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Ephesians 1:13-23
13 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is the guarantee1 of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it,2 to the praise of his glory.
15 For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love3 toward all the saints, 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might 20 that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. 22 And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
[1] 1:14
[2] 1:14
[3] 1:15
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Alright. We're in Ephesians. Ephesians chapter 1. We started a couple of weeks ago with studying Ephesians. It'll take us into the new year.
Joel Brooks:Wanna begin reading in verse 13. Ephesians 1 chapter 13. In him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love towards all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you. Remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him.
Joel Brooks:Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, And what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ, when he raised him from the dead and seated him at the right hand in the heavenly places. Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet, and gave him his head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all, and all. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Joel Brooks:If you would, pray with me. Father, we pray in this moment for a spirit of wisdom and revelation, that the eyes of our hearts would be opened, that we might know you, Jesus. We want to know you, and we wanna be transformed by you. And for that to happen, your spirit, he needs to come, and he needs to open up dull minds crack open hardened hearts. So we ask that He would do that.
Joel Brooks:I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But, Lord, may Your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. As most of you are probably aware, my wife and I, we try to have every person who's been visiting the church over to our house for dinner at some point.
Joel Brooks:And probably many, if not most of you, have come over to our house for dinner. And during this time, we, you know, we'll talk with one another. We kinda get to know one another, and then I'll talk briefly a little bit about the church, and then let you ask questions. Now almost every single time we have one of these dinners, I have somebody come up and talk to me about something. And they they won't say this in front of everybody, but but usually before they leave, they'll they'll come up to me and they'll say something like this.
Joel Brooks:Joel, the first Sunday I I visited, you made us kinda do the small group prayer thing. And gosh, why do you make us do something so awkward? In all honesty, when when in horror, I started hearing you say, we're gonna gather up in groups and we're gonna pray, I just wanted to get up and I just wanted to run. I started thinking, should I say I need to go use the restroom, and I'm gonna leave, and but but I ended up staying, and I just wanna tell you it was one of the best experiences. As we were praying, and I was so nervous about it, but I got to hear person after person in my group pray and and really got to hear their heart.
Joel Brooks:And then as they were praying, and then as I prayed a little prayer, you know, I felt my heart being softened and opened up to the things that we had just heard. So I I hate you and I love you, but but don't stop doing that small group prayer. I say, I won't because I really love making people feel awkward. It will always be a part of our service. That's what Paul's doing here, actually.
Joel Brooks:He's he's just given us a chunk of theology. And this theology leads him into prayer, and he's hoping that as we pray, our hearts, our minds will be opened up to really understand the theology that he's just given us. All good theology leads to doxology. All good theology leads to prayer. And and so when when you were given this chunk of theology that Paul's given us, or essentially, I'd say he's he's taken us to the deep end of the pool, and now he says if you wanna swim, you gotta jump in through prayer.
Joel Brooks:And that's how we swim in these deep truths, and our hearts become open to it, and we begin to experience these things. And so Paul, he's talked to us about the mercy of God, the the forgiveness of God, about how we've been chosen for adoption. We've been given this his Spirit as an inheritance, And his thought of all of those things, it leads him into prayer. That those things might become a reality in his life and in their lives. And that's what he does now.
Joel Brooks:He tells the Ephesian church he's been praying for them. He's been praying for himself. He's been praying. And what we get is one of the most glorious prayers in all of the Bible. Let's look again at verse 16.
Joel Brooks:Let's read a couple of verses revisiting this prayer. Paul says, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you. Stop there. Let me ask you a question. What is it that you think you need most?
Joel Brooks:What is it that you think you need most? And as you're thinking of that thing, let me ask you this question. How does it align with what Paul just prayed? Does it does it match up with with the things that Paul just prayed about? I find that our prayers are often filled with requests for material blessings, requests for health, maybe help in some kind of relationship issue, or some job concern that we have.
Joel Brooks:And and those are not bad things to pray. But I want you to notice that Paul does not pray for any of those things. None of those things are what he sees as the pressing needs of his heart. Instead, he prays this, that we would come to see God as glorious. That we would come to know God.
Joel Brooks:That's that's what he sees as the deepest need of his heart. Now, what's absolutely remarkable about this is Paul is writing this out. He is he's writing out this prayer from prison. We haven't talked about this yet in Ephesians. But in Ephesians chapter 6, he calls himself an ambassador in chains.
Joel Brooks:He is literally in prison. He is chained up as he is writing this prayer, and so you would think that the most pressing need for Paul would have been something like, and Lord get me out of here. Lord release me from these chains. Night and day, I call out to you. That would have been his ceaseless prayers.
Joel Brooks:And then he would have been inviting the church, will you pray with me for that, that I might be released from this place? But instead, what we see Paul doing is he doesn't pray for any change of circumstance. He only prays for a change in his vision. He doesn't ask God to change anything about what's happening around him. Instead, he just says, Lord, just give me new sight so I can see the things that are really important.
Joel Brooks:Help me to just know you during this time. He he he prays that God would give him wisdom and revelation that the eyes of his heart would be opened. Is that what you would pray when you're sitting in prison? But hear me. Our prayers always match our theology.
Joel Brooks:Our prayers always match our theology. And we always pray the things that we think our heart needs most. So think again at how you pray. Paul here, as he's praying these things, he's he's struggling for words. I'm gonna find that he does that several times throughout this great letter.
Joel Brooks:He he's struggling with words. So he just kinda begins saying the same thing over and over again. He he uses 4 synonyms. When he prays for a spirit of wisdom or that you would have a revelation in knowledge or that the eyes of your heart would be enlightened or that you may know, he is essentially saying the same thing 4 different ways. So you kinda get the feeling though that what he's trying to communicate is immensely important to him.
Joel Brooks:You know, he doesn't know how to say that other than just repeating himself 4 times. We really need to see this. God, give us eyes to see this. Open up our minds. Give us revelation.
Joel Brooks:Give us wisdom. Let us know. So whatever it is He's asking for, it's gotta be pretty huge. What does He want us to see? What does He want us to understand so desperately?
Joel Brooks:And it's this. Three things. I love it when Paul just gives you a 3 point sermon. It's a very rare thing that Paul ever does, but he gave me that gift this week. He a 3 point sermon.
Joel Brooks:He says, we need to see 3 things and they're clearly in there. He wants us to see or to understand our hope. He wants us to see and understand the inheritance of God. And he wants us to see and to understand the resurrection power available to us. So our hope, the glorious inheritance of God, and the resurrection power available to us.
Joel Brooks:So let's look at hope, verse 18, again. By the way, I I know I continually read the scripture over and over, keep pointing you back to the text. That's intentional. I I don't want to tell you what to believe. I want to show you, show you what to believe, show you where it is in scripture, and so we're always gonna keep going back to the text and reading these things over and over.
Joel Brooks:Verse 18. Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you. Now, we need to redefine hope because we have a pretty watered down version of it today. Hope essentially, means something you wish for. You know, I I hope the weather's nice today.
Joel Brooks:I hope it doesn't rain. I hope I get this job. I I I hope, you know, this this person likes me. I hope I could get a date. It's it's it's like I wish, and sometimes it's like a fat chance wish, so you just kind of hope for it.
Joel Brooks:But that's not a biblical hope. A biblical hope is a certain fixed future. You're absolutely certain about this future. That's a biblical hope here. So he's not at all meaning wish.
Joel Brooks:And the future that we have is a future that's not based on any circumstance, Even death itself cannot alter it, and that's why this hope is certain. So Paul prays here that we would know that real fixed concrete hope to which he has called us. So, the question is, what is that hope? Well, the hope is what we've been looking at for for weeks now at this church. That hope is future glory.
Joel Brooks:It's that one day we will be resurrected and we will live in a resurrected world, a world that's been healed and redeemed. That is our hope, and it's certain. It's fixed. Romans 8 writes about this hope, and we read about it there. Romans 8 tells us that we live in a world and we feel it ourselves, a a world of brokenness and of pain, but that this brokenness and this pain is not without purpose and it's not without end.
Joel Brooks:It's not a senseless pain and it's not a endless pain, but there is a hope behind it. Romans 8 calls us a pregnant pain. It's a groaning pain of labors. And hear me, if you are a Christian, the hope that we have is that every pain you experience is a pregnant pain. They're the pains of labor.
Joel Brooks:Pains are gonna give birth to to a new joy into a new life. It's never just a senseless or an endless pain. And this isn't just true of us, this is true of the entire earth. All the earth groans, all the earth is in pain, from every tsunami to earthquake, from pollution to to drought and famine. The earth is groaning, but it's a pregnant pain.
Joel Brooks:Every tree, every ocean, every mountain, every raindrop is pregnant. It's not what it should be yet, but it is pregnant with its potential for joy, and someday that joy will be unleashed. So all the suffering that's in this world that we experience or that's in this world itself is a pregnant pain. And hope allows us to see this. And if you come to understand this, do you realize how transformative this is?
Joel Brooks:To understand all of our sufferings and all of our pains as pregnant pains? Okay. So my wife has been pregnant several times. I I need to clarify. I I in the early service, everybody thought I was announcing that she was pregnant.
Joel Brooks:She she is not pregnant. So but she has been pregnant, and when she is pregnant, we both realize that things are different because there's a certain pain that comes with her pregnancy because it's uncomfortable. It could be painful, especially if you're pregnant in the summer, and there's just a little bit of crazy that goes with being pregnant. Alright? And we both have to be aware of that.
Joel Brooks:Lauren, at one point, she asked me to rearrange all the bushes in the front of our house. She didn't say she wanted them replaced, she didn't say she wanted them removed, she said, I just don't like the order of them all. Now normally, I would just say, no way, but she's pregnant, and I'd say, yes ma'am. And so we just rearrange all of the bushes. Because she's pregnant, and there's a discomfort, and there's a pain that comes with this.
Joel Brooks:And so you have to learn to be extra patient, extra kind. Lauren herself has to learn to be patient with herself and understanding of her own moods during this time. Understanding pregnancy goes a long way in during that season, But it's the awareness that the season comes to an end. And though the pain is going to intensify, it's going to end in a joyful new life that allows us to be patient with one another and kind. See how transformative that is if we were to apply that to this world?
Joel Brooks:The kindness and the patience we would have for one another. And for this world, as we see the pain it's in, but we realize it's a pregnant pain. It's pregnant. And someday, there's gonna be a joyful life that comes from all of this. That's the hope we have.
Joel Brooks:Now can I say this, in all of my years of preaching, and I've been preaching for about 18 years now? In all my years of preaching, I've never had one person ask me to preach a sermon on hope. I've had people ask me to preach sermons on, you know, sex or marriage or dating, countless times. Preach on parenting. Preach on depression or anxiety.
Joel Brooks:Preaching all these things, but but never have I had anybody say, would you please preach a sermon on hope? Yet, hear me. Hope is the engine of our soul. It's the engine of our soul. Hope is the one thing we need that can transform a marriage, or it can transform the way we see work, or it can free us from depression.
Joel Brooks:It's the engine of our soul. So imagine with me if you will, 2 men. 2 men who have completely miserable jobs. The same job. Picture this.
Joel Brooks:Alright. So the most miserable job I've ever had, I think it was I was a senior in high school and I used to solder on microchips onto foam boards, essentially. I was in a warehouse and I would be looking through a magnifying glass all day and I would just be soldering little microchips onto little computer boards for phones. And it was possibly the most miserable thing you could do all day. Thankfully, I only had to do that 3 days a week, but that was my summer job.
Joel Brooks:Now imagine if that is your job. So for these 2 men here, these fictitious men, it's it's their job. They're doing this 5 days a week. But going into this job, one of these men, he was told, alright. Yes.
Joel Brooks:The job is miserable, but at the end of the year, you're going to get paid $30,000. And the other person was told, hey. I know this is a miserable job, but at the end of the year, you're gonna get paid $30,000,000. Same job. 1st guy, he comes in and, the first day was pretty bad.
Joel Brooks:2nd day was even worse. 3rd day, he's already complaining like crazy about the heat, and your back hurts, and really, he's even becoming toxic to all the people around him through all of his complaints, and then finally after 2 weeks, he said, enough of this. It's not worth it, and he gets up and he would just walk out. Then you have the other guy. He's literally whistling to work every day, just whistling away, sits down, he's like, isn't life great?
Joel Brooks:You know, and he's just soldering away, singing to himself, bringing cheer to everybody else around him. Why? Exact same work. Nothing's changed about the work. The the only difference is the first person had no hope, and the second person had a glorious hope.
Joel Brooks:But that future hope had present implications to the way they went about living, enormous present implications for how they live their life. Hope is the engine of our soul. And let me tell you, God has given us a glorious hope that should transform everything about the way we currently live. We don't need a change in circumstance to be joyful. Because that hope goes through any circumstance.
Joel Brooks:All the pain that we feel, hope tells us is a pregnant pain and joy is coming. That's a hope that'll transform any job, any marriage, any anxiety, and that's why Paul prays, prays, and he prays. He ceaselessly prays that we would come to understand this. Alright. Let's look at the next.
Joel Brooks:The next thing that Paul wants us to know concerns an inheritance. Let's read verse 18 again. Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints. Now for many years, I misread this verse. I completely, not just misunderstood it, I I misread it.
Joel Brooks:So already in Ephesians, we've had this theme of inheritance come up, in which Paul's been talking about our inheritance, our glorious inheritance that we receive. And so once again when we hit inheritance, I think okay, here goes Paul again. He's once again talking about our glorious inheritance. Now for the 3rd time, and so then I move on. But that's wrong.
Joel Brooks:He is not talking about our inheritance. He's talking about God's inheritance. God's inheritance. He's praying that we would know the riches of God's glorious inheritance. Now this is not what what we expect after such a buildup leading to this.
Joel Brooks:I mean, there there's been a huge build up here. There's there's been this, you know, I ceaselessly pray and that you might see and that you might know and that you might have knowledge, things may be revealed to you. And this is this is really building a whole lot of momentum, but He doesn't say that you might know your inheritance. It's so that you might know God's inheritance in you, in the saints. In the saints.
Joel Brooks:When Paul says, and the saints here, he's talking about Christians. Now I know you might not feel like a saint. We often use the language, well, I'm no saint. That gives you license, apparently, to do whatever you want. But God says you're you're a saint.
Joel Brooks:That's the biblical word that he uses for Christians, for his children. They're they're saints. And God's inheritance is the saints. Now an inheritance, perhaps we need to define that, an inheritance is the net worth of an individual. An inheritance comes after the accumulation of wealth over an entire lifetime.
Joel Brooks:That accumulation of wealth is one's inheritance. And so when God says that he is wealthy, he's not talking about because he has mountains, or that he has oceans, or that he has stars or galaxies. When God says he is wealthy, He says He's wealthy because He has us. We are the accumulation of His wealth. We are His glorious inheritance.
Joel Brooks:Now, we read this throughout scripture. Deuteronomy 7 is one of the best places. Deuteronomy 7, if you wanna go back and read it, it's really a parallel passage to Ephesians 1. It's almost all of the exact same themes. But we read these words.
Joel Brooks:For you are a people holy to the Lord, your God. The Lord, your God, has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession. He has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession. You hear that? We are God's treasured possession.
Joel Brooks:Now, when all the hurricanes hit, you probably heard story after story about people who had to evacuate and flee. And And one of the things that, I kept hearing in different interviews, or that people would post on social media or something was, how hard it was for them to have to go back to their home, I mean, before they fled it, but think, what do I take out of there? What do I take that is of most value to me? Knowing that their house was was likely going to be flooded, if not totally destroyed, they're going in there and they're thinking, what is the most treasured possession that I have that I can take with me? And in many ways, the hurricane was actually a gift for some of these people because it helped them realize what was precious and what wasn't.
Joel Brooks:And they walked away with this new sense of what's really precious and dear to them. But when they were evacuating, they're thinking, okay. It's it's my family album, my old family photo album, or maybe an old family bible, maybe it's my my my wedding album, maybe it's some family heirloom. Something like that that they would take, and they would think, as long as I have this one thing, this is my inheritance. I'll be okay.
Joel Brooks:This is my treasured possession. Hear me. God says that one thing that he can hold close to his heart and he can say, as long as I have this, as long as I have this, this is my treasure possession, I'm wealthy, He says, that is you. You're my treasured possession. My inheritance is in you.
Joel Brooks:I mean, you wanna talk about building some self esteem? I mean, we're in a self esteem culture. Try putting that one on for size. There's some self esteem there, and this is why Paul has to repeatedly pray once again. He ceaselessly prays that we might see this.
Joel Brooks:We might be given a spirit of revelation, that our eyes of our hearts might be open, that we might know this because this kind of knowledge doesn't come naturally. This has gotta be pressed into us for us to really accept that this is true. Another way that we know this is true or that we are so treasured is to simply look at the price that was paid for us. You know the value of something by the price that someone is willing to pay in order to have it. That's what value means.
Joel Brooks:What is somebody willing to pay for it? Well, God was willing to give his son. He was willing to give his son that we might be his. The price that was paid was the precious blood of Jesus. Have you ever asked the question, what exactly was it that God gained from the cross?
Joel Brooks:What did God gain? What did He get afterwards that He did not have before? I mean, was it, you know, more diamonds or gold or mountains or stars? You know, what what was it he gained? No.
Joel Brooks:He he had all those before. The only thing that he gained was you. It's the only thing he didn't have before. You were lost. You had run away.
Joel Brooks:You were dead in your sins. And so he had to ransom you or to buy you to bring you back to himself. What a price he paid. This is something that we struggle with understanding. We struggle with understanding our value to God.
Joel Brooks:Years ago, I went to Indonesia. I went with a number of just about 5 other different pastors, 5 or 6 of us. I was the only non Baptist, and I was the only one that was not pastor of a megachurch. Alright? So the next smallest church was about 3,000 people.
Joel Brooks:So, you know, we're roughly in the same range there. So I don't know how I got picked to to go on this trip with these with these baptist and mega churches. You know, just to play with them. Every time we went out to eat, we would sit down and I would order some kind of beer and have it delivered there. Not not because anybody likes Asian beer.
Joel Brooks:There there is no such thing as Indonesian craft beer. Alright? I really just wanted to make things awkward for them,
Connor Coskery:and
Joel Brooks:I would just have that delivered there and then ask if they had anything harder. But but during this time, besides just having fun with these guys, we got to teach, basically a makeshift seminary, if you will, in which persecuted church planters would come. So pastors of underground churches would come and we would train them over the course of a few days. So these were people who were being severely persecuted for their faith, and they were pastoring, local churches. And so, one of the pastors of a rather large church, he got up there and he began talking to these people.
Joel Brooks:And and and it was terrible from the start. He began explaining about the walls of Jericho, and then his application point was, so guys, what's the walls of Jericho in your life that needs to come tumbling down? Is it drugs? Is it materialism? I'm like, materialism?
Joel Brooks:They're pastors in a persecuted underground church. They're not struggling with materialism. They're literally being persecuted for their faith. But just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, it got way worse. The pastor, kind of towards the conclusion, this was after 2 hours of teaching, he finally says, do you know the value that we have with God?
Joel Brooks:Do you have any idea of the value? And then he makes it personal. Do you know how I know that God values me and that he loves me? Because let me tell you the one thing, the one thing that I could go to and always be reminded that God loves me. And he cued a slide, and I kid you not.
Joel Brooks:The slide went up, and it was of his church that was half filled. And he said, next slide. And it was his church packed. He said, whenever I doubt God's love for me, I just have to look at that. If ever, I want to know my worth in God's eyes, I just look at that and once again, I'm renewed.
Joel Brooks:And, if I had been obedient, I would have picked up my chair and gone there and knocked the guy senseless. Alright? You you wanna know your worth? You wanna know why you love you? You you don't look at your size, you look at the cross.
Joel Brooks:You don't look at whether or not God has has healed, you know, your your mother of cancer. You don't look as to whether you got that job you wanted or the house you wanted or you you finally got the marriage that you wanted. You don't look to any kind of horizontal blessings that you receive. Those are not signs as to whether God loves you or not. You look to the sign which is the cross.
Joel Brooks:What more can God say? Do you wanna know I love you? I literally gave my son to die that I might have you. That's your value. You're the treasured possession of God.
Joel Brooks:That's why Paul is ceaselessly praying this. Give them eyes to see it. Give them revelation. Open up the eyes of their heart, because that is transformative. That is a rock on which you could build your identity.
Joel Brooks:Who cares what the world says? Because you know what God thinks about you. Alright. Let's look at the resurrection power. We're not gonna linger here, because Paul's gonna deal with this in the weeks ahead in much greater detail.
Joel Brooks:So we're just gonna put a toe in here. Let's read again verse 19. What is the immeasurable greatness of his power towards us who believe? According to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. Man, I love how Paul prays.
Joel Brooks:You actually don't get any other New Testament writer who prays like this. The other apostles don't pray like this. I mean, granted, the other apostles have some pretty amazing prayers that are in the bible. I mean, Peter does some great prayers. John does some great prayers.
Joel Brooks:Those are there. But Paul is different. The reason Paul is different is because those other apostles, those other writers of scripture, they they got to see the risen Christ. Alright? But Paul, he got to see the risen and ascended Christ.
Joel Brooks:He got to see the risen and ascended and glorified Christ. The Christ who is already seated at the throne and given all power, all authority. And let me tell you, when he saw that Christ, when that Christ met him on the road to Damascus, everything changed. And so when Paul praise, he is transcended and kinda goes off all the time when he kind of goes off all the time when he prays and he can't he can't help himself. He's been so transformed by what he has seen, But here, he he wants us to know that the resurrected and ascended Christ, that power that raised Jesus from the dead is now available to us.
Joel Brooks:The power that raised Jesus from the dead, which is immeasurable because there's no amount of power that we can comprehend that can raise anybody from the dead, but the power of God has. But it's an immeasurable power, he now says, is ours. The power that made Easter possible is ours. Power that can raise someone from the dead. Hear me.
Joel Brooks:A power that can do that, can defeat any sin in your life. Can conquer any sin. A power like that can overcome any despair. And hear me. It's a power that still can work resurrections.
Joel Brooks:So if you were in a marriage that you would define as dead, this is a power that can resurrect your marriage. If you're in a family that you think is just completely broken dead, this is a power that can bring new life to that family. This is resurrection power. Things in your life that feel like death, it can bring to life and bring to joy. This is what Paul means later, and we're gonna talk about this later, where he says in chapter 3, God is able to do exceedingly more than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us.
Joel Brooks:The power that's already at work and already in us. Do you believe that? Do you? Of course not. Of course, we don't believe that.
Joel Brooks:That's why Paul's praying this, ceaselessly praying that we would understand and know. We know in part, but he's praying that we would know in full. Join with me. Let's pray through these things. Father, we pray in this moment through your spirit.
Joel Brooks:You would give us the eyes to see and understand and know the hope that we have. That every pain is a pregnant pain. That we have a glorious future. Pray that we would know that we are your inheritance. We are your treasured possession.
Joel Brooks:Help us to know that. Then, let the world say what it wills. And, Lord, may we experience and take advantage of Your resurrection power that is available to us. May we not live weak lives, cowering behind certain sins. May your resurrected power free us of those things.
Joel Brooks:It's immeasurable. And we pray this all in the name, and for the glory of Jesus. Amen.