"Step Out of Boredom"
Notes
Transcript
Intro:
We live in a culture of boredom. We do. We have more available to us in this day and age than ever in history, yet we are so bored. Here's an example.
Somehow, we've gotten bored with food. No longer is just eating a taco normal. We now have to go… We have the option to eat a taco that is wrapped in a Nacho Cheese Doritos shell.
No longer is just a chicken sandwich okay to eat. No longer does that hit the spot. We've done away with the bun.
Let's deep fry those patties and use them as buns, fill it with bacon, cheese, and sauce and call it a sandwich.
We're bored. How about in our cars? No longer are 20 radio stations enough for us. We now need 536 radio stations.
You're driving, and you think, "You know what I could really go for in this music? I could really go for some Canadian country folk music to listen to."
We're bored. We're a bored culture. We're a bored people. Sadly, I think this boredom hits home for us as believers in the church as well.
I think we're bored with our prayer lives and in our prayer lives, I do.
Now look, I'm not saying that there are not prayer warriors who will pray boldly at the drop of a hat, but as a whole we are probably dropping the ball.
If I were to ask you if you think prayer is important, every single one of you would say, "Absolutely, it's important. Yes, it's important."
If I were to ask, "Hypothetically, in a 24-hour day, how many hours of your day are spent filled with prayer?" Let me be a little fairer, how about just an hour of prayer day?
My guess is no one in here… Maybe 98 percent of us in this room would say, "I'm not killing it. It's not filled very much."
My hand is up here. I'm confessing. But here is the thing, how much of that time will we spend praying?
Then to take it a step further. When we do pray, how many of us believe the prayers we're praying? You see, because when we're bored, we either won't pray, or we won't believe that what we're praying matters.
When we're bored, we have to think and examine and know why it is that we're bored.
My hope today is not just to heap a load of shame on us today. I don't want to do a drive-by guilting here today, but I just want us to be honest and have a conversation and examine our hearts.
Maybe we're bored because we're praying the same things over and over and over again in the same ways over and over again, toward the same things over and over again.
Maybe it's because we expect answers to our prayers in 30 seconds. Maybe it's because we don't approach prayer intentionally, or maybe it's because we're so distracted with everything else going on around us.
You could probably think of a dozen other reasons why we don't pray and that contribute to this boredom.
But, I want to suggest that one large reason we're so bored in our prayer lives is because we have forgotten how deep the Father actually loves us.
You see that is the foundation of who we are and why we do this. When we forget how much He loves us, then our attention towards Him will suffer greatly and in turn our prayer life will suffer greatly.
In 3:14-21 we see Paul showing us what it is like to pray in view of God’s greatness and our human need. This section is a transitional section of the book. The first three chapters are about who we are in Christ. The next three chapters are about how we are to live.
Now to understand both is crucial for all believers, but just having knowledge is not going to be enough. So in between these two sections comes this section about prayer.
The emphasis of this section about prayer is simple. We must have God's power if we are going to do God's will. Let's take a look at our passage this morning. Read Passage: Ephesians 3:14-21
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.
In our time together this morning I would like to share three approaches that Paul lines up that will help us pray with a higher view of God and therefore in return pray with the upmost power.
The first approach is we should ...
1. Pray for and with humility (14-16)
1. Pray for and with humility (14-16)
Now we won't spend a lot of time on this but I think it is worth noting, lets take a look at Paul's posture. It was a posture of kneeling.
This was not a common position of prayers for the Jews. In fact they were known to stand for long periods of time when they would pray.
Whenever you look at someone praying in the Bible from this posture you typically see that they are praying with great humility and a deep range of emotion.
While this is not the only posture that you can pray from obviously, I do believe that this is a great way to pray from a place of humility though.
So the other part of what we might want to make note of is that Paul is praying with a heart of gratitude, and desperation.
It's in those moments that we reflect on the grace of God that should lead us to a posture of humility.
That's what should happen when we remember that He called us, adopted us, redeemed us, and Praise Jesus, forgave us.
Kneeling is also a sign of desperation too. Paul in this sense is recognizing that God is the only one Who can act on the behalf of what he is asking for.
This is the act of a great leader. Paul is pleading with God for the Ephesians and for something that only God can do. He wanted them to experience the full power of God.
So in order for that to take place, Paul then leads us to the next approach in which he calls to ...
2. Pray for God's love to capture you (17-19)
2. Pray for God's love to capture you (17-19)
Paul clued us in the first few verses that we need to come rightly before God, but also the importance of it. Now out of humility we go into praying for the power of God's love.
Paul is essentially praying for the readers to experience what he has just talked about in the previous chapters: Christ’s supreme power and God’s great love toward sinners.
Read: Ephesians 3:16-17
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,
Church, this is the vision. This is the picture of God's love for us, that according to the vast richness of his glory, he has given believers the Holy Spirit to strengthen us and Christ to dwell in our hearts.
Let that sink in for a second. The very one who left his home in glory, the one who came to this earth, the one who cast out demons and healed the sick.
The one who laughed and cried, the one who turned water into wine, the one who fed thousands upon thousands of people with just a little bit of food.
The one who was mocked and beaten, betrayed, the one who was crucified, the one who was resurrected, the one who now sits enthroned at the Father's right side.
Church, He is the one who dwells in our hearts. That's Christ. He dwells in our hearts. That is a picture of love.
I know it's a picture of love because I know I don't deserve that. I don't deserve for Christ to dwell in my heart. I am keenly aware that my heart is not a suitable home for a king.
I know how much work needs to be done to my heart. There are rooms of my heart, chambers of my heart that are so wicked, but through faith, Christ has stepped into that space and is repairing what is broken.
Then Paul finishes out this section about love saying you, Read: Ephesians 3:17-19
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.
So if we break down those four pieces, it really magnifies the love of God to the full.
Breadth. When God demonstrated his love by becoming man and living on earth, that was no narrow love.
When he loved the woman who was caught in adultery, when he loved little old Zacchaeus, when he loved back-stabbing Judas, His love is broad enough to cover everyone, no matter where they are or who they are.
Length. How long is God's love for you? Have you ever thought about that? When does his love for you run out? When does it end? When did it begin?
Was it when you first believed that he loved you? Was it when he first created you that he loved you? Was it when he created the world? No. God's love has no start date.
Charles Spurgeon says this about the length of God's love for you.
"It's so long that your old age cannot wear it out, so long your continual tribulation cannot exhaust it, your successive temptations shall not drain it dry…" Praise the Lord. "…like eternity itself it knows no bounds."
Height. How high does his love reach? As high as the heavens? Yes. As God sits above the entire universe, so sits His love for you.
Depth. How deep does the love of God run for you? Deep enough for his Son to be crushed by the weight of all the world's sin? Deep enough to send Jesus to the darkness of the grave? Yes, that deep.
And so, as we have measured this love and we see the final approach that Paul brings to the table to pray a higher view of God and with the fullness of His power and that is to ...
3. Pray with an expectation that God can (20-21)
3. Pray with an expectation that God can (20-21)
Then Paul gets to his crescendo, his doxology really of the first three chapters of Ephesians but of this text too. Let's marvel together at verses 20 and 21. Read: Ephesians 3:20-21
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.
3. Pray with an expectation that God can (20-21)
3. Pray with an expectation that God can (20-21)
I love what Paul is saying here. He says God is able to do everything we ask. If Paul had stopped right there, that would have been remarkable, right? God is powerful enough to do anything we ask.
But what is even more remarkable is that God can reach into our depths and get to the heart of our thoughts and do those things as well. This is our God.
He's able to do everything we ask or think, and as amazing as that is, this is what grips me.
Every time I read this text, here's what gets me every single time. God is not just able to do what we ask or think; He's able to do far more abundantly than what we ask or think.
Another way of saying that is he is able to do exceedingly abundantly more. He wants us to understand that far above anything we could imagine, we can think, we can ask, God is able to do it.
If that doesn't stir within us a boldness to approach His throne, then I don't know what will. There is nothing you can think or imagine or ask that God isn't able to accomplish.
That should fire us up, church. That should fire us up. We can see throughout all of scripture that God can do incredible miraculous stuff.
But when it comes down to it, many of us don't pray with the expectancy that God can or will. When is the last time that you prayed with expectancy.
When is the last time you prayed a prayer that was bigger than anything you could accomplish on your own and would take the workings of God to do and did expect it to happen?
You see I think what happens is that we view many of our prayers based upon what we feel has not been answered in the past or at the very least the way we wished them to be answered.
So, what happens is that we begin this journey of praying and not believing that He can or will. That’s you answering the prayer friends. That's you.
God can do more in response to one prayer than we can do in one hundred years of planning and plodding.
Do we believe God alone is the only Sovereign? He is the One who raised Jesus from the dead and placed Him as head over the church, and He has put all things under His feet!
If so, then pour out your heart to Him, believing He is able. We need a vision of God that increases our faith in God’s greatness.
The best way to do this is to fill our minds with the Word of God. When you are ingrained in His truth, you won't forget what He can do.
Do we believe the gospel is strong enough, that He is strong enough to save? Are we praying for that? Are we believing when we pray for revival? Do we really long for that? Do we really ask for that?
These are massive things we're asking the Lord for, and they're too big for us to pray about without us expecting and believing God to be able to heal and to save and to set free and to fix.
We're only a few weeks away from the new year, which means we have an opportunity this year to grow as individuals and as a church into becoming a people of prayer.
More than your resolve to get swoll in the gym this year, my earnest hope and plea for you is that you would grow exponentially in your prayer life and that we would mature as a church in knee-bending prayer.
Most great movements in history got their start by a small group of people who gathered together and got on their knees and sought the Lord.
Just so you know there is a group already going after that. Right now, a small group of people attacking the enemy with petition after petition before the Lord.
And let me tell you, there is plenty of room for you! I want that for us. I do, not so we get any attention from the world, not so we would be famous, not so we have anything we ourselves can boast in, but because His name is great.
And so this morning we are going to simply pray to end this message. I am not going to pray for your behalf, I am asking you to take a step-in boldness right now and pray and to pray with expectancy.