Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / October 26, 2025 | Ephesians - Five things I Pray

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October 26, 2025 | Ephesians - Five things I Pray · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_02: Hey everybody, how you doing?
0:04
SPEAKER_02: Anemic.
0:05
SPEAKER_02: That was pretty.
0:06
SPEAKER_02: That's the word that comes to mind.
0:08
SPEAKER_02: Anemic.
0:09
SPEAKER_02: Hey everybody, how you doing?
0:11
SPEAKER_02: Ah, there you go.
0:12
SPEAKER_02: So glad to have you here.
0:14
SPEAKER_02: So uh my name's Jim Tong, and I work here at the church uh doing the two things I love most, leader development and missions.
0:21
SPEAKER_02: So life is like a daily party for me.
0:26
SPEAKER_02: And I get to preach one of my favorite passages this weekend.
0:29
SPEAKER_02: Second time I preached in Ephesians, the other time was on the other prayer in chapter one.
0:34
SPEAKER_02: This is one of Paul's most famous prayers, and we're going to begin with a video because there is a couple in our church that has lived this prayer through difficult times over the last 15 years.
0:46
SPEAKER_02: But to introduce that, uh, since they've lived this prayer, I want us to read it together.
0:52
SPEAKER_02: All right?
0:53
SPEAKER_02: So, sorry if you feel uh more Episcopalian after this is done, but that's just your tough luck.
1:00
SPEAKER_02: So let's read Ephesians 3.
1:02
SPEAKER_02: Last uh, this is the last eight verses of Ephesians chapter 3.
1:05
SPEAKER_02: For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.
1:14
SPEAKER_02: I pray that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power in your inner being through his spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
1:30
SPEAKER_02: I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God's love.
1:45
SPEAKER_02: And to know Christ's love, that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
1:54
SPEAKER_02: The reason I've highlighted the word love here is that it's the most common word.
1:59
SPEAKER_02: And there's a couple in our church that has, uh you learn in this passage that you learn the love of God and you come to know the love of God, not through easy times or through blessings, but through adversity.
2:12
SPEAKER_02: This couple has experienced incredible adversity.
2:16
SPEAKER_02: And so, as they have learned the love of God in the last 15 years and the value of the words of this passage, watch this video with me, will you, for the next few minutes.
2:27
SPEAKER_02: You have prayed, many of you, for Richard and Kathy Ramshaw and their son Ryan because of his cancer.
2:34
SPEAKER_02: But what you probably don't know is the long journey that they walked the eight years before Ryan was diagnosed.
2:42
SPEAKER_02: I want to tell you about that.
2:44
SPEAKER_02: The story starts way back in 2008 when Richard and Kathy, through a variety of circumstances, decided to adopt a little girl named Kaelin, who it turned out had been with five families in her first three years.
3:01
SPEAKER_02: As they had Kaelin, they found that there were a number of strange things about her behavior.
3:06
SPEAKER_02: And uh, and when they got her professionally tested, they found that there were some attachment disorders, intellectual uh disorders that they really needed help with.
3:15
SPEAKER_02: And they looked for some sort of professional help, and it was really difficult for them to find.
3:20
SPEAKER_02: And they raised her another year and another year.
3:23
SPEAKER_02: They searched for that help, they prayed for that help.
3:26
SPEAKER_02: But it took eight years of raising her in difficult struggles for God to answer that prayer and find an out-of-state program where there were professionals that could help little Kaylin.
3:38
SPEAKER_02: Because just five weeks later was when little Ryan was diagnosed with a rare pediatric cancer called Ewing's sarcoma.
3:46
SPEAKER_02: Of course, they treated it aggressively, but that surfaced two more cancers.
3:51
SPEAKER_02: So treating Ryan lasted eight years over with three cancers.
3:56
SPEAKER_02: And once they thought they had that handled, now Kaylin is an adult and she needs a safe place.
4:02
SPEAKER_02: She needs some place where she can stay, where she can be taken care of or helped and live like an adult.
4:09
SPEAKER_02: And yet all the doors were closed, and the door opened because Kathy herself was diagnosed with cancer.
4:19
SPEAKER_02: So now Kathy has cancer, and you're saying, as I'm saying, wow, weren't Richard and Kathy just like discouraged and isolated and all that kind of stuff.
4:28
SPEAKER_02: The answer is you're not wrong.
4:30
SPEAKER_02: They were, but it but Paul's prayer to the Ephesians, those words they found coming true in their life.
4:36
SPEAKER_02: They became rooted and established in love, and they found that God's power is greater than they could ask or imagine.
4:42
SPEAKER_02: Some of you have seen Kathy's book, which he published this last year, terrific book with the title, God, Don't Worry, I've got this until I don't.
4:51
SPEAKER_02: But what would be better is for me to turn this over to Richard and Kathy.
4:55
SPEAKER_02: Let's hear it in their own words.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: I remember thinking, with Kaelin's journey, there are always things to try to do.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: I was always looking for a way to help, how to teach her something, how to create a bond, all these things that were missing in the connection with her.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: And when the doctor said Ryan has a tumor, there's nothing you can do.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: It was a night that you just realized I can't do anything.
5:26
SPEAKER_01: This has got to be something that I trust in God for.
5:30
SPEAKER_01: It was a hard night.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: It was like where everything is spinning, so out of control, and yet somehow there feels like this centrifugal force of God.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: The people around us are praying and just being with us.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: It's really kind of impossible to even describe how much life changed in just that moment.
6:00
SPEAKER_01: I know that my relationship with God and my understanding of His love for me became much more intense.
6:07
SPEAKER_01: I have always told my boys that there are experiences that you have that build relationships and they're not built on the perfect sunny day, and that's what you remember.
6:20
SPEAKER_01: And I'm convinced that you can't understand or um draw close to God without part of your experience or your relationship being difficult.
6:33
SPEAKER_01: So through our time with our daughter Kaelin, and stacked on top of that with Ryan's illnesses, I have a much deeper relationship with Christ and understand what it means when people talk about his love.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: And our encouragement to others is your story isn't over yet.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: It might look like your son's not gonna live, or your daughter's never going to have the life you dreamed she'd have.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: But God is there with you and he is speaking to you and loving you, and I just would encourage you to remember that he will never leave you and will never forsake you.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: The length of this journey, we had become accustomed to just the wildest of storms and circumstances that seemed insurmountable.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: Kaylin is back home, and um life is still pretty crazy for us.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: And um in all of it, we were faced with Kaylin um becoming an adult, getting some sort of a living experience that will mimic her peers and help her to feel independent, and there aren't a lot of options out there, and in the midst of all of it, I am diagnosed with cancer.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: It was like God had said, you know, I can turn bad things into good, and we had experienced that so many times, and God just he spoke to me and he said, you know what, Kathy, I have been doing this for centuries.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: You're just getting to see it up close.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: And when I got cancer, it was like we had had enough of those experiences where cancer didn't feel like, oh, this is the worst thing ever.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: The miracle of it was my cancer helped Kaylin get the help she needed to live more independently.
8:38
SPEAKER_01: And um, I remember many times thinking, I don't know what, I'm not sure what we can do now.
8:45
SPEAKER_01: If you remember what we have been through before, you you know that it's it's not a it's not a problem for God to fix it and move forward.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: So the mystery of how God works in our lives, I can't wait for heaven because we're all gonna be able to see how he worked it all out.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: In the meantime, we have to be patient and um cling tightly to his hand even when we're afraid and we think that there's no way.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: And it's hard.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:27
SPEAKER_02: Paul prayed a great prayer 2,000 years ago, and that prayer was answered 2,000 years later in the lives of Richard and Kathy Ramshaw.
9:38
SPEAKER_02: It's a prayer that you should pray.
9:40
SPEAKER_02: It's a prayer that perhaps has been answered in your life.
9:44
SPEAKER_02: I've titled it Five Things, I Pray for You.
9:48
SPEAKER_02: Uh let's take a closer look at that prayer.
9:51
SPEAKER_02: I I'm gonna structure this in five questions and answers, all right?
9:55
SPEAKER_02: And the first question is simple, it's the first three words in English.
9:58
SPEAKER_02: Why am I praying?
9:59
SPEAKER_02: For this reason, Paul says, and he says there's a reason I'm praying, and he's pointing back to what he said.
10:05
SPEAKER_02: There are a lot of reasons that we pray.
10:07
SPEAKER_02: I hope you don't pray in public so that people will hear you or see you and think better of you and respect you.
10:16
SPEAKER_02: That's what the Pharisees did, right?
10:17
SPEAKER_02: So that people would think they were more spiritual than they were.
10:21
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes we pray out of fear that we'll lose things that we value, or we pray that God will give us more of the things that we value.
10:32
SPEAKER_02: Okay, but the best reason for praying is the reason that Paul prayed, because he says in the previous chapter, he says, you know what?
10:42
SPEAKER_02: God is building something on earth.
10:44
SPEAKER_02: He's building people, he's building himself a building, a church, uh a house, a temple, a family.
10:53
SPEAKER_02: And he's building people, and you're the rocks in that family, and so the reason I'm praying is I want to participate with God.
11:01
SPEAKER_02: I want to join in God's building project by praying for you.
11:07
SPEAKER_02: And that's the best reason to pray.
11:10
SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna urge you to pray for your friends and family this week and in your life.
11:15
SPEAKER_02: Why?
11:16
SPEAKER_02: Not so they'll like you more or so they'll be richer or more healthy, but primarily because you want to join in God's building project, and God has important things that he wants to do in their lives.
11:28
SPEAKER_02: The second question is, how am I praying?
11:31
SPEAKER_02: It says here, I kneel before the Father.
11:34
SPEAKER_02: There was an argument in a men's Bible study, and one of them said, you know, I'm firmly uh believing we ought we ought to kneel.
11:40
SPEAKER_02: That's the best way to pray.
11:43
SPEAKER_02: Another guy says, but I seem to have the best uh fortune, the best luck.
11:47
SPEAKER_02: When I stand and I lift my hands to God, that's the way I like to pray.
11:52
SPEAKER_02: Third guy says, uh, you both have it wrong.
11:55
SPEAKER_02: The very best prayer I ever prayed was when I was hanging off the edge of a roof upside down.
12:02
SPEAKER_02: And the important thing to know is that if God cared what your posture was, physical posture in prayer, he'd have told us.
12:10
SPEAKER_02: But he doesn't do it.
12:11
SPEAKER_02: In fact, we find that most often we hear that people were standing when they prayed.
12:16
SPEAKER_02: Abram was standing, Solomon was standing.
12:19
SPEAKER_02: At times Paul was huddled, sitting in a in a prison cell, chained to the wall.
12:24
SPEAKER_02: Here he says, I kneel, I kneel.
12:29
SPEAKER_02: The important thing is not, however, what your external or outer posture is, it's what your inner posture is, and that posture should always be kneeling, like a servant before his Lord, or a citizen before his king.
12:46
SPEAKER_02: It's your inner posture.
12:48
SPEAKER_02: Whether you're lying on the ground or lying in a hospital bed, whether you're uh chained to a wall in a huddled mass on the floor, or seated as David once was when he prayed, or standing, or jumping up and down, or running in a race, or driving your car, whatever it is.
13:10
SPEAKER_02: That's not important.
13:11
SPEAKER_02: What's important is your inner posture.
13:14
SPEAKER_02: Your posture that says, you know what, I realize if I'd lived anywhere else in the last 2,000 years where there was a king or a queen, and I'd been invited, I'd been allowed into the throne room to make my request.
13:27
SPEAKER_02: And somebody had whispered to me, you really ought to kneel, I wouldn't have said, Oh, I don't like to kneel.
13:32
SPEAKER_02: It's hard on my knees.
13:33
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna go ahead and sit in my easy chair, you'd you'd have knelt.
13:38
SPEAKER_02: So if God tells you to kneel, kneel.
13:40
SPEAKER_02: And in fact, I'll say a good word for kneeling.
13:43
SPEAKER_02: My sister who goes to our church over right now, working as she does every week, with a what, two, two through six-year-olds or something, Ruth Maynard, she would tell you in detail that if you'd stood outside our little thousand-foot square house on 16539 Northeast Halsey, Portland, Oregon, when we were growing up, and it was night, and you'd peered through the living room window, you would have seen a living room that was full of a dozen people.
14:11
SPEAKER_02: The children would all be ages uh two to seventeen, and we would all be kneeling.
14:16
SPEAKER_02: We would have finished singing songs, we would have finished reading the Bible.
14:20
SPEAKER_02: We knelt every night from Monday through Saturday, and we knelt to pray.
14:26
SPEAKER_02: If it's been a long time since you've done that, then I would suggest, I'd urge you to do that at least once this week.
14:33
SPEAKER_02: You'll be surprised when you kneel, even though that's not what matters to God, you'll be surprised how your prayers will be slightly more reverent.
14:42
SPEAKER_02: They will, if you'll kneel to pray.
14:46
SPEAKER_02: And that's why I think the answer to this question should be it's your inner posture, not your outer, that matters, but kneeling is good.
14:54
SPEAKER_02: Third question: To whom am I praying?
14:57
SPEAKER_02: We have no problem with the first word here, father, because it reminds me that when the disciples asked Jesus how we should pray, his answer in the Lord Prayer said, When you pray, say Father.
15:10
SPEAKER_02: When you pray, say Father.
15:12
SPEAKER_02: That's how it begins.
15:14
SPEAKER_02: And that's what Paul says here.
15:17
SPEAKER_02: For this reason, I kneel before the Father.
15:19
SPEAKER_02: The Greek word is patera.
15:21
SPEAKER_02: By the way, it's very interesting.
15:22
SPEAKER_02: If you do study of languages, I love languages, all across the world, almost no matter what tribe or what language it is, almost all of the words for father in every language sound like papa or papa or something like that.
15:37
SPEAKER_02: Very interesting.
15:38
SPEAKER_02: I think God did that, so it would be the baby's first word rather than saying mama.
15:42
SPEAKER_02: No, I'm kidding.
15:44
SPEAKER_02: But it's true, isn't it?
15:45
SPEAKER_02: I know you moms are so mad about that.
15:47
SPEAKER_02: That's it's just it's just the way it is.
15:50
SPEAKER_02: Paul uses uh that, I think, partly because the word family, which immediately follows, is sort of a pun.
15:56
SPEAKER_02: The words are related, patria, from whom every family in the heavens on earth is named.
16:01
SPEAKER_02: And frankly, we have a little bit of a problem with what in the world is he talking about.
16:06
SPEAKER_02: We would understand if he just talked about family on earth, where we have fathers, and we get that word because of God.
16:14
SPEAKER_02: It's not as though we call God father because we have fathers, and so therefore we can call him mother if we choose.
16:20
SPEAKER_02: No, we're called father because he's the father.
16:24
SPEAKER_02: Okay, but why does he say from every family in the heavenlies or in the heavens or in your translation in heaven?
16:30
SPEAKER_02: It's because God for all these years has built himself a divine family, a heavenly family.
16:36
SPEAKER_02: He calls the angels and archangels oftentimes sons of God.
16:41
SPEAKER_02: They're named after him.
16:42
SPEAKER_02: And he's now building himself an earthly family, a human family.
16:47
SPEAKER_02: And he's going to join those families that one time, we read, when we get to heaven.
16:51
SPEAKER_02: And those families will be joined, and we'll be with the elves and the orcs.
16:55
SPEAKER_02: No, I mean, no, I'm getting confused here.
16:57
SPEAKER_02: No.
16:58
SPEAKER_02: It'll be a wonderful thing.
16:59
SPEAKER_02: There'll be a heaven family and an earth family all joined together in God's family.
17:05
SPEAKER_02: And therefore, the answer to whom am I praying is well, when you pray, say Father.
17:11
SPEAKER_02: He has a divine family, and he's building his human family, and you're part of it.
17:17
SPEAKER_02: The fourth question is, what am I praying?
17:20
SPEAKER_02: And that's the main question here, because the answer is Paul prays five things: strength, faith, pink for love, knowledge, fullness.
17:34
SPEAKER_02: And you notice the very moment I read those that they're a little different than most of our prayers, certainly different than children's prayers, which are mostly shallow requests.
17:44
SPEAKER_02: Paul's five requests for his friends and family are wow, they're deep, they're spiritual, they're moral.
17:51
SPEAKER_02: Most of our prayers are about physical and material needs, right?
17:54
SPEAKER_02: We pray about the outer person.
17:56
SPEAKER_02: We pray for people's help.
17:57
SPEAKER_02: We pray that they might have a job, we pray for their income, and so forth.
18:02
SPEAKER_02: Paul, and there's nothing unspiritual or unbiblical about those, Hannah, remember, prayed that she might have a child.
18:08
SPEAKER_02: But most of Paul's prayers, most of the biblical prayers by the great prayers, are about spiritual or moral needs, the inner man, the inner person.
18:17
SPEAKER_02: So prayers for spiritual needs are higher up, and I would just suggest if 98% of your prayers are for physical or material needs, sprinkle in a few more prayers for people's spiritual life.
18:31
SPEAKER_02: Will you do that?
18:33
SPEAKER_02: Now, let's look at these five things that Paul prayed and that I think you and I should pray for our family and friends.
18:40
SPEAKER_02: And by the way, the five things are, let's look at them again.
18:43
SPEAKER_02: Say them with me: strength, faith, love, knowledge, completeness.
18:49
SPEAKER_02: Why do I have two helmets there?
18:51
SPEAKER_02: Because the I don't remember things really well, but I can always, for years, I can remember this perfectly because of the first letters of these five words.
19:02
SPEAKER_02: San Francisco lost to Kansas City.
19:11
SPEAKER_02: When I first came up with this, I confess to you it was San Francisco loves Kansas City, but I go out to Kansas City a lot for Jews for Jesus, and I have found they really don't.
19:21
SPEAKER_02: They don't love us at all.
19:22
SPEAKER_02: They hate us.
19:23
SPEAKER_02: I can't even talk about the two Super Bowls in the last five years where we spanked them.
19:28
SPEAKER_02: They certainly don't want to talk about that long past.
19:31
SPEAKER_02: I get I won't sorry about that.
19:33
SPEAKER_02: I I won't get into the Tyree Kill story.
19:35
SPEAKER_02: But anyway, um, but you'll never forget that.
19:38
SPEAKER_02: If you're a sports fan at all, San Francisco lost.
19:42
SPEAKER_02: They can't just say, well, let's let's let's let's let's let's go through those.
19:47
SPEAKER_02: So strength.
19:49
SPEAKER_02: Strength for what?
19:50
SPEAKER_02: In this context and in this book, it's strength to defiantly endure your trials.
19:57
SPEAKER_02: And that's an inner strength, isn't it?
20:00
SPEAKER_02: We're so concerned about external strength, or even just keeping it up.
20:05
SPEAKER_02: I don't like doing push-ups every morning, but I do them so that I won't, so that I can still stand up straight here instead of being a huddled mask.
20:13
SPEAKER_02: It's important that you and I, you know, go to the club, that we work out, that we eat well, that he exercise, you know, that we have hygiene.
20:20
SPEAKER_02: Bodily discipline is of some value.
20:24
SPEAKER_02: However, inner discipline, inner strength, inner guts, inner muscles, endurance are far more important, right?
20:34
SPEAKER_02: I'm a friend in Juice Perdidas, a big cancer doctor who likes to say, big hat, no cattle.
20:39
SPEAKER_02: He's making fun of people who, you know, pretend as though they're something big, but they don't really have anything behind it.
20:46
SPEAKER_02: And like some of the people you meet at the exercise club, they're big talk, but they have no muscle.
20:52
SPEAKER_02: What Paul's more concerned about is big self-talk and no inner muscle, no inner guts, no inner endurance.
21:01
SPEAKER_02: And we should pray for people that they'll have inner endurance.
21:05
SPEAKER_02: We should pray that out of his glorious riches, that he would strengthen the Nigerian Christians this week with power through his spirit in your inner being.
21:15
SPEAKER_02: And Lord, we pray that right now.
21:17
SPEAKER_02: We pray with our eyes open, as they often did in New Testament times, and for some reason the Jews for Jesus always do.
21:23
SPEAKER_02: We just pray with our eyes open for all those Nigerian Christians today who are gathering and they're weeping because over 12,000 of their friends and family have been slaughtered by people who hate Christians and go in and burn them alive in their churches.
21:37
SPEAKER_02: And they need endurance, they need guts, they need spiritual strength, and we pray that for them, Heavenly Father, help them to strongly endure their trials.
21:48
SPEAKER_02: The second thing that Paul prays is he prays for faith for them, for those that he loves.
21:53
SPEAKER_02: Faith for what?
21:55
SPEAKER_02: The answer is faith to believe not I.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: But Christ lives in me.
22:02
SPEAKER_02: Now we have a problem with this, don't we?
22:04
SPEAKER_02: Because as one person said to me when we got to this verse in a Bible study, he says, I thought that every Christian was indwelt, that Christ dwelt inside every Christian.
22:13
SPEAKER_02: Doesn't Romans 8 verse 9 say that if the Spirit of Christ doesn't indwell you, then you're none of his?
22:18
SPEAKER_02: And the answer is right.
22:20
SPEAKER_02: You are right, it does say that.
22:22
SPEAKER_02: Christ is indwelling every Christian.
22:26
SPEAKER_02: Well, then why he says, does Paul say in several places, including here, that Christ dwells in us Christians through faith, in our hearts through faith?
22:37
SPEAKER_02: We came up with, it was proved to be a good discussion because the answer isn't sitting right on top of the ground.
22:44
SPEAKER_02: Well, one option is, as one person said, well, it could be that Christ is dwelling, that he comes and he pitches a tent on our land.
22:51
SPEAKER_02: He's on our property, he's in our property, but we don't invite him into our house.
22:55
SPEAKER_02: He's not at home in our house because we hold him at arm's length.
22:58
SPEAKER_02: We don't talk to him during the day.
23:00
SPEAKER_02: We don't care about him enough to let him really enter into it.
23:03
SPEAKER_02: We're like that story Robert Munger wrote years ago, that little pamphlet that they used to hand out, My Heart, Christ's Home.
23:12
SPEAKER_02: But he points out that not every Christian allows Christ to come into their kitchen and eat and drink with them.
23:20
SPEAKER_02: And that's why, remember, John, he said, wrote Revelation 3.20, a verse directed to Christians, not non-Christians.
23:28
SPEAKER_02: Behold, I stand at the door of my children, of my Christians, and I knock.
23:33
SPEAKER_02: If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him or her and eat with him or her, and drink coffee, I hope.
23:42
SPEAKER_02: And he or her with me.
23:44
SPEAKER_02: And Paul's prayers that Christ may dwell on your hearts through faith, and I'm sure that part of what that means is Christ uh dwells every day in daily fellowship with you.
23:54
SPEAKER_02: But it takes faith to do that.
23:56
SPEAKER_02: It takes faith to open your door to him, it takes faith to believe that he's really in there and he really wants to spend time with you and talk to you.
24:03
SPEAKER_02: And to have a conversation, a running conversation with him, with you all day long, pray without ceasing, Paul said in Thessalonians, and that must be part of what he means.
24:13
SPEAKER_02: This is the fellowship life.
24:15
SPEAKER_02: But I suspect that he means even more than that.
24:18
SPEAKER_02: That this Christ who comes to dwell with you and drink coffee with you in your kitchen also wants to go with you as you walk through life and live your life through you.
24:27
SPEAKER_02: For in my favorite verse, Paul says elsewhere in Galatians 2.20, I've been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me or dwells in me.
24:40
SPEAKER_02: Same word.
24:41
SPEAKER_02: The life I live in the body, I live by faith, there it is, in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
24:50
SPEAKER_02: It takes faith to believe that as I go through life, I don't have to flip off a driver who cuts in front of me, or I don't have to get mad when the boss elevates someone else past me, even though I've been there longer.
25:04
SPEAKER_02: No, because Christ lives in me, Christ is living through me, Christ is living me, and therefore I respond like Christ.
25:14
SPEAKER_02: And that's called the exchanged life.
25:17
SPEAKER_02: It's very famous.
25:18
SPEAKER_02: Hudson Taylor, a missionary 150 years ago, wrote a pamphlet about it, and I'll mention him in just a minute for another reason.
25:27
SPEAKER_02: It takes faith to live that life.
25:29
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna walk through this world and I'm gonna look through the eyes of Christ at people.
25:34
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to have the compassion of Christ for people.
25:37
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna respond to people that make me mad, and I'm gonna respond to the way Christ does.
25:43
SPEAKER_02: And that, dear friends, is living, letting Christ dwell in my heart through faith.
25:50
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
25:52
SPEAKER_02: The fourth thing, or the third thing, is knowledge.
25:56
SPEAKER_02: To grasp, I pray that, Lord, I pray for my child, I pray for my friend, I pray for my wife, I pray for my husband, that they would grasp the greatness of Calvary love.
26:09
SPEAKER_02: Look at these verses.
26:11
SPEAKER_02: Look, I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, right?
26:16
SPEAKER_02: John 3.16, that's how you were rooted like a plant in the ground of salvation, established or founded.
26:23
SPEAKER_02: It's a building term with the foundation of Jesus Christ, salvation, rooted and grounded in the love that comes from heaven, may have power together with all the Lord's holy people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.
26:45
SPEAKER_02: And from the very earliest days of the church, the greatest of church saints and the greatest of church fathers have seen in this a picture of Calvary, a picture of the cross.
26:57
SPEAKER_02: You have that vertical beam stretching up toward heaven at the very top of it, the thorn-crowned head of our Lord Jesus Christ.
27:06
SPEAKER_02: And you have those words from Psalm 103, as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is the Lord's mercy toward them that fear him.
27:14
SPEAKER_02: And that vertical beam goes down into the dirty soil of mankind and sin and so forth.
27:20
SPEAKER_02: His love is high and it is deep, as far as the east is from the west, so far as he removed our transgressions from us in the cross.
27:31
SPEAKER_02: I want you to grasp, grasp, says Paul.
27:34
SPEAKER_02: I'm praying that God would help you grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.
27:44
SPEAKER_02: There's a story from the French Revolution, which happened about the same time as the American Revolution in the late 1700s.
27:52
SPEAKER_02: A spiritual leader, a bishop, was thrown into prison, much like Nigeria today, and he was later beheaded.
27:59
SPEAKER_02: And in the dungeon there was a tiny window in the shape of a cross, the only light that that dungeon admitted.
28:07
SPEAKER_02: And that man oftentimes looked out at that light and prayed.
28:12
SPEAKER_02: And when the people returned to the room, when the jailers returned to the room after executing the Christian, they found, as they were cleaning the room, that he had scratched at the top of that window the word height, under the window, depth, and on the sides, length and breadth.
28:34
SPEAKER_02: He had seen the love of Christ and experienced it in the midst of his trials and tribulation.
28:44
SPEAKER_02: That's Calvary love.
28:46
SPEAKER_02: That's a love we celebrate every time we celebrate communion because Jesus never wants to take more than one step away from it.
28:54
SPEAKER_02: He wants us always to be remembering his love and the love of God.
29:00
SPEAKER_02: Back in my rock and roll fanatical days, for some reason I liked a musician named B.
29:07
SPEAKER_02: King.
29:08
SPEAKER_02: I had no idea that he was about to come to Christ.
29:13
SPEAKER_02: More recently, what's been called the greatest rock group of all time, U2 got together, and I'd heard the Bono, the lead singer of U2, was a Christian, and they got together and did an album together called Rattle and Hum, which featured a song that B.B.
29:28
SPEAKER_02: King wrote, whose words went like this: I was a sailor, I was lost at sea, I was under the waves before love rescued me.
29:38
SPEAKER_02: Reminds, if you know the song, I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore.
29:45
SPEAKER_02: Love lifted me.
29:46
SPEAKER_02: That's what those words remind me of, my favorite childhood song.
29:50
SPEAKER_02: I was a fighter, Bibi says, I could turn on a thread.
29:53
SPEAKER_02: Now I stand accused of the things I've said.
29:57
SPEAKER_02: When love comes to town, I'm gonna dump jump that train.
30:00
SPEAKER_02: When love comes to town, I'm gonna catch that flame.
30:04
SPEAKER_02: Maybe I was wrong to ever let you down, but I did what I did before love came to town.
30:09
SPEAKER_02: Bibi is remembering his sins and his failures, especially in human relationships, and his need for something that would change and convert him.
30:21
SPEAKER_02: And you wonder, is he talking about something more than human love?
30:25
SPEAKER_02: And then you get to that stanza that you two and Bibi sing together.
30:29
SPEAKER_02: I was there when they crucified my Lord.
30:32
SPEAKER_02: I held the scabbard when the soldier drew his sword.
30:39
SPEAKER_02: I threw the dice when they pierced his side.
30:42
SPEAKER_02: But I've seen love conquer the great divide.
30:46
SPEAKER_02: Calvary love.
30:48
SPEAKER_02: Calvary love has come to town and changed B.B.
30:53
SPEAKER_02: King's life.
30:55
SPEAKER_02: And that's what we should pray for other people, those that we love.
31:00
SPEAKER_02: They would begin to grasp and comprehend the Calvary love of Jesus Christ for them.
31:08
SPEAKER_02: The fourth thing that Paul prays for them is knowledge.
31:11
SPEAKER_02: And this goes along with love because now it's sort of the flip side of the coin of this grasping the greatness of Calvary love.
31:19
SPEAKER_02: Now this is learning, it's a paradox.
31:23
SPEAKER_02: He says that you can come to know the unknowable love.
31:27
SPEAKER_02: That's the way he says it.
31:28
SPEAKER_02: Doesn't say it's God's love.
31:30
SPEAKER_02: We obviously know it is God's love.
31:32
SPEAKER_02: But the text on the left-hand side there is to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.
31:41
SPEAKER_02: Can you know something that surpasses knowledge?
31:43
SPEAKER_02: Just ask any husband here.
31:45
SPEAKER_02: Just ask any husband here.
31:47
SPEAKER_02: You're married?
31:48
SPEAKER_02: Do you know your wife?
31:49
SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, you know her to some extent.
31:51
SPEAKER_02: You walk down the aisle with her.
31:53
SPEAKER_02: Do you really know her?
31:54
SPEAKER_02: Are you kidding me?
31:55
SPEAKER_02: It would take eternity.
31:56
SPEAKER_02: Now, you wives have it easier because we're so shallow and you get to know you know us perfectly within two hours of the wedding.
32:02
SPEAKER_02: But but I'm kidding a little bit.
32:06
SPEAKER_02: It's just a little.
32:07
SPEAKER_02: But this is the answer, I think, to the question of how can we how can we come to know God and his love when even at the end of all eternity, we still will never be able to say that we really completely know God or his love.
32:27
SPEAKER_02: But yet God says, pray that people will come to know, get to know, know a little bit of me and of my love.
32:35
SPEAKER_02: A woman in Britain in about 1850 wrote a song called Jesus, I am resting, resting in the joy of what thou art.
32:46
SPEAKER_02: I am finding out the greatness of thy loving heart.
32:54
SPEAKER_02: She had a brother who was working in China at the time as a missionary, and he was a good friend of the founder of that China Inland Mission, whose name was Hudson Taylor, maybe the most famous of all missionaries.
33:08
SPEAKER_02: And he introduced Hudson Taylor to the song that his sister back in Britain had written.
33:14
SPEAKER_02: And in that day, it became Hudson Taylor's favorite song.
33:20
SPEAKER_02: For the rest of his life, every day, almost every hour, they said, you could hear him humming or whistling or singing that song.
33:31
SPEAKER_02: It would sound, I think, something like this.
33:33
SPEAKER_02: Remember, this is Hudson Taylor, not me.
33:36
SPEAKER_02: And if you don't know the song, you need to hear this.
33:39
SPEAKER_02: Jesus, I am resting, resting.
33:43
SPEAKER_02: Feel free to join me in the joy of what thou art.
33:48
SPEAKER_02: I am finding out the greatness of thy loving heart.
33:53
SPEAKER_02: Isn't that a great tune?
33:56
SPEAKER_02: They had a problem one day because there was a boxer rebellion, famous rebellion in China, much like the Islamic rebellion in Nigeria today, in which they were slaughtering Christians and missionaries.
34:10
SPEAKER_02: And on the very day, on the very day that China Inland Mission in China had heard that some of their missionaries had been slaughtered, they heard Hudson Taylor whistling that tune.
34:26
SPEAKER_02: And they were nervous.
34:27
SPEAKER_02: He was a great man, he was famous across the world already, but finally someone said, Dr.
34:32
SPEAKER_02: Taylor, how can you be whistling on a day like this?
34:38
SPEAKER_02: How can you be whistling?
34:41
SPEAKER_02: I am finding out the greatness of the loving heart.
34:46
SPEAKER_02: Why would you have me whistle?
34:48
SPEAKER_02: He said.
34:56
SPEAKER_02: We know when we're going through great tribulation.
34:59
SPEAKER_02: And that's why we showed the video, and that's why I have a little picture of Richard and Kathy Ramshaw on the screen.
35:08
SPEAKER_02: Because that's when we discover the greatness of the love of God.
35:15
SPEAKER_02: It's unknowable, but we can learn some of it, right?
35:21
SPEAKER_02: And finally, completeness.
35:23
SPEAKER_02: I didn't know the word to put here, but I put it down and I thought, oh, San Francisco lost to Kansas City.
35:29
SPEAKER_02: That's perfect.
35:30
SPEAKER_02: Because the word in the text is, of course, well, it's translated depending on your translation, as complete or perfect, perfected, or filled.
35:41
SPEAKER_02: So I put completeness to be filled, completely, full of God.
35:46
SPEAKER_02: And I think the picture is since Paul's been talking about how we are a temple of God and we're the church of God, and we're the house of God, and we're his family, and so forth, I think he's referring back to that statement, that that phrase, that clause in the Old Testament that's that's repeated, you know, for Isaiah and for Ezekiel and for Moses and so forth, that God, when invited, when welcomed by his people, would go down and his glory would fill the temple.
36:16
SPEAKER_02: Isaiah 6, 1.
36:18
SPEAKER_02: And one day his glory will fill the whole earth completely.
36:24
SPEAKER_02: And Paul's prayer is that even right now, I'm praying that you be filled right up to the top, filled to the brim with God.
36:39
SPEAKER_02: That's weird, isn't it?
36:42
SPEAKER_02: But you know, I learned the value of that when I was a teenager.
36:46
SPEAKER_02: Uh one of my uh one of my tasks, I think illustrates this phrase that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
36:55
SPEAKER_02: One of my tasks one hot summer added to milking the cows and so forth, was Dad said, the water trough, which for us was a white bathtub, an old bathtub.
37:06
SPEAKER_02: The water trough's always filthy and the cows, you know, are not drinking out of it.
37:11
SPEAKER_02: Would you, every day, would you, in the evening, chores, would you clean that out?
37:16
SPEAKER_02: Would you make it nice and fresh so that they'll drink it?
37:20
SPEAKER_02: They need the water.
37:22
SPEAKER_02: So every day I would go out, and it was a I hated it, had to wear boots because the cows would slosh in it and they would turn manure, you know, and so forth.
37:32
SPEAKER_02: So I'd stand in my boots, you know, and and next to that, and I would put my hand in and I would dip out the snot and the leaves and the grass and the alfalfa and all of that stuff, and I'd keep dipping it out.
37:45
SPEAKER_02: Had a hose with me, and then I would fill it up so that it looked good.
37:50
SPEAKER_02: One day dad came out and he watched me.
37:52
SPEAKER_02: He said, Uh, why are you doing it that way?
37:57
SPEAKER_02: He said, Why don't you just put the hose in and let it rise and see what happens?
38:05
SPEAKER_02: And I did.
38:07
SPEAKER_02: And the water got up to the top.
38:10
SPEAKER_02: It was entirely filled to the brim, and then over the top, and then I saw pieces of grass, hay, you know, just fall off into the muck, and then the heavier alfalfa, and then clods of dirt, and then stuff that came out of their nose, and whatever else.
38:26
SPEAKER_02: And after a little while, that tub was pure, and it was clean, and it was full, and it was inviting.
38:37
SPEAKER_02: And I'd learned a wonderful lesson that I would later realize was a spiritual lesson as well.
38:42
SPEAKER_02: That God's method to clean us out and make us pure and make us complete in Him is to fill us.
38:50
SPEAKER_02: It's not negative.
38:51
SPEAKER_02: Pick every one of those bad habits out of your life, one by one.
38:55
SPEAKER_02: Come on, come on.
38:58
SPEAKER_02: No, it's positive.
39:00
SPEAKER_02: Come to me and let me fill you and get you so full that you don't have time or even thought for some of that gunk that's messing up your life that you want to get rid of.
39:11
SPEAKER_02: Be completely filled to the brim and over with me.
39:17
SPEAKER_02: You'll be amazed how your life will change.
39:23
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
39:25
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure that Paul probably thought, you know what, I've blown some minds here.
39:29
SPEAKER_02: This is my the last question, but you know, I know there's some people going, oh, really?
39:34
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I find it hard to believe that thinking of the person I'm praying for, that that could ever actually happen in their life.
39:44
SPEAKER_02: These five prayer requests are so, so huge.
39:46
SPEAKER_02: Is it even possible that any of them could come true in their life?
39:50
SPEAKER_02: And so Paul ends with this famous, famous statement, listen, now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.
40:03
SPEAKER_02: According to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.
40:12
SPEAKER_02: You've got it backwards, Paul would say.
40:15
SPEAKER_02: You're thinking your requests are big and your God is too small.
40:20
SPEAKER_02: But God is big.
40:22
SPEAKER_02: And these are things that he really wants to do in his people.
40:26
SPEAKER_02: So your requests are just what he wants to hear.
40:31
SPEAKER_02: And really they're small.
40:34
SPEAKER_02: He can do what you ask.
40:37
SPEAKER_02: And not only can he do what you ask, he can do what you ask and imagine.
40:42
SPEAKER_02: And not only can he do what you ask and imagine, he can do all that you ask and imagine.
40:49
SPEAKER_02: And not only can he do all that you ask and imagine, but he can do more than all that you ask and imagine.
40:56
SPEAKER_02: And not only can he do more than all you ask and imagine, he can do immeasurably more than all that you can ask or imagine.
41:09
SPEAKER_02: So pray SKL or S is it San Francisco?
41:15
SPEAKER_02: S-F-L-K-C for your friends, because God wants to answer those gigantic prayers and completely fill those people with himself.
41:27
SPEAKER_02: Let's you and me do something really special for our friend or family member this week.
41:35
SPEAKER_02: Let's secretly give them a gift by praying for them.
41:42
SPEAKER_02: And let's pray S F L K C for them.
41:47
SPEAKER_02: Pray for them the gift of strength to defiantly endure their troubles.
41:53
SPEAKER_02: Pray for them the gift of faith so they'll invite Jesus in to walk with him every day and let him live through them.
41:59
SPEAKER_02: Pray for them the gift of love so that they will grasp the Calvary love and keep their eyes on the cross.
42:06
SPEAKER_02: Pray for them the gift of knowledge that they'll begin to grasp just a bit, uh, comprehend just a little bit through their trials and tribulations, the unknowable love of God, and finally and most of all, pray for them that they will become complete by allowing themselves to be filled up with all the fullness of God.
42:27
SPEAKER_02: In fact, let's start, let's do that right now.
42:29
SPEAKER_02: Would you bow your head with me at the close of this service?
42:32
SPEAKER_02: And would you allow God to slide into your mind a picture, a photograph perhaps, of someone, a family member, a friend, someone that you know that you'd like to pray this for?
42:43
SPEAKER_02: Let's pray this for them right now.
42:44
SPEAKER_02: Heavenly Father, I pray for that person I love.
42:50
SPEAKER_02: Would you, Heavenly Father, give them strength?
42:55
SPEAKER_02: They're going through tough times.
42:56
SPEAKER_02: Would you help them to have the guts and have the boldness to endure, to fight it off, to hang in there?
43:02
SPEAKER_02: And Lord, would you also give them the faith to believe that you're not only inside, but you really want to have a moment-by-moment conversation with them and then to live your life through them?
43:15
SPEAKER_02: Lord, help them to grasp Calvary love and constantly be bubbling over with the joy of salvation and also to be entering into a bit of that unfathomable, unnoble love that they'll never understand completely throughout all eternity.
43:32
SPEAKER_02: And most of all, Lord, would you fill them up with yourself?
43:37
SPEAKER_02: Would you make them willing to allow you to fill them up with yourself so that the gunk in their life just spills over the top?
43:53
SPEAKER_02: We pray this, Heavenly Father, for our friends, and we hope that you will put in someone's mind to pray this prayer for us as well.
44:03
SPEAKER_02: In Jesus' name.
44:06
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
44:07
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for coming.