![]() ![]() And here's the summit now of Christian experience that we're going to begin looking at today, along with the doxology that you would be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God, that being the summit of Christian experience, the best you can have in this world, a foretaste of Heaven.Īnd Paul concludes this prayer with an astounding doxology, a beautiful doxology. that you would have power to grasp that, to know that love that surpasses knowledge. This love of Christ “poured into your heart by the Holy Spirit,” Romans 5:5. It's not contrary to knowledge, it's just beyond knowledge. And to know that love that surpasses knowledge, something that goes beyond anything you've ever experienced or could know. That you'd actually have a sense of it, and that you would actually in some ways, through your reading of the Scripture, through the power of the Holy Spirit, be able to travel in your minds to see the limits, and there are none, of Christ's love for you, how wide and long and high and deep. But all Christians could have this kind of power, that you would be able to grasp, to comprehend the infinite dimensions of Christ's love for you. This was something that could happen to all Christians all over the world, all generations. “Rooted and established in love, that you would have power,” some translations just say "be able," but I think the whole theme of power just pervades this text, “so that you would have power together with all the saints.” But one of them more of a living picture of an oak tree with deep root systems sucking nutrients and moisture from the subterranean areas there, and then growing and just flourishing like a mighty oak tree, or then a building, like Jesus said, built on a solid rock as we sang earlier, immovable. Step four, that they would be “rooted and established in love.” You see that again in verse 17, “you, being rooted and established in love.” When I preached that, a different picture of an oak tree and of a vast building, both of them a sense of rootedness, stability, strength, not being easily moved. Step three, so that Christ would, “settle down in your hearts through faith,” that you would have a daily powerful experience of feasting with Christ, that you would just live with Christ and He would settle down in your hearts through faith, verse 17. Step two, that God would, strengthen the inner man of these Christian people, the inner being, “out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being.” So there's this sense of strengthening through the Holy Spirit inside you. "For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom His whole family in Heaven and earth derives its name." So, he has a view of the whole church of God here, not just the Ephesian Christians, but he's kneeling and praying for them. Look at verses 14 and 15, Ephesians 3, Paul's prayer for the Ephesian Christians, he prays to the Father on their behalf. But you can see step-by-step Paul just taking the Ephesians and lifting them higher and higher and higher as he goes through this text. ![]() Others have told me you've had these kinds of experiences, and that's been amazing for me. And so, this is my fourth and final week preaching, and I think for many of you this whole theme has been new and unusual. And by the power of God, we will start moving up higher and higher a mountain of Christian experience to some rarefied air that we didn't even know existed, and begin to breathe healthier, in this parable that I'm using this illustration, and have sights of the world that's coming in ways that will empower us for the mission God still has for us to do. ![]() And that if we would just exert ourselves and believe that there is a better kind of experience of Christ's love available for us through the Holy Spirit, “the deposit guaranteeing our future inheritance” in Christ, then we will begin to climb. ![]() And three weeks ago, I put a slide up, as you may remember, of the City of Kathmandu, which is in somewhat of a bowl, and you can see the city in the slide, the picture, and then above it a layer of smog and air pollution and cloud, and then above that, majestic mountains, the Himalayan mountain range, and a desire to set that image in your mind as somewhat of a parable of the ordinary Christian experience of how we Christians can live our lives in a smog covered haze with our head down, drizzled on all the time, and not aware of the mountain of majestic experience, of a sense of the “love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit” that is available for all of us. We're going to be looking at the very end of this chapter now, as Kyle mentioned, for the fourth week, looking at this remarkable prayer that the Apostle Paul prays for the Ephesian Christians, and I believe for us, and that we can learn from it. Turn in your Bibles, if you would, to Ephesians chapter 3. ![]()
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