That is the title of the series that we're preaching through Ephesians right now, Higher Ground. And I do believe if you'll get in touch and in tune with Ephesians, you will find that higher spiritual ground that God has promised for all of his dear children. We're going to be in Chapter 3 again this morning. We hope to finish this chapter today and then get on to Chapter 4 next week. But one of the goals that I've been focusing on We're preaching through Ephesians is to keep reminding you about all of these spiritual blessings that we have in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, and you know we're accustomed to The physical world we understand bottom line stuff I talked about this in a study school a little bit, but you know we keep an eye on our account balances and You know, we have different ways of banking where we can check our, the funds in our savings account or our checking account, check our IRAs if we have those things or 401Ks, whatever it might be, pensions and on and on and on. But we also, I grew up in, you know, in the 70s and the 80s, I know that's a long time ago for some of you, but my dad had a checkbook. And he would write a check for just about everything he did business with, whether the groceries or at the Sears store, whatever it might be, and he would write a check. And I'd watch him do it. He was left-handed, so he wrote it the wrong way. But anyway, he'd write the checks, and then he would cut the check out, tear a check out, and then he would go to the back of the checkbook where he had a register. And he would record the check, you know, who it was to, the date that it was, the check number, and the amount. And then he had like this running total of his check register. And he kind of kept track and it was balanced that way. He'd do the math and, you know, simple way to know how much funds are in your account. And then at the end of a month or maybe the beginning of the next month, the bank would mail him a statement. And he would take his check register and the bank statement and he would reconcile to make sure the bank statement and his checkbook register lined up so they have the same amount of balance, same amount of money in the funds. That reconciling is what we're going to talk about this morning. We're going to look at it with the word reckon. And the word reckon means to count. to number or to calculate. I want you to see this this morning as we're going to reckon our riches in Christ Jesus in verses 14 through 21 of Ephesians chapter 3. I won't keep you long, I hardly ever do. For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God. Now unto him that is able to do exceeding, abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end." And everybody said, Thank you father again for the word of god pray you'll speak to us from this portion of it and father as you do speak to us this morning that we Would do the right thing and that we would respond to your priest word this morning that we would decide to draw closer to you to have to to edify our walk and to work and on our faith. Father, whatever needs to be done here this morning, Father, I pray that it would be done in the spiritual realm. And Father, we do pray this morning that there be anybody in our congregation this morning, in our midst, who does not yet know Christ as their personal Lord and Savior, that today would be their day of salvation. And Father, we do not want to fail to give you all of the honor and all of the praise and all of the glory. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. talk about reckoning our riches, reconciling our riches, going through that checkbook register, comparing it to the bank statement, making sure that the different values add up. How much do we have in this account and in that account? And we're talking about this morning about reconciling our eternal riches, things that God has given us because of our faith in the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. As a way of reminding you, just in case you weren't here recently or maybe a first-time visitor today, the Apostle Paul was in prison, in a Roman prison, when he was inspired by the Holy Ghost to write this epistle. And the Roman prisons had a way of controlling their prisoners. We would say they were on a very short leash. and a prisoner would be chained at the wrist to a Roman guard, and we understand the length of that chain to be somewhere between 18 and 24 inches long. And so being a prisoner and being attached to a guard, that would pretty much interfere with all of the daily activities of life. You're not going to do anything without the guard's knowledge. You're not going to be able to eat or sleep or walk or do anything else. And I also feel that this way, that being the prisoner, you would have very little say in how things would go during a day. I would say that for the most part, and I think you'll agree, you would be at the whim of that Roman guard. He would be the one that would decide where we're going to go, when we're going to sit, where we're going to stand, all those different things. And so he's going to be at the whim, the Apostle Paul is. And now, I hope you brought your imagination to church, because if you brought your imagination, you're going to enjoy church a lot more. I want you to imagine the Apostle Paul going to his knees, just pushing his chair back from a table, going to his knees like this. And the Roman guard's saying, what are you doing down there? Oh, I'm fixing to go to prayer. Can you just see a dialogue here? Well, what's prayer? Oh, I'm gonna talk to God. What are you talking to God about? Whatever he puts on my heart. Did you want me to talk to God about something for you? He said, well, what are you going to pray about? Can you just see Paul saying, well, just listen. Just listen here, and you're going to see what I'm going to pray about. And we're going to get that going and understand some things in the spiritual realm. And so the apostle Paul has fallen to his knees. He's going to pray to the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, maybe in the presence of a prison guard, maybe just in the quietness of his heart, it doesn't really matter. But I'm saying this, he's going to start talking and praying to God because it's a spiritual exercise. Whenever we open in prayer, that's our intent when we open in prayer for a church service, that we're reminded that what we're about to embark upon is a spiritual journey, a spiritual exercise. And as we preach the word of God, even though we're reading a physical word, it's still a spiritual word. It has the power to get down into the depth of our soul, to do some discerning, to do some helping, to do some Holy Spirit surgery in different areas of our life. And so it's a spiritual word. We believe that preaching is a spiritual exercise. We believe that singing should be a spiritual exercise. We believe that worship is a spiritual exercise. And so also prayer is a spiritual exercise. I guess before I go on, I wanna say this to the believers this morning. Let's make sure that our prayer is spiritual in nature. And I say it because of this. And I'm pointing four fingers at me right now, no, actually eight fingers at me right now. Oftentimes our prayer is about physical things, physical needs, physical health, physical relationships. But there's a lot of spiritual needs that we need to also address before the Father in heaven this morning. Somebody say amen. And so we want to make sure that we have that spiritual side of our prayer life. Nothing wrong with praying for physical needs at all. Nothing wrong for praying for God to meet a financial need or a health need or whatever the case may be. Nothing wrong at all. But make sure that we go to God and understand there's some spiritual things that deserve and are worth addressing also to the great God of heaven. We're going to boldly approach the throne of grace to find help in our time of need, help and mercy in our time of need. And so Paul is going to be praying, he's in a spiritual exercise, a transaction of faith, if you will, if he's going to pray to God, and he says, for this cause, he says, I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. Talking about all of Christians from eternity past to eternity future to right now, where we're living in the 21st century. Talk about every born-again believer, all part of God's wonderful, beautiful family. And you start to think about how big that family would go and how diverse that family tree would branch out. Somebody help me. You understand it would be huge, it would be ginormous to try to put our mind around, to comprehend how big that thing is. And so God in His wisdom and God in His perfection says this, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to cut off little segments of my family. I'm going to call it something like, I don't know, a local church. And you can focus on that segment of my family. And I do believe this. I do believe that a local church ought to be a family of believers. We come together. We care about each other. We show joy when others are experiencing joy. We find sorrow when others are weeping. And we have that kind of family connection. So here at Liberty Baptist Church, we're trying to continually focus on the idea that we are a family. Yes, all part of the huge family of God that you and I can't even comprehend, but we're going to be focused on this small segment, this sample size of God's family. While God gives us breath, and while God gives us strength, and while God gives us grace, we're going to focus on the things that God has for us here at Liberty Baptist Church. Now, in verse number 16, we're going to start to see these spiritual riches named out, lined out, brought out in kind of bold type, if you will, underlined. And the spiritual riches that we're going to begin to explore, you're going to see that they're interlinked, they're intertwined. In other words, that one of the spiritual riches will lend itself to the next spiritual riches. You know what I'm trying to say. This very important thing, this very precious thing, this very wealth, Spirituality thing is going to connect to the next one and we're going to see a kind of a building block of these spiritual riches One upon the other it's a beautiful thing if you'll just allow God to speak this morning and see how these things build upon each other and what's going to happen as we see this this This building of spiritual riches takes shape and to come into form that's going to lead to it to an ultimate goal This spiritual realization and so here we're going to start out and see what the first spiritual Riches is going to be all about and it's going to be about being strengthened with might by his spirit In the inner man that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man, there's this strength that's offered, that's afforded to every blood-bought child of God. There's this strength, this spiritual strength that a lot of times we go through our Christian life and we fail to tap into this, what I would call infinite and exhaustible resource, this strength that God has given us. And the reason that we don't always tap into it is because it's in the inner man. And life is like this, the outer man often overshadows the inner man. Because we live in the physical realm and we converse to each other, we shake hands, we hug, we embrace. In the romantic, there's different things, the kissing that goes on and things of that nature. We are very accustomed to dealing with things in the outer man indexes, the outer man categories, and things of this nature. But God says, I've put something in your inner man that you have the ability to tap into this untapped resource, this inexhaustible, almost, infinite resource that you cannot go to enough. You cannot go to the well and get enough of this, and it came into your heart, the moment, into your soul, excuse me, the moment you got saved, my, God says, my Holy Spirit moved in to your ever-loving soul, and He dwells there now. And it's important to understand that that happened to you the moment you got saved. You, my God, have felt anything, you might not have sensed anything. But it happened when you asked Jesus Christ to save your soul, His Holy Spirit moved in. And it talks about how this spiritual realization, this spiritual reckoning is a part of being a believer in Christ Jesus. But ye are not in the flesh, the outer man, but in the Spirit, the inner man. If so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now, if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And so this power comes in through the blessed Holy Spirit indwelling us, choosing to to put down stakes and to establish residence again down in our souls. And the power is more than we realize, more than we recognize, and much more than we appreciate. Even Jesus, while He walked the earth, did things in the power of the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit. Acts chapter 10 in verse 38 puts it like this, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil for God was with him. So Jesus was on the earth and we know that Jesus is God in the flesh, don't we saints? And we know that he's the only begotten Son of God. But Jesus also did these things through or in the power of the Holy Spirit. So God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit, all working in harmony, in unison, in blessed unity. All these things are true. Jesus understood the power of the Holy Spirit. But do you and I understand the power of the Holy Spirit? I read a man, many years ago, said something like this. He said, he was a pastor, he said, I believe this. He said, I believe that God could pull his Holy Spirit from the earth and we would go through the motions like everyday business. We wouldn't even recognize it. Probably we get that way sometimes we kind of get on automatic on on cruise control sometimes so it's good to have maybe a thought like this come across the The brain or a warning shot come across the bow every once in a while just to remind us to get our attention to grab us and say yeah, I don't want to be that kind of Christian who would who could have the Holy Spirit withdrawn from me and I would still go through life as usual or business as usual or like normal, but like if I lost the Holy Spirit, like I wouldn't know where to go, I would be pleading for the Holy Spirit to come back. Right. And the strength, it says, comes through the inner man. Where's it at here? that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man. I want to focus for a minute on that phrase that says according to the riches of his glory. According to riches is different than out of riches. Let's just pretend because this is our old pretend right here. Let's pretend I've got $1,000. That's a real pretend. Trust me on that. Let's pretend I got $1,000. And Phil's sitting right here, and I'm gonna give Phil $10. I gave it to him out of my riches, didn't I? Because I still got 990 left. I know what Karen Evans say, where's mine? Amen, Karen? See Russ. Yeah. All right. Let's just go here now, Phil. Let me give it to you according to my riches. I've got $1,000. I give you $1,000. Now we're like best friends, aren't we? You like the direction we're going in now? Yeah. Because I gave it to them not out of my riches, but according to my riches. Out of riches is a portion. according to is a proportion. And God always gives us out of His proportion that His riches are innumerable. You can't count them. You can't reconcile them. You aren't able to reckon them in a number or in a balance sheet or in a bottom line that you can understand. Does that make sense this morning? And so God's giving to us out of His proportion according to His riches. And again, it's to the inner man. Now the outer man, this part, the outer man is perishing. We all have a life expectancy in our day. Our appointed time with death is coming sometime in the future. We know that's true. The outer man is perishing. I was sharing with a church family on a Wednesday night a couple weeks ago that our hearing is at its peak the day we were born, and it continues to diminish from day one. So, can anybody say, huh? Right. So, we understand that. And so, you know, a lot of things are happening on the outward man. It's perishing. It's heading towards the graveyard. It just is. But the inner man, conversely, can be renewed day by day. Here's the text. 2 Corinthians 4 verse 16. For which cause we faint not. But though our outward man do what, saints? Perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. And so you could be, let's just get, let's exaggerate, you could be 110 years old and on death's door, but be energized spring chicken, alive and well on the inner man. Because that's where God is going to put His riches, His bank account, His checkbook is opened up, and He's depositing those riches on the inner man. Spiritual blessings in heavenly places. Not talking about salvation here, but talking about the byproduct of salvation, experience the manifold blessings of God. And somebody said, Amen. That is right. Now verse number 17 says this, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in love. We're going to stop there and just read that for a second. What's going to happen here with this spiritual realization, this building block that starts with the strengthening of the inner man, which is a resource that God has placed on your ever-living soul, What we're going to see here is that there's going to be first a dwelling taking place. Some kind of dwelling is going to be made. And the word dwell means to make permanent residence in. To make permanent residence in. And so again, we're referring back to the Holy Spirit moving in the moment we accepted Christ as our Savior. He moved in. He took up permanent residence in our ever-living soul, didn't He? He's going to make it a dwelling place. He's going to live there. And here's what we've got to understand and be okay with. When the Holy Spirit moves in, he might have to do some remodeling and some renovating. Amen? That 1970s gold shag carpet might have to come out. Gonna put down something nice like that, that luxury vinyl plank stuff they have these days, you know? Probably will outlast our lifetimes, the way things are looking, right? So, you know, and maybe the paint on the walls needs to be updated. I remember my grandmother, her house, she was just, she was just the, she was just grandma, man, and she just had all the grandma things, and she was the one that had the plastic cover on her couch, somebody say amen. And her wallpaper, Was like, had like fuzzy velvet on it. I mean, as a kid, I could stand there for an hour and just play with that fuzzy velvet wallpaper and be entertained. I think that was part of the game, wasn't it, Saints? Right? Well, that's got to come down, too. And the plastic off the furniture, right? And the Holy Spirit's going to move in, and He's going to make some renovations. He's going to make some changes, watch this, Saints, that will cause you unknowingly to glorify the great God of heaven. which he wants to do. So he's going to do some remodeling. I was talking with a man yesterday about that same idea. You go and you buy a house and you say, well, I've got a house. I've got four walls and a roof. It's a house. But then you find out you're married. You got to maybe make some adjustments. I know in our house, we've done the flooring, we've done the kitchen, we've done the queen's bathroom, we've done all those different things. We've done the landscaping in the backyard. Right? And I was going to tell you, I would have been okay from day one. Amen. That's the difference between guys and girls, and it makes life interesting. Somebody say amen. Sure. But the Holy Spirit's going to move in. He's going to dwell. He's going to settle down. He's going to want to feel at home. I like that thought. Anybody ever tell you, hey, You're not guests, you're family. You make yourselves at home while you're here. Here's the thing, they don't mean that. And I'm not one to turn down a piece of apple pie, cup of coffee, come on. You know, they say, hey preacher, you want a piece of apple pie and a cup of coffee? I'd love it. And I get done, I eat that, drink the coffee, my tummy's still grumbling, I'm still hungry. And they said to make myself at home. So I get up, and I go to the cupboard. I get a skillet out of the cupboard. I go to the fridge. I get some butter, not margarine. Get out some eggs, maybe some ham. Yeah, I don't know. Bell pepper? Bell pepper, yeah. Yeah. Onions okay? Oh, yeah. And I'm just gonna start sauteing that bell pepper and that onion, you know. Throw a little ham in there. I'm not gonna make an omelet, I'm just gonna make a nice little Mark Hoffer scramble. Throw a couple pieces of sourdough down the toaster. I mean butter, just running down those things, right? And I get my plate, I come back, I sit down, and I'm gonna have nine people staring at me like, have you lost your ever-loving mind? But you said to make yourself at home. Here's the thing, the Holy Spirit wants to make Himself at home in our soul. We have to make the allowance for that to be a reality in our Christian lives. If He wants to make an omelet, amen. I think you understand that in a spiritual sense, don't you saints? It also says to be rooted, rooted. I think you understand that the health of a plant is really down to its roots, what's happening down underneath the soil. These poinsettias that Kathy put out this week, you know, they have that red flower, I guess they're a flower, that green leaf and all those different things. The real health of that plant is determined down below the surface of the soil, where that root is. That's where it gets the water. That's where it draws the nutrient. That's what happens. And so, that's also the truth of us. What's happening on the outward, on the surface, isn't the true measure of our spirituality. It goes down to our roots. down to the depth of our soul. And sometimes our Christianity is so shallow. Somebody help me this morning. But we have to allow for it to go deep and for those roots to go down and to do what they have to do to maintain our spiritual health. And this is also this, to be grounded. And to be grounded is really a building term. It's to have a strong, stable foundation. You know, I know when we added just this little bathroom addition on here a few years ago, we had to have soil samples taken by an engineering company to make sure that there was enough strength in the soil to support that structure of adding that bathroom addition. I've watched them build, I remember watching them build the baseball stadium down in Phoenix, how deep a hole they had to dig. to build that stadium because it was the foundation that made that stadium possible to go so high. And this is a good preaching axiom right here. If you won't allow yourself to ever go deep, you'll never go high. You have to. You've got to let God do His work. You've got to let the Holy Spirit, you know, envelop you and guide you and tell you to pray for things that you don't know how to pray for. All those different things, you really need to take that next spiritual level because if you won't go deep, you'll never be able to build up high. So we're going to see a dwelling, a rooting, a grounding in verse 17. Then verse number 18, I love this verse of Scripture. It says, may be able to comprehend with all saints. Now count the dimensions with me. the breadth, and length, and depth, and height. Who's confused? Really, you're not confused? Explain to me then the fourth dimension, Brother Shambly. Okay, I'll do it. Now, we live in a 3D world. My height, my length, My width, a little on the thick side. I could lose a few pounds, right? We understand that. We understand height, length, width. If I'm going to find the volume of a box, I'm going to take the height times the length times the width. So let's add a fourth dimension. Well, the fourth dimension, this is so beautiful, the fourth dimension is not really about me. but what's coming out of me. And if I'm living right, and I'm walking the walk and not just talking the talk, somebody help me. then the love of Christ is exuding out of me, that others actually see Jesus in me. That's the fourth dimension. The fourth dimension is God's inexhaustible, undeniable love. And so all these things are happening, but let me define these terms for you a little bit so you can appreciate them even more when we talk about God's love for us. There is the breadth. of God's love. And God's love is wide enough to save any who will come to Him for salvation. And His breath does not discriminate about race, about which sex you are, male or female. It does not talk about how depraved you were. It doesn't worry about your social economic status or any of those things. But God's breath, The breath of God's love can reach as far as the east is from the west. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us. I want to say this this morning by way of testimony, I am thankful for the breath of God's love. He was able to reach me, a lost, undone sinner. I wanted nothing to do with the things of God, and the grace of God, and the goodness of God, and the mercy of God. But He, in His breadth of love, reached and found my ever-living soul. And He saved me, somebody say amen. And I have never been sorry since. In the length of God's love, it speaks to the enduring, the lastingness of God's love. He has loved us with an everlasting love. Jeremiah 31.3, the Lord hath appeared of old unto me saying, yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving kindness have I drawn thee." So far we've seen the breadth of God's love. We've seen the length of God's love. And so far we have found those terms to be immeasurable. Isn't that right? And then there's the depth of God's love. That word depth means there's no bottom to it. He can reach down to the lowest level of depravity and save your soul. His arm cannot be shortened, so it cannot save. He can reach down to the lowest of below. You know, I was in the Navy, and I was in submarine fleet, and for four years we tooled around the ocean, most of it in the Pacific. And there's a little island in the Pacific called Guam. How many of you have heard of Guam before? Just off the coast of Guam, there's this place called the Marianas Trench in the ocean. It's one of the deepest points in all the oceans. 36,000 feet deep. We would call that unfathomable. It's a death that you cannot understand. A submarine couldn't even withstand a small percentage of that death before it was crushed into oblivion. That's how deep the ocean is. But God's love goes even beyond that Marianas Trench. There is no bottom to it. He can reach down to the lowest of the low. One man used to say this, he reached down to the gutter most and saved me to the uttermost. Amen. And then the height of God's love. It's elevated. How high? All the way up to heaven. That's how high. It's unstoppable. It's unquenchable. It's unfathomable. It's unmovable. And that love needs to be coming out of us in that fourth dimension of the Christian reality that the love of Christ isn't just the love of Christ that which passeth knowledge, but also the love of Christ that constraineth us and causes us to do the things that we do for the cause of God's glorious kingdom. Verse number 19 says this, And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God. Pastor, I don't understand. Why does it say it passive knowledge? Because you can't measure the breadth or the height or the length or the depth of God's love you can't reckon it all and you can get your slide ruler and your calculator and all those Supercomputers and do all kinds of calculations, but you cannot reckon at all. You can only know what you know and And some of us have a, well, we all have different capacities for what we can know. And we're at different places in our spiritual plane. And we're at different places in our spiritual growth. All those things are true. You can only know what you can know. So we need to rethink though. definition of love because I'll tell you what we have been soiled and corrupted by the world's definition of love haven't we Saints for them love is about attraction love is what can I gain from this relationship and love will last until no longer satisfies me that's not how God's love works at all It's not about attraction because He loved us for we were yet unlovable. And it's not about what we can gain. It's about what He gained by bringing us to salvation, by finding our ever-living soul and giving us the grace, the power to believe and to receive Christ as our Savior. And it won't quit when we no longer satisfy Him because we'll always satisfy Him. He doesn't give up on us. He doesn't turn us in for a younger model. Somebody say hallelujah. Amen. The outward band is perishing, but the inward band is being renewed day by day. And it says to be filled with all the fullness of God. I was going to do another optic lesson, but if I wanted to fill this bottle up with water, let me get another bottle. Here's one right here. If I wanted to pour this bottle into this bottle, what would I need to do? Into the first bottle, right? So there's probably things in your life that need to get poured out. I mean, just stop harboring them. They're weighing you down. They're like an anchor in your life, and you're not experiencing, we sing it, victory in Jesus, but you're not living victory in Jesus. So these things gotta be poured out and they gotta go away and by the wayside and not be picked up again, right? We wanna be filled with all the fullness of God, the fullness of the divine, the fullness of the creator of the universe, the fullness of the one who gave his only begotten son to die for you on Calvary's cross. You know, we say, well, pastor, you know, You say all that stuff, and it sounds flowery, it sounds so nice, you have those key words and tricky phrases. But pastor, I've been doing a lot of, I've been doing a lot of comparing. And I measure myself up to other Christian people, and I'm really not that bad off. Well, here's the thing that we do about comparing, because I also compare myself. We will compare ourselves to the weakest, and the most flawed among us. You say, yep, I'm doing pretty good. Amen? I love this. When I'm playing golf with somebody and I'm the best one in the foursome, I mean, that's a stretch. Trust me on that. But I was on my birthday trip in Tucson. I played with some guys and they were a lot worse than I was. And they kept on saying to themselves, wow, you're outplaying us. Yeah, but I gotta go back and see Jeff and Phil. Back to reality, right? It's nice while it lasts, but it's a tainted reality. It's not a true reflection of who I really am as a golfer, and more importantly, of who I really am in Christ. We don't measure ourself among the most flawed, the weakest Christians that we know. We measure ourself according to the plumb line. And the plumb line, we talked about being Messiah, Jesus Christ, and the plumb line being the inspired Word of God and measuring ourself to that truth. Amen, saints. You might need to empty yourself of some preconceived notions. Empty yourself of some ulterior motives. personal desires, agenda, just emptying yourself of self? Amen? Sure. We're almost done. Now on to Him. Paul's on his knees. That Roman guard's sitting there taking it all in. Can you just see this? Chained to Paul. And he says this. They call it a doxology because it's just words of glowing praise. Amen. How hard would it be to be that Roman soldier chained to Paul and not want to lift up your arms and pull Paul's arm out of a socket? Because you are so excited and so enamored by the knowledge and the depth in the intimate personal relationship that Paul has with the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and saying this, I want what he has. Amen? But He's able to do these things that are much above our ability to understand. He's able to do all, above all, abundantly above all, exceeding abundantly above all. It's more power than we can reckon. It's more available than we appreciate. It's easier to tap into than we understand. All those things are true. But we have to understand that God is able to do all of these things. They go beyond what we're able to even ask or think. You know, we talk about prayer being about asking, asking and receiving. And there's things that you didn't even think about to ask God that are there, excuse me, for the asking. and for the giving and for the receiving. But we are limited because of our finite minds. We are limited because of our finite faith. We have the I can'ts of life, and I can't do this and I can't do that. That might be true, but He can. And we let past experience defeat us. Here's the thing about past experience. Never say never when it comes to God. I've seen, I mean, pastor, I've seen this. I mean, we've. Pastor, it'll never work. Well, it may not work if we do it, but what if God does it? And what if God's in it? Then it could work, and it would work, and it would work to His glory, right? All those things are true. And so He's able to do these things that are above all, abundantly above all, exceeding abundantly above all. Never say never when it comes to God's grace. Never say never when it comes to God's power. Never say never when it comes to God's love. All these things are true. I've read this book more than a few times. And in this book I have seen God humble and change the heart of kings. I've seen him deliver entire cities without a single weapon being used. I've seen him pull men of faith out of fiery furnaces and close the mouths of lions. I've seen him send down fire from heaven. I've seen him defeat the principalities and the powers of darkness with three little words, it is finished. And those same three words have the power to change your eternal destiny. God's plan of redemption was done on Calvary's cross when Jesus said it was finished. He did it all. You simply need to come to Him in faith and start experiencing these spiritual blessings in heavenly places. It's as simple as this. For whosoever Shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved and everybody said Thank you father for this time this morning a chance to Look into the register and reconcile and even in a way Lord compare our spiritual lives with spiritual realities with biblical truths And Father, I don't know where this message might have found some folks this morning, but if you have spoken to hearts, I pray that the hearts would speak back to you. And Father, if there is somebody here today who has never trusted Christ to be their personal Lord and Savior, that today would be their day of salvation. Father, please move in hearts, guide and direct as you see fit. And Father, let us be accommodating to what you're trying to accomplish in our life. We thank you for the spiritual blessings. And Father, I know that we just scratched the hem Touch the hem of the garment's surface today, Father. I pray, Lord, that we would just begin to have a desire and a deep appreciation for these spiritual truths, these spiritual blessings that you have laid up in store for each of your dear children. I pray these things and ask them in Jesus' name. Amen. We're all going to stand now, have a time of response. God is speaking to you. Would you please take some time to speak back to Him? If you don't know Christ as your Savior, would you come this morning? Let us take the Bible and show you some more truths about salvation to help point you to the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Whatever your need is this morning, I pray that you'll be receptive and responsive. We're going to sing, Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus. O soul, are you weary and troubled? No light in the darkness you see. There's light for a look at the Savior, and life for a fun game. upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. Through death into life everlasting He passed and we follow Him there Over us still some more hath dominion For more than conquers we are Turn your eyes upon Jesus Look full in His wonderful face And the things of earth will grow strangely dim In the light of His glory and grace His word shall not fail you, he promised. Believe, and all will be well. Then go to a world that is dying, his perfect Turn your eyes upon Jesus Look full in His wonderful face And the things of earth will grow strangely In the light of his glory and praise. introduce a new church member this morning. Howard Quinlan comes and desires to unite the Fellowship of Liberty Baptist Church. And I got to visit with him and he was actually raised on the mission field in the Philippines. And so his parents were independent Baptist missionaries. Is that right? Yeah. And so he's coming to unite with us here. And we're excited about that. If you're excited, say amen. Amen. All right. Let me have Brother Tom close in prayer. We just give you the praise and glory of how you're working here at Liberty Baptist Church, where we know it's by your