Ephesians 3:14-21 | When Your Faith Feels Like It Isn’t Working

Well, you know, something that comes up from time to time, something that I often hear people say is something like this, why don't I feel my faith? Why don't I feel my faith? Or another way that sometimes the same question really, but the way that it's put is, why am I not experiencing God? Why am I not feeling my faith? Why am I not experiencing God? And another question that I hear a lot, and it goes together with these other two, is, why is faith not working? Have you ever asked that question? Why is my faith not working? Why don't I feel my faith? Why don't I experience God? And I want to encourage you that as we go through this message today, by the end, we're going to hear about three important ingredients that Paul gives us on how to experience our faith, experience our God, and to see our faith work. So hang around to the end for those three important ingredients. You know, when I was in my teens and twenties, I had a rather strange obsession with trying to recreate the KFC original recipe. Anyone like the KFC here? Well, their recipe's a secret, isn't it? Well, I was obsessed with trying to figure it out. And so I made my fried chicken with all kinds of different combinations, trying to get the magic combination of the Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe. I never quite got there. And apparently, by the way, if you Google it, you can find it online. Someone's leaked it a long time ago, just in case you were wondering. But I'm trying to find the right combination of ingredients. And I want to tell you, if you're wondering, why am I not feeling God? Why am I not feeling my faith? Of course God can just show up. That's God's prerogative. He did it with Paul. Paul wasn't even asking for it. And God just showed up, didn't he? He just said, here I am. And Paul was just struck down to the ground. But, you know, that's God's prerogative. But I want to tell you, if you're really hungry for God, there are some important ingredients that really go into us having that kind of satisfying walk with God. And we've been sharing on Ephesians. We're in ephesians, chapter number three from verse 14. We were there last time, the week before last, and we're there again today. And within this, we're going to find some of those ingredients. Shall we just read this prayer together? And then we'll get into it and we'll find out what Paul has to say to us about these two or three questions that are often asked. So from verse 14 it says, for this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. We talked about that last time, didn't we? But then from verse 16 it says, I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his holy or through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints or in the niv. Here it says, all the Lord's holy people to grasp how wide, long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to all the measure of all the fullness of God. And then verse 20, it says, now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than we could ask or even imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him, verse 21, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. And somebody said, amen. Hallelujah. The reason I raised these questions is I think that some of the Ephesians were going through some questions like these. You see, they were living in a world that was putting pressure on them. You see, they lived in a world where it wasn't always comfortable to be a Christian. Sometimes we think it's uncomfortable to be a Christian, but actually, really, we've often got it quite easy, haven't we? But it wasn't easy for Paul. It wasn't easy for the Ephesians. Paul was in prison. The Ephesians were living in a society that didn't understand them at all and was pushing back against them. And suddenly now Paul is in prison, and actually he's already partly answered the question, why isn't faith working? Because, you see, they're looking. They're saying, this doesn't add up. You remember what Paul said. Let's just go back and look what Paul said in verse 13. He said, I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory. Why did Paul write that? Paul wrote that because he suspected that they might be discouraged. What's it like to be discouraged by his imprisonment? Well, they're asking themselves, is this thing working? You know, we've been told all about the victory of the cross. Paul's been telling us about the victory of the cross. And now Paul, the one who's been preaching about the victory of the cross is suddenly in prison. It's a bit like that man comes round, that minister comes round who's known to have a powerful healing ministry, and you see they're sick and you start asking yourself all kinds of questions and you say, why are they sick? I know some pastors, actually, who, back when I was working in Kenya, some pastors would go on holiday to India to get hospital treatment so people wouldn't know that they were sick. But everyone gets sick. That's just the fact of life. Doesn't mean we don't believe that God is able to heal and do amazing things. But here's this. Paul. Paul has been talking about this victory of the cross, and now he's in prison. It looks like everything's failing. Paul's already partly answered that. He said, no, no, no. The church is proof that faith is working. He says, actually, the fact that they have to put me in prison, the fact that I'm here suffering for your sake, is actually your glory. The reality is the fact that you are here, the fact that you Gentiles believe in Jesus and you're worshiping the God of Israel and the church is growing and becoming strong, is actually proof that, actually, yes, it does work. It's just that it doesn't always work according to our expectations. It works according to God's plan. That's why he begins Ephesians by talking about the plan of God and rejoicing in the purposes of God, not the purposes of man, but the purposes of God. So he's already partly answered that. But this prayer answers, I think, in some ways, all three of the questions I mentioned, because some of them would be saying, this thing isn't working, Paul's in prison. Others of them would be saying, you know, they would have been feeling insecure, feeling bereft, feeling abandoned. Where is God in all of this? Where is God in all of this mess that we are in? Where is God in it? Why don't I feel my faith? Why is the faith that was preached to me not working? Why isn't God present? And so Paul, knowing that they might be discouraged by his circumstances and maybe by the pressures that they are facing around them, says, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to pray. I'm going to pray because I've been exhorting you. I've been talking about, you know, how we're seated with Christ in heavenly places. But he says, I understand that on a Monday morning you might not feel like you're seated in heavenly places. You Might feel very much like you're crushed, abandoned and laid low in earthly places. And so he says, I've preached all of that, but you might not be experiencing that. You might not be enjoying the experience of that. And, you know, it's quite often the case that people tell me that actually experience doesn't matter so long as you hold on to the truth. But I want to tell you, experience matters a whole lot. It matters a whole lot. I don't just want to objectively know that my wife loves me. I don't just want to objectively know that I'm loved by God. I want to live in it. I want to experience it. I want to know it. I want to comprehend it. That's why the Pentecostal churches and the charismatic churches are the fastest growing churches in the world right now. Because they don't just offer theology, they offer experience. Not only to know about God, but to experience and to know God. That's why, you know, I could just eat my food like some of you. You want eat food without Pepe? Why will you die without Pepe? Will you still get all of your vitamins and your minerals? But that food is not real to you until steam is coming out of your ears. Paul understands that. And that's why Paul prays this prayer. He says, I'm on my knees for you because I know that as much as I have exhorted you, as much as I have encouraged you with truth, now I know that truth has to get into you. So you experience it, so you know it, so you taste it. For this reason, I kneel before the Father from whom every family in heaven and earth derives its name on. I pray that out of his glorious riches. It's another reason why Paul prays. Because God is well able to provide us with what we need. He's well able to his glorious riches. But you won't get it anywhere else. You won't get it from a pastor or a friend or a new girlfriend or a new boyfriend or a new husband or a new wife. You won't get it from there. You will get what you need from God. He is the only one that has this. And what is it that they need in their situation where they are discouraged, where they are feeling like God is not present, they're feeling like their faith is not working. What is it that the Ephesians need? What? Well, Paul puts his finger on it here. He says that out of his glorious riches, he may strengthen you. They need strength. They need a strength that only God can give. Paul tells the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians, as he's talking to them about his experience where he was going through some physical suffering and he cried out to God and God answered him and said, my. My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. He tells us in Isaiah 41:10, when the Israelites were going through a situation where they were facing deportation, being dragged off to Babylon. And God speaks to them, and he says, so do not fear, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous hand. They needed strength. And that strength could only come from God, by his Holy Spirit. It's a wonderful thing, Christians, to have the Holy Spirit. Now, I'm not talking about that Pentecostal anointing or baptism with the Holy Spirit, what we're talking about. I'm talking about what every believer has access to when they believe in Jesus. Says anyone who doesn't have his Spirit doesn't belong to him. Everyone who's ever believed in Jesus has a measure of the Holy Spirit within them. And that Holy Spirit is the one who delivers that strength. And so he says, I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his spirit. But then he says, in your inner being. There's a specific place where Paul says that we need to receive strength so that we might face the challenges that we are faced with. You see, every challenge you ever face will either come from within or without. If you're not strengthened within, you cannot face the challenges within yourself. You know, the challenges within yourself, the temptations within yourself, the discouragement that you get from discouraging yourself, anyone sometimes discourage yourself. Preachers are not immune to it. I knew a preacher once, very confident man, and he began to stand up to the. He was doing a big crusade. And as he climbed the steps of the crusade, he just had a thought entering into his mind. He said, I wonder if God exists. There are things that come to us from within ourselves, because do you know what? We have this war going on inside of us, and we need strength. We discourage ourselves. But then we also got pressures that come from without, and we need strength in precisely the same place. I don't know if you heard that story a little while ago of this man who was operating a submarine. He was taking people down to see the Titanic, I think it was. And he did some rather suspect engineering on that submarine. And so when they went down into the water, they were fine until they got to a certain depth and suddenly that submarine was absolutely crushed by the weight of the water with all of them inside. And they were all gone, Finished. Why? Because the pressure without was greater than the pressure within. The pressure within was not enough to sustain them against the pressure from without. That's a good analogy of the Christian life. If we don't have sufficient strength from the Holy Spirit within, then the things that are going on outside of us will crush us. But if God will strengthen us in our inner being, well, now, then we can withstand those precious. We can deal with Paul being in prison. We can deal with the fact that some things that I happen to be wanting and I have prayed for don't seem to have happened yet. I can deal with the fact that maybe some friends or some family have rejected me because of my faith. I can deal with the fact that in my community, my community has rejected me because there's certain things that I won't do or. Or I won't follow anymore. Because greater is he who is in me than he who is in the world. Inner strength, that's what we need. And Paul understood this. And so Paul prayed for this. They said, I pray that out of his glorious riches he will give you this strength to withstand everything that's going on outside. Well, now, what is strength? What does strength look like? What do you think of as strength? I know that when I became a Christian, I was waiting for the Holy Spirit to come and fill me and do amazing things with my life. And. And I always felt like, you know, strength from the Holy Spirit would be like, you know, I just feel strong inside. I just feel kind of powerful, like I could do anything, like I could fly. You know that song, I believe I could fly. I believe I could touch the sky. I don't recommend trying. Has a 100% failure rate. There's something that I thought I'd feel. But Paul gives us a very great definition of what Christian strength looks like. You see, in this passage, it's a bit difficult to tell in the Greek. It's one of those passages that they struggle to translate perfectly. So it looks like he will give you strength so that Christ can dwell in you. I don't know how it says it in your Bibles, but it says in my Bibles, I pray that he may strengthen you with power through his spirit, in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. But here's the thing. Paul is not praying for them for salvation. Paul has been talking to them all along as people who are already Christians. They're already believers. So surely Christ dwells in your heart, doesn't he when you become a Christian? Do you believe that when you become a Christian, Christ dwells in your heart? So he can't be praying that Christ would come inside of them, because that's already been done. John chapter one says, to those that received him, to those that believed in his name, those that received him, those that believed in his name. And so if you're a Christian today, I want you to know that Christ lives in you. So he couldn't have meant that. And by the way, if you've never asked Christ into your life, if you've never turned to Him, I want to encourage you today that we're here to pray with you. Every human being is invited to have a relationship with Christ and have God come and live in them and have a relationship with Him. Don't leave it another day, whatever you've done, however terrible you think you may be, however unlovable you think you may be, however impossible you think it might be for God to love you and for you to have a relationship with Him. I want to assure you that God does not lie. And he has made an offer to every man, every woman, and every child. Come to me. I will give you rest so you can come to him today. But if you already have come to him, he lives in you. I'm going to sing the Lion King song right now. But he lives in you. Jesus lives in you. So what does it mean when it says to strengthen you so that Christ may dwell in you? Well, that's where it gets a bit awkward in the translation. And really what it means is this. So that Christ may be at home in you. Have you ever been in a room? If you're in a room and there's a shy person in that room, they may be sat in the corner of the room and they're looking at their feet and they're not really making their presence felt. You know, sometimes you can even miss that they're there, right? But a confident person. Do you know someone who, when they enter the room, they fill it? I mean, there's some people that when they enter the room, all the oxygen goes out of the room and there's none left for anyone else. But there are people, when they come in the room, they fill it, you know, they're there. It's an experience. Not always a good one, but it's an experience. It's like that with Christ. Not that Christ is ever shy, but the Bible does say that you can quench the Holy Spirit. Christ can be in the room and you're not really experiencing it at all. Christ can be in you, but you're not really getting it at all. But you can come to a place where that experience is real, where that experience is profound, and Paul wants us to have it. Some people will tell you, oh, don't listen to your feelings, brother. You just need to worry about the Word. No, there's the Word, but there's experience too. There's tremendous strength in having that experience of Christ, that inner reality of Christ in our lives. Not just as a religious thing that we can recite, but as an actual experience where Christ is at home in us. Tremendously important that Christ is at home in us. How often do we do things where we kind of filter out the fact that God is in us as we do those things? I don't want to say start going down a list of potential sins or things you might do or not do. But we know there are things that we do. There are things that we watch. When you're watching a movie, would you want Christ to be watching that movie? When you're listening to a song, would you want Christ to be listening to that song? See, that's the thing with having an experience of Christ dwelling in you suddenly. Now, things change, don't they? Because Christ has to be at home in you. It's as you nurture that that becomes a living reality. Christ in you, the hope of glory. That's the secret. Paul says. In fact, Paul calls it a mystery. The mystery of Christ in you, the hope of glory. It's something that. A mystery. I've told you before, it's not like a mystery novel trying to find out who killed who or something. It's not that kind of mystery. It's something that you can't see until God opens it, until God reveals it. It needs to be revealed. And that's what Paul's saying. He's saying, I want the Holy Spirit to come. Come and strengthen you so you can know and experience what it is to have Christ dwell in you. Colossians 1:27 tells us to them, God has chosen to make known amongst the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. And then in John 15:5, he talks about this connection. You can be a Christian, but you're not connected. And he says, I am the vine and you are the branches. If you remain in me and I remain in you, you will bear much fruit. You see that connection to Christ so you can have Christ in you. But it's not real. It's not real, it's not happening. Let me ask you today, is that a reality to you, that Christ is living in me? Nurture it. It's so important. But then he goes on to say in verse 20, sorry, verse 19, he says, actually, let's back up and say so Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith and I pray that you being rooted and grounded in love. Something happens when you experience this reality of Christ dwelling in you. It creates a. He uses two metaphors. One is to be rooted. I remember years ago we had a massive storm. Anyone who grew up in this country years ago remembers this storm. I think it was. I think it was in the late 80s, I think it was 87 or something, something. And all the trees were gone. And you saw all of the roots of those trees ripped up. There's something tremendously strong about roots, tremendously important about roots. And then the other metaphor that he talks about is being grounded. And that's like a foundation. I showed a little while ago, we preached a sermon and I showed a picture of a house just near us in Mombasa. Actually, not a house, a five story, I think it was, office building near our house in Mombasa, where one night we passed it, it was up, the next night we passed it, it was gone, it was completely collapsed. Why? Because the owner didn't want to pay for the proper foundation. So he built a foundation for one story and then he just decided to keep building on. He says, when you know this experience of Christ and we're back to that kind of image of the submarine again, but in a different way. That once you are rooted and grounded, you're established and nothing can move you. But you're also established for growth. So the metaphor of that foundation is nothing can move you. Remember what Jesus said at the end of the Sermon on the Mount? Do you remember what he said? He said, anyone who builds his life on my words is like a house that is built on a rock. A house that has a foundation. Well, this is similar to that. When you begin to experience and walk in the experience of the indwelling Christ, then you're established and things don't move you and shake you. So many problems, honestly, would be solved that people are struggling with if they could know what it is to be rooted and grounded in that relationship, in that experience of Christ in their life. You don't get that by a once a week religious activity. You get that by nurturing, by embracing that Reality, we're now rooted and grounded. Rooted also means that there is growth and enlargement, isn't it? First of all, a tree or a plant must put down roots before it can grow. Sometimes you don't see things grow for a while because they're growing down, not up. Jesus warned, didn't he, about Christians as well when he talked about the different types of seed. He says, there's a type of seed where it just shoots up very fast. And I've seen this people coming up very fast. Suddenly they're super Christian for a while, they've been saved maybe six months, a year. And suddenly they're getting all this attention and everyone's, you know, they're even leading a church after a very short time. And things are happening, but no one realizes they haven't had time to put down roots. And so when trouble comes, they're done. But it says this experience of Christ, when you begin to experience that indwelling, that's the first part of a journey towards growth. And what are we growing in? He says, you grow being rooted and grounded and established in love may have power together with all the Lord's holy people to grasp how wide, how long, how high and how deep is the love of Christ, you begin to grow in that. Sometimes we're not, you know, as human beings, we're more interested in what can Christ give us, what can he do for us, than we are in experiencing more and more of his love. But the reality is, once we get on that road where we know what it is to live in the love of Christ and to have that experience of Christ dwelling in us as a living reality, that is the starting point where we can grow more and more to experience his love. And the more that we experience experience of his love, the more full we are of Christ and His love, the more that begins to fill up our cup until we overflow. And that's why Paul says that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. That is, you have a richer and richer and richer and fuller and fuller and fuller of what it is to know Christ. And suddenly now you have this inner resilience that is not dependent on circumstances because you don't just know Christ loves you, but you know Christ loves you. It's a living reality in your life. And Paul says, I am praying for you for this because that's the strength you need. So when you look at persecution, when you look at the opposition, when you look at the fact that I'm in prison, you won't see it the same way anymore. I'm praying for you, he says, and church. I want you to know that I'm also praying for you that you will have this experience, that your Christian walk won't simply be a religious walk where you go, you know, I didn't lie this week. Tick. I paid my tithe. Tick. I don't smoke anymore. Tick. I don't drink. Tick. Or whatever it is that you're ticking and move on to something where you have a love relationship with Christ. It is your joy. You're not just coming to church because you know, you. You came here from somewhere and as you were leaving, your mother threatened you that assemblies of God is where you'll be going every Sunday or don't come home because no, you're standing on your own two feet. You're on two spiritual feet. You're having your own relationship with God that is real. And you're not in it because you're scared of what will happen if you're not in it. You're in it because you've tasted and you have seen that the Lord is good and you don't want anything else from now on. There's certain types of food, there's certain types of things. When you've had it, you don't want anything else. Right? Men. The correct answer at this point is to say, that's my wife's cooking. Your life will be so much better if you would just say it's that. You've tasted it, you've seen. That's what Paul says. I'm praying that for you that you would be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now we're going to deal with verse 20 next week. But. Paul gives us three things in this passage that I think are really ingredients that we can recognize when someone knows what this indwelling is. Like this. There's three ingredients to this. The first ingredient is connection. Roshami didn't know why she had that word this morning. She had that word this morning because it connected with the sermon. He says. In verse 18 that you may have power to together with all the Lord's holy people. We touched on this the other week, but the reality is that God made us for connection. And Paul is greatly concerned that what we experience and what we have is lived out in the context of his church, his people. And the problem is, for many of us, we've never really experienced church in the way Paul has envisioned it. We have experienced church as an event, a place that we go a meeting that we attend or something of that sort, an organization. But none of those things were in the heart or the mind of Paul. When he talked about church, he said, God's holy people, the people that together have been called out of the world and into the household of God. Do you know that God has a household? As we read the chapters that are ahead of us in Ephesians, Paul is going to tell us about households. He's going to tell us about the household of God. He's going to tell us about the immediate household. Wife, husband, kids, all of that. Everything's going to be framed around this idea of household. But Paul's very concerned for us that we should know that we have not become a church member in the same way that you become a member of a club, but you have become part of the body of Christ. You are a member of the family of God. And if you look around the room today, you will see people that you are related to as brothers and sisters in Christ. And it is through his body so many people struggle because that connection is not secure. There are people today that, and I know there are parts of the world where maybe you might not have a choice as to whether you are part of a church or not. And people are in difficult situations. There is always grace for that. There are some great missionaries over the years that, that have ministers over the years in countries where there were no believers and they got saved out of the blue. They were on their own as a newborn Christian and God raised them up and they have done amazing things. But sooner or later, our body forms because that's the normal way that the Christian life is supposed to operate as a body. And so there are people today that are saying, I don't need church to be a Christian. Yeah, you don't need church to be a Christian. You'll be a very unhealthy Christian. Imagine living on your own on a desert island. Are you going to be healthy as a human being? Even more so when it comes to the church. But the church is not a meeting you attend. You have to make clear connection with people around you. I said last week, get somebody. Don't wait for us to organize things. Find somebody in the church and say, shall we be prayer partners? Shall we pray together? Come along on a Tuesday. So many of us don't attend on a Tuesday night. Now, this is not for me to throw stones at you. You might have a very good reason why you don't attend on a Tuesday night. You know, the football's on, World cup, that kind of thing. But you might have a good reason. You might be on shift work, you might have family issues. I get that. So I'm not throwing stones here. I just want to say that if your reason is just that, you're not feeling it, there's connection there for you. Come and connect. Find someone. As I say, find someone to pray with. Find someone in the church to have coffee with. Don't be that person who you have all these non Christian friends out there or all these other friends. And then you come here just to say, oh, how was your week? And then you go, no, make connections. Because Paul says that we are connected together. And it's as we connect together that these things can flow. So bear that in mind. Connection. Get connected to church. I'm not talking about Sunday, I'm talking about your brothers and sisters be in relationship. And then the other thing that Paul says is prayer. Prayer together with all the saints. He says, and then he talks about prayer, or rather he is praying for him. Prayer is the solution. He said, I'm going to pray for you. And this is also in the context of the body. If we want to see that reality of Christ dwelling in us, let's pray for that over somebody else. It's not just, oh, prayer is the answer. Let me go into my room and pray. God, please show me the reality. No, find somebody and say, I really want to experience this. Let's pray together about it. Let's pray together about it. We always have this idea that our prayer life is kind of a private thing where we go up a mountain somewhere and, you know, deal with God because all the great men talk about, I went up a mountain, I didn't eat or drink for 40 days. And you know, and I came back and now God is real to me and good for them, Good for them. But the picture Paul paints for us is pray for one another. He's going to talk about that later in Ephesians. Pray for one another. So if you're feeling like you're missing something, don't just go and pray in your room. Find somebody and say, shall we be praying together? I'll pray for you, you pray for me. And together we'. Seek God. I'll seek God. That Christ will dwell in you richly. And you pray for me that Christ will dwell in me richly. And not only that. Will you call me out? Will you call me out? Many, many years ago, I was young Christian. And as a young Christian, there were things that I was doing that were not good. And so I had an elder there and he prayed for me and he said, now I'm going to be asking you. There's nothing like that. If there's something you struggle with, there's nothing like somebody you know, I can't do this because on Sunday they're going to ask me. And suddenly the body is working. We're connecting with other people, we're encouraging each other, we're, we're praying for each other. God gets words of knowledge, so you might get a word of knowledge from somebody or for somebody. And suddenly now we all begin together to experience the reality of Christ indwelling, not only us individually, but us as a body. And when trial or hardship or persecution comes, or even if you're just having a rubbish week, because we all have rubbish weeks, right apart from me, because I'm so spirit filled, I never have a rubbish. It's always wonderful. We all have rubbish weeks and suddenly now we've got something in us that is giving us a kind of resilience, a spiritual resilience. Hallelujah. We find joy in chaos, as the song goes. That's how it goes, isn't it? Joy in chaos. I've never been more glad. Hallelujah. Go before your boss and he says, you're fired. You say, I've never been more glad. I've got joy and chaos. But it's true. There's a resilience that you have, a joy that you have. And it doesn't just come through prayer, it comes through connection and prayer, the body and prayer. And then actually I am going to hit on verse 20, because the third thing I've got here is recalibration, recalibrating our perception of God. Look at what Job says in job 42 5. He says, My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. Mark 11:24. This is one you'll all know. He says, therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you will receive it and it will be yours. Listen, Paul says now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work in us. So he's still talking about this indwelling Christ. He's saying, according to this power, this strength, this indwelling Christ, this power by the Holy Spirit that God has put in us, according to this, he's able to do immeasurably more than we could ask or even imagine, according to this power. Now to him be the glory in the church and in Christ. There's the church again. There's the together again in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. He started with prayer, but he got so excited at the end, he had to praise because he said, oh, what this indwelling Christ can do, what this power can do, if you would just recalibrate your perception of who God is and what he can do in you. How many times do we measure what we can withstand and what we can do according to our own inner selves and not according to the Christ that is in us? That's why it says, greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world. Because it's not to do with what I am inside, but what I have inside, which is Christ. If we could recalibrate that idea. I mean, if we were just to meditate on that for a little while and think about this. Think about what David said when he looked up and he said, when I consider the heavens, the work of your hands, the moon and the stars that you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of, and the Son of man that you care for him, you made him a little lower than the angels, and yet you have crowned him with glory and honor. And he looks up at the heavens and he sees the magnificence of God. We can see more than David now. Do you know that? Do you know we can see more than David? We watched Artemis. We saw more than David. We've watched the pictures from those telescopes they've put up, and we've seen it. Have you seen the amazing pictures? And all of that, all of that vastness is nothing compared to the God who created it. And now stop for a minute. That God, that vast God who is vaster than the universe, dwells in you. Recalibrate, change your expectations. Begin to meditate upon that. It's not what you can do, it's what he can do. So I want to encourage you today. Get connected with God, but get connected with the church. Get connected. Make a decision today. Decide today. Don't do what we always do. You know what we always do. We. We hear it, we say our amens, and nothing changes. Make a change. Make a decision. Say God. You know what? I get that message. I need to be connected to the body of Christ. You know, I was talking to that lady the other day, and we had this great conversation about family and whatever, and I felt I really connected with her. Let me just speak to her. I think we could be prayer partners. I think we could begin to pray. For each other, or I was there and men don't look for ladies, please, if you're a man. You know, I met that guy the other day and I had a conversation with him and we bonded over the fact that we both support the same football club. I don't know. Well, you know, we talked about whatever it was, but you felt a connection. You thought he was a brother that had something about him and said, you know what? I'm going to speak to him and we're going to arrange. Maybe we'll have a cup of coffee and then we'll figure out how we can be praying together. Men are terrible at that, by the way. Men are terrible at that. We'll do all sorts of things together, but pray together. It feels not a manly thing. It's true. It doesn't feel like a man thing to sit and pray with a brother and just bare my soul. When men meet together quite often, we're like, how's it going? Oh, yeah, I'm successful. You know, have you seen my car? Have you seen my. You know, it's like we want to project something. If you want to know what it is to have Christ in you, begin to begin to get vulnerable with your fellow men and say, you know, I'm struggling in this. One of the great things I love about meeting with the pastors in Colchester, it's one of the great blessings in my life, meeting with the other pastors in Colchester because we sit together and we're just able to just be open and just say, you know, I'm struggling right now. There's no judgment. We just pray for each other and I want that for you. I'm speaking to men because I know women. You're pretty good at this. I know I'm going to say this, and before I know it, you'll all have prayer partners and you'll be doing it. And I'll speak to the men and they'll be, you know, it won't happen so easily. And I can say that because I'm a man, so I can throw stones at men. So let's make a decision. Let's go from this place and let's take a look these things. Let's take this idea of connection and prayer, and then through connection and prayer and encouraging one another, let's recalibrate our expectation of what God can do in us.