Latest / Wesley at FSU & TSC / Rooted: Love Deeply | Sunday Service | September 1, 2024

Transcript

Rooted: Love Deeply | Sunday Service | September 1, 2024 · Wesley at FSU & TSC

0:59
SPEAKER_00: I want to give a uh a message this morning, but I want to start by telling you about the series that we're gonna do.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: Last week, if you were here, we talked about being rooted uh like a tree has roots.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: We talked about, if you remember, I told you the story of the plumbing of my house and the roots kind of getting in the way.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh roots are way bigger, way stronger than you've ever imagined, ever really have experience with.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: Roots keep you tied down.
1:24
SPEAKER_00: And if you'll remember at the end of the sermon last week, I I said, hey uh, roots keep you where you are, meaning you should be where your feet are, if you remember that.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: Because so often, especially in college, we are ready to move on to the next thing, right?
1:39
SPEAKER_00: We're ready to take that next step into whatever the next thing is.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: And the truth is, is we need to stay where we are right here.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: There will come a time in which we can move on, but where we are right here, if we're not here, we're gonna miss it.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: So we talked about that last week.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing uh being rooted means you gotta be rooted in something, right?
1:58
SPEAKER_00: You gotta be rooted in something.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: I told you last year last week, like being rooted in Christ is where you need to start as a college student.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: And I want to give you some stepping stones, some places where you can build that foundation over the next couple weeks.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: Can we do that?
2:12
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: So I want to start a series called Rooted.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing: um, we are a part of the United Methodist Church, uh, and that doesn't really matter to most of you, to be honest.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: Some of you grew up Methodists, cool, some of you didn't, cool.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: I really just care that you're here, right?
2:28
SPEAKER_00: I just really care that you're here trying to grow in your faith.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: Um I'd encourage you to like, man, denominations drive me crazy.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: They drive you crazy.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: Like, just leave them out for a second.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: Because I do think it's helpful, though, uh to know where we're rooted.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: Now, let me tell you about why we're called Wesley.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: In the 1700s, a guy named John Wesley started a campus ministry at Oxford in England.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: And so ever since then, the ministries that came from his movement are called Wesley after John and his brother Charles.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: Kind of cool, right?
3:06
SPEAKER_00: This comes all the way back to seven the 1700s.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: Here's what John did, though, in the 1700s.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: He looked at the church that he saw then, and he said, Hey, man, I don't know if the church that we look at, and that at the time it was the Church of England for him, is the Anglican church.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: He's like, I don't know if the people that are there are really on fire for Christ.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: He said, A lot of people are just aren't practicing the things they need to practice, they're not doing the things that they need to do, they're not spending time in scripture, not spending time in prayer.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: And he said, We need a revival.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: And so he began in a college ministry a thing that turned into this kind of global phenomenon where people started studying the scriptures on a daily basis, where people started praying on a daily basis, where people started falling in love with God again.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: That's what happened.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: That's why we that's how Methodism started, and that's why we're sitting in a building right now.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: And I'll be honest with you, much like Wesley's church then, I feel like our church today needs a revival.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: There are less people going to church today than ever before.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: There's less people falling in love with Christ than ever before, and less people giving their lives to Christ than ever before.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: And so I feel like our church in general needs a revival.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: So thank you, first of all, for being part of it.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: Why?
4:22
SPEAKER_00: Because you're sitting here.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: Because you're sitting here ready to do it, right here.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: And some of you are like, I don't know, man, my friend just invited me.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure I'm into this.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: But by being here in this space, right now, the beginning of school, this is the beginning of something big.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: It's the beginning of something big, not only in the church, but also in your life.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: In your life.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: That's so that's what can happen in the midst of revival.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: In order to start a revival, John Wesley he created some practices and things that were helpful for people who were going through their lives of ministry.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, honestly, he just pulled people back to some of the initial roots of the church in the beginning.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of what I feel like we need now.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: To pull people back to the initial roots of where the church should be, where Christianity should be, where Christianity should focus, because I don't know if you've noticed, but we tend to get distracted.
5:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah?
5:22
SPEAKER_00: So what he did is he pulled them back, and that's what we want to do is pull those back.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: But in order to do that, we got to find our place.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: Are you with me?
5:28
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's what I want to do.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: I want to point us to this scripture.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: This comes from Ephesians, Paul's letter to the Ephesians in chapter three.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: Here now the reading of God's word.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: This is why I kneel before the Father.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: Every ethnic group in heaven or on earth is recognized by him.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: I ask that he will strengthen you in your inner selves from the riches of his glory through the Spirit.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: I ask that Christ will live in your hearts through faith.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: As a result of having strong roots in love, I ask that you have the power to grasp love's width and length, height and depth, together with all believers.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: I ask that you'll know the love of Christ that is beyond knowledge, so that you will be entirely filled with the fullness of God.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray over the preaching of God's word.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, your word is a lamp into our feet.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: It's a light into our path.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: God, we ask this morning that it would speak to us, that it would speak through us for the establishment of your kingdom on this earth.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: God, let your kingdom come down upon us.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight and in your sight alone, oh God.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: You're a rock, you're a redeemer, you're our savior.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: And we love you because you first loved us.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: We pray this in your holy name.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: To start at the beginning, where the root is, you have to start with who God is.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: At the most fundamental level, you have to start with who God is.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: Notice that I didn't say you have to start with the scriptures.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: The scriptures are super important, but the scriptures have one purpose, and it's to show us who God is.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: You have to start with who God is.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: And how is it that God has been defined throughout all of Christianity, throughout all of our religious history?
7:40
SPEAKER_00: How is it that God has been defined through the scriptures as love?
7:44
SPEAKER_00: So I want to talk this morning about loving deeply.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: Loving deeply.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: You have to start at the beginning with love.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: Now, the scripture passage that we just came from, this is Paul's letter to the Ephesians.
7:59
SPEAKER_00: This is a church group meeting where?
8:01
SPEAKER_00: Somebody tell me.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: Ephesus, thank you, Willis.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: Willis always got the answer there.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: Uh his church, it says an early church group meeting in Ephesus, okay?
8:11
SPEAKER_00: And they're they're meeting, they're new Christians.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: If you aren't familiar with the history here, Christianity, not very legal, not very popular.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: There are more people in this room this morning than were there when they were reading this letter, more than likely.
8:28
SPEAKER_00: Small group of people.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: In fact, we know they were small because in a lot of his letters, he calls people out by name.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: And these were read.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: People couldn't read back in the day, so they would be read together as a community, and you would come and gather and you would listen to Paul's letter.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine being called out by name when you're gathered in the letter?
8:46
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, and by the way, Willis always knows the answers, right?
8:50
SPEAKER_00: Like, can you imagine being called out?
8:52
SPEAKER_00: Right?
8:52
SPEAKER_00: Like that that, but that's how that's how the process would work.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: Now, in Paul's letters, we have chapters.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: This is from chapter three.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: And if you've never studied the scriptures before, here's a good place to or put a good thing for you to know.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: There were no chapters or verses when Paul wrote his thing.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: Those were added later.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so when Paul writes his letter, he's just writing his letter.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: He's just writing it like you would write a letter.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: Well, like people used to write letters back in the day before text, right?
9:19
SPEAKER_00: So you would write, you know, those novel texts that you sent.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: One day, those will have chapters and verses attached to them, right?
9:24
SPEAKER_00: Uh so that's what he's writing, right?
9:26
SPEAKER_00: And at this point in chapter three, particularly in these verses, uh, we call this a hinge prayer.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: That means that the beginning of the of the letter and the end of the letter kind of hinge on this prayer.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: Here's this interesting thing about Paul.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: When he's giving, when he's writing all the time, he he gives theological instruction, like he explains who God is, and then he gives practical instruction.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: Always, and sometimes in opposite orders, but there's always those two things in all of his letters theological instruction and practical instruction.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: Man, isn't that what it's like to be a Christian?
10:04
SPEAKER_00: Like, you gotta learn something about God, and then you have to put it into practice, right?
10:09
SPEAKER_00: Like there's both of those things together.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: And that's what's happening here in this verse.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's interesting because at first it just sounds like a night's prayer.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: At first, it's just like, I pray this over you, and it sounds flowery, like the pastor standing up here saying things that you probably wouldn't say if or he wouldn't say to you if you were just talking, you know.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: But that's what he does, is he he praises, and if you read it carefully, you'll actually see what he's trying to say.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: So I want to start at the end of the passage.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: This is verse 19.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: Hannah's gonna put it up on the screen for us.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: Can we say thank you to Hannah on the slides?
10:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: He's praying to the Ephesians, praying that the Ephesians are going to experience something that is logically impossible.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: Or it's at least not possible for us to fully grasp.
10:58
SPEAKER_00: I want you to see, I ask that you'll know the love of Christ that is beyond knowledge.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: I want to read that again.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: I ask that you'll know the love of Christ that is beyond knowledge.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: I ask that you will fully know, you could say, the love of Christ that is beyond knowledge, so that you'll be filled entirely with the fullness of God.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: How can I know something that's beyond knowledge?
11:22
SPEAKER_00: Is it something that's experienced?
11:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: It's something bigger than we've ever thought of before.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's very interesting that in this he says, hey, there's a love of Christ that I want you to know, and it is beyond anything you can know.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: It's beyond anything you could ever explain, anything you could actually intellectually write an essay about, anything you could answer on an exam.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: It's beyond all of that, he says.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: He says, I want you to know the love of Christ that's beyond all knowledge.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: Man, that is a big love.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: A big love.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: A fully immersive love.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: Can I tell you about one of my favorite immersive experiences in the whole world?
12:03
SPEAKER_00: Rise of the Resistance at Hollywood Studios.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: Bro, if you've never been on this, and I am not a Star Wars guy.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: I don't, I like half know the characters.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: I have never seen the full trilogy, don't shoot me.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: I have never, I have never really like fully gotten into the Star Wars stuff.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: But then when Rise of the Resistance came out, everybody's like, you gotta come with this Rise of the Resistance, blah, blah.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: So uh my brother-in-law, who is a Star Wars nerd, and I say that with love and affection, but like uh you know the type, right?
12:38
SPEAKER_00: He's a nerd.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: He was like, hey, do you want to show up at 5 a.m.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: so we can get it get into Rise of the Resistance?
12:44
SPEAKER_00: And I said, uh I suppose so.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: Five, okay.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: So we get there at five in the morning, like 4:30 or whatever.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: We get there at 5, and we uh start, uh, we get into what they call the, what they used to call it FastPass or or what no, it's not FastPass.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: Um Lightning Lane.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: It was Lightning Lane, but virtual cue is the word I'm looking for.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was the virtual cue.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: So you get in line in this virtual queue, and you have to do this on your phone.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: So everybody is sitting at the gates, but on their phone, it's weird.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: And you're sitting there and you're like tapping as fast as possible, like tap dot.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Ah, cool, two o'clock, you know?
13:16
SPEAKER_00: And then we get to go on this ride.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: And I am like not into it.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm like into it because he's into it, but I'm not like into it, into it.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: And we get on the little uh dolly or whatever you call it, it's like a little seat thing, and we start the ride.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: First of all, if you've never been into Star Wars Land at Hollywood Studios, it is completely immersive.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: The cast members talk to you like they're on a different planet, which is weird.
13:45
SPEAKER_00: But we get in this thing and we start going around, and I start to see some of the characters, and I'm doing that thing that Star Wars fans hate.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: Like they see Kyler Ren and I'm like, oh, Darth Vader, right?
13:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh and he's like, just shut up, you know.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, when you're going to this, you you uh you go through this period where you're you're kind of walking first, and uh you get captured by the Imperial Guard, and then they come up and they talk to you, and then they pass them off to some cast members who have to pretend like they're the Imperial Guard.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: You walk into this room that has stormtroopers, and there's all these mirrors, so it looks like there's like four million of them, but there's you know, there's probably less than that.
14:21
SPEAKER_00: But I'm in this point, I am like the guy who goes to Disney and rides the rides, and I'm thinking, like, how did they do that?
14:28
SPEAKER_00: Where'd they put that projector?
14:29
SPEAKER_00: Right?
14:30
SPEAKER_00: Like, uh, where are the speakers?
14:31
SPEAKER_00: How are they?
14:32
SPEAKER_00: Is this aligned and synced?
14:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm that guy who's like trying to figure out the cool tech piece of it.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: And and I was not here.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: I was like not into Star Wars, but into tech.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: And here I was, like super into this moment, into the Star Wars, and not understanding the tech at all.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: Wild.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: So we go through this thing, and you're kind of like paying attention, or you're kind of having having experience with the stormtroopers, and you're you're starting to feel like I like I know that they're acting, but I'm maybe not so sure that they're acting like this fully immersive experience.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: And then we go through the actual ride where you're sitting in the booth thing and you're riding around, and Kyler Wren shows up again, Dorthmeter.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: And then uh we we finally get to this point where it drops you like an elevator, which I thought was Tower of Terror.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: Guess they reused it here.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: But the whole time I'm thinking, how will hold up?
15:25
SPEAKER_00: Because in Tower of Terror, you go into a thing that's very clearly sitting there and it moves down.
15:31
SPEAKER_00: I had no idea that we were gonna drop.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: What an immersive experience.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: And I don't, this sounds strange, but when I think about the total eclipse, the total totality of who God is in love, I gotta think about this full immersion.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever used like VR glasses?
15:52
SPEAKER_00: Like the whole point is to fully immerse you.
15:59
SPEAKER_00: That's true with God's love as well.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: I want you to know the love of Christ that is beyond anything you can know.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: That you'll be fulfilled entirely with the fullness of God.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: Love's a big thing.
16:17
SPEAKER_00: There's something else about love, and this love that encompasses you.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: It transforms you from the inside out.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: In fact, if you're affected by this love, you can't help but be transformed by it.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: Put yourself in this shoes.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have been in romantic relationships before.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are still in those romantic relationships, and some of you are not in those anymore.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: Think about the relationships you've had.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a romantic, maybe it's it's more or more friendly.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: Friendly?
16:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: Platonic.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: What happens when you say the words I love you?
16:54
SPEAKER_00: It's like a definitive thing, right?
16:57
SPEAKER_00: You say when you say the words I love you, something changes in that relationship.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: There's a famous Star Wars moment where he says, I love you, or she says, I love you, and he says thank you, or I know.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: Crazy.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: I told you I'm not a huge Star Wars fan.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: They did a study, I found this on Reddit, so I believe it.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: They did a study in Western countries that they found on average men say I love you faster in a relationship than women.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: Not surprising.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: Men say it about 107 days into a relationship, that's about three and a half months.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: Women say it 122 days into a relationship, that's about four months.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: Same study found on average that men have told over six partners in their lives, I love you.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: Women tell only three.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: Seems accurate on brand.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: And uh one guy on Reddit, I thought this was funny.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: One guy said he only the only woman he's ever told I love you to was his mom.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: I thought it was so alright.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure things are going great for him.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: Uh verse, verse 16.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: Verse 16.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: I ask that he will strengthen you and your inner selves from the riches of his glory through the spirit.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: I ask that Christ will live in your hearts through faith.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't seem very transformative at first, but I want you to read it again.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: I ask that Christ will live in your hearts through faith as a result of having.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: Okay, go back to 16, sorry, that was wrong.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: I ask that he will strengthen you and your inner selves from the riches of his glory through the spirit.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: When somebody tells you something intimate like, I love you, man, that hits you inside.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: And it changes the relationship, but it hits you inside.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: In the same way, when God says, I love you, Paul's saying, I want you to have that in the inner self through the riches of your glory, through the spirit, of his glory through the spirit.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: Have this internally.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: Love does change things, but I want you to hear how it does it.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't just coat it, it doesn't just surround it with this kind of candy coat.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: No, it comes inside and starts to change you from the inside out.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: I want to show you a picture of a woman named Nadine Collier.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: She's the daughter of a woman named Ethel Lance who went to a Bible study in South Carolina.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: And uh she was at this uh historically black church, South Carolina, and they invited in uh a little white kid who came to Bible study, and he sat there for the whole time.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the Bible study, he took out a firearm and killed all of them.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: You probably remember this story.
20:01
SPEAKER_00: He had some stuff online about being a race uh about how wanting to start a race war or whatever, you can talk to Willis later about it.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: What was incredible to me in that entire exchange is that so many of them, including Nadine, went to the court house, went to the trial.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: And she said to the shooter, I won't mention his name, I forgive you.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: You took something precious from me, and I will never talk to her again.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: I will never ever hold her again.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: But I forgive you, and I ask God to have mercy on your soul.
21:03
SPEAKER_00: What I know is that the love, that is who God is, had to have spoken to Nadine internally in order for her to be able to say something like that externally.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: It had to transform her from the inside out.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: There's another piece of the transformative nature of this, and this is important, I think, for us to realize.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: Because I do think uh it's become very easy in modern-day Christianity for us just to go to church or join a little group or do our little thing on the side and then leave and be completely not transformed.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: What John Wesley believed, and what I believe is the roots of who God is, is that because God loved you so much, God came into your heart to change you, and you cannot not be changed.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can walk away, but there's a change that happens there.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: John Wesley would say that once you've uh understood that, once you pull that into your heart, then you are now a part of what he calls a new creation.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: Meaning the old self is gone and the new self has come.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: This is what we teach you in baptism, if you've ever been baptized.
22:21
SPEAKER_00: They'll ask you questions about uh dying to self and then raising to life.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: The old self is gone and the new self has come.
22:31
SPEAKER_00: This is a new creation, it's a transformative love.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: It's not transformative pressure, it's not transformative anything else, it's transformative love that changes you from the inside out.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: Because if somebody were willing to give their life for you, would it not change you internally?
22:47
SPEAKER_00: Would it not then change your mindset?
22:51
SPEAKER_00: This is why I think our church needs a revival.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: This is why our church needs this motion.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: To happen within young people, especially.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of us are just like, Christianity became a thing we did when we were growing up and it's gone.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: It didn't really change our lives.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: Or we let all these other things get in the way.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: But instead, what Paul seems to be saying is, hey, Christ, I'm praying over you, Christ to come into your inner self and change you from the inside out.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: Well, give you enough courage to forgive somebody that that everybody else logically would say doesn't need forgiveness.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: Where you would completely die to yourself.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: Man, that's the love he's talking about.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: The other thing I would tell you about love is that it expects for you to love others as well.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: Think about that for a second.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: If a love is transformative internally for you, then it cannot be held in.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: It cannot be held in.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: It must change.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: Which means that you've got to love other people.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: I will tell you that sometimes I feel like this is a good barometer to the effect that the love of God is having on your life.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: Like if uh you have a hard time loving others, I think there might be some internal questions you have to ask.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: Is the love of God really transformed me?
24:21
SPEAKER_00: Have I been transformed?
24:22
SPEAKER_00: Have I been changed into a new creation, or have I just been playing this game?
24:27
SPEAKER_00: Have I just been going down the same path over and over again?
24:29
SPEAKER_00: Or am I really, have I really been changed?
24:34
SPEAKER_00: Love expects you to love others.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: This is verse 17 and 18.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: I ask that Christ will live in your hearts through faith.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: As a result of having through strong roots in love, I ask that you'll have the power to grasp love's width and length, height and depth together with all believers.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: I ask that you'll have the power to grasp love's width and length, height and depth, together with all believers.
25:11
SPEAKER_00: From the beginning of time, from the creation, God created you and said you were good.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: We were the ones that fell away.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: And God continually ran after us to love us even more.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: It's like the story in the Gospels.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: Where the young man runs away with the inheritance and he wastes it all.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: And then when he comes back, the older brother is expecting everybody to be mad at him because he wasted all the inheritance.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: And the father is standing there with his arms wide open.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: Man, that's a transformative love.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: That's the definition of God.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: In fact, when Jesus tells that story, it's a parable, when he tells that story, he says the kingdom of God is like this.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: As you begin a year where you're going to be rooted in Christ, there is no more important message, I don't think, than to tell you that God is love.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: And that hear me clearly, God loves you.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: Even when you feel like you can't be loved, even when you feel like I can't be forgetting.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: God loves you.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: God loves you.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: I pray the same prayer that Paul prayed over Ephesus.
27:03
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Hey, I pray that you would come to know a love that is beyond all knowledge.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: I pray that you become to know a love that is internal, a love that will spread further than you've ever imagined, a love that will transform you from the inside out.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: A love that will change the way you ever look at the world.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: A love that cannot help but be shared.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: That's my prayer.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: It's my prayer over this community, it's my prayer over you individually, it's my prayer over all of that.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: That you would come to know a love that is beyond all knowledge.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: Every week before the service, our uh team, our staff and uh band and all that kind of meet together to make sure that we're not gonna embarrass ourselves.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: And uh in that process, we pray before we put our hands in the middle.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: Ben gives us something funny to say, and then we tap the sign just like Ted Lasso.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: And uh, but we we hold hands and we pray.
28:08
SPEAKER_00: And we pray every week over every individual's seat and every person that will be in that seat that they would come to know that they are loved by their creator.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: Man, that is my prayer for you.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: That you will come to know that you are loved by your creator, a love that is beyond all knowledge.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: Because that's the centerpiece, the foundation, that's who God is.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: God, uh you are the God of all love.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: Not the like hippy-dippy kind of love, God.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: Not the love that uh is just there for us to half-share with one another, not the love that we've perverted love to be in so many ways, where we pass that off as love or this love.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: No, God, we're talking about the internal love that the Creator gives us and grants us, the one that you repeat over and over again, God, as we continually sometimes run away from you, the one that you repeat over and over again, that type of love, the love that surpasses everything we've ever imagined, God, the love that we cannot know but has to be internal.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: This love that we experience because it's fully immersive, God, that sort of love, man, that's our prayer.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: That we would see that love and know that love.
29:38
SPEAKER_00: God, that kind of love is the love that will change the world.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: It'll bring revival to the church.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: It will be the foundation upon which we can root ourselves.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: God, I don't I don't care where what our church history is, or our background, or denominational affiliation, or anything.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: None of that matters.
30:02
SPEAKER_00: What matters is your love.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: Never been able to say that God loves me.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: Never been comfortable saying that.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: I pray that you would give them the courage to say that this morning.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: Just internally.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: God loves me with a love that transformed.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: Spring me on to Christ.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of love, God.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: Every day.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: Your unconditional love every day.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: Your copy life every day.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray this again.