Fullness Of God's Love

Fullness of God’s Love

Ephesians 3:14-21

March 3, 2019

What kind of a Christ follower are you? How’s that for a loaded first question? In all sincerity, if you are a Christ follower, do people know that? Do they know it from the way you live your life? Do they know it from the words you speak? Do you gently tell people about Jesus?

You see, people have a great opportunity to get to know Jesus by the way we live our lives. If we’re not excited about who Jesus is in our lives, then will people really see Him at work in our lives?

For example, if you’re passionate about the Colts, people will know about it. You’ll dissect every game, every draft pick. If you’re into Marvel movies, then, people will know about it, they’ll know about it by what you wear and your conversations about those movies.

It makes sense that we talk and live and breath about what we’re into. We talk about our kids and our grand kids, don’t we? Why? Because we are passionately in love with them. We adore them. And when we can, we tactfully, right!! Talk about them.

Well, we’re in the final week of our look at the mission of the church, and for the past 3 weeks we’ve been looking at the love of God and our response to God. We’ve also been spending a lot of time in the book of Ephesians 3. Today will be our last day looking at this passage. This passage is filled with so much for us to take in that it’s actually taken us 4 weeks to look through these 8 verses.

Once again, let’s look at Ephesians 3, as we open our hearts and spirits to the Word of God. Paul wrote —

14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,

16 that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you

to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being,

17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith — that you, being rooted and grounded in love,

18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,

19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

20 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,

21 to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. – Ephesians 3:14-21

Let me give you a 2 minute recap and then we can move forward ~

Paul humbly bowed before God praying that the people would be strengthened with the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul’s expectation is that God would take up a permanent and not a temporary residence in our heart and spirit.

The fact that God fills us should change us. We should no longer walk around like a bunch of grumpy, bitter, empty people, with no purpose. Instead whether we understood God’s plan in our lives or not, we would go into the world, as I said last week, when you were taking pictures of the screen - and you can do it again. Because this is really important - - - -

We are called to be PASSIONATE and CONTAGIOUS Christ followers who make a RELEVANT difference in the world!!

Now, to show I listen to your comments, someone told me I should change the order. It should be this instead ~

We are called to be CONTAGIOUS and PASSIONATE Christ followers who make a RELEVANT difference in the world!!

So, what’s the difference. It’s a subtle difference, but one which will help you remember this and use it in a way which makes even more sense. This now forms the acronym –

C - CONTAGIOUS

P - PASSIONATE

R - RELEVANT

Isn’t that great?! It’s a great way to remember this because what does CPR do for a person? It gives them life. And that’s exactly what Christ does for us. He gives us life. And then we go into the world and we give life to others through the power of Christ. We do spiritual CPR to others! So, if you can’t remember this phrase, remember CPR . . . be contagious, be passionate, be relevant!

You can even double this - -

Compassion / Contagious Power / Passion Real / Relevant

Well, we’ve talked about that and more over the past weeks. That’s a quick summary. Now, I want to lead us towards wrapping this up and starting next week, believe it or not, we’ll be starting a lent series, which will lead us to Easter!