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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
Ephesians 3:20-21
Now to him
who is able to do far more abundantly
than all that we ask or think,
according to the power at work within us.
To him
be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus
throughout all generations,
forever and ever.
Amen.
Everybody, good morning
and welcome to Christ Community Chapel.
My name is Joe. I'm
one of the pastors here.
Thanks for coming.
We have a great morning
and a full morning,
because we're going to be baptizing
people.
We're going to baptize
40 people over the course
of all the services this weekend,
which is awesome.
I have to tell you one story quickly.
Thanks for the overwhelming applause.
Lost my train of thought there just.
Right.
Let me tell you this story, though.
At 8:00, the baptism there
one one of the people that got in was out,
a young man,
his wife, who is obviously pregnant,
was waiting for him, with a towel.
Found out afterwards
she is going to be induced tomorrow.
So he was getting baptized
before his daughter was born.
And then the next guy that got baptized
was a grandfather
whose grand grandkids were watching.
I just thought, how awesome is that?
All right.
Yeah.
Now you're going to be.
Now you're going to be applauding.
All right.
This is the last message
of our four part series
where we're setting the theme for 2026,
and our theme is simply More Life,
More Life.
And we're taking it from John chapter
ten, verse ten,
where
Jesus gives us his reason for coming.
Jesus says, "I've come that they might
have life and have it more abundantly".
Jesus wants you to have more life,
a fuller life, abundant life.
The passage we had read to us
comes at the very
end of a prayer in Ephesians
chapter three.
It's my favorite prayer,
probably in the whole Bible.
I actually prayed for it.
I prayed it for you early this morning.
Let me read you the prayer
and then we'll get to this final part.
The benediction.
And this is what it says
beginning at verse 14.
For this reason, I bow my knees before the
father, from whom every family in heaven
and on earth is named,
that according to the riches of his glory
he may grant you to be strengthened
with power through His Spirit
in your inner being, so that Christ
may dwell in your hearts through faith.
That you, being rooted and grounded in
love,
may have strength to comprehend
with all the saints
what is the breadth and length
and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ
that surpasses knowledge,
that you may be filled
with all the fullness of God.
And then this ending, this crescendo,
he says, Now to him
who is able to do far more abundantly
than all that
we can ask or think,
according to the power at work within us.
To him
be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus
throughout all generations,
forever and ever.
Amen.
What an awesome prayer.
Paul.
Because oh, by the way, we did a
this is a four part series.
We started with John chapter
ten, verse ten.
That's the Gospels.
The next week I preached on Psalm 19.
Last week Zach preached using passages
from Genesis and Revelation,
and now we're using a passage
in Ephesians.
And the point is that from cover to cover,
the Bible is about more life.
God has always wanted you
to have more life.
And here in this passage,
he tells us that more life is found
in the middle of three things.
And these are my three points.
If you want more life,
it will be found in the middle of a God
who is greater, a power that is stronger,
and a glory that lasts longer.
A God who is greater, a power that is
stronger, and a glory that lasts longer.
First, a God who is greater.
Paul begins this by
stacking like superlative
on top of superlative.
Sweat, he says now to him who is able to
do far more abundantly than all we can ask
or think, another version
says, all we can ask or imagine.
Paul says, you want more life.
You don't start by looking at yourself
in the deficiencies in your life.
You want more life.
You start by looking at God, at a God
who is greater.
Let me tell you a few things
that God is greater than.
The first is God is greater than your past
pain.
God is greater than your past pain.
I read a good book last week.
It was called Make Sense of Your Story
by a guy named Adam Young.
Adam Young is a counselor.
The premise of the book is that
we experience
a lot of his experience, pain
as a child that then become the wounds
that we organize
our life around as adults
because we haven't quite healed that pain.
And I
that's there's some truth to that's
why I say it's a really good book.
But I also believe that God is greater
than the pain of your past.
You are not defined
by the worst chapter of your life.
And I say that because every great story,
every great book,
every great movie is the same kind of arc.
There are some dark and in Lord of the
rings, one of my all time favorite books.
There are some really dark chapters,
but it's the darkness of those chapters
in the middle that make what happens
later is so incredible.
I think of the story of Joseph
in the Old Testament.
Joseph at the age of like 16,
was sold into slavery by his own brothers.
Are they find
something more traumatic than that?
And we catch a glimpse of the trauma
in a single verse,
kind of tucked away in that story
where the brothers who sold him,
they feel like
the judgment of God is coming,
and they're talking to each other
about why it's happening.
And they say, did we not see his distress
when we sold him?
But we did not heed his cries.
You could just imagine
Joseph screaming, crying,
begging to not be taken away
and to no avail.
He ends up alone, sold as a slave.
And just
when he's getting used to life as a slave,
he gets wrongly imprisoned.
For what?
In what seems to be a life sentence.
It's enough to make anybody angry and
and hostile, violent.
But by
the end of the story, what we find is
Joseph is full of wisdom and compassion
and forgiveness
and integrity. Why?
Because God is greater
than your past pain.
God can redeem your past.
That's just true.
The second is God is greater than
our present needs, than our present needs.
It says that he's able
to give more than we can ask or think.
You know,
there's a verse in the book of James
that says, you do not have
because you do not ask.
And I was thinking, what?
Why don't I ask for more from God?
To be honest,
I mean, there's some things I don't ask
God for because they seem so small.
I don't want to bother him.
And then there are some things
that are so big.
I don't want to put God in the awkward
position of saying no and seeming
like he didn't come through for me.
But the Bible says, go ahead and ask.
There's a
there's a story about Alexander the Great.
I really like
where Alexander the Great had a general
that served him for many years,
and the general came to Alexander the
Great and said, I want to ask for a favor.
Would you pay for my daughter's wedding?
And Alexander
the Great said, okay, y'all do that.
Just go to the court treasurer
and ask for what you need.
Like three days later, the court
treasurer came to Alexander the Great
and complained.
He said, This general has come and he's
asked for an enormous amount of money.
And Alexander the Great thought about it,
and he said, go ahead and give him,
give him it. Give him all of it.
Because by asking,
he has paid me two great compliments.
One, he thinks I'm rich enough
to give him such an exorbitant amount.
And two, he thinks I'm generous enough
to give it to him.
And by paying me
these two great compliments, he honors me.
Listen, God loves you.
God is a generous God.
Go ahead and ask and trust him.
If if what you're asking for seems like
it, it's the best thing for you.
But God knows it's not.
You have to trust him
that he'll say no, but ask him
he is greater than your present needs.
And finally,
God is greater than your future.
Fear.
In John chapter 11,
it's the story of Lazarus
where Jesus has a friend named Lazarus
who gets sick.
By the time
Jesus gets to where Lazarus was.
Lazarus has been dead for four days.
Seems like that book is as close.
Jesus makes
one of his most iconic statements.
He says, I am the resurrection
and the life.
Whoever believes in me, though
he were dead, yet
shall he live.
And then, as if to prove his point,
he goes to the grave of Lazarus
and calls him out.
And Lazarus is raised from the dead.
Amazing.
You know, there are certain stories
in the Bible where I can't
wait to get to heaven and hear
kind of the rest of the story.
We don't hear much about Lazarus.
After I would like to know
what Lazarus life was like
after that, because I just think
he would be a tough guy to rattle.
Don't you?
I mean, what are you going to make?
How are you going to make him afraid?
You're going to say Lazarus,
you may get laid off next year.
You know, he's like,
seriously,
that's going to shake me, right?
Because Lazarus knew
beyond a shadow of a doubt
that the best was yet to come.
Listen, Jesus said,
I am the resurrection and the life.
Whoever believes in me, though
he were dead, yet shall he live.
And I believe in Jesus,
which means I may not know
what's going to happen
next week or next year, but this I know
the best, is yet to come for me,
and the best is yet to come for you.
If you believe in Jesus,
that's the first thing Paul says.
You want more life.
You find it in a God who is greater.
Then he says, you want more life.
You find it in a power that is stronger.
He says this now to him
who is able to do far more abundantly
than all we ask or think,
according to the power at work within us.
What Paul says is that that
that power is not a power
I have inside of myself.
More life isn't found with more stuff
or more experiences.
It's found in the the power of God
that is actually in me.
In you.
If you belong to Jesus.
And that means that it's a power
that is stronger than certain things.
Let me tell you what it's stronger than.
It's stronger than.
Sin's grip.
Let's be honest.
Some of us don't have more life
because of sin,
because we're involved in sin
and you may feel stuck,
but you are not powerless.
If you are stuck in sin.
And the reason I say that, you know,
we sing songs
that say that through
Jesus every chain is broken.
We sing songs like that
because over and over in the Bible
it says that we are no longer
slaves of sin.
Romans six says
sin will no longer have dominion over us.
John chapter eight Jesus says, here
the sun sets
free, is free indeed.
Listen, sin is you are not a slave to sin
anymore because of the power within you.
And I always think that the power
that I have with self-discipline,
and I like to think of myself
as a self-discipline person,
is like the power of like a triple
A battery compared to what?
What Paul is saying is I have access to
a power that could power an entire city.
That's the power that is yours.
It's greater.
It's more powerful, stronger
than sin's grip.
It's also stronger than
shames boys, shames boys.
In the movie good Will hunting.
Matt Damon plays a young man named Will.
Robin Williams is his counselor.
And there's this moment in the movie
where,
Matt Damon, he.
As a boy, he was abused,
and he felt like it was his fault.
And you got Robin Williams as a counselor
saying, well, it's not your fault.
It's not your fault.
It's not your fault.
You keep saying it over.
And finally, Will breaks down sobbing
because he finally believes it.
Some of you need that.
So you, you know in your head
that Jesus has forgiven your sin,
but you still feel the shame
and you need to hear
Jesus said, taking your sin.
But I've also taken your shame.
I've taken your shame.
I've taken your shame.
The power that we
have is stronger than sins.
Grip. It's stronger than shame.
Voice is stronger than Satan's attacks.
I always think my.
If my life was like a like a chess game
and I was playing against Satan,
he would crush me.
But if Jesus is on my side,
then every time Satan makes a move,
then Jesus counters.
Paul says, you want more life.
You're going to find it.
The God who is greater power
that is stronger, and finally a glory
that lasts longer.
This is what he says to him
be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus
throughout all generations,
forever and ever.
Amen.
How is it?
I'm surprised at how quickly glory fades
in our kind of current culture.
It's so fleeting.
The older I get, the more I realize that.
I just read about a mom
who is trying to explain to her daughter
who Robert Redford was,
right.
Her daughter had no idea.
So the mom said, oh, Robert
Redford was like the Brad Pitt in my era.
And her daughter said, Who's Brad Pitt?
That's how quickly it goes.
I remember
reading a poem years and years ago.
I made such an impression on me.
It was written by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
It's called as Amanda's, and it's a it's
a poem about just about the futility
of whatever you are pouring your life
into right here, right now.
And I memorized
I think I can still remember it.
This is the way it goes, says I.
I met a traveler from an antique land
who said to vast and trunk lists
legs of stone, stand in the desert
near them, half sunken.
A shattered visage lies,
whose frown and wrinkled
lips stamped on those lifeless,
lifeless things.
Tell. Well, it's sculptor.
Read the hand that mocked them.
And the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear.
My name is as Amanda, King of kings.
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.
Nothing beside remains.
Round the decay of that colossal wreck.
Boundless and bare.
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
What?
That says once was a king
who had built a massive kingdom.
His name was Asmodeus.
He was so confident of his glory
that he built a statue to himself,
with an inscription that challenged
anybody who thought they'd done something
with their lives, to look on his kingdom
and despair of what they had accomplished.
And the only irony is, the
only thing that was left
was this broken down statue.
It's my question.
What are you spending your life on?
What do you think will go with you forever
and ever?
It's not what you do for a living.
It's not what you accumulate.
What this says is
there's a glory that will last forever.
And it's connected to Jesus
and his church.
And that goes back to what Zach said
last week, right?
That we want to be a church
where God is big, we are small.
We love each other so well
that people keep coming
and they keep coming to find Jesus
to get baptized,
because that's what lasts forever.
Listen, you want more life in 2026?
That's what Jesus wants for you.
If you want more life in 2026,
you will find it
in a God who is greater.
Greater than your past pain,
your present needs, your future fears.
A power that is stronger
than sin's grip
and Satan's attacks and shames voice
and a glory that lasts longer.
Choose life
now to him
who is able to do far more abundantly
than all we ask or think,
according to the power at work within us.
To him
be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus
throughout all generations,
forever and ever.
Amen.
Would you pray with me?
Father in Heaven, I am so grateful
that you are for us and not against us,
as you've always wanted us to have
more life, and you want every person here
to have more life in 2026
than we did in 2025.
I pray that we will find that,
find that right
in the midst of what you want us to be.
Lord, I pray that you will,
pull everyone in this room
closer to yourself.
We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.