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Imagine that right now you could double what you know of God. Or triple your experience of him. What if you grew in your knowledge of God by a factor of one hundred? Even if we could multiply by a million our current perceptions and insights into the God who is Three in One — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — we would be left far short of experiencing what Paul calls "the fullness of God." His bold prayer, however, is that the combined efforts of God's Spirit and God's own power would help us grasp more and more of the depth of his love. This weekend we will consider the staggering fact that God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.

 

Hope in Darkness
More than All We Ask or Imagine
Ephesians 3:14-21

Rev. Glenn McDonald

July 24-25, 2010

There’s a wonderful moment in Prince Caspian, the second book of the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis’ spiritual adventure series for children. It has been a long while since young Lucy has seen Aslan, the enormous lion who represents Christ in the land of Narnia. When at last they are reunited Lucy gasps, “Aslan, you’re bigger.”

“That is because you are older, little one,” he answers. “Not because you are?” she asks. “I am not,” Aslan responds. “But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”  

Every year that we grow older in the Lord, it should be our happy discovery that God is larger than we had ever previously dreamed. But for far too many of us, God hasn’t been growing bigger. We have held on to a mental snapshot of God that remains static and unchanging. That may help account for the ongoing popularity of a little book that was published almost 50 years ago – Your God is Too Small by J.B. Phillips. Phillips makes the case that all too often the God we imagine – the God we therefore end up believing is actually there – is disinterested, or distracted, or frightening, or inept. Our own imagination makes God seem small.

But the God of the Bible is not small. He has the power to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. How can we grow in our awareness of that? What are the commitments that we need to make in order to grow up spiritually into an ever-accelerating experience of what the Bible calls God’s fullness?

The pathway to spiritual maturity always goes through three important realms: Worship, the Word, and the World. We praise and adore God; we listen to God’s voice on the pages of Scripture; and we serve God wherever we go, whether just down the street or on the other side of the planet. Worship – the first primary setting for spiritual growth – is at the heart of the book of Ephesians. Here at ZPC we’ve set aside eight months to dig into the apostle Paul’s remarkable correspondence to a fledgling group of first century Christians.

Today we arrive at the end of chapter three, which is the transitional center of this letter. Ephesians begins with prayer. It also ends with prayer. And right here in the middle we find Paul on his knees before his Father in heaven. Ephesians 3:14-21 is in fact an extraordinary prayer. If you’ve ever been faced with the need to pray for another human being, but you didn’t know quite what to say – you didn’t know what words might lift that person up to the heart of God – then grab hold of these words and make them your own. Together let’s offer this as a prayer right now to the Lord.

Today, instead of standing, feel free to remain in your seat. Or perhaps you are able and willing to kneel. It’s actually easiest to do that by turning around and kneeling against your own chair. You can read these verses from your own copy of the Bible, or find them up on one of our screens – either here or in the back of the room – or recite them from memory. If you’d like to kneel, let’s do so now, and pray together this part of the Word of God:

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power 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, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

God is incomprehensibly vast. He is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. The problem is that we don’t ask or trust or expect him to do very much. We know only a little of what Paul describes as God’s fullness. Therefore we must start at the place where Paul starts. We must get down on our knees. That’s more than just an expression of reverence. It’s an act of vulnerability. When I am on my knees I cannot run away. When I become smaller in God’s presence, he becomes bigger. And that is the ultimate goal of worship.

Prayer is not a technique to get in touch with my true self, as some people in our culture might put it. Prayer is a decision to turn away from myself towards God. Tim Keller asks us to imagine three very different conversations. One is with a business associate you don’t really like. In that conversation it’s likely you’ll stick to comparatively safe subjects like goals and strategies. There won’t be much chitchat. The second conversation is with a friend whose company you enjoy. It won’t be surprising to either of you if at some point you end up sharing some of your personal feelings and problems.

The third conversation is with someone you love. This someone also loves you. In the course of your time together it will feel quite natural to look that person in the eye and say something special about them. You might comment on their beauty, or their wisdom, or the joy you feel simply being in their presence.

Now review in your mind the last couple of conversations you’ve had with God. Were those prayer times mostly about goals and projects that you hope God is willing to get behind? Were they chiefly about personal problems and feelings that you want to bring to God’s attention? We can be sure that it pleases God to hear all the details of our lives. We can tell him anything. But the Bible is always nudging us toward that third kind of conversation. Last week we noted in Ephesians 3:12 that “in him and through faith in him [that is, through Christ] we may approach God with freedom and confidence.” We can come to God confidently because he loves us. He wants us to experience our time with him as the joyful reunion of two persons who are crazy about each other.

Paul says in verse 14 that he kneels “before the Father.” On the pages of the Bible there are more than 100 titles for God. But the title that is used most often in the New Testament is “Father.” That is an expression of profound intimacy. But that same word can trigger some troubling responses in us.

For instance, when Paul describes God as “the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and earth derives its name,” does that mean that God is male? After all, clear distinctions were made between male and female deities in the ancient world. Why is it that Jews and Christians have historically described God with male pronouns alone and assigned to him the specific parental role that can only be fulfilled by males?

Without taking the time at this point to do a comprehensive study of Scripture, it’s enough to say that neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament ever describes God as male. God does not have gender. The word “Father,” however, is not trivial. “Father” speaks to the eternal identity of the first person of the Trinity; there is something about God that is now, always has been, and always shall be Father. God’s role as the creator and ultimate authority over the human race is also in view here. His Fatherhood is what guarantees our security, love, and care. We can count on our heavenly Father the way a vulnerable and trusting child should be able to count on their human father.

But that’s what often triggers a second concern. A great many of us did not find our fathers on earth to be heroically trustworthy. In fact it’s almost impossible to find a single positive example of human fatherhood anywhere in the Bible. All of us arrived in this world emotionally preprogrammed to want our dads to come through for us in some very important ways. Boys grow up hoping their fathers will say to them, “You have what it takes.” Girls grow up yearning to hear just a few magic words from Dad: “I think you’re lovely.” But when we don’t hear those words, or we don’t hear them often enough – or when we tragically hear the very opposite message, again and again – our hearts and our lives can be deeply scarred.

Thus at the beginning of this majestic prayer Paul sets the record straight: There is someone who can fulfill our deepest needs. And he can heal our broken hearts. The love and security that we hoped might come from our parents, or by falling in love, or getting married, or making that sale, or acing that test, or buying that house can only be ours if we fall on our knees before our Father in heaven. God is in fact all we have ever needed. And we will never be disappointed if we demote every other hope and aspiration to second place.

What is this prayer all about? Paul prays that by God’s power and God’s Spirit we will come to know so much of God’s fullness and God’s love that our very lives will contribute to God’s glory.

Pound for pound, there is more about power in the book of Ephesians than any other New Testament letter. Gaining and holding on to power has been one of humanity’s timeless goals. Dictators want power. So do generals and bank presidents and athletes and marketers and virtually every superhero we encounter in movies and comic books. But the power that is available from God isn’t for the purpose of confronting other people or altering our circumstances. Paul prays that we might be strengthened “in our inner being” (verse 16) and “in our hearts through faith” (verse 17). Verse 20 says that God’s power is at work “within us.” In other words, this prayer calls us to focus on what is happening inside us instead of what is happening around us.

Throughout Ephesians Paul has repeatedly said that followers of Jesus are “in Christ.” Verse 17 plainly tells us that Christ is also in us. In other words, God is not far away. God doesn’t live on a high mountain or somewhere just beyond the Andromeda Galaxy. God’s own Spirit is living and active within the most humble Christian. And he is in us to win us.

Specifically, the Spirit is in us to help us grasp the unimaginable depths of God’s love. Continuing in verses 17 and 18 Paul writes, “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” What Paul is saying is that if we’re grounded in God’s love we will continually experience more and more of God’s love.

That’s a very big deal for a very simple reason: Learning to love is what life is all about. It’s what we’ll be doing for eternity. The Bible is not the story of God’s power. It’s the story of God’s love. Don’t you have days in which you just wish God would just use his power to clean up this mess of a planet? But God is working steadily and relentlessly by another means. God is healing our broken world by putting his love into human hearts. He is freeing us from self-centeredness, one hour at a time, just so we can love others deeply and wisely. There are frequent major setbacks in this process – especially in the church. Sometimes it seems as if we’re all going in reverse. But Jesus died to put this strategy into place, and he is never going to abandon it.

Look a little more closely at the dimensions that are identified in verse 18: God is helping us grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. It’s easy enough to picture length, width, and height. But what is being measured here according to its depth? Our best guess is that Paul is talking about the fact that the love of Jesus, when poured into human hearts, simply has no end. We can never reach the bottom of the grace and love that God is able and willing to give to us.  

Dennis Kinlaw, former president of Asbury College, remembers what it meant to him when he became a grandfather. The first time he held his little grandchild in his arms he was overcome by emotion. Tears came to his eyes and he asked himself, “Is there anyone who feels about me the way I feel about this little one?” The answer came to him immediately. It was a resounding, “Yes, and even more – God himself.”

It’s impossible to overstate how committed God is to sharing his love with us. When I offer my love to somebody else, and that person chooses not to love me in return, I feel pain. I hurt because I have lost something. When God offers his love to us and we refuse to love him in return, God feels pain, too. But God’s hurt is different. He feels pain not because he has lost something, but because we have lost something. We have lost the most important thing in the universe: the chance to experience the saving and transforming care of our Creator.

Paul continues in verse 19 by saying something that doesn’t appear at first glance even to make sense. His prayer is that we might “know this love that surpasses knowledge.” In other words, our goal is to know something that can’t be known. What are we to make of this?

Let’s get some perspective from another part of Scripture. God says in Isaiah 55:8-9, “’For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’” Jews had reflected on this celebrated Old Testament text for generations. It implies that there is an immeasurably high wall between our minds and the mind of God. And not one of us is ever going to scale that wall.

But Israel’s greatest rabbis were also sure of something else: God can scale the wall from his side. God is able and willing to reveal his character and his purposes to human beings. We cannot know God exhaustively, since God is infinite and we are finite. But what we do know of God we can know truly. And Paul is saying that because of Jesus the wall has come down as never before.

That’s because Jesus has put a face on God’s love. As I John 4:9 expresses it, “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.” Therefore when Paul prays that we might “know this love that surpasses knowledge,” he is praying that we might know and love Jesus in a deeper and more authentic way.

Now let’s get practical. How do we apply these verses, which include some of the most soaring and poetical words in all of Scripture? How can we grow in our actual experience of the fullness of God, and really live this prayer? There are at least three things we can do.

First, praise God now. Bring praise to God all the time. We can transform our housecleaning and our morning drives and our business meetings into times of worship as we consciously turn away from ourselves and turn toward God. We don’t literally have to fall on our knees before the Father. We can bow before him invisibly in our spirits. And every moment is the right moment to do just that.

When our kids were younger we stopped at a fireworks store in another state. At that time you couldn’t buy big rockets here in Indiana, so I purchased a package of missiles that shot way up in the air and exploded into this bright flare. I launched one of them as soon as we got home. The others I decided to save for a really special occasion. So I stored them carefully in our garage. And I kept waiting for a special enough day to launch the rest of the rockets.

Last month I cleaned out our garage. I picked up a box, and there they were. I had forgotten all about them. Fifteen years had come and gone in which apparently there had never been a day that was special enough to light those fuses. That very night I launched a rocket. I celebrated the fact that I had a clean garage. What does the Bible say? “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Praise God now. This is a special enough day, and so is tomorrow, and so is the next day, to stop and thank God that he is truly God.

Second, choose to trust God for a far deeper experience of him. God can do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. But it doesn’t take long for most of us to put God in a box. We contain him with our language. We limit him with our expectations. We stop believing that he is in fact doing amazing things around us all the time. We settle for a very small God.

Why do we experience so little of God’s fullness? Klyne Snodgass, who is a brilliant commentator on the book of Ephesians, suggests, “The real problem is that we do not care enough. We do not have the necessary discontent with ourselves that will lead to change.”

This week take a risk. Ask God to do a miracle in your life or in a difficult set of circumstances – something about which you have frankly given up asking, and even given up imagining. Read verse 20 out loud to God. “Lord, you say that you have the power to do immeasurably more than all I can ask or imagine. Right now I’m asking for your help. I’m asking for your deliverance. I’m asking for your mercy. God, I’m trusting you to do a miracle where only a miracle is going to make a difference, and I’m not demanding that it looks exactly the way I’m picturing it. ” God is not small. Ask God to experience much more of him.

Third, and finally, end each day receiving the assurance that God is taking care of you. Twice during this series we’ve talked about the importance of waking up with confidence in Christ. It’s just as crucial to fall asleep with confidence that God is big enough to take care of all of our tomorrows. We must receive this assurance. This is an action we must choose to take.

Twenty-five years ago a couple from Arizona named Fred and Cheryl went to Haiti to pick up a child they had adopted. Addie was five years old. Her parents had been killed in a car accident. On the airport tarmac – with fearless and innocent trust – this tiny orphan reached up and slipped her hand into the hands of her new parents whom she had just met.

Addie met her two new brothers, Thatcher and Graham, who were both teenagers, later that same day back in Arizona. This new family of five sat down to their first dinner together. There was a platter of pork chops and a bowl of mashed potatoes. Addie had never seen so much food in her life. Nor had she seen food disappear so fast, either, as Thatcher and Graham continued to refill their plates until everything was gone.

That’s when Fred and Cheryl noticed the look on Addie’s face. Was it insecurity, or fear, or just exhaustion? Cheryl guessed that it had something to do with the disappearing food. She took Addie’s hand and they walked into the kitchen together. They looked at the fresh loaves in the bread drawer, at the milk and orange juice in the refrigerator, and at the peanut butter and cans of soup in the pantry. Addie saw the eggs and the bacon and the vegetables and the fish and the peaches and the pickles.

Addie had been hungry her whole life. Her new mother was telling her – no, more than that, her new mother was showing her – that she would never go hungry again. She could go to bed that night knowing that someone who loved her was going to provide for her.

Whenever we pray this prayer we are addressing a God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He knows all the stars by name. We can go to bed every night remembering that we need never be spiritually famished again, since our God gladly shares his fullness with all who call on his name.