is not like that. It doesn’t divide. It unites. God’s power does not enable people to get their way. It enables them to walk together with others in God’s way. God’s power does not provoke resentment; it generates love.

Hold onto this thought: God wants to empower you. God, said C. S. Lewis, “seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye.” He empowers us. But why? What does God want to accomplish by empowering us?

The answer to that question is what this sermon seeks to address–and that answer is full of hope.

Listen and share your thoughts in the comment box below.

God’s best to you!

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Didn’t See That Coming: Living with Uncertainty

Posted on February 29, 2020 by salooper57

In over a hundred years of Major League Baseball, only 16 men have homered four times in one game. Most of them were power hitters. Twelve of the 16 hit 200 or more career home runs. Nine of them hit 300 or more.

Then came Scooter Gennett, a 5-foot-10, 185 pounds utility player who spent his Major League career bouncing from one team to another. Scooter had only 38 home runs in his entire career and was on an 0 for 19 slump, when he came to the plate for the Cincinnati Reds on June 6th, 2017. In that game, he hit one single and four home runs (including a grand slam). No one in the ballpark was more surprised than Gennett. He didn’t see that coming.

In his novel Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry has his protagonist say, “Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there … I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led…”

My wife and I know what Jayber meant. When we left college, neither of us imagined that I would be a pastor for nearly forty years. We did, however, think that we would work overseas, probably working with the poor in Latin America.

We had a general idea of how the future would work. We’d get jobs. (Did that.) Get married (Did that.) Get a master’s degree. (Didn’t do that.) Apply to our denomination for credentials. (Did that.) Do two-years of required home service (did that), probably as a youth pastor (didn’t do that). I would be ordained (did that), receive approved missionary status (didn’t do that), and move to South America, maybe Ecuador, where we would spend our lives. (Not even close.)

That’s how we thought things would work out. Instead, I, who never had a pastoral ministry course and hated the idea of talking to a room full of people, have spent more than 38 years pastoring and preaching, mostly in rural southern Michigan—and am grateful for it. But I didn’t see that coming.

The fact is none of us can see what’s coming. We try to shine a light into the darkness that is the future by making plans, but it remains pitch-black. How many people can say life has turned out as they expected? Only a few, and not many of them are over the age of 40.

We make plans and try to use them like battering rams to force our way into the future, often irrespective of God’s plans. Jesus once told the story of a successful businessman who had done well for himself, had a significant income, and expanded his holdings.

Jesus tells the story like this: “He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.””

Jesus ends the story this way: “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you.’” He didn’t see that coming.

St James, who regularly echoes Jesus’s teaching, wrote: “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.”

Humans cannot see what’s coming. Days before the stock market crash that initiated the Great Depression, the economist Irving Fisher assured the Builders Exchange Club that stock prices had reached “what looks like a permanently high plateau.” He should have read the Book of James.

Admitting that we don’t know what is coming next is both intellectually honest and emotionally daunting. Yet, if we have experienced the love and goodness of the God who does know what’s coming, the future can be faced with courage, no matter what it may bring.

First published by Gatehouse Media

Posted in Faith, Peace with God, Spiritual life | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Powerful Prayers: The Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation III (His Incomparably Great Power for Us Who Believe)

Posted on February 27, 2020 by salooper57

(Note: For a few weeks , I will post the manuscript that goes with the audio (posted Tuesdays) from a sermon in the Powerful Prayers series. People have requested the sermon manuscripts many time, but I’ve always been reluctant to make it available for two principal reasons: 1) I never simply read a sermon, so what people read is not exactly what I spoke. The manuscript might be better or it may be worse but it will be different. And (2) because the sermon has not been edited for publication. With those caveats, here is The Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation III (His Incomparably Great Power for Us Who Believe)

(Ephesians 1:18-23) I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way. 

Imagine you are at your high schooler’s track and field regional finals. She has already run the 100-meter relay and won’t run the 200 for at least a half-hour, so you mosey over to watch some of the field events. The shot putters are competing right now and they are well-matched and they are remarkably good. A couple of them are throwing around the 60-foot line.

At the moment, your school has a pretty strong lead, which might be unsurpassable. Then a shot putter from another school steps into the circle. He hoists the shot, gets into position, spins and releases. The shot flies not 60 feet, not 65 feet, but 75 feet. He doesn’t beat the previous best by inches but by 15 feet. It is astounding. It is miraculous.

What word would you use to describe the difference between this shot putter’s throw and all the rest? Greek has the perfect word for it: huperballon, which means literally “throw beyond,” and figuratively to outdo something by a long shot. That is the word St. Paul uses to describe the power of God. It is not even in the same ballpark with any other power we can name or conceive. It is beyond our grasp.

When Paul wrote this, the Roman Empire was the paradigm of power. Its enormous standing army, garrison cities, elite special forces, and latest military hardware were well beyond any other earthly power. But God’s power surpasses Rome’s like the world record shot putter surpasses the high school freshman’s best throw.

In order to impress his readers with the enormity of God’s power, Paul piles on one descriptor after another. You could translate verse 19 like this: “and what is the surpassing greatness of his power for us who believe, according to” – now listen to how he piles it on – “the working power” (we get our word “energy” from this word) “of the ruling power” (the word “autocrat” come from this root) of the forceful power of him.”

The primary word for “power” here is frequently translated “miracle” in the gospels. A miracle is an expression of power and God’s power is nothing short of miraculous. The word has the idea of ability and is sometimes translated that way. To possess power is to possess the ability to do what one chooses. In its verb form, the word is frequently translated as “I am able” or “I can.”

We are not always able. Human power is strictly limited. We cannot do everything we choose to do. I may choose to open a jar of homemade preserves but lack the ability (the power) to unscrew the lid. Jesus pointed out that we lack the power to add a single hour to our lifespan, no matter how desperate we are to do so. Human power is limited.

Even collective power, as displayed in government or business, is limited. Rome might have been the paradigm of power in the first century, with its enormous army and advanced weaponry, but even Rome lacked the power to root out rebellion. Rome lacked the power to end starvation and disease. Rome didn’t possess the ability to create a just society based on mutual respect. And though we’ve come a long way since the first century, today’s “superpower” still lacks the ability to do those things.

God does not. His power knows no limits. A critic will immediately ask: Then why is there still starvation and disease? Why does justice evade us? Where is universal human respect? If God is so powerful, and he wants these things, why hasn’t he made them happen?

There’s no getting around it: that is a difficult question, with a multi-part answer and none of us has all the parts. So, even after we have given our best and truest answer, there is much that we don’t understand. But here, at least, is one part of that answer. God has chosen to demonstrate his ability to do these things through the saints, effectively transferring (or, better, investing) some of his incredible power in his people. He wants to demonstrate what he can do in the Church. Later in this same letter, Paul will write of God’s immeasurable, unimaginable ability (the verb form of the noun translated “power” in this passage) which is at work in the church!

But before writing that, Paul tells the Ephesians that God’s intention is to make known to rulers and authorities his wisdom – the absolute brilliance and effectiveness of his plan – and to do so through the Church. The Church is his proving ground, his test track. The church is intended by God to be a model of what can happen – what God has the power to make happen – in the world. The Church is on display as the prototype of God’s wisdom and power.

Every year in January, Las Vegas hosts the country’s biggest tech show. People come from all over to see the latest tech innovations: self-driving cars, delivery drones, next-gen software solutions – even bathroom mirrors that respond to voice command and turn on the shower, make it warmer, soften the light, and more. This year at the tech show, Char Broil introduced smart propane grills, which will take the temperature of your meat, raise or lower the heat at your command, and warn you if a burner goes out. (Next year’s model will actually eat your steak.)

Imagine you are at the Char Broil demonstration at the tech show. The guy running the demonstration looks at an app on his phone and it tells him the temperature of his T-Bone: 130 degrees. That’s not high enough, so he touches his phone screen, and the grill turns up the heat to medium high. He shows his audience the phone and smiles knowingly. But then something happens. Flames start leaping from the grill, catch the display deck and its backyard furniture on fire, and the entire Las Vegas World Trade Center has to be evacuated. That demo will probably not generate many buyers or investors.

So with the church. God has a display. He is demonstrating his know-how and power in a group of very imperfect people, transforming them into “an all-inclusive community of loving persons, with himself as its primary sustainer and most glorious inhabitant.”[1] As God transforms us into this work of art, (functional art, by the way), we experience his power in our lives. Our desires begin to change, as do our attitudes and our relationships, and we gradually become that beautiful community of loving persons. While undergoing this transformation, we become witnesses to Jesus. We experience his power, and others see what God is capable of doing.

But when we sin and fall short of the glory of God – when we fall short of bringing glory to God – because we refuse to give; refuse to forgive; act hypocritically; gossip; mislead; manipulate – we catch fire, burn down the display, and empty the church. There are not many people wanting to buy in when that happens.

Paul longs for Christians to know, to the full extent of their mind’s ability, the supreme greatness of God’s power. He knows that when the Spirit of wisdom and revelation opens people’s eyes to God’s surpassing power, it changes them. It gives rise to reverence in them, what the ancients called “the fear of the Lord,” and makes them passionate worshipers. As our knowledge and experience of God’s power grows, the fear of failure, fear of people, fear of the future, fear of privation is extinguished. Knowing the power of God sets people free to try, to give, to enjoy, to love. We need to know, to the very limits of our ability, the power that God possesses.

This power, Paul says, is “for us who believe” or “for us the believing.” Do you think that is an accurate description of you? John the believing. Dawn the believing. Ethan the believing. Emily the believing. Not everyone is in position to take advantage of the power Paul is talking about.  It is for the believing.

That begs the question, doesn’t it? What are “the believing” believing? In my experience, many people who confess belief in God have little more than a blur or smear of religious thoughts – some quite pagan – about a God who is generally nice and will look after us, and take us to heaven when we die. Would Paul recognize those folks as “the believing”?

I don’t think so. A fuzzy belief in god doesn’t mean much to Paul. “The believing” believe in Jesus the Lord, the rightful ruler of the earth. They believe that what Jesus says is true and his sacrifice is sufficient. “The believing” have more than head knowledge. They have a heart – that is, a command center – commitment to Jesus the Lord.

There is a correlation between belief and the experience of God’s power. In the gospels, there is a remark made in passing by the narrator that has enormous implications for our experience of God. The Evangelist comments, “And he [Jesus] did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith” (Matthew 13:58). St. Mark says something even more starting: “He could not do any miracles there, except lay hands on a few sick people and heal them” (Mark 6:5). God’s power – his energetic, working, ruling, overcoming power – is for “the believing,” whose belief becomes a conduit for the exercise of God’s power.

But what if I doubt? Doubt is not a big problem. Unbelief is. Doubt exists in the absence of knowledge and when the knowledge is supplied, the doubter believes. But unbelief – the refusal to believe – is different. It is not motivated by lack of knowledge but by an unwillingness to commit. Doubt is routinely the predecessor to belief. Unbelief is the predecessor to ruin.

Is the power of God capable of meeting your need? It is. As difficult as your situation might be, Jesus’s was worse. He was dead and in the grave when God’s power changed everything. One minute, Jesus was dead and gone and the next he was alive and raised. He was as an impotent corpse, then he was ruler of heaven and earth. Paul says that God’s power for us is just like that power.

“That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come  (Ephesians 1:19-21).

If you’re in need of power – capable, energetic, authoritative, overcoming power – the person to see is Jesus. He has been raised to the heights of power (verse 21), all things have been subjected to him (beginning of verse 22) and he has been appointed head over everything for the Church. Now, if you’re not in the Church, this power is not for you. But if you are in the Church – you’ve joined Jesus and believe in him – he is the one to go to.

It is important to realize this power is not meant for individuals in isolation from the Church. God loves the Church of Jesus so much he chose it for his inheritance. He invests in the Church and values it tremendously. He releases his great power to “the believing.” This means that, if you are not in the Body of Christ; if the Church is not important to you; if you’re not invested in it; you won’t see much of God’s power.

There are people who are not in the Church, not involved in its mission, not committed (or even giving a thought) to what God is doing in the world – summing up all things in heaven and on earth under one head, even Christ – who still wish to see God’s power in their lives. They want God to use his great power to get them a job or cure their disease or change their son’s attitude but none of that is happening and they cannot understand why. They give to a TV ministry that promises – quid pro quo – that God will heal them or help them, but it appears God is not keeping his end of the bargain. They pray, they ask others to pray, but nothing seems to happen. Why not? Because they are not where the power is.

Imagine living on Lockwood Road in 1936. You don’t have electricity (and don’t really trust it, either). None of your neighbors have electricity. But then Edna and her husband – he works at the car dealership in town – become the first to sign up. The Electric Company runs a wire from Angola Road to the new pole and then to their house. If you want to see what electricity can do, you need to go to Edna’s house. They’ve put in electric lights, a refrigerator, and even a toaster. The only way you’ll see electric power at your house is if lightning strikes, which is not very likely. Just so, God’s power may strike someone who is outside the Church and doesn’t care about Jesus’s mission, but it’s not very likely.

This is hard for us to understand. Western Christians tend to see a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ” in isolation from Jesus’s mission, his church, and God’s glorious inheritance in the saints. But when God displays his power, it happens where Jesus is obeyed and his mission advanced. Since the Church is the prototype or the test site or the working model for what God can do, it is where we find his power at work.  

Imagine again that it’s 1936 and you’ve just got on the bandwagon and had the electric company run a wire to your house. You’ve got two electric lights in your kitchen, a lamp in your living room, and one in each of your bedrooms. You have five places where the electricity can actually accomplish something in your house.

It’s a good start. Now imagine that its 1966, and those five light bulbs are still the only electricity-using devices in your home. It’s what you’ve become accustomed to, and you don’t think much about it, but you’re not experiencing many of the benefits electricity could provide.

Similarly, if we have little outlet for the power of God, we will have little experience of the power of God. The first time many people are aware of God’s power is when it flows through them to someone else. This is supposed to happen in the church all the time. Power runs through me for you, through you for me, and through us for everyone else. A Christian who doesn’t serve others doesn’t experience God’s power. We want God’s power in our lives. God wants our lives in his church, delivering power where it is needed.

If you want to become a conductor of God’s power, as well as a recipient of it, try this: Begin praying seriously for something (for example, Children’s Ministry, Family Ministry or Youth Ministry) or some person (for example, someone on the prayer panel in the bulletin). Make yourself available to God for his will regarding that person or ministry. If he brings something to mind for you to do – it can be as simple as sending a card or making a phone call – do it. That’s how you plug in to the power.

This is not simply volunteering for a job. This is connecting to God so that his energy can flow through you. Every time someone does that, it’s like a light comes on in the church. When we all do it, the church becomes the success of the entire exhibition known as life on earth. It becomes, in Jesus’s metaphor, a city on a hill that cannot be hidden.

Let’s light this thing up!

We’ll close our time by praying Paul’s prayer for our church family. We’ll personalize the words to our situation as we pray:

God of our Lord Jesus Christ, glorious Father: give us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that we may know you better; that the eyes of our heart may be enlightened in order that we may know the hope to which you have called us, the riches of your glorious inheritance in the saints, and your incomparably great power for us who believe. Amen.

[1] Dallas Willard

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