There's no one like the Lord. So, Lord, there's no one like you. God, we honor you. You are the reason why we gather today, why we chose to be here, or is to declare your goodness. And Lord, if it was for any other reason, if we felt like a social obligation or a cultural obligation to be here, Lord, that is not the case. That's not the truth. In this moment, God, we are here. We choose to be here to declare your goodness, to honor you for who you are. God, to express with the breath in our lungs that there is no one like you, there is no one greater than you. You have our full attention, you have our full thought, our full focus, our full heart in this moment. We honor you, we praise you. It's in your name. Amen. Amen. Amen.
You can grab a seat. So glad that you're here with us today. We're going to move forward into a time of giving, uh, continued in worship. This is just another opportunity for us to worship the Lord and thank him for all that he's done in our life, for all that he is doing. And this is how we tie our literal work uh to worship, saying, God, we know that this is all yours. Whatever you've given us, it's yours. And so if this is your first time here, or if you're new to Move, this really isn't for you. This is for those who call Move Church their home. This is a time to practice our discipleship. In giving and we can give on the app, or if we have physical money, we have the containers over uh in the back. You can drop that in there as you leave today. But let's prepare our hearts because the Lord loves a generous giver. We don't want to give, we don't want to tithe begrudgingly, uh, but with joy, thanking God for who he is. So let's go ahead and let's let's read this giving liturgy together and posture our hearts. Holy Father, there is nothing I have that you have not given me. All I have and am belong to you, bought with the blood of Jesus. To spend everything on myself and to give without sacrifice is the way of the world that you cannot abide. But generosity is the way of those who call Christ their Lord, who serve Him with free hearts and serve Him with renewed minds, who withstand the delusions of riches that chokes the word, whose hearts are in your kingdom and not in the systems of the world. I am determined to increase in generosity till it can be said that there is no needy person among us. I am determined to be trustworthy with such a little thing as money, that you may trust me with true riches. Above all, I am determined to be generous because you, Father, are generous. It is the delight of your daughters and sons to share your traits and show what you are like to all the world. Amen. I want you to go ahead and look at your neighbor and say, Man, it's hot in here. Look at your other neighbor and say, it really is hot in here. All right. I think it's funny that Jonathan spoke on uh suffering last week. And then prophetically, here we are today with no AC in the building. I haven't sweat this much in church since I went to judgment house when I was 16. So, I mean, it is what it is, but here we are today. All right.
If you have your Bibles,
Ephesians 3, we're going to move towards the end of Ephesians. We are starting a new series over these
verses from 14 to 21, and it's called power. All right. Deep power is what we're going to focus in on today. And look, I promise if we can stay focused and attent, we'll get through this very quickly today. Um I think it's very comical to see everybody fanning themselves. So I got my attention deficit disorder. I'm like all over the place. Like who's fanning faster than the other? Right now, I think Nick is spanning the fastest. Charles is fanning pretty fast too, but but
Ephesians 4 or
chapter 3, verse 14, that's where we're going to be at today. This says this for this reason. So just a side note here, for this reason, you know, when we started
chapter 3, Paul starts it with for this reason, and then it goes, comma, I Paul, and he goes into this whole revelation of the mystery of the gospel being for Jew and Gentile. But that was like a whole tangent thing. That's not why he started this whole chapter. The whole chapter was really for this reason he was going to move into a time of prayer. But he goes on this tangent side note to reveal to us the mystery of the gospel, that it's not just for the Jew, but it's for the Gentile. And that we're brought into one family. But then after that, Paul gets right back on track. 14 verses later, it says this: For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father. And that's really important to see because in Jewish culture at this point in time. Everyone prayed standing up. That was like the posture of prayer. So Paul's saying, For this reason, now I bow my knees before the Father. He he's emphasizing: hey, this prayer that I'm praying is a really important prayer. Like it's urgent that I'm praying this. In the same way that Jesus falls on his face in the Garden of Gethsemane when he's praying to the Father, Lord, if there's any way, let this cup pass from me. But if not, not my will, but your will be done. With that same urgency, Paul begins to pray this prayer. So from every uh from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. So this is our uh our family here on earth and our eternal family. So this is all the family of God, that
according to the riches of his glory, that just means with all the wealth, with all the resources that God Possibly quoting Ephesians 3:16–17 has. This is how Paul is his coming to God and he's praying here, like God, with all of your resources, that you may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being. Somebody say power. So, for this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth his name, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being. Paul is not just praying that we be powerful. He's not just praying that the people of Ephesus would be powerful, but how would they be powerful? Through uh the inner being being strengthened by the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit. So that, so why are we being strengthened? So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love. So that little last part that really just pushed towards what we're going to talk about next week, but today, so that why why do why are we being filled? Why is Paul praying that we're going to be filled with power? Why is it important that I because when we see prayers like this, have you ever heard someone pray before? And you're like, you know what? I may have never prayed that. Like, but you say, like, amen. Like, yeah, I agree. Like, I want that prayer too. I sometimes I hear people pray prayers, a lot of people who are like more seasoned in faith, and they're praying these strong prayers. And I'm like, yeah, like God, I want that too. So we see Paul praying a prayer, and this is why I'm like, yeah, I God, I want that too. As much as Paul wanted God to move in Ephesus during this time, like today in 2026, I'm praying like God, I want this same thing for move church. That according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. Do you want that for yourself? That Christ may dwell in you. I'm gonna get into what that truly means at the end. But if in order for us to be in this spot where Christ isn't just visiting with us. But he's resident. He lives. He dwells in us, is what Paul is saying. How do we get there? Well, it takes something significant. It takes power. And here's why I wanted to kick this series off this particular way, because we really do a good job of trying to rely on our own power for life. Have you ever, maybe if you've been a Christian for a while, you feel like there's like some effort that really does come from you to uh grow in your spirituality, right? That that it really takes this power that comes from within. And not just in Christian faith, just in life in general, we feel like our culture rewards power. Our culture rewards someone who can like pick themselves up by their bootstraps. And when things get tough, we we can just hold on and we can grit through it and we can create grit. There's whole there's been books written about these particular things on how we can just like muster up the courage and muster up the strength. And maybe some of you are really good at relying on your own power. But here's the thing that I've found about that. Is that it works until it doesn't work. And maybe you don't understand that saying because it still works for you. But for someone who I've relied on my own strength and my own will and my own power several times in life only to be humiliated by the Lord or humbled by the Lord to see that, hey, buddy, like it doesn't work anymore. Have you ever been that way before? Have you ever like the thing that you've done worked until it just like it didn't work anymore? And then where did you find yourself in that moment? I don't know about you, but where I find myself is like, huh, I don't know what to do anymore. And some of us might find like be frustrated with that, and maybe you're living in in the re in that reality currently. There's like, you know what? Like, I feel stuck. I feel like I'm in a doldrum. I feel like I have no movement forward because I don't know what to do. And instead of hating that season, instead of being like disgruntled in that, I really do believe that God uses those places for you to realize hey, you can't, where I'm taking you, you can't rely on your own strength. And you can't rely on your own power. That's what Paul is telling the church of Ephesus during this time. It's like, I am on my knees begging and praying to God that your inner man would be strengthened with power. So if you find yourself wherever you find yourself in your Christian walk, in your life with God, maybe you're you're new to faith and you're it's like you're just like drinking from a water hose and everything is new, but it's exciting, and you're like, man, I really feel close to God. That's a great place to be. But know that you that God's not asking you to do things in your own strength and power. Or maybe you find yourself somewhere stuck in the middle, where like, man, I remember those times with God, but now I'm just like really in this plot where like, I don't know how I that that whole apathetic thing that Jonathan's been speaking about, where we really do feel that God's challenging us as a church not to be. And apathetic people. We're one of those, like, ah, you know, like I know what's required of me, but it's not that big of a deal. I really just don't care right now. But a lot of times we've we find ourselves in places of apathy because we have relied on our own strength and power. And the truth is, we don't have strength and power to move forward anymore. And this is what Paul is trying to get across to us. We kind of develop, I don't know about you, but you can develop your own persona. And I got really good at this my whole life, guys. Like as a kid, I wanted to make good grades. I wanted to be on a honor roll, right? We had accelerated reader growing up. Anybody remember accelerated reader AR, right? Like I wanted to get the most AR points in the grade. I wanted to read the books and pass the test and get the points. I wanted to be an honor student. I wanted to excel at sports, be good at sports. And then beyond that, I was like, I I I I want to be in advanced classes in school. I want to seem smart. I want to take AP classes because other people aren't doing those things. I want to be a good kid. Like I was I was in ingrained in the church at an early age, and so I was like, I don't want to be like all the other pastors' kids. Like, I want to be a good pastor's kid, right? I wanted to here's the thing it'll show church culture for me. I wanted to be the main character in all the church human videos where in the church plays. Like I wanted to be the person, and it bled over into I wanted to be the first person to graduate college in my family. I wanted to get a good job. Right? I I I then it moved into you know what I want to be a good husband. I want to get married, I want to be a good husband, I want to I want to take care of my health. I wanna I I I want to do these things. Not only that, I want to be a good dad. But it was just the next thing, and the next thing is like when those things were accomplished, it just wasn't good enough. But those are the things, guys, that drove my life for years. If I if I work hard enough, I can accomplish these things. And Augustine has this incredible quote because all of this, what it comes down to, is matters of the heart. For me, it was drive for these things. And if I could create enough of my own power and my own strength, I could do these things. I could study enough, I could make the grades. I could practice enough, I could make all-stars. I could do all the different things. If I worked hard enough, I would get the raise at my job. Right. If I got the right degree, then I could get the job. If I worked out hard enough, I could get the wife. Right? All the things. But it was just on to the next thing over and over, and maybe that's where you find yourself. It's like it's it is just because here's the thing those things don't sound bad, right? None of those things sound bad. But we really do have to get to heart matters here. And Augustine has this quote says, Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in thee. What that's saying is, because what ultimately I was facing was was I had a restless heart. I was looking for other things to put my power behind so that I could create this persona to be this person. So if I could be this person, I could be strong enough for whatever life, whatever came my way, and whatever I faced in life. Right? We create personas about ourselves. Boss babe, right? Strong guy. Whatever the personas may be. Mine was: I'm just gonna be dependable. I'm gonna be good at whatever I put my mind to. I'm gonna be good and faithful in those things. And good and faithful is good qualities. But it was all about myself. Who is this persona that we're building? One, who is it about? And where does the power source come from for that persona, for that person, for that inner being? Because ultimately what we're talking about is our inner being. In this day and age, we would say our persona or our nature. The same thing as our inner being, our inner self, not the one that people can see on the in the outside, but that inside voice of who we say that we are, right? And you can get on TikTok and you can get on YouTube, you can ascribe to different masterclasses, or you can get as many degrees as you want to increase that inner man, to strengthen that inner man, to know a lot about a lot of different things. But what does it, what is it rooted in? Because you can know a lot about a lot of things. But like I said earlier, it works until it doesn't work. And what Paul was saying here is like, hey, if you're relying on your own strength, it'll work until it doesn't work anymore. So that's why I am on my hands and knees praying to God that your inner man would be strengthened by the Spirit. John Calvin has this quote He says, We should not rely on any opinion of our own strength, however small it is, if we want God to be favorable towards us. That's a pretty pretty strong quote. Even like we should not rely on our own opinion of our own strength, however small. This isn't some huge egotistical thing. The smallest places where you're relying on yourself. What does he say here? He says that God would not be favorable towards us. If we're relying on our own strength, what we're ultimately doing is saying we are relying on us as God. Even in the smallest of places. This is why this is a big deal. We want power. I want you to have power in your life, but I don't want you to have power in your life so you can be your own little God. Power that opposes God is antichrist. We don't want that in your life. God's not trying to give you power to oppose him. He's not. He wants to give you power to be strengthened in your inner man. So, how do we get that? Because I understand when we read the scripture and we're saying, all right, how can I be strengthened in my inner man? We instantly start running down like the gamut of, okay, well, if I read my Bible more, maybe this time I join a growth group and learn how to read the Bible or go to a prayer group or whatever, right? We can just go, not saying those things are bad. Don't hear me say those things are bad, but we instantly start going down the path of what do I need to do? To strengthen my inner man, right? Have you read this scripture and be like, okay, I feel convicted that my inner man is a baby. I need to be strengthened in my inner man. But where do we run to first? Do we run to God for Him to reveal to us how our inner man is strengthened? Or just like everything else in life, do we run to ourselves and say, okay, how can I strengthen my inner man? Because this is so counterintuitive to what we would do in regular culture. And I hope you hear what I'm really trying to say here.
Ezekiel 36:26–27. This is Old Testament. So this is pre-Jesus. This it just shows that this has always been God's plan. Ezekiel, he prophesies. And I will give
you a new heart and a new spirit Possibly quoting Ezekiel 18:31. If you underline and circle, underline new heart and new spirit, and I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you. And cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. There's a lot going on in this verse. What is Ezekiel prophesying? That we're gonna get a new heart and we're gonna get a new spirit. But there's also another piece that I don't want you to miss here. How does the new heart and how does the new spirit get inside of you? How does it get inside of you? How do you receive this new heart? And this is where if like where we could rub against this as humans in 2026 when everything's about us from day one. How do we get it? It's right here in this verse. I would love for you, if you do like underlining and taking notes. See how many times God says this, or see how many times Ezekiel says this because this is for a word from the Lord. When he says I hear, he's not talking about himself. He's a he's prophet, he's prophesying. So he's he's he's saying, like, when you see I hear, it's God, right? So so who will give a new heart and a new spirit? Here's what it says: and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit. I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be okay, be careful to obey my rules. So who's putting the new heart and new like who's putting it in us? God is putting it in us. The new heart, the new spirit that we're wanting to receive, that Paul is praying that the church in Ephesus would receive, that we're praying that we will receive as move church. God puts it in us. We cannot give ourselves a new spirit and a new heart. Only God can. And this is different than what psychology would teach us today. Because what psychology would teach us today, it was it would encourage you to take your experiences with you. Take the things that have happened to you and work them for good. Those things are markers that you then are transformed by, but you use those. Psychologists say with like the dark, the the the your shadow life is what psychologists would say. Your shadow life, you would use that to to to to live in a new way. And that's just not what scripture shows us here. What we see is that we're not we're living differently based on our experiences, but but what scripture shows is like we are actually getting a new heart and a new spirit. So while things may have happened to you, way the ways things might have circumstances have caused things in your life, that's not who you are. You're not defined by those things. Now, did they happen? Yes. But the cool but the great thing about the gospel here is God saying, Yeah, while those things happen, I am giving you a new heart and a new spirit, which means you're not defined by those things anymore. I'll put in your notes this way: stone can't move, but flesh can. Your heart A heart of stone cannot move. But God is wanting to give you a new heart. And He's given us a new heart. Those who are believers, God is the one He's given you this heart. He's taken your heart of stone and He's given you a heart of flesh so you can feel, so you can be shaped, so you can be formed. Because I don't know about you, but with a stone, there's not much you can do to a stone to shape it and form it. You can break it, but it can't be shaped and formed in the same ways that God's given us a heart of flesh.
Zechariah 4, 6 says this. Then he said to me, this
is the word of the Lord to Zerobabel. So, Zarababel, this is what you need to know about this. And how it ties perfectly Possibly quoting Zechariah 4:6 to what we're talking about in Zechariah. They're building The temple back after Babylonian exile. So the Jews are exiled after Babylon is taken over. Everything about their life was ruined. The presence of the Lord, the temple where they met with God, the DNA of who they were as a people, completely wiped out. They were taken from their land, taken from their homeland. But now they're they've been brought back, and in their being brought back, they're restoring the temple and building the temple because during this time, the temple meant this is where God was. This is how we worshiped God. This is how we were forgiven. Through sacrifice. It was very important to their life, their makeup as a people. And they're trying to rebuild this temple, but they faced time and time again during this time opposition. So Samaritans were writing accusation letters to the Persians saying, hey, they're trying to go back to who they were before. They're not obeying uh the law of Persia. They're trying to say that they're their own people, they're their own kings. They're writing letters trying to get uh what they were doing to be illegal. Not only that, but their economy was being stalled as well. They weren't making money, so they didn't have the resources needed to build the temple. Remember, they're building this temple because that's where God's presence dwelt. And they wanted God's presence during this time. This is pre Jesus and the cross. They needed it, but the economy was stalled. They were tired from working, they were tired and cynical from opposition year after year. And in fact, they were stalled for 15, almost 16 years from when they laid the foundation to this moment. There was no work done. I don't know if you've seen so like seen a place where work was being done and then it stopped. When we were building a building a few years ago, we cleared the land super fast and everybody's excited. And then it was two years before anything else happened. A lot of cynicism, a lot of all these different things came up during that time. So imagine. Shoot, imagine even us, right? We're like, hey guys, we put a letter of intent on this building, and now here we are, a year later, still sweating our tails off in this armory, right? Imagine those things. Imagine 16 years of hoping and longing for something to happen, for your identity to be restored. You're facing opposition. You think it's gonna be illegal, you think you're gonna be ransacked and taken over by another nation again. And Zechariah receives this prophecy and he gives it to Zarababel. And he says, This is the word of the Lord. And you got to imagine Zarababel's like, Yes, we're going to get some breakthrough in the economy. We're going to get some political policy that'll allow us to build this. They're going to donate to us these letters of accusation. They're going to say they don't believe and they're going to write them off. But that's not what the word of the Lord is. The word of the Lord says, Not by my might nor by my power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts. By my spirit, we will build this temple. Now that sounds great for like Pentecostals in 2026, where yeah, by the Spirit of God, yeah, but imagine being Zerobabel during this time. That's probably the last thing he wanted to hear. Because what does that require? Faith in something you can't see. Faith in the spirit. Faith that power would come when you don't realize when you where you're hoping power would come from somewhere else. And maybe that's where we find ourselves, find ourselves. Man, we need power outside of God to solve our problem. We need power outside of God. We need an opinion or a voice of reason or a way forward or a path forward or some sort of economic resources to give us the strength and the power that we need so that we can move forward, right? But imagine God showing up to you in your junk and saying, Hey, it's not gonna be by any of those things where I give you power to remain faithful. It's only through my spirit that you would receive power. How would you feel hearing that answer to that question? Honestly, think about it. And not from just like our Christianese perspective. We know the answer. Like really, deep down in your heart, like, is that the answer that you would want? But it's not your strength, but it's God's spirit. Is where you're strengthened at. You can't get a master class for your inner man. You can't get another college degree for your inner man. You can't get enough money for your inner man. You can't self-strengthen the spirit that's in you. You can't. I need you to hear me say that. You can't do that. Only the Spirit of God will strengthen you. I think that's good news for us. Now, does that mean that we're like apathetic? Saying, well, then God's just gonna strengthen me whenever. No, that's not the case. Because there are things that we're now responsible for, that things that are motivating us from our inside. What is that thing? It's us realizing it's well, wow, I I really can't change anything about me in my own strength. I really can't make it out of this circumstance or situation on my own. But the Spirit of God in me will give me everything I need to make it, to be strengthened in my inner man. That's good news for a baby believer or for a seasoned believer, for an excited believer or a cynical believer. It's the spirit of God that strengthens us. How are we strengthened? By his spirit. I love this quote from C.S. Lewis because this is going to show us how the work is done. And I want you to see this analogy. C.S. Lewis says this He says if I want to produce wheat, The change must go deeper than the surface. I must be plowed up and re sawn, re-sone. Saying, if I want real change in my inner man, if I want wheat to be reproduced in my life, then it's gotta go deeper than the surface level. And how many of us really are like if we're focused on our we're not even looking at our inner man? We we really are on the surface of our inner man. And what do what do we typically do? Well, we'll just mow the grass, right? We'll just cut grass. We see all the weeds coming up, like, man, I want this to be a wheat field. I want there, I want to see a crop produced here. But we just cut the grass over and over and over. Did you know that if we just cut the grass over and over, that wheat will never be produced? We've done nothing to the soil for anything to be produced. And that's what a lot of our life can be. It's just management, self-management. Let me just like surface level. Let me just do just enough to cut down the weeds so that's manageable. God's not calling us to a manageable life. He's calling us to a powerful life through the Spirit of God. So how does that happen? Well, we can't just cut the grass of life to get to the inner man. We can't just maintain this surface level of life with God. It's not that. We have to get into the soil. We have to tear the ground up. It's got to be plowed up, all of it. It's got to be torn up. Your life with God has to be torn up. What you think life with God is has to be torn up so that new things can be sown in there. We're all about sowing seeds. We want seeds to be sown. Who doesn't? Who doesn't want the fruit of the spirit in their life? Is there anybody in here that's like, no, Trace? I've read that
fruit of the spirit stuff. I really don't want more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness Possibly quoting Galatians 5:22, gentleness, self-control. I don't know about you guys. I could loot, I could use a lot more gentleness and self-control. I really could. In this season of life, I really could, and I want it. But guess what? I can't just take some seeds of gentleness and self control or the seeds that would produce gentleness and self control and just throw them out. What nothing happens there? That's not how planting and sowing and reaping works. How many of us are wanting things for our lives with God, but we're not protecting we're not allowing God to do the work to rip our soil open? To rip the ground open. How many of us are praying prayers? God, here I am, I am ground, and I want you just to rip me apart so that you can plant the things in you. That is what is required for our inner man to be strengthened. We can't tear the ground up. It's impossible for us to tear the ground up. Only God can do those things. And that's where the prayer shifts. I think about that scripture in Psalms where it says, search my heart, O God. Search me if there's anything in there that's not of you, remove it. That's my own translation of that verse. But like, search my heart. God, search my soil, search the ground. If there's anything here, God, will you tear it up? That's a scary prayer to prayer, but a prayer to pray. But my encouragement to you in the room is like start praying the prayer and listen. It's a scary prayer. But it's the only way our lives can be strengthened with God, our inner man to be strengthened. Can we no longer be a people? Can I no longer be a person that just scatters seed, hopefully, hoping that God would just bless those seeds? No, God, tear the ground up. Tear it up. So how is it even possible? If I can't tear the ground up and you can't tear the ground up of your life to get to your inner man, how is it possible?
Galatians 2 20 says this I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Cam, you can come up. Is only through the power of the gospel. Jesus has already proven it. He tore the ground up in your life so that the Spirit of God could dwell in you. We really do live so many times thinking that we had a part to play in our salvation process. Jesus died. This is good news for us. Jesus died on the cross. And so in that we were crucified with him. It's no longer I who live, but it's Christ who lives in me. And so it's a crucifixion of your flesh. That's how your inner man is strengthened. We have to die to ourselves. That's what Paul says. I die daily. I crucify myself daily. That's a daily thing. There might be days where you wake up and you don't crucify yourself. And it's going to show up in how you interact with your family, what you post about online, what you say in group messages, right, Casey? If you don't crucify yourself daily, that's the thing about our flesh daily. My guys, I don't want to be the same today, 10 years from now. I hope you don't want to be the same 10 years from now. And not from a place of status or what we accumulate or how much knowledge or wisdom we have. That's not it. Because what's the whole point in receiving power, right? Because power for power's sake, what does that even do? What does it say at the end in chap in verse 17? So that I've given you I've given you power through the Spirit for your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts. What are you talking about, Trace? Like I accepted Jesus in my heart when I was like seven. Or when I was 20, or however old you were when you received Christ is in my heart. There's a difference in Christ being in your heart and Christ dwelling in your heart. There's a huge difference here. And this is why we need power. This is why we need the power of the Holy Spirit, why our inner man needs to be strengthened. Because if our inner man's not strengthened, our flesh will oppose everything Christ tries to do when he dwells in our life. Because I just the last week I stayed in a few different Airbnbs. But I was just a visitor to those Airbnbs. Now I lived in the Airbnb for a few days at both places. But the owner of the Airbnb probably would have been very upset if I treated the Airbnb like my home. If I went and bought different furniture or replaced furniture. Or hung a different picture on the wall or took something out that didn't belong there. Right? There's a difference between visiting somewhere and dwelling somewhere. And the scripture, the root, the Greek root word here for dwell is to live in, to live in in the way a master lives somewhere, not an alien, this or a foreigner that's visiting and staying the night somewhere. That's what Paul's saying. This dwelling is not staying the night somewhere, it's calling a place home. Do you know if you call a place home, you you treat your home differently than you treat a hotel. There's a safety and a security in your home. You have rights to, even though like there's no way I could ever change decorations in my own home, my wife would lose her mind. But like you can do those things there, right? If we want to get a new couch in our home, we're gonna get a new couch in our home. You see what I'm saying here? I don't want to belabor the point, but I hope you can see this imagery. Is Jesus in your heart? Is he dwelling in your heart that way? If I'm being honest, sometimes I can only speak for myself, but I've been around church culture long enough to where we're like, Jesus, like you can visit here, like you have a place, you have a room here, you can stay here, but you're not the master here. This is not your home. This is my heart. And that's the tension that we live in. And what Paul is begging God for, he's pleading, he's on his knees praying that your inner man would be strengthened so that Christ may dwell in you. Because when Christ dwells in you, he gets a say as to what your heart looks like. He gets to adjust things. He gets to say, you know what? It's time for a different couch in this heart. It's time for a different painting to go on the wall. And you know what? We're actually going to remodel the whole place. We're knocking walls down. And I hope you can understand what I'm trying to say spiritually here. He's in things that walls that you built that you thought were good walls, we're tearing those down. You thought you were right about all these different things. Well, actually, you were wrong and prideful, and we're going to tear those things down. But here's the thing if we're not strengthened in our inner man, we're going to fight Jesus. Tooth and nail every time he tries to decide something in our hearts, and that's not the life of a believer. We need strength for the sanctification process that Jesus is trying to do in our lives. We can't sanctify ourselves. A lot of us try, you've tried really hard to stop doing that thing over and over and over again. We have to be strengthened in our inner man. We have to say, God, tear me open. What is it? Nothing is off limits. Whatever you want, it's yours. Think about like you remember that show uh extreme home makeover. For anyone over the age of 20, do you remember that? They would go, you know, the movement move, yeah. Of course you know what I'm talking about, but they would go in and they would knock every it wouldn't even look like the same house. And here's what I'm saying spiritually today, God is trying to give you an extreme home makeover. He doesn't want your life to look recognizable anymore. That bus is gonna move, and people will be like, Who the heck is that, Chelsea? Who's that, Daryl? That's going to require strength. That's what I hope you can hear and take away from this. It's not going to require your own strength. Because who gives
you a new heart and a new spirit Possibly quoting Ezekiel 18:31? God does. God does. Who's the one? God. So my prayer for us, and that's how I really want to close today, is like, God, we want power that comes from you. But I want power that comes from you so that you can transform me. Because my heart of stone opposes you. All the time. And I need your power to submit to you. I need your power. Come on, guys. We're hoping we can get power so we can storm the gates of hell and do all these other things. No, we need power from God against the opposition of ourselves. Because our flesh is strong, and our flesh wants what our flesh wants. God, I need your power for you to strengthen my inner man. So that you may dwell in me. If we're gonna be a church that's not apathetic, we need Christ to dwell in us. You get a say, God, not a say, God, you don't just get a say, you get to do whatever you want. Man, be Ty Pennington, God. Knock that wall down, paint a new wall, throw a basketball goal in the bathroom. Man, I'm really hammering this extreme home makeover thing, but I hope you get it. If you've never watched it, go home, get on Disney Plus, and find Extreme Home Makeover. It's insane what they used to do to houses. That's what we're asking. God, this is what my clean, tiny little home looks like. And I would love power. But I would love power so that I could relinquish power for you to do what only you can do. You see that? You see the difference there? And that's what I want to pray into that God would give you power so that you can lose control of yourself, so that the Spirit of Christ can dwell in you. Amen. Does that make sense? Do you want that for your life? Let's pray. God. And here we are. Will you search our hearts right now, Lord? We are asking for power from you to strengthen our inner man. Lord, we recognize that it is you who gave us a new heart. You turned a heart of you exchanged a heart of stone for a heart of flesh. God, you have given us
a new heart and a new spirit Possibly quoting Ezekiel 18:31. We recognize that it is only you who could do those things. So, God, here we are from there asking you, God, would you give us power that we cannot possess ourselves? God, would you give us power that we cannot create in our own strength? We need your power in our inner man so that you, Jesus, can dwell in us. God, we we we repent. We are done trying to think that we can do this on our own, that we can get opinions from other people, that we can conjure up enough things. God, we're asking you right here, right now, would you search us? Would you tear up the ground of our life? Would you remove walls that we thought were good walls? Would would you redecorate? Would you reorganize the inner workings of our lives so that you, Jesus, can dwell with us? That you are not a stranger in our hearts, but you are master of our hearts. You call our hearts your home. It's not somewhere you visit from time to time. And if we're being honest, God, sometimes we feel like you visit us from time to time. And we have instances and we have seasons of life. We have weeks, we have months. Sometimes we have years where we feel you visiting with us. And God, we have mistaken that for what true life with you is. God, you are not trying to visit us, you're wanting to dwell in you for power. So that we can relinquish power so that you may dwell in us. God, we are not the masters of our heart. We're saying that right now, not in our own strength, but in the power of your Holy Spirit. We're saying we are not the masters of our own heart. Some of you right now, you need to say that. God, I am not the master of my own heart. And you need to say it with strength and the power of the Holy Spirit. I really do encourage you right now to say it. God, I am not the master of my heart. Jesus, will you be the master of our heart? And would you daily give us strength to die to self, to crucify ourselves daily, so that we can have this new life with you daily, so that you can dwell in us daily and call our hearts home. We ask it. In your name, Jesus, the name above every other name. The only name in which we can not only be saved, but can even ask this prayer. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Man. We made it, guys. Hopefully, next week we have air conditioning. Hopefully, but we'll see. If not, Matt will have more fans next week. He might even put a QR code on there to show your house. Who knows? Just kidding. But uh uh I've got a few announcements before we leave today. Uh, if we can throw those up. I know first and foremost, we are going to have prayer this evening. I know it's in the armpit heat time of the day, but we will still have the fans. We're gonna pray the fire of God in this place. Okay, it's already gonna be hot, so it should be very easy for the fire of God to show up in this place this evening. All right. We're gonna do that at five o'clock tonight. If you feel like today, like man, God was really speaking some stuff to you, and you need some help with some next moves, please tap that disc right there and fill out that next moves card. We want to help you make those next moves. All right. And then finally, this the art for all. This is a big deal that we're putting on for move kids. This is a move event. This is not any, this is a big move church event. It's like uh creative arts vacation Bible school for a day. Art for all August the first. Invite your friends, share it on social media. You're gonna see signs around the community. But like Art for All is August 1st. Please check out the app for all the information about Art for All. And please, please, please invite some people, some families to come with you to Art for All. All right. We made it. Let's all stand together and let's say our sending liturgy as fast as humanly possible before someone literally sweats to death. And then Charles has to clean it up. All right. Let's let's read this together because this is the whole point of why we gather and what we spend our Monday through Saturday doing. Let's go. We are not leaving this place, but we are being sent. We are obeying the command of our Lord to go. So send us, Lord, to find you in secret in prayer and devotion, to love and care for our families, to strengthen and encourage our brothers and sisters in Christ, to faithfully work as unto the Lord in the marketplace and home, steward, all that you have given us, to recognize our place and ability in our community. To witness of your goodness and grace to neighbors and nations, send us now in your presence and power. Amen. L L L. Hello Everybody One, two, three, four. Hello Hello Hello
