Alliance Church
Pastor David Welch
“Walking in God’s Fullness”
"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.By this(mutual love) all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." John 13:31-35
Introduction
By observing the Biblical descriptions of genuine love, it is clear that God’s love is supernatural and impossible to live apart from a divine work in our lives. Don’t limit your understanding and experience just to what you now know but continue to review the characteristics of genuine love and pray for an even deeper understanding and a continually expanding demonstration of His love to others.
That divine work begins with God who is the source of love. We can only love because God loved us FIRST! Love is from God.
The Father loves, the Holy Spirit loves, love is found in Jesus.
God initially pours his love in us by the work of the Holy Spirit.
God continually teaches us how to love Him and others.
God causes the expression of His love to grow.
Our obedience to His truth purifies our heart to love supernaturally.
Our obedience to the truth continually perfects our love for one another.
God allows us to choose to wear his love or not.
God instructs us to pursue opportunities to love.
God instructs us to stimulate one another to love fervently and live righteously.
God encourages us to pray for increased demonstration of his love.
Love is the basis for everything we do in life and is able to change lives.
In one of Paul’s prayers, we have a staircase to the development of fervent love.
WE will briefly examine each step in the staircase found at the end of Ephesians 3.
The "Staircase to Fullness"
Paul bowed before the Father making petition behalf of the family that this new society of people, this family of God, this building, this temple who were created to display the character and presence of God (who is love) would actually perform the function according to design. He includes all the necessary elements or steps to experience this fullness. Each stair builds on the previous one.
Stair One -- Request for strengthening
that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man
Paul asks God that these believers be strengthened.
"strengthen" to make strong, to establish
We are incapable of living the Christian life in our own limited strength. To live as true temples of God on our own is not just difficult it is impossible.
"Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord."
The sooner we recognize our inability to live this life in our own strength and realize how desperately we need the strengthening of God, the sooner we will discover what fullness of life is all about.
Paul touches at least five aspects to this strengthening.
• Strengthening is something God does to us
Not that they would strengthen each other. Not that they would exercise enough to become strong. But that God would grant that they be strengthened. We do have a part but Paul request something that God does to us.
• Strengthening is according to His riches in glory
The request is that God strengthen believers not “out of” His glorious riches, but according to the riches of His glory. “Out of” His riches would be portioned. “According to” His riches is proportional.
ILLUS Win the $10 million lottery and give you $10 is portioned -- "out of".
Win the $10 million lottery and give away 1 million is proportional -- "according to"
Paul prays for a strengthening that is proportional to the riches of God’s glory.
• Strengthening is by His power
It is the same power that God employed to raise Jesus from the dead. Paul asks that belivers be strengthened with enabling power equal to the power that raised Jesus from the dead.
• Strengthening is through the Holy Spirit
Luke 4:1 demonstrates the source of Jesus' power
"And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led about by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days being tempted by the devil."
Jesus operated from the same resources available to us. Power of the indwelling Spirit, prayer, obedience by faith This power for life is granted by God through the Holy Spirit in answer to humble prayer of faith in the promises of God. God has not given a Spirit of fear but of love, power and a discipline mind. 2Tim 1 Paul prays for believers to be strengthened by the ever present all powerful strength of the Holy Spirit.
• Strengthening takes place in the inner man
Paul prayed that God strengthen the inner man.
This is not brute strength to crush rock. This is not some macho power trip. This is a strengthening of the inner person, the core of who we are in order to live the life God calls us to live -- to live in love and holiness.
"though the outer man is decaying, the inner man is being renewed day by day. 2Cor4
Have you never heard or understood? Don't you know that the LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth? He never grows faint or weary. No one can measure the depths of his understanding. He gives power to those who are tired and worn out; he offers strength to the weak. Even youths will become exhausted, and young men will give up. But those who wait on the LORD will find new strength. They will fly high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint. NLT Isaiah 40:28-31
We will never ascend the staircase to fullness without first receiving the strengthening of the Holy Spirit in our inner core. Without this strengthening of the inner man by the Holy Spirit there is no supernatural further progress toward fullness. It is a gift of God granted in response to our petitioning the God of all power. No wonder Paul prayed for the church continually and specifically. Why don't we experience this strengthening?
Two Blockers
1. Prayerlessness
"you don't have because you don't ask!
Personal prayer, corporate prayer, intercessory prayer.
2. Pride
"God resists the proud but gives grace (enabling power) to the humble."
Often it is pride that keeps us from praying. Once we settle the issue of where true life is found, we can progress to life on the next stair in the staircase to fullness.
Stair Two -- Request for Christ's indwelling
so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; being rooted and grounded in love
"dwell" to settle down, be at home, dwell in a fixed place, not to inhabit as a stranger but settle down as a residence, a place where one is master of one's own house
Paul did not pray that these believers invite Christ in their life. Paul prayed here that Christ be given full reign to effectively dwell in their life. Christ in you the hope of glory. Christ's effective indwelling produces our worthy walking. A righteous walk is the result of allowing Christ to live out his life in us. The Holy Spirit strengthens us in the core of our being so that we make the daily choice to allow Christ access to more an more of the areas of our life. Our thoughts, our emotions, our circumstances, our reputation, our dreams and aspiration, our money, our time, our family, our leisure, our work is all continually placed by faith into His control to accomplish whatever best results in His glory and our good. This is a continual, daily act of faith in the character of God to bring about His purposes in us.
Gal 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
It is one thing to realize that I can't do it on my own. It is another thing to entrust my life into the care of someone else. We have been burned so many times by people. The unconditional love that we so desperately desire has eluded us so many times, we resist trusting anyone, even God. Only when we allow Christ to genuinely rule in our hearts will we experience true love. His loving rule solidly roots and grounds us in love. We learn love from trusting Him to lovingly rule our life. "Rooted” agricultural term "grounded" architectural term. Both indicate the foundation necessary for genuine progress toward divine fullness. When God strengthens us by His Spirit in the inner man. Christ can effectively live through us by faith.
As Christ effectively lives in us by faith we begin to understand what genuine love is all about. It is as we abandon ourselves in the deep, deep love of Jesus that we begin to comprehend the full dimension of a love that goes beyond what anyone knows of love in the natural.
Stair Three --Request for comprehending
that you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge
Paul prays here for the ability to know the unknowable. Know the Love of Christ that surpasses human comprehension.
Breadth -- Wide enough to cover all peoples and nations Jew/Gentile, slave/free ,male/female
Length -- Expressed from eternity past (1:4) to eternity future (2:7)
Height -- Reaches to the very heavenlies
Depth -- Descends to the lowest hell
It is essential that we not just know about this love but experience it in the very core of our being. God loves you. God loves you for you. God loves you in spite of your performance.
God's love for you is by grace. Nothing can separate us from the love of god in Christ Jesus. When we realize the full dimensions of His love for us, in us, and through us we will be filled to the fullness of God the top rung of this staircase to fullness
Stair Four -- Request for filling
that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
We will experience the fullness for which our soul really longs. We will be filled with His love rather than a life of empty selfishness. The essence of God is love. A filling with the fullness of God is a filling with the love of God. Without love, we are nothing
To be filled with His fullness is to be so filled with His love that it effects every action and relationship. That is when we truly walk in love and live in love. When we begin to truly understand the full dimension of God's love for us, then we can begin to share that love with those in our circle of influence. It is also possible to slide down the stairs as well as climb up the stairs.
Return to believing Satan's lies about God and forget His love for you
Return to a life of works rather than faith in the presence of Christ
Return to proudly operating in your own strength rather than His
Return to prayerlessness.
We are here today to think about his great love together so that we may reflect that same love back to Him and also to one another. Only then will we be a body of believers recognized by the world as true followers of Christ.
Reflection
For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:7-8
God made Jesus who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Cor. 5:21
In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 John 4:10
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast. Ephes. 2:1-9
Response
Offer your praise and worship
We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Ephes. 2:10
But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, Philip. 3:7-8
Offer your very life.
I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. Romans 12:1
Allow his healing love to flood your soul this morning.
Express your love to him as a pleasing sacrifice to God.
