Our Spiritual Understanding

Hey, for those of you the nine o'clock people, if you're wondering what in the world was that, that is our 11 o'clock choir, and they are that good every single Sunday morning. Okay, so choir, thank you guys. [Applause] In fact, choir, y'all are so good, we just might invite them to the 9:00 service every once in a while as long as they'll let us and invite our drums and guitars to the 11:00 service. We'll make a trade-off every once in a while. But choir, again, thank you so so much for that. you know, as they're kind of getting deceated and stuff, I just want to take just a second for us just to have a prayer right where we are. There's just as you look over life, there's just lots of things going on right now. You've been watching the news in Kurville, Texas in that camp there. And and as I say that, my heart kind of gets emotional because um I've had the privilege for the last, this will be my 19th year to traveling about 45 minutes from Kurville and doing a kids camp every summer. I go there in two weeks and there were churches that were involved in that flooding and stuff that some of the kids won't even be at the camp this year. And so I want to take a time just to pray for those families. Pray for all those people there. Um also just met my friend Kevin over here. Um Kevin's right there. And Kevin just moved here from California and his wife's having surgery Sunday or this next week and he said, "Keith, I'm just anxious." And so we're going to pray for you. After the service today, some of our elders are going to gather around you and pray specifically for you and your wife. But one more to pray for Kevin back there in our family viewing room. Olivia's back there. Olivia is a high school student that had her second hip major hip surgery this past couple of weeks ago and um went through some kind of like scary moments, but she is here today. So, while we pray and intercede, we're also going to pray and thank God for all that he's doing. So, would you just pray with me um as we get ready for the rest of the service? Lord Jesus, you are in control. And there's sometimes that we see what's going on in this world and we don't understand. And God, if we're really, really honest, there's sometimes we see things going on in this world that we don't just not understand. We don't even agree with. But we at this moment recognize that you are Lord and you are God and you hold all things in your hand. And so we pray for the many families in Texas that are just going through so much tragedy of life and homes and and just all that's going on. We pray for them. I pray for my friend Kevin and his family as as they're waiting on the surgery this next week. We lift him and his wife up to you and his two girls. God, thank you for the good news of Olivia and just how you're healing her. And father, so many other unspoken requests, so many unspoken burdens, so many unspoken thankfulness in this room right now. So Lord Jesus, we claim that you are Lord and you are God. And we simply just say, would you be in control? And we pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen. And all the people said, amen. You know what? Um, when Denise and I moved into our new house a couple of years ago, um, we got all the new the kitchen appliances and we've got the most amazing Oops. They're waving at me. Hey kids, this is your time to leave cuz I'll be really boring for you. So, you need to go ahead and leave right now cuz you have your kids ministry down. Woo! There went a whole lot of mamas going, "Thank you, Jesus. He answers prayers because I couldn't put up with this kid all in this service." So, yeah, there you go, kids. So anyway, we have this new kitchen appliances and we got this microwave that when we saw what was going to be put into our house, I was so excited. It had more bells and whistles and buttons. It could do so many things in there. It had invection oven on it. You could scan the food barcode and you could scan it and put that into the microwave and it would know exactly how to cook that food. It had a a not just reheat and preheat. I mean, all these different things. And we've been in the house for two years now. And yesterday Denise said, "Hey, I'm gonna make some popcorn. How do you make popcorn in this thing?" And I said, "Babe, for the last two years, all I can do is put two minutes or three minutes in this thing. That's all I can do." You may have the same thing. You may have an appliance. You may have a car. You may have something that has more bells and whistles and things it can do, but you never fully take take just just ability to engage in those things. Now, we laugh about my microwave, and I guarantee I could preach the same sermon in two years or 10 years. have the same illustration. And you know what I'll do in two years or 10 years? I'll know how to put in two minutes, three minutes. I will probably never access everything this microwave can do. That's just me. And we may laugh at that and you may look in the mirror and see yourself in my illustration. But it's not so funny when we get beyond microwaves and appliances and cars and we look at all that God has for us in our lives and we look and we never fully access everything that God has and wants to do in our lives. Um, I was thinking back several years ago when I first started ministry, one of the first students, high school students I ever met, his name was Josh. And Josh was a good kid. Josh was a 10th grader in in high school and he would come every single Sunday morning and he would come on Wednesday nights and his family came to church and he was just a good kid. Did all the right things. He would bring his Bible. He was just good. But when I had these conversations with Josh, this 10th grade boy, he never really, I'm going to use this term, got all of Jesus. It was almost like he would check off the box that he read his Bible. He would check off the box that he went to church. But as far as just experiencing Jesus and the intimacy and experiencing Jesus and the relationship that God wants to have with him, he just always came up short and he would come to me going, "Keith, if this is all there is to God, I'm coming now because my parents make me, but when I get out of school, when I get out of my parents house, I don't see me still doing the church thing, the God thing, because I just and I would look and I'm going, God, Josh, you're missing the fullness of God." Now, that's Josh's story. Um, but here's a sad thing. That was 30 years ago when I first started ministry. But I have lost count of the number of people that I've met that are claim and they are followers of Jesus, but they're just going, "Is this all there is to it?" They just missed the fullness. They're missing the fullness of all that Jesus offers. And as I say that, I may actually be describing you like you would call yourself a good Christian. You would call yourself a good person. and you're filling a chair, whether it's a nine o'clock or 11 o'clock and you try to read your Bible and you try to do all the good things, but you have to be really honest. When you get away by yourself, and you think about God, when you get away and you you you try to picture yourself in this intimate relationship with God like you hear people talk about, you're just going, I don't get it. You're as lost in your relationship of how to experience the fullness of God as maybe I am when I'm trying to do something new on the microwave that I don't know what all the buttons are for. Anybody identify what I'm talking about? Now, if that's you, here's the good news. We've been studying the book of Ephesians. We're like on our fourth or fifth week today and we're getting to chapter three. And the Apostle Paul understands you're not a bad person. You're just a normal person if you're missing the fullness of God. Because Paul takes time in the third chapter of the book of Ephesians and he writes a whole chapter. And his whole purpose of writing this chapter that we're going to look at today is how do you experience the fullness of God? Not just the dos and the don'ts. Not just to go here and don't go theres, but how do you experience the fullness of a relationship with Jesus? And he spends a whole entire chapter. And that's what we're going to look at today. And so if you have your Bibles, you can look it up. It's in your outline or you'll also have it up here on the screen. But we're going to be looking at that third chapter of Ephesians and we're going to start in verse one. Now, because we only have one service today and it starts at 9:00, we have an entire chapter to work through today. But we don't usually get out here till noon. So, we're going to be okay. So, just relax here for just a second. But let's start in chapter 3 verse one. This is what the Apostle Paul says. He says, "For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ on behalf of you Gentiles." Now, here's what he says. For this reason, what reason is he talking about? Everything that he's just talked about in chapters one and chapter 2, the things that we've been looking at. In fact, Paul is this guy that that he reminds me of someone in my life. I would not mention her name because I'm married to her. But when my this person begins telling a story, we know this. She may tell you where she went that she went to the grocery store, but she's going to tell you what color socks that she wore. She's going to tell you what roads that she went down. She's one of those people that instead of telling a story from point A to point D, point B, she's going to tell you a story from point A, over here, over here. Anybody married to one of those? Don't leave me hanging right now, people, okay? Because I'm in trouble when I get home if you don't if you don't say something there. But Paul has this tendency when he's writing, he will just go off on these tangents. Now, they're good tangents just like the tangents that I hear in her stories, but they're tangents and you're like, where where are you going? And so, here's what happens when Paul says this. For this reason, I Paul a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles. He goes on one of his loop-de-loop tangents. And if you look read today verses 2 through13, he is really just redescribing, reviewing, redoing everything he just talked about in chapters 1 and two. And so, because we've been preaching that the last couple of weeks and studying that together, we're not going to look at verses 2 through13 today. But I really encourage you to take some time this afternoon or this week and look back over it because it's going to remind you of all the good stuff that God's given us, all the benefits that he's given us. But then what happens in verse 14? Paul picks it back up. And that's the part I want us to focus on right now. Verses 14-9. And this is what he says. 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 your 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 the length and the height and the depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. And look what he says here at the very end. That you may be filled with all the fullness of God. If you're taking notes or if you've got your hand out and you're drawing things, circles around things, I want you to circle to be filled with the fullness of God. So I said, Paul is writing this whole chapter three to go. I don't want you to just go through the motions as a Christian. I I don't want you just to experience what little bit is that you think you can get. I want you to experience everything that God has for you. and those verses and those words preceding the fullness of God. He outlined three things that we can be pursuing in our lives that will lead us to experience the fullness of God. So if you're here today and you're going, Keith, man, you spoke my language. I I sound more like your friend Josh from many years ago than I do like a fully functioning follower of Jesus. this day is for you because three things that we need to be pursuing in our lives as followers of Jesus that will allow us to experience the fullness of God in our lives. If you're taking notes, here's the first one. If we want to be filled to the fullness of God, here's the first thing we need to be pursuing. We need to give up control of the direction and the details of your life. We need to be willing to give up control to the direction and the details of your life. Here's how Paul put it. Let me read back verse 16 and 17. He says, "I pray that you being strengthened with power through his spirit and your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." Circle that word dwell. Paul says this that you Jesus needs to dwell in your hearts through faith and he uses this word dwell and this idea of dwell is more than just like staying at night or going for a visit. It is really ownership that that God wants to needs to we need to be pursuing in our lives to allow God to take ownership of our very lives of our hearts. You know, when Denise and I moved to Colorado a couple years ago, we didn't realize it, but we opened up an Airbnb at our house that we opened up had never had a basement, like felt like a full house in the basement. And so, all of our friends and family that don't live in Colorado realize, "Hey, they've got a free place to stay." And so, it is not unusual for somebody to call say, "Hey, we miss you. Can can we come see you?" Which means we're too cheap to get a hotel room. Can we stay in your basement? Exactly what that means. And we love our friends. And so we've had a multiple people come through. In fact, the last people that came through our house, they almost we called them squatters. Like they moved in and we didn't know if they're ever going to move out. Thank God that Daniel and Bianca, our new worship leader, finally got a house because he finally moved out of our house after 6 months. But here's what happened. When Daniel and Bianca showed up at our house, they had three or four suitcases and we're like, "Okay, here's what we're going to do." And Denise laid out the rules of the house. She goes, "Here's your bedroom down in the basement. Listen, if you guys want to stay down and watch TV and not come up with us, don't feel like you're a guest. You know, you're going to need some time alone." And she cleaned out a entire closet and said, "Here's your closet." But as she's walking down, they said, "Oh, what's in that room?" You know what she said? You'll never know. Cuz that door was shut. And she's like, "That is not for you. That's the owner's room. That's not the guest's room." You know what was in that room? all the junk she pulled out of the closet so they could have a closet and put over in that room. As long as we're in loving company, you know what's still in that room? All the stuff she hasn't put back in that closet yet. But that's another story another day and some marriage counseling we're going through right now. But that closet, that room was completely off limits. And we said, "Y'all you guys come upstairs. Our refrigerator is yours. The pantry is yours. And so anything you want is yours." And they said, "Well, what's over in that room?" We said, "Oh, that's our bedroom. you don't go in there either. And they're like, "Well, is there a bathroom over there?" Yes, there is, but your bathroom is downstairs. And so, we set up these loving boundaries because they were guests and they weren't owners. They could go in this room. They could use that closet. They could go into this pantry, but don't you touch that. Don't you think about looking in over there, and you stay away from that room. We're the owners. We can go to any room, any closet we want to. You're the guest. You can't. When Paul is writing to the Ephesians, he says, "I pray that you will let Christ dwell in your hearts." He's saying, "I pray that you will allow God to be the owner of your heart. As the owner, he has the right to go into that closet. As the owner, he has the ability and the right to go into that room. as the owner, anything in our lives and our hearts are his. But one of the reasons that followers of Jesus do not experience the fullness of God is because they treat Jesus more like a guest than an owner. Hey God, you can have this part of my life. You can have Sunday, but don't you touch Friday. You can have this relationship, but I don't want you near this relationship. You you can try to make this attitude better, but I'm going to hang on to this attitude and I'm going to love this person and this person and this person, but I am not intending on loving this person. And so all of a sudden, we take our hearts and we take our lives and we begin to sequester what God can touch and what God can use and what God can go into. Then you know what happens then? He's not dwelling in our lives. He's visiting our lives. And most of the time he visits when when we invite him not when he comes over himself. And so in our lives we miss the fullness of all that God hap has for us because we don't allow him to dwell in our lives. That's the reason that point is if we want to experience the fullness we need to give up control of the direction and the details of our lives. For those of you that are taking notes, I'm going give you an exercise if you're not taking notes as an exercise of the mind. What is a direction or a detail right now? And a direction and a detail could include an attitude, a relationship, a position that you need to give to God. You see, here's what happens. We think if we hang on to it, we're in control. But when we hang on to it, we're really out of control. Because the best control we want for our lives is not ourselves but God in control.

And so as you think about how do we experience the fullness of God? The first direction, the first step that we take is simply to give up the control of the direction and the details of our lives. Here's the second thing Paul says. He says this, "Wrap your mind around the personal love that God has for you." Wrap your mind around God's personal love for you. I'm going to let that one sink in here for just a second because for so many people, God is more this thing and big thing that we obey than a person that we love. is more a religion than a relationship. And Paul comes in and let me just read the verse to Ephesians chapter 3:18. He says this, "I pray that you may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and the height and the depth of the love of Christ." You see, Paul understood this that the fullness, the really, really, really knowing God, the fullness, not just having like one button to push and get this little bit from God, but to get all that God has for him. He realized this, that there is a love that he has for us, that if we never wrap our heads around it, if we never try to understand how much he loves us, we will truly miss the fullness of what he has to offer us. Because what God has to offer us is not necessarily a path to go down. It's a relationship to walk through. And he uses those terms, the breadth, the length, the height, the depth. Let me give you just a couple of verses that help us understand that better. As you think about the breadth, 1 Timothy chapter 2 verse 5 and six, I love the way the message puts it. There's one mediator between God and us. And this is Paul writing to young Timothy, this young man that he's discipling. He goes, "There's one mediator between God and us, Jesus, who offered himself in exchange." And look what he says, "For everyone held captive to sin to set them free." That the breadth, the width of how much God loves us, he sent his own son, Jesus. And he says, "I didn't send him for a select few. I sent him to everybody." And I want you to know there's days in my life, and I'm sure you felt this way before, going, "Why would God love me? Why would God choose me?" As we learned about in chapter one, he did it because he loves you. He's not picking and choosing, well, she's acting really good and I really like him and he seems like he's on the right path. I'm going to love those. He goes, I love you in your dirty filthiness called sin. He did not exclude anybody. I had a wall hanging on my office wall for a long time and it said this. I asked Jesus how much he loved me and he stretched out his arms and he died. That is the width of how much God loves us. But Paul said not only just the width and the breath, he said the length of how much. We need to comprehend the length of how much he loves us. Jeremiah 31:3 says this. God told them, "I've never quit loving you and never will. Expect love, love, and more love." Man, let that ring into us. God said, "I have never quit loving you and I never will. Expect love and love and more love." We are never out of God's love. A great theologian put it this way. That great theologian was Buzz Lightyear. God loves us from infinity and beyond. There is never an end to the length of how much he loves us. It was his It was the width. It was the length. It was the height. Psalms 103:11 says this, "As high as heaven is over the earth, so strong is his love to those who fear him." God loves us as much as from here all the way to the heavens. I'm not much into astronomy. I'm not much into studying the sky, but here's a little facts I learned this past week. The sun is 93 million miles from us. Neptune is 2.7 billion miles from us. That's all part of the sky that the psalmist is talking about there. God loves us in a way that's longer than that. You know, thinking about the sky and how far things away. I don't know about you, but I wish the fireworks were a lot further away on July 4th. Huh? Like I know I've stepped over it and being old because Denise and I thought, well, there's two miles away from us. The community was putting on a fireworks show on July 4th. So, we went on our back deck going, "This is the first time ever that we don't have to travel somewhere. we can just go to our back deck and we could see those fireworks. Well, the people across the street from us that we have kind of this gully in between us and them, they decide to put on their own fireworks show. They must have spent, I promise you, two or $3,000 on fireworks because it wasn't the little blackjack black firecrackers, black cat firecrackers. It was a show that was a hundred yards from our house. You said, "Why do you think you've gotten old?" Because I prayed it would stop really quick. Okay? Like I saw one firework and I'm going it's 8:45 people. Time to go to bed.

But God loves us as far as as far as we are from here to the sun. As far as we are from here to Neptune. Pick some other solar system. That's how far that's how much God loves us and the depth. Paul wrote this in the book of Romans. He says, ' Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way. There's no trouble. There's not hard times. There's not hatred. There's not hunger. There's not hopelessness. There's no bullying threats. There's no backstabbing. Not even the worst sins listed in scripture will drive a wedge between you and God. There are some that think that they will never experience the fullness of God because they've done this. They'll never experience the fullness of God. God will never love them completely because they've done this so many times. That how could God love somebody with your sinful past? Paul wrote there there and said there is nothing there is no sin that will ever drive a wedge between how much God loves you. Paul went on to say this in verse 38. He says, "I'm absolutely convinced that nothing, nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable, absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus has embraced us.

I remember when my daughter was three or four, she was learning to potty train and she was doing pretty good with number one, but number three, she wasn't doing so good and she got to be like four years old and she would still not hope this is appropriate for a Sunday morning sermon. She would never poopy in the potty like she could do a will in her diaper, but she wouldn't just something about her. She wouldn't go in the potty. And we're like, "Alex, you can't go to preschool if you don't learn to go poo poo in the potty." And she's like, "So, here's what she learned. She learned to hold it. We would put big girl panties on her. She'd go to preschool all day long. And as soon as she got home, she'd worn a diaper on, and she'd run the corner, and you knew exactly what she was doing. And when she finished doing that, you know what she'd want to do? She'd look at her daddy, put her arms out like this. Daddy, come love me. I'm going, "Girl, you stink. I'm not touching you. Go love your mama for a while." But here's the deal. My daughter, as a four-year-old, had this knowledge, this understanding of her love for her father that nothing, the stink of what she just did would keep me from loving her. And I know this, there was some basic emotional needs met when I'm like, "No, come on. And I'll love you. and I'll clean you up and make you clean like you should be and put a love inside of her that a couple of months ago when I got to hug her and say goodbye um give her away at her at the wedding altar of her wedding, it wasn't a loss, it was a gain because I knew that love would still say the same. Listen to me. For some of you here today and you're like, I I I come to church and I do the right things and I try to read the Bible and I try to pray, but I just don't Keith, what you're talking I just don't feel it. I just don't get it. I'm not experiencing the fullness of it. Listen to me. So many times it's because we're trying to do it all instead of letting him do it all. And maybe he brought you here today and he just wants to wrap his arms around your stinky sinful life and going, "I love you the way you are. I love you too much to leave you the way you are. But I'm going to love you just as you are today. And until we can embrace that love and until we allow him to embrace us, we will never experience the fullness of what it means to have that relationship with God. So maybe maybe maybe the to-do list for you today is simply do this. Just open your arms up and say, "God, I don't get it. I don't understand why." And it even seems foreign because all of my my religion has been up in my head, but today I open my heart and God, I just would you love me? And the Bible says he will embrace you. And there's nothing that will keep a wedge in between you and him. That's his doing, not our doing. Here's the last thing. Paul says this, that not only are we to to make sure that that in all of this that we give up control of the direction, the details, that we wrap our mind around his personal love for us. But the last one is to embrace a relationship with Jesus more than a rel a religion about Jesus. To embrace a relationship with Jesus more um than a religion about Jesus. Paul says this in Ephesians chapter 3 verse 19. And to know the love that surpasses knowledge. She goes, "I pray if you want to know the fullness of God, experience the fullness of God, I pray this that you would know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge." There's a difference between knowing with your head about Jesus and knowing your heart and your relationship knowing Jesus. Can you imagine if you've never had an Oreo cookie before? And so you came in today um and you're like, "Well," and I'm like, "Well, let me describe an Oreo cookie to you." And so my description is very factual description. Like they come in this blue package in the store and the package is made amazing because you just kind of open it up and you can grab like four cookies out instead of one at a time out of a sleeve. It's like the most amazing package. And then you reach in there and get you one of those cookies and it's got a chocolate dark outer crunchy side and it's got some white creamy filling on the inside. And I try to describe it to you the best I can. or I reach into the bag and I hand you one. And I said, "Let me tell you how Jesus eats his Oreo cookies the right way. You take it and gently turn so you can break it apart and you lick all the frosting off and then you dip the chocolate cookie into your milk until it gets just soggy enough that it doesn't break off and you eat it." Now, would you rather me tell you about Oreo cookie or would you rather eat one of the Oreo cookies? You with me? Who wants to eat it? We'll see at my house at 3:00 today. Okay, Oreo party in my house today. But but here's what Paul is saying. So many followers of Jesus know the facts and they just know the facts just like the Oreo cookie. But he goes, "I pray this that you know the facts, but you also experience tasting it." Because can you imagine going your whole life and never actually eating an Oreo cookie, but someone just always tells you about it? It might be good. You might finally in your mind create what it's the experience is like, but the first time you dip that Oreo cookie in the milk and you eat it, you're going, "Oh, that's what I've been missing." And so in our relationship with Jesus and the fullness of Jesus, that's where the relationship comes. It's as much the feelings of the relationships as the facts of the scripture. It's not either or. It's both and the facts and the feelings, the intimacy and the intellect. And we move towards that and knowing we're in a relationship when we embrace the love of God and we give up the control of the details and the direction of our lives. So those three simple things that we give up control of the direction and details of our life that we wrap our minds around his love for us and that we embrace a relationship with Jesus more than a religion about Jesus. Paul says, "You want to experience the fullness of him, you move in those three directions. That's what you begin pursuing in your life. That's what you begin chasing after in your life." And then he concludes by saying this in verse 20. Now, now that you get it, now that you understand how do you experience the fullness of Jesus is through those three things. Now, what do you do? He goes, "Now to him," meaning God. now to God. Now to Jesus who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ever ask or think according to the power at work within us. You're going, "Okay, Keith, everything you just described, those three things, that's what I want. That's what I'll start pursuing. That's what I'm going to chase after." And this is what Paul says. Listen, here's the cool thing. You start chasing after that to grab hold of the fullness. God has even more than that in store for you. He's got immeasurably more for us than we can imagine. Even if I went home today and I studied the the manual of my microwave and I said, "Well, I'm going to start doing this. I'm going to start doing this one." I know my technological ability and I know what's going on in that microwave. There's still a whole lot more that I'll never ever get to. I immeasurably more than I'll ever get to. And no matter what we can dream of, because maybe you're here today and you're like, "Keith, I know the fullness of God." Here's the deal. No, you don't. Because there's more fullness in what you know. I pray to God that I never hit the pinnacle of like, God, I've got you because if I've got you, the rest of my life is all downhill from there. He has so much bigger, so much grander, so much greater than we could ever dream of. He has so much more love, so much more intimacy, so much more relationship than we could ever dream of. I just described the Oreo cookie to you, but you understand this. There's an Oreo cookie immeasurably more better than that cookie. Chocolate dip fudge Oreo cookie. Okay? Like if I get to heaven and there's not chocolate chip fudge dip Oreo cookies in heaven, I will be disappointed. Okay? I can put an Oreo cookie in my hand and a chocolate dip Oreo fudge dip cookie in this hand. One is immeasurably more better than the other. God's got his hand up going immeasurably more better. And then he goes on to say this. To him be the glory in the church in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever. Now stick with me and I'll close. He says to him be the glory in the church. You see our relationship with Jesus is individual. And he wants us to discover him and experience him in his fullness. But the glory he gets is not through you. It's through us. You see, when you and you and you and you and me and you and you and you and all of us take a step towards experiencing that fullness, we create a picture for the world to see that cannot be duplicated any place else. There's another way to put it. If you continually just check off the box, oh, I'll I'll read my Bible. Oh, I'll go to church. I'm not going to really pursue experiencing the fullness of God, you are affecting the glory that God wants to do through the church for the world to see. Can you imagine if all of us left here today going, you know what? I'm gonna live in the fullness. I don't get it all. I'm not gonna be great at it, but I'm gonna live in the fullness. And we went to our workplaces and we went to our communities and we went to our neighborhoods and wherever we went, we're like, I'm going to live in the fullness. And we gather here on Sunday morning together and the fullness of one, the fullness in another, and the fullness of another, and the fullness of another, like the fullness of all of us in the room. Can you imagine? I think people are driving down the road going, "Woo, put the brakes on. I need to go see what's going on there." And then it says this, "To all generations." You know what I love about that?

God's fullness is not for older people. It's not for mature people. It is from the kids who left this room and they're downstairs right now and they in their little seven-year-old minds are experiencing the fullness of Jesus in a way that a seven-year-old mind can understand. I love it because my friend Josh, this young boy that the 10th grade that I told you about years ago, he called me about five years ago and he said, "Keith, I got it. I got Jesus now." So, it's not depending on our age. It's not dependent on our season of life. Where we are, God says, "I want you to experience the fullness of it." I am thankful. as a fourth grade boy when I was walking down the road of Six Flags over Texas and the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, "I want you. I know more now than I did then. I've experienced more now than I did then. But I'm thankful that God didn't wait till now to give me what he gave me then." So if you're here today, regardless if you're in middle school or high school or elementary or college, your midlife or your older life, no matter where you are in life, God says, "Come because the glory of me will shine through all generations when we live in the fullness of God." And then one last word in the last verse, he says, "To him be the glory and the church in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever. Amen. Do you know what that word amen means? So be it. You know why we can say amen. So be it. Because God dreamed it up and not us. If these were some ideas that I brought you going, hey, I might try this. You might try this. I'm not sure if I could look at you going say amen because it's Keith's idea. I don't know. But Paul goes, this is what God said to experience his fullness. So be it. Amen.

Would you look at somebody around you and just say amen.

Amen.

You know, one of the ways that we the reasons we can say amen is because of what Christ has done for us. He did it all. All of chapter one and chapter two is about what Jesus did for us. And as a church, we get to come together weekly. And one of the things that we value is that we remember what Jesus did for us through communion. I'm going to go ahead and ask our deacons to go ahead and go to our tables. A lot of times when we have one service like this, we do communion a little bit different. So, we're going to do it at the table. Let me tell you what you'll get when you get over there. We're not doing an intention. Sometimes we do it this way. You'll get the bread and you'll dip it in the drink. We have individual cups for you that already pre- poured. You don't have to take the plastic thing off like we normally do. So when you get over there, just walk up there and you the deacon will hold the bread and take a piece of bread and then just take your cup of drink. And and here's why we do this. Because Jesus said, "Do it." He said, "Until I come again, do this in remembrance of me." We remember his death, his burial, and his resurrection. But we remember that he loves us. We remember that he wants all of our details in all the directions in our lives. We remember that it's about a relationship, not just a religion. And so today, as you drink and take the bread, remember that God wants you to experience the fullness of him through the death and the burial and the resurrection if the of his son Jesus. If you've never stepped into that relationship with him, it simply just on your part just says, "Jesus, I need you. I'm a sinner. I'm dirty. I need you. So be it." And you can pray that prayer today just right where you are. Just just invite Jesus. Just would you take over my life? Would you be the Lord of my life, the savior of my life? You do that today. Then as you take communion, it's going to be even more because you're like, "Ah, I get it." As you move towards that fullness, I'm going to pray and after we pray, I'm just going to invite you to go to the tables. There's one back here. There's one over there and two the sides. Here's what I encourage you to do. Don't like you have to run and make a line. Maybe you need to stay and talk to God a little bit of your chair before you get up. Even as you get up the table, if maybe you're with your family, I invite you this one. Instead of going one by one, maybe the family steps up to the table together and take your communion together at the table. Or if you do it individually, that's fine, too. When you finish taking communion, return back to your seat and then I'll come back up in a few minutes. If you're a guest with us here today, we're so glad you came. We believe in open communion, which means this that if you're a follower of Jesus, you're more than welcome to participate at the Lord's table with us. And so, Father, we come for you now. And Jesus, it's because of you. Your death, your burial, and resurrection. We remember what you did for us. And may it influence, may it push us to Monday to live for you. And we pray this in your name. Amen.