The riches God has given every believer include more than forgiveness and an eternal inheritance—they include His extraordinary power at work within us. In Part 3 of The Riches You Already Possess, we continue exploring Paul's prayer in Ephesians and discover how God's power transforms our lives in ways we often fail to recognize.

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Welcome to the Fortifying youg Family podcast.

It can be daunting to navigate through an anti marriage and family culture.

Our teacher will expound biblical principles to help fortify our families and keep these sacred institutions strong.

And now here's this week's teaching from Sam Wood.

In Ephesians chapter one.

And look with me at verse three.

I'm going to read verse three, then I'll skip down to verse 15 and read down through verse 23.

And looking at the prayer of the Apostle Paul.

So I hope this will be a blessing to you tonight.

I hope it will bless your heart tonight as much it's blessed me in studying it and preparing to share these messages with you.

Ephesians 1:3.

And I'm just going to read the first verse there.

Actually verse three, as I've said before, through verse 14 is one long sentence in the Greek.

It's no periods, there's nothing else.

It's one long sentence.

It's like Paul got overwhelmed by what he was saying and just kept on saying it.

And I can understand why.

He says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places.

Christ.

And you know, I stopped there and I think about that.

I told Debbie on the way to church here tonight.

I said, really as a believer, it would do us well to read Ephesians chapter one and especially these verses at least once or twice a week to remind us of the blessings that we have in Christ.

And this is such a powerful chapter as we look through these blessings and we talk about the blessings through these verses that he is chosen us unto salvation.

He's predestined us, he's adopted us, he's accepted us.

I mean, we can go on and on and on.

And as we read these things, our hearts ought to be overflowing with joy unto the Lord and thanksgiving for what God has done for us.

And that's the case with the Apostle Paul.

But then he transitions when we come down to verse 15 into a prayer.

And this is what we've been looking at a few Sunday nights.

And I want to continue with that tonight as we look at verse 15 down through verse 23.

Let me read it here tonight.

Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and love unto all the saints, here's Paul, as I've said before, narrows down the evidences or the test of our faith to two things here.

That is faith in the Lord Jesus and love unto all the saints.

And then he says, cease not to give thanks for you making mention of you in my prayers.

And then he transitions here and he says, here's the prayer.

That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us who believe according to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ when He raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power, and might and dominion in every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come, and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all.

After being overwhelmed in verse 3 through 14, as I said with God's spiritual blessing, Paul proceeds verses 15 through verses 17 to give us his general petition for these brothers and sisters in Christ.

And we see it in verse 17.

Here's the general petition that he gives that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.

In this general petition, he is praying for these Christians to have a spiritual knowledge of what they already actually have so that they can really know and understand their position in Christ.

Paul knows that until we understand our position in Christ, we will not live, we will not practice the Christian life the way God desires for us to practice it.

I shared a few weeks ago that Christian growth, we might say in the Christian life is making our practice equal to our anybody remember our position?

We might say that spiritual growth in the Christian life is when we make our practice equal to our position.

And so it's very, very important that we understand our position in in Christ, which Paul has given to us in verses three, through verses 14.

Now in verse 18 and following, he transitions from a general petition to three particular petitions.

So he gives us this general petition, and now we're transitioning to three particular petitions.

The first one is in verse 18.

He says, I pray that you'll know the greatness of the plan of God.

And then in verses 19 and 20, if you're taking notes or doing an outline, you might outline it this way.

He first says, I pray that you will know the greatness of God's plan.

And then in verses 19 and 20, he says, I pray that you'll know the greatness of God's power.

And then in verses 21 through 23, he says, I pray that you'll know the.

The greatness of his person.

But Paul precedes these particular petitions with a very important statement.

At the beginning of verse 18, he says this.

The eyes of your understanding being enlightened.

Since Paul is obviously addressing his prayer to God, which he is, we see that in verse 15 and verse 16 we know that the source of this spiritual enlightenment that Paul is praying for is God himself.

And we saw in a past message that the channel of this understanding to us from God is the Holy Spirit.

And the object of it in verse 17, the object of it is the knowledge of him.

That we would have a knowledge of him.

Then here in verse 18, he gives us the.

We might say or call it the organ of the spiritual enlightenment, which is the word understanding, which I mentioned, means actually our heart or our mind.

So we see the source of this prayer.

Paul is God.

The channel is the Holy Spirit.

The object is of this prayer that we may know him.

And then the organ that receives this prayer is our heart or our mind, that our understanding would be enlightened.

So Paul is praying God, through your Holy Spirit, help them to have a knowledge of you so that they might really know the things that they think that they know.

Did you get that?

God help them to really know the things that they think that they know.

You know, it's a lot of things we think we know, and we do know some about them.

But sometimes all the things we think we know we don't really, really know.

We don't really really have the depth of understanding that we need to have of those things.

So Paul is praying God, help them to not just know these things intellectually, but to know them experientially.

That is, help them to know more, not just about you, but to know you, to really know you.

How many of you really want to have that kind of intimate knowledge of God, that intimate experiential relationship with God.

Then he mentions.

He goes in and mentions at the end of verse 18 this first specific petition.

He says that you may know what is the hope of his calling and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.

So Paul prays that the eyes of their understanding, a heart, will be enlightened to the greatness of God's plan for us.

And you see two words there.

It tells us about that those Two words are what?

And the first one is what is the hope of his calling that we would understand the greatness of his plan of God's calling upon our life unto salvation.

And we talked about that in the last message, what that means.

And then secondly, that we might really know, have a real understanding of what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints is.

And what a beautiful, wonderful thing that is that we can know.

We can know these things.

Paul prays what is the hope of his calling and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saint might be?

Now I want to focus in on this second petition.

In verses 19 through 21, Paul prays that we might not only know the greatness of God's plan, but we might also know the greatness of his power.

The greatness of his power.

Look at verse 19.

And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us, Ward, who believe according to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand in heavenly places?

Now, notice in verse 19, if you like to mark in your Bible, if you like to circle words, there's four different words given in verse 19 for power.

The first one you see there, it says, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us, Ward, who believe?

So you see that first word, power in the Greek?

That's dunamos, which we get that word dynamite from, okay?

And that speaks of inherent power.

Then if you go down through this verse and look at the end of this verse, it says, according to the working, here's a second word in the Greek for power.

And that word in the Greek is energiae, which we get our word, what, from energy, okay?

Energy.

We get our word energy from that which means operative power.

So dunamis, the first word means, we might say inherent power.

The second word means operative power.

And then we see that word mighty.

That's another word for describing power in the Greek, it's kratos, which means ultimate power.

Okay?

So Paul says we have this inherent power, we have this operative power, we have this ultimate power.

And then the last word he uses there is the same word.

It's not the same word in the Greek, but it's the same word in English there that says power again.

And it's the Greek word ischos, which means endowed power.

Endowed power.

And the point that Paul is making in this verse, I think we'd be hard to miss this point.

And I don't want you to miss it tonight is Paul is saying to us that we might and praying that we might have an understanding of God's power.

Power, power, power that's working in us.

There's a mighty, mighty, mighty power that's working in us.

An inherent power, an operative power, an ultimate power, an endowed power.

There is power, the power of God working in us.

And then he gives us two evidences of this power.

And these are just wonderful evidences that he gives us in these verses.

Look at it with me.

The first evidence of this exceeding great power that Paul is describing is that we believe.

That we believe.

Look at it in verse 19.

And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us, Ward?

Who do what?

Church?

Who believe.

Who believe according to the working of his mighty power.

And notice the words according to.

When you believe according to somebody, that means that what they have done or what they have said has caused you to believe.

If I took a class in engineering back years ago in thermodynamics, and my thermodynamics teacher taught me something, and I believe that I am believing it according to what he has taught me to believe to be true.

And that's exactly what Paul is saying here.

Paul is saying that we believe because according to the working of his mighty power.

It's because of the working of his mighty power that we believe when it says, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us who believe according to the working of his mighty power?

It means that the very first evidence of his power is the fact.

Listen, folks, the fact that you believe, the fact that I believe, that we even believe God.

If you believe today, tonight in the Lord Jesus Christ, it's because of the working of his mighty power.

Listen, folks, the older I get as a Christian, the more I know and I hope it's.

The more you realize and understand.

It's a miracle that I believe.

It's a miracle that you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

It's a miracle.

Then I believe.

The more I think about that and meditate on that, as Paul would have us do, because he wants us.

He's praying that these Christians would have a knowledge and understanding of this.

That is the understanding that it's a real miracle of God that I even believe.

That I even believe.

And if you don't know.

Listen, if you don't know what a miracle of God it is that you believe, then you don't know your heart very well.

Because it says In Jeremiah, chapter 17 and verse 9, it says the heart is Deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, it says.

Who can know it?

The Bible tells us in Romans 3:10, as it is written, there's none righteous.

No, not what church?

No, not one.

There's none righteous.

No, not one.

There is none that understandeth.

There is none that seeketh after God.

Listen to me, folks, if God did not seek you, you would never seek Him.

It's because of his grace and mercy that he seeks us according to his mighty power that we believe.

Paul describes our desperately depraved position in the verses following this prayer.

And I don't really believe it's any accidents as I think.

And meditate on this in chapter 2 and verse 1.

Look at it with me and you.

Hath he quickened.

That word, quickened means to be made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past he walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also we had our conversation in times past in the lust of our flesh and fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind.

And were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

How were we quickened and made alive?

God says, Paul says in this prayer.

And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us?

Would who believe according to the working of his mighty power?

Listen, folks, if there was a casket sitting on this table right here with a dead person laying in that casket, place a million dollars inside that casket, they wouldn't say a thing.

They wouldn't do a thing.

Because what they're dead.

The only thing a dead person needs is what life.

And all of us are dead in our sins.

Depraved.

We have no hope without God.

But.

But God has quickened us.

He has made us alive by the working according to the working of his mighty power.

The evidence.

The first evidence, the first evidence of the great power of God is that we believe.

And listen, folks, even the faith to believe is a gift to us from God.

Did you realize that?

Well, go over in Ephesians, chapter 2 and look at verse 8.

For by grace you are saved.

How?

Through faith.

Through faith.

And that not of yourselves.

It is a what of God.

It's a gift to us from God.

God has to even give us a gift of faith, to even believe.

God is the Lord of salvation, not of works.

Lest any man should do what should boast.

Folks, listen, you have nothing to boast about.

I have nothing to boast about.

Everything that I am, if I'm anything at all, it's because of God.

It's because of his mighty power working in me.

Paul prays that God would remind them that God would remind us that the evidence of God's great power is we believe.

Do you take time during your week sometimes just to stop and thank God and praise God that you believe that you're a child of God and you realize God, if it wasn't for you, I'd be dead in my sins.

There's no telling.

I might be in jail, I might be in prison, I might be in a ditch somewhere, I might be divorced.

Life could be totally and would be totally different without Him.

Just to take the time and say, God, I thank you according to your mighty power.

Power, power, power, power God according to your mighty power.

I believe.

Praise his name that we believe according to his mighty power.

Now the second evidence that Paul gives us of the greatness of his power is a resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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