Your Bible to St. Luke's Gospel, Chapter 7. I want to read about a very, a very familiar woman, a very familiar story. And I want you to keep her in mind, Lord willing, as I said, I'm going to remind you of her again in a moment. But I want you to keep her in mind as you think of the prayer that Paul prays for the Ephesians, the model prayer that he patterns for us. Luke 7, beginning with verse 36, one of the Pharisees asked him, Jesus, to eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at table. And behold, a woman of the city who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, She began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of his head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. Now, when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, if this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who's touching him. For she's a sinner." And Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have something to say to you. And he answered, Say it, teacher. A certain moneylender had two debtors, one owed 500 denarii and the other 50. When they could not pay, he canceled the debt of both. Which of them will love him more? Simon answered, the one I suppose for whom he canceled the larger debt. And he said to him, you've judged rightly. In turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, do you see this woman? I entered your house, you gave me no water for my feet, but she's wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in, she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, Loves little. And he said to her, your sins are forgiven. And those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, who is this who even forgives sins? And he said to the woman, your faith has saved you. Go in peace. Wow, just reading that makes me regret I didn't pick that to preach. Let's turn now, I'm glad I could use her as an example. Let's turn now to the book of Ephesians chapter three. Man, I'm hoping I had missed what the Lord wanted me to do tonight. Ephesians three, this is Paul's second prayer. It begins with verse 14 and it goes through verse 21. Again, let's hear God's word. For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 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, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church, and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. Let's pray. Father, these passages and this sermon will bounce off of us tonight like rain on a tin roof. unless your spirit comes and enables me to open your word clearly and faithfully and you open our hearts and cause them to burn within us as you reason with us and explain Christ to us from the scriptures. That gives us hope because, Father, you promised that if we being evil know how to give good gifts unto our children, how much more would the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him? So we come, we ask. Give us ears with which to hear, eyes with which to see, hearts with which to embrace your truth. Make us good soil and grant that we might bring forth fruit, some 30-fold, some 60-fold, and some even 100-fold. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. When I read this prayer, it makes me think of something C.S. Lewis writes. This is not an exact quote, but it's close enough to make the point. You're probably familiar with it. Lewis says, we are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with things like drink and sex and ambition when Infinite joy is available to us. He says, we are like an ignorant child playing with mud pies in a slum and finding it hard to believe that there is such a thing as a holiday at the sea. I think that's true of us. in a variety of ways, don't you? But I think maybe the primary way it's true of us is in our prayer lives. I think most of us fish for minnows when we ought to be fishing for marlin. Thou art coming to a king, large petitions with thee bring. For his grace and power are such, none can ever ask too much." The prayer that is prayed here, I think, teaches us to fish for marlin, not minnows. to revolutionize our prayer lives. It is given to take us by the hand and lead us to the throne of grace. I go even further. It is given to put words in our mouths and our hearts when we come into the presence of our God. And so all I want to do tonight is ask you to join me as we walk through this prayer. And I want to show you four things here and ask you to think seriously about each one of them. Because I believe with all my heart that we're not going to change the way we're capable of changing and we're not going to have the impact that God wants us to have as his church. Until we begin praying like this. That's how important this particular prayer really is. So let's look at what the prayer has to say to us and just four words. Here is our first word. Our first word is the word potential. Potential. You remember the old Army commercial, be all that you can be. It was, I think, unique and attractive, alluring. I have no doubt it led no small number of young people to sign up for the Army. What it was saying is this, you can have a life of significance and you can have a life that is really special and you can live in a way that when you get to the end and look back, you'll think that was really a pretty worthwhile life. And what's important is the army can help you get there. Now, I'm not sure how true that is or was, although I respect our armed forces enormously. But that thought, be all that you can be, I know of no better way of describing what Paul is saying to you and to me in this passage than simply that. I think he's standing before us and he's saying, child of God, believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, will you simply sit and listen to your God tell you the enormous potential that resides in you as someone who belongs to him. That it is possible, distinctly possible for each of us in this room, in spite of our ordinariness, it is possible for us to become nothing less than Hall of Fame followers of Jesus. Robert Murray McShane, the Scott preacher, you've heard this quoted I don't know how many times. Robert Murray McShane prayed on a regular basis, Lord, make me as holy as a pardoned sinner can be. And Paul is saying to us here, our ambition as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, ought to be as holy as we can possibly be, ought to be as godly as we can possibly be, ought to be as fine a specimen of what a true Christian really is as we can possibly be. And the enormity of what we can possibly be is virtually indescribable. And so I want you to see, before we go any further, two things that he holds out to us, underlining in terms of this is what you have the potential to have in your life and is what I have the potential to have in my life. So what are the two things that are available to us? Here's the first one. We have the potential, listen now, we have the potential to have an extraordinary communion with the Lord Jesus Christ. J.I. Packer was once introducing a young Christian woman he knew to a friend of his. The friend had known C.S. Lewis well. And Packer introduces him to the young lady and says that, and she looks up at him and says, Did you really know C.S. Lewis? The man says, Yes, actually, we were we were quite close for a good period of time. And the woman said, May I touch you? But will you notice what Paul prays in verse 14? That you may be strengthened with power by the spirit in the inner man. Listen now. that Christ may dwell in your heart by faith. What's he talking about? Jesus does dwell in our hearts. The glory of the gospel is Christ in us. So what's he mean? What he means is this. He means what the old writers used to call communing with Christ, believing that Christ does live within us and having fellowship with Christ, conversing with Christ from the time we get up until the time we go to bed, turning to Christ and celebrating all that he is, turning to Christ and calling upon him, turning to Christ and thanking him, reveling in Christ and rejoicing in Christ. So that we go through our day near to him and enjoying him. Now, that's available to you. That's what he's talking about here when he says that Christ may dwell in your heart by faith. He's saying, child of God, you can have extraordinary communion with Jesus. But notice the other thing that he's saying here. Not only do we have the potential for extraordinary communion with Jesus, listen now. We have the potential for extraordinary conformity to Jesus. Most of y'all know my son, Nathan. The other day, one of my daughters called us on our landline and she's the only one who calls other than telemarketers. And I picked up the phone and I said, hello. And this is a response I got. Nathan? Now, Nathan thought the same thing, by the way, I just want you to know. Because Nathan and I, he's my mini-me. Well, he would say I'm his mini-me, but you got the point. We talk just alike. We walk just alike. We both walk like the old comedian Groucho Marx. We walk like a question mark. We both bend over. We do. And we think a lot alike. And we have many of the same abilities and likes and dislikes. So that when you look at Nathan, you see a striking resemblance of me. Will you notice at the very end of verse 19? that Paul says, he is praying, listen, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now, what's he talking about? If you will, and I'm not going to ask you to do it now, but if you will, as our British friends say, at your own leisure, open your Bible to chapter 4, verse 16, you will see that Paul says, that we are to come to the fullness of the stature of Christ. What's he talking about? He's talking about us increasingly, moment by moment, day by day, becoming more and more and more and more like the Lord Jesus Christ. More like Jesus in faith. More like Jesus in patience. More like Jesus in servant heartedness. More like Jesus in living for God. That just as we have the potential for extraordinary communion with Jesus, we also have the potential for extraordinary conformity to Jesus. That's why God saved us, is it not? That's what it means for God to work all things together for our good. For those whom he foreknew, them he also predestined. And those whom he predestined, them he also called. And those whom he called, them he also justified that we might be conformed to the image of Jesus. That's salvation. That's what redemption is about. When you and I are perfectly and permanently like Jesus, we're going to be perfectly and permanently happy. That's the glory of heaven. That's what John in Revelation is talking about when he says God's going to wipe away all of our tears. How's he going to do that? He's going to make us just like his son. We shall see him as he is and we shall be like him. And even Paul says our vile bodies shall be transformed by his power to transform all things. Now, that's your potential. I don't want to go any further before I do one thing. Doesn't this set your toes to tapping? Doesn't this amaze you? This is amazing grace! That frail creatures of dust and feeblest frail, who ought to be on the broad path headed to destruction, have been translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. made new and given the extraordinary potential of extraordinary communion with the Son of God and extraordinary conformity to him. You know, we talk about application when we preach, rightly so. But I think the first application here is just to be amazed, to be astounded, to be floored, to be overwhelmed that God has so worked in us that we can know Jesus intimately and be like Him wonderfully. Bless you. That's your potential. Word two, power. Did you catch it? It's an emphasis here. Look again, he says in verse 16, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power. And then drop down to verse 20. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work in us. Look, if we're going to have extraordinary communion with Jesus and extraordinary conformity to Jesus, we need power to get us there. And that's what Paul wants us to understand. We can't get ourselves there. We need an energy. We need a force. We need a motivation. We need a fuel. We need something way beyond us to work in us so that we get there. So here's the question. What is the power that will drive us to know something of our potential. This is where you've got to be careful that you not allow the trees to keep you from the forest in this passage. Because the thrust of the passage, listen, is this. The thrust of the passage, listen now, brothers and sisters. The thrust of the passage is the truth that power For communing with Jesus and conforming to Jesus comes from appreciating how very much God loves us. That's where the power comes from. It doesn't come primarily from fear. It doesn't come primarily from being lashed with the whip. There is a place for that. But the driving force to moving forward as Christians, the reason why we're so often like Sisyphus pushing that rock up, and before we get down to the bottom of the hill, it's back down there, is we don't really appreciate how much God loves us in the Lord Jesus Christ. You say, Charlie, show me that in the passage, right? Let me show you now. Follow with me. He prays that we might be strengthened with power through the spirit in our inner being, that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith. Now, listen, why that for this reason, for this purpose, that you being rooted and grounded in love. two metaphors that are mixed, that our roots may go down deep in love and that love might be the foundation on which the superstructure of our lives is built. That you may be rooted and grounded in love and may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ. that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. He said, look, I want you to conform to Christ. Here's how you get there. You got to know how much Christ loves you. So he's not talking about us saying, yeah, I believe Jesus loves me. I believe the Father loves me. What he's talking about is appreciating that love. I know labor pains. But ladies, You who have children, you know labor pains. I have a dictionary understanding of them. You have an experience of them. And when Paul says here, listen now, when he says, I'm praying that God will convince you of how profound his love for you and make you sense it, make you feel it, make you be gripped by it so that it becomes the habitat in which you live and move and have your being and your basic identity as a Christian is this. I am loved by God almighty and by his son. He says, when that happens, change is going to happen. And you're going to find communion with Jesus that is really sweet. And you're going to conform more to it. Now, I don't want you to take my word for it, although I hope you trust me. I want to give you examples. of how the power that we need to live for God comes from one place and one place only, and that is from being convinced that we are loved. So I'm gonna give you three examples, okay? Here's the first one. The first example that the power that drives a genuine, authentic Christian life, that helps God's people reach their potential, the power that drives that is the love of God. And the first example is the Apostle Paul himself. I read one time that D.L. Moody heard a man preach, and the man said, the world has yet to see what God can do with a man fully sold out to him. And that'll preach, that is, boy, that catches your attention, doesn't it? And for a long time, I believed that. And then it dawned on me, that's not true. The world has seen what God can do with a man fully sold out to him. Because the world seen the Apostle Paul. And when you look at the Apostle Paul, you look at a man who knew extraordinary communion with the Lord Jesus. And you look at a man who knew extraordinary conformity to the Lord Jesus. Paul was a man who went into his potential further than anybody I have ever heard of. Now, here's the question. What drove him? What fueled his reaching so much of his potential? Well, he tells us, you ready? Second Corinthians 5.14. He said, look, some of you think we're crazy. Some of you, we don't know what you think about us. But here's what we want you to know. The love of Christ controls us. He's not talking about his love for Jesus that comes in. He's talking about Jesus' love for him. He sums it up in Galatians, does he not? Christ loved me and gave himself for me. 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. What's Paul saying? Paul's saying, listen, if you want intimacy with Jesus, if you want to grow in Jesus, you've got to know how much God loves you. It's got to sink down into your bones. It's got to be who and what you are. So that's example one. Here's example two, the woman we read about. Now, you hear about Paul, and if you're like me, which you're, but that's Paul. He's cut from a different bolt. He's extraordinary. He's unusual. OK, take this woman in Luke 7. She's ordinary. She's us. She's we. Sorry, Debbie, you got the point. She reminds us of us. I know that us is right after the of, so stay with me. We don't even know her name. Do you notice that? And her description, it's a mirror in which we see ourselves, the woman who was a sinner. Now, there are a lot of things I can't say about myself. I'm not a woman, but I'm sure a sinner. And yet, when you read, look at the ardor of her devotion to Jesus. Where does that come from? Jesus says she loves much. Why? Because she has been forgiven much. The flower of her love for Jesus has as its taproot Jesus love for her expressed in forgiveness. She was empowered. To do what she did. By her appreciation. Of how much she was loved. Third example, I'll step out of scripture. Thomas Chalmers. I don't know if you've ever heard that name. He was a famous Scottish preacher and he preached one of the most well-known sermons in church history. It's called the expulsive power of a new affection. You can read it online. It's not easy reading. He was a brilliant man and his writing was not always as clear as it ought to have been. When Chalmers first went to his church, he was unconverted, and he nevertheless was concerned with the moral lives of the congregation. They were stealing, they were lying, there were all kinds of things going on. And Chalmers beat them to death, scolding them and preaching, get up and do what you're supposed to do or else, and there's a place But then Chalmers was converted and he began preaching the gospel. He began reminding the congregation of the love of God in Jesus Christ and the people changed. The people changed. That love made them want to honor God in the way that they live. And you find it all through scripture. That's how we grow. We grow by appreciating how much we are loved. How does it work? I think it works like this. When you know God loves you. You love him. And when you love someone. You long to spend time with them. When you love someone. You long to please him. Isn't that what John says? We love him. Why? Because he first loved us. Brothers and sisters, the power, the power for pursuing intimacy with Jesus and likeness to Jesus comes from the primary source of appreciating How much you're loved. I told a friend, I was going to start this sermon tonight by saying, God loves you. And then ask you, does that set your toe or tapping? And he didn't give me a very positive response. But does it? So our third word is prayer. Now, here's what I want you to notice. I'm venting tonight. I've been vile. Let me be even more vile. I think we come to something like this and we take it apart and we look at the doctrine and we forget it is not primarily to teach doctrine. It is a prayer. It's given to show us how to pray. So that we are being told appreciation for the love of God. comes primarily in response to prayer. I don't know about you, but that is so extraordinarily encouraging. There are so many things I can't do, but I can pray. Sometimes when things are going on and you're not able to do what you normally do, you can still pray. You're always in a place of prayer. And Paul says here that it is prayer that seeds the clouds of glory and causes not merely mercy drops, but showers of love to come down upon us. But will you notice something? And I'm going to be very careful here. It is not prayer per se. It is a very specific kind of praying. We make a great mistake in our prayers. We are health and wealth gospelers in our prayers, are we not? What I mean by that is. The vast majority of our praying has to do with give us healing, deliver us from temptation, help us find employment and things of that nature. And there is nothing wrong with that. Scripture tells us in everything through prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known unto God. When the Lord Jesus says we're to pray, give us this day our daily bread. He's saying we're to come before the Father and ask him for everything that we need. But if that is the totality of our praying, if that is the burden of our praying, if that is the substance of our praying, then we're mispraying. Read through Paul's prayers and notice how seldomly you find him praying the way we normally pray. But read through his prayers and notice what he focuses on the way everyone at a wedding focuses on the bride. The very things he focuses on in this passage, our soul, our heart, I'll walk with the Lord. And so I think we're being taught here that God wants us to pray, yes, to pray for our physical needs. There's nothing wrong with that. No condemnation, no rebuke intended. I have no business rebuking. You don't deserve rebuke for that. That's not the point. But don't stop there and don't emphasize that. When you pray, come into the presence of God and pray like this, Paul says, Father, whatever else you do, help me to appreciate how much you love me in Jesus. And Father, help my spouse and my children and my grandchildren and my brothers and sisters in the church and the elders and the deacons help all of us appreciate that we are your beloved and you love us according to Jesus himself as much as you love him. So what does that mean in practice? Well, I think it means things like this. I think we pray, Father, help me to appreciate how much you love me individually. You love Charlie Lynn Chase in the DNA that makes him Charlie Lynn Chase in spite of his sin and in spite of his manifold failures. You love me so that as scripture says Jesus loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus. So I can say Jesus loves Charlie and you can say the same thing. And then help us to know and appreciate your love in its intensity. We have no idea how much God loves us in Christ. That's the point Paul makes when he talks about the length and breadth and height and depth and to know that which is unknowable. He's not saying we can't grow into an ever deepening appreciation of it. What he's simply saying is this, you're never going to completely appreciate it. Even in glory, there's going to be more waiting for us. And so we pray, Father, let us know as individuals that you love us and let us know the intensity of that love. And then let us know the loyalty of your love. I love a story that Chuck Colson tells. He's being interviewed a number of years ago by, I think it was Mike Wallace on CBS. And Mike Wallace looks at him, this is after Coulson was converted, and Wallace said, How did you stick close to Richard Nixon all those years after Watergate? And Coulson looked at him and said, Because Richard Nixon was my friend. Loyalty. And God says, look, the moment I brought you to Christ, indeed, from eternity past until eternity future, I am clinging to you with love every bit as strongly and continuously as I clung to my son. When on that cross, I veiled my smile. Before the frown of my wrath, now that that's how we're supposed to pray. That's that's what we ought to be praying. And while we pray for these other things, they ought to be secondary and they ought not to be our emphasis. What we ought to be praying is, Father, in trial, help us to appreciate how much you love us. And Father, as we're trying to figure out what's going on, help us to appreciate how much you love us. Father, give us a deepening appreciation of how much you love us. That's where the power is going to come, brothers and sisters. And I'm not the one. That's what the Apostle Paul is saying. He is saying, If we want intimacy with Jesus and likeness to Jesus, we got to know, we got to know, we have got to know we are loved. Which leads to the last word. And that's the word performance. Will you look again at verses 20 and 21? Because Paul's a good pastor. And I'm going to tell you, I read this and I think of someone like me appreciating far more than I do the love of God. And I just think, Father, really? And then I read, now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us. You see what Paul's saying? He's saying, yeah, it just seems awesome and astounding and so far beyond you. But it's not beyond him. He is able to come and cause you to have an ever deepening appreciation of his love. I tried, I was thinking about this this afternoon, meditating on this passage. And I tried to think of a picture of exceeding abundantly beyond all that he asks us to think, the King James. So I thought about it this way. Imagine turning the faucet on in your bathtub and leaving it on. And it rises and rises and it overflows the tub, right? And then it just keeps rising and it overflows the bathroom. And the next thing you know, the ceiling's fallen and the water's just going everywhere. That's the picture of God. That's the picture of what he is able to do. Flood after flood after flood after flood after flood after flood after flood, even for small, ordinary people like us. And why? Will you look at verse 21? To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever. You see what he's saying? He's saying this. You can be sure that God will perform. God's going to answer this prayer when you begin praying. He's going to answer it for you and he's going to answer it for people you pray for. And the reason you can be sure is this. God's primary concern is to be glorified. And nothing glorifies him. Like his children. Having extraordinary communion with his son. And growing an extraordinary conformity to the Lord Jesus. When we are intimate with Jesus and growing like Jesus, we are walking doxologies. God gets glory from us by showing love to us. Humphrey Bogart's my favorite actor. And my second favorite Humphrey Bogart movie is Casablanca. He plays a jaded American during World War II who has a bar and gambling establishment in French-occupied Casablanca. The only way out of Casablanca is through exit visas, and the only one who can give you an exit visa is the French Prefect of Police. And so a young couple are trying to get out. She visits the prefect and he lets her know that if she will give him certain favors, he will see to it that they are allowed out of Casablanca. So she's concerned. She goes to see Rick and she says, Monsieur, you're a man. You understand these things. What if someone loved you so that they were willing to do something that would hurt you deeply, but they did it because they loved you. Would you be able to handle that? Bogart looks at her and he says, no one ever loved me that way. You can't say that. You were loved indescribably. And the way to grow is to pray to the God who performs to give you power to appreciate his love. So how does that work? Do you sit around and wait until love suddenly strikes you? No, no, no, no. You begin expressing appreciation for the love you have now. Look, take this book. This is the love of God to you. Paul says to the Romans, if you want to know the best thing God did for the Jews is he gave them the Bible. Every time you open this book, you ought to say, Father, thank you for loving me and giving me this book. Every time you come to this church, you say, Father, thank you for loving me. Thank you for giving me elders who care for me and deacons who care for me and brothers and sisters who use their gifts in my life and who pray for me and who encourage me. They're all tokens of the love of God for you. And you have something, with one exception, tonight's preacher, you have something very few congregations have. You have had people come and stand in this pulpit and expound the word of God with awesome That's the love of God for you. Every time you walk into the sanctuary, every time one of these people on that list back there stands up and opens the Bible and says, Thus saith the Lord, your heart ought to burst with, Father, thank you for loving me that much. I'm here to tell you, you're in a very, very, very small minority when it comes to having the Word of God preached to you. Every time you have a prayer answered, you ought to say, Father, thank you for loving me. Every time a promise is kept, you ought to say, Father, thank you for loving me. Every time you confess a sin, you ought to say, Father, thank you for loving me. And then you ought to take this prayer and you ought to start praying it. Don't edit it. Don't change it. Don't doctor it. Do with it what you do with the Lord's prayer. Take it. and make it part of your daily prayer life, praying for yourself, praying for your brothers and sisters, praying for your children. Strengthen me with might by thy power in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in my heart by faith, that we may be rooted and grounded with all the saints in love, that we may know the length and breadth and height and depth of the love of God, the love of Christ, which is beyond knowledge. Now unto him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, to him be glory. Both now and forever. Amen. Amen. Amen. Father, will you cause in the language of those of years past who knew far more than I of what I just preached. Will you cause us to have an experimental, experiential grasp of how much we are loved so that appreciation for your love governs us. Help us, I pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.