Living Powerfully

Written by Ed Allen
Saturday, 11 November 2000 19:00

Ephesians: Christianity for Dummies

Ephesians 3:14-21

“(14) For this reason I kneel before the Father, (15) from whom his whole family [1] in heaven and on earth derives its name. (16) I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, (17) so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, (18) may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, (19) and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (20) 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, (21) to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

The Christian life is not automatic. You are not a Christian because you grew up in a Christian home, or a Christian country. You are not a Christian because you are a nice person. You are not a Christian because you go to church. Even believing that there is a God does not make you a Christian. You are a Christian if there is a new operating system governing your life so that all your decisions and actions are made in reference to that new operating system. As one writer put it, you are a Christian if Christ permeates your life. Or as I used to tell my children, you are a Christian if Jesus lives in your heart. You are a Christian if the power of God has touched your life in such a way that you are transformed inside.

That’s why, in his letter to the Ephesians, Paul prays for them to be strengthened with God’s power, through His Spirit in their inner being. In another place this same Paul says: “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.” (Philippians 4:13) That’s the kind of power I want resonating around my life. I want to be a husband out of that kind of power. I want to father out of that kind of power. I want to be a neighbor out of that kind of power. I want to counsel my friends and spend my alone times and make decisions out of that kind of power. If you’re like me, then God has something to say to us today. Today we’re going to answer four questions concerning God’s power: What is the source of it? How do we tap into it? How does it work? And why don’t we experience it more?

For several weeks we have been working our way through the spectacular letter to the Ephesians in a series that we have called “Christianity for Dummies.” We called it that because this letter spends half of its time laying out the basics of what it means to relate to God and how to understand Him. The second half of the letter then is spent explaining how that relationship applies to our lives. Today we come to the end of the first half. And to our surprise, we find that it ends in a spontaneous prayer that erupts from the pen of the author in one long sentence.

Through this prayer God unwraps for us what it means to live powerfully. First of all, He gives us the source of His power. According to the Bible, the only source for genuine power that can sustain our lives is God’s spirit.

Please understand that this is not the same as getting in touch with your own Spirit. One new age author describes living powerfully as getting in touch with “the human in the human, the better in the worse, the immortal in the mortal.” Some of you know people who are really spiritual. But not all spirituality is created equal. God never encourages us to get in touch with that better and deeper part of ourselves. Some of you know people who are really spiritual, but no all spirituality is created equal. God says “let me fill the deeper part of your life with my Spirit and then live your life out of that fullness. All other power is counterfeit.” The French philosopher Pascal used to say that there is a God-shaped vacuum in all of us. When that vacuum is filled with God’s Spirit, then genuine power is accessible in and through our lives. When that vacuum is empty, then all exhibitions of power are illusions. Because the only source for genuine power that can sustain our lives is God’s Spirit.

In the next verse he restates this reality in another way. “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.” The words “so that” here do not give us a result. In other words, this does not mean that the result of the infilling Spirit is Christ dwelling in you. This phrase gives us a clarification. This means that another way of saying the Spirit is filling me is that Christ is dwelling in me. The Bible claims that Jesus released God’s power in a dynamic way to us. The Holy Spirit then applies that power to our lives by merging with our spirit.

When my boys were young, Diane and I used to talk to them about asking Jesus into their hearts. This is a concept so simple that even the youngest child can intuitively understand it. And yet it is so profound that it takes a lifetime for any of us to understand. And don’t think that this is some fairy tale. The Bible means this quite literally. Jesus comes to live in our hearts. Think about it. The one “who is before all things, and in whom all things hold together,” it means that the one “by whom all things were created...created by him and for him,” it means that the one who is “the exact radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being,”...this one animates our lives. This one enters a spiritual relationship with us, in us.

The source of God’s power is the infilling Spirit, in other words, the indwelling Christ. If you have never experienced the filling of God’s Spirit, if you have never asked Jesus to come live in your heart, pray for it this morning.

So how does God’s power work? How does it affect us? What does this look like? According to Paul’s prayer, God’s Spirit strengthens and empowers the interior of our lives. Out of this strengthened interior then we are enabled to deal with whatever life throws at us faithfully. God is not after cosmetic changes. He is after real change that will last. Real change comes from the inside out. “I pray that God will strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.”

For some of you, this point may seem so obvious that we shouldn’t even bring it up. And while I know many of you think this way, we often don’t live this way. In other words, even if you know that the spiritual world is the unseen world you may not live like you know it. Even if you are a skeptic, it just makes sense that if there is a God at all, most of his work would be on the interior of our lives. And we all know that this is where real change occurs. But we live as if we believed the real source of power was in our circumstances. “If I could just change the circumstances of my life, then I’d be able to be happy.” “If I could add on to my home then I’d have the power to be a better mom or dad.” “If I could just get a raise, then I’d have the power to feel better about myself.” “If I was just thinner or taller or smarter...”

And when we’re not looking at circumstances as the source of power for our lives, we look at habits. “Boy if I order this new time management system, I could live a more powerful life. I’d be a more effective project manager and a better person.” “If I could control my eating habits, or my language, or my sleeping patterns then I could go further in life.”

Sometimes we manage to change the habit. Sometimes we even manage to reach the desired goal by changing a habit only to find that what we wanted is not what we really wanted. I believe that’s what Jesus meant when he said, “those who seek to keep their lives will lose them, but those who lose their lives for my sake will find them.”

What we really want is to be rocked by God’s power. We want Christ in our lives. We want the vacuum filled. And nothing else will satisfy. Stop looking at the exterior of your life for a while today. Let the exterior go. Lose it. Expect God to strengthen and empower the interior of your life and then watch what He will do.

So how do we get it? How do we tap into God’s power? We have already implied the answer to this question but let’s give it. We open ourselves up to God’s power by a willing, attentive heart.

I have chosen my words carefully here. You see, this means that there are not any steps that we can take that will automatically fill us with God’s power. God’s power is not a force that we can manipulate. His power flows where there is relationship with Him. There is nothing we can do to cause God’s Spirit to merge with our spirit. That’s why Paul prays for the Ephesians that God would strengthen these believers with power. This empowering is God’s doing. As we said, it does not come from within us and we cannot control it. But it would be a colossal error for us to think that we can do nothing. God’s Spirit will not empower unwilling, inattentive hearts. So we open ourselves up to God’s power by a willing, attentive heart. As with so many other things concerning God, this is very, very simple, but sometimes very difficult.

As a parent I have learned that the heart is really more important than behavior.

A right heart will eventually show itself in right behavior. Similarly, even though right behavior can cover a bad heart for a time, eventually the bad heart will show itself in bad behavior.

God is looking for willing and attentive hearts.

So if Christ is in us and that is the source of God’s power, then why don’t we experience it more? If you’re anything like me, two options come to your mind in answer to this question.

1. Maybe the idea is wrong. God is not real and if He is real, He is unconcerned about me.
2. Something is wrong with me. I am not willing and open to God’s Spirit the way I need to be.

Obviously the Bible dismisses the first option, as should all of us who have experienced God’s power. Unfortunately, we allow ourselves to fall into the ‘what have you done for me lately’ category. Which brings us to the second option. It is not an easy thing to keep ourselves open and attentive to God’s Spirit. Quite often the Bible calls people hard-hearted. And sometimes it says that of believers. It sometimes tells us that people have turned away from God, that they have gotten completely preoccupied with the exterior of their lives -- so much so that they cannot be attentive to the movement of His Spirit.

Some of you may sense that this is a fair description of you this morning. How long has it been since you have felt grounded in God’s love for you? This is exactly what we encounter when Christ comes to live in us. Paul prays, “So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith and you being rooted and established in love...” Here is the acceptance and significance that our hearts crave and it flows out of Christ’s indwelling. We can’t find it anywhere else. And out of this deeply satisfying foundation we will be able to really understand what God has done for us and we will be able to experience God’s love for us. And this experience changes us completely. “I pray that you being rooted and established in love, may have the 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.”

It may be this morning that you have not been open to God’s Spirit. You have not had a willing heart. Your heart has been closed down by hurt, or by anger, or maybe by busyness and chasing down the exterior. You want to grasp the dimensions of God’s love and more than that, you want to experience it filling you, but that seems like a million miles away. I want to remind you this morning that God is always near and He wants to do far more, in fact immeasurably more than we ask or even imagine. Whatever is closing you down today, whatever is making you unwilling stop it! Let it go! God is here and His power is at work!