The Power Of Love Series

I am tempted to start back at the first of Ephesians and point out what we have, what we may have covered without realizing the significance. But that would mean starting this series of Ephesians over again. Then when I get to this point again, and we realize anew what we have in Christ, I could start it over and cover it again, and still not exhaust it. This is important. This is why we need to be like the Bereans.

Here is a side sermon, free of charge, today and today only. Sometimes I hear someone say, “I don’t get anything out of that preacher. I’m starving to death under his ministry.”

Listen, we have it backwards. We do not come to Church to eat. Eat at home. Get out your Bible. Put away your syrupy devotional books and get into the Gospels and Epistles to the Church. Come to church well nourished, and simply pray for God to use the service to give you a little dessert.

I know many have spent their lives coming to the Church to get fed spiritually. But let me show this in a startling passage.

In Revelations 3, beginning in verse 14, we see the letter to the Church at Laodicea. It was a lifeless, dead Church, lukewarm and disgusting to God.

But look at verses 19- 20 for the shock of a lifetime. “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”

This is not telling a lost person how to open the door of his heart to be saved. He is talking to the individual members of a dead, luke-warm Church. He said, if anyone inside will hear me and open the door, I will fellowship with that one. The Church services will not be blessing free, but full of blessing, for the one who comes prepared and invites God.

The problem here was not that the Church services were godless. The lives of the members were lifeless and they were coming to the Church services for life support. Our Nation is not seeing a Church bathed with power, because the individuals of the Church are not fellowshipping with God outside the building. Therefore, there is little fellowship with God in the services. A lifeless church in America, It’s not because we don’t have power available, …not because the Pauls of the world are not praying it, …not because we are not praying for it for one another, …but because the individual Christians are not experiencing the supernatural in their lives. We are not experiencing it in our Church and showing it to the community.

I am not talking about miracles, healing services, signs and wonders. I am talking about the supernatural love that moves people to faith. It’s about people seeing Christ make a difference in our worse possible moments, no, I am not seeing that. No, not about our service, we are failing on a much simpler level, the difference Christ makes in our everyday life.

We are living without power, not at the powerful Church meetings, but at the funeral home, in the hospital rooms, at the business market, in the family meetings…..in the city council meetings, in the school boards meetings, at the PTA, at the baseball games. We are powerless and living, acting and reacting like a good lost person.