Such good songs this morning. We appreciate that. Beautiful winter morning. It's kind of nice in the winter here now, all of a sudden. Go out in your hoodie and do your chores. It's all right. Have to walk through four feet of snow. Man, I think we're gonna be crabby next year.

Well, we spent the last several messages studying the tremendous truths of our salvation in Christ. Paul began to praise God to give him glory back in verse 3 of chapter 1 and continued this eulogy all the way down through verse 14, extolling the greatness of our salvation in Jesus. He spoke of God's eternal salvation plan and election, choosing us for salvation before the world began and predestining us to be conformed to the likeness of Christ.

Paul wrote of redemption in Jesus because of what he accomplished on the cross, dying for us in our place for our sins, satisfying the wrath of God, and we have been redeemed through faith in him. And Paul explained to us the greatness of our salvation in that we have obtained an inheritance. Literally, God has made us his inheritance, and the Holy Spirit has come to permanently indwell us, to regenerate us and seal us. He's a deposit guaranteeing our glorification, the redemption of the purchased possession which we eagerly anticipate at his coming.

These amazing and profound truths comprise the fullness of the salvation we have in Christ, and this is the main point that Paul keeps reiterating, that we are in Christ. God has placed us into Christ, united us with him in his death, burial, and resurrection, and we are secure, we are saved, and we are complete in him. It's difficult for us to grasp the profound nature of what Paul has said here, to really take it for ourselves, understand it, know and believe who we are, what we have in Jesus. 

And so in our text this morning, Paul is compelled to pray, to pray to God that he would give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation, that he would open our eyes to fully understand the glorious nature of our salvation, and that we might have some grasp of the exceeding greatness of his power, the power that raised Jesus from the dead, working in us to accomplish his will and purpose. 

This is the essence of our text this morning, a prayer that God would give us understanding that we might more fully appreciate who we are in Christ, and that we, by his life and power in us, might live in light of our great calling. Let's look at our text in Ephesians 1 at verse 15.

"Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all."

I've given you four points on your outline this morning: praying for you, knowledge and understanding, the hope of his calling, and the exceeding greatness of his power. 

Well, it's difficult for us to truly understand the greatness of our salvation, what God has done in us to recreate us, to equip us, and the magnitude of the power, his power, that works in us to accomplish his will and purpose through us. Paul's just laid all these truths out before us and the believers in Ephesus in this great epistle, but he knows that it's only by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit that we can truly understand the profound nature of the salvation that Jesus provides and what that means for our life today and every day. So he begins to pray.

He prays for the believers here in the first chapter, and then we see a similar prayer over in chapter 3 at verse 14. I'd like to look at that prayer as well, Ephesians 3 verse 14. Paul says, "For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from 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 through his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height, to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen."

What we see in these two prayers is a desire on the part of Paul for the believers to know and understand and believe the truths of their salvation, who they are, what they have in Christ. He wants them to understand the fullness that they have in Jesus, that he is sufficient, that God has fully equipped and empowered them to live for him. They lack nothing, and they do not need something more. They need to understand what they have; they need to believe and trust in the power and grace that God provides in order to have his life manifest through them.

So this is a prayer for understanding not only what we have in Christ, who they are in him, but also how God intends to work out his will in our lives for holiness and for witness. Paul knows that it's only the Holy Spirit that can really make this salvation effective in our daily lives as we walk, and yet we have this tremendous tendency to look for something more, to doubt the truth of what God says and to seek to establish our own righteousness through our own power, through law or works or rites or rituals. 

This is our tendency to doubt the truths of our salvation, to seek to do it on our own, to fail to simply look to Jesus in faith and abide in him, trusting him and his power to produce holiness through us. So the battle of the Christian life is one of knowing; it's one of believing and trusting in the truth according to God's Word, what he says, how he plans to accomplish the fullness of our salvation, not just in justification and glorification, but in this day-to-day life of being conformed outwardly to who we are inwardly in sanctification. Paul is praying for this for each one of us.

Notice in verse 15 Paul says, "I heard of your faith in Jesus and your love for all the saints.” Faith and love, these are the true indicators of salvation. These are the commands of the new covenant, the law of Christ. I was interested when Mark was reading from Hebrews 7 this morning, I just am astounded over and over and over how clear the scriptures are about how the old covenant has been set aside, and yet we constantly have the church in our own tendency wanting to bring that law back as a rule, as a means to holiness.

The command of the new covenant is in 1st John 3:23: "This is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another as he gave us commandment." In John 6:28, you remember they came to him after he fed the 5,000. They came to the other side of the sea there and he said, they said, "What shall we do that we may work the works of God?" And Jesus said to them, "This is the work of God that you believe in him whom he sent." 

Paul was encouraged because he heard good reports that they believed Jesus and were loving one another. He thanks God for this genuine salvation evident in their lives. So what exactly is Paul praying for? We see this in the beginning of verse 17. He says that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. 

We see an interesting phrase here, the spirit of wisdom and revelation. What spirit is this referring to? We don't see the definite article here that would point us to the Holy Spirit, and of course every believer possesses the Holy Spirit according to Romans 8. So what's Paul praying for here? Is he asking God that the Holy Spirit would come to us, that we would have him? I don't think that's it. He’s not talking about the human spirit; everyone has the human spirit. 

He's asking God that the Holy Spirit would give wisdom and knowledge to the spirit of every believer to understand. The Holy Spirit is our resident truth teacher; he guides us into all truth, he points us to Jesus through the truth of God's Word. It is his power that allows our spirit to understand in an ever-increasing way the deep truths of God. This is a spirit of wisdom and revelation that Paul's talking about. 

We see a very interesting, important passage concerning this in 1st Corinthians 2. If you'd turn to 1st Corinthians 2 with me, we'll look at verse 11. "For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned."

But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. The lost man in Adam cannot understand the things of God. He is dead in his trespasses and sins, his spirit is dominated and controlled by sin; he is under bondage to law and fear of death; he is blind, my friends, and cannot understand the things of God. Why? Because they are spiritually discerned.

When a man hears and believes the gospel of Jesus Christ, many wonderful things happen. Paul's explained much of this to us in the first chapter of Ephesians. When we believe Jesus, we were redeemed, justified, made right with God. These positional truths that we are right with God, not because we are righteous or because of anything we have done, but because through faith God has imputed his very righteousness to us and our sins to Christ. Jesus died in our place for our sins; he gave to us his righteousness, the very righteousness of God. This is a positional truth that we are in him and thus God sees us as righteous in Christ.

But this is not what Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 2 when he says we have the mind of Christ. Our salvation is not just positional, as important a truth as this is; our salvation is actual. God has actually performed a great work in us in regeneration. The Holy Spirit came and indwelled us permanently and quickened our spirit. By grace he made us alive together with him. When we believe Jesus, we were not only made positionally righteous, but we also died with Jesus on the cross. We died to the controlling power of indwelling sin, knowing this, that our old man, that man in Adam, was crucified with him so that the body controlled by indwelling sin might be done away with, rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves of sin, for he who has died has been freed from sin.

We died to sin, we died to the law; therefore, my brethren, you also having become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we should bear fruit to God. For when we were in the flesh, when we were in Adam, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were working our members to bear fruit to death. But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve, how? In the newness of the Spirit, not in the oldness of the letter. And we also died to the fear of death itself. If we died with Christ, we believe we should also live with him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has dominion over him.

And as much as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared in the same, that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Because we have been regenerated, because we have been made alive in our spirit, and because the Holy Spirit has come to indwell us permanently and empower us to impart strength to our inner man, we have become partakers of the divine nature. We have the mind of Christ. We now can discern and understand spiritual things, the deep things of God.

Back in 1 Corinthians 2 verse 9, Paul says, "'Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.' We can't even conceive of it. More than we can ask or think, He does. But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God." 

The essence of Paul's prayer is that God, through the Holy Spirit, would give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. The word knowledge here speaks of a full and complete knowledge, knowledge of Him. Expositor says it was by a knowledge of God Himself, or as it may be better put, within the sphere of that knowledge, that the gift of enlightenment and the reception of further disclosures of the divine counsel were to make themselves good. The only gifts desired for these believers were gifts of a spiritual order, meaning a better acquaintance with God Himself. A better acquaintance with God Himself. Isn't that what you want? 

This is life eternal, this is sanctification, this is the essence of the Christian life, to know Him and to have an ever-increasing, deepening knowledge of Jesus, to have our life conformed to His. And my friends, this can only come through His Word and only by the power of the Holy Spirit, energizing our spirit with understanding and wisdom.

In verse 18, Paul continues, "...the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of His calling and what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints." Paul's prayer here in this section is that God might cause us to fully understand the blessings that we have in Christ, the salvation truths that he laid out in verses 3 to 14, every spiritual blessing in Christ. He wants us to understand the magnitude and power of these truths.

The phrase, "...the eyes of your understanding," is literally the eyes of your heart. We see this phrase used in the Old Testament, in Psalm 13:3, it says, "...consider and hear me, O Lord, my God, enlighten my eyes, lest I should sleep the sleep of death." In Psalm 19:8, "...the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes." 

The eyes are the window to the soul, enlightening the eyes speaks of revelation, of understanding. God often speaks of opening the eyes of men, causing the blind to see. In Acts, he said he sent Paul to open their eyes through the preaching of the gospel. 2nd Corinthians 4:6 says, "...for it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shown in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

The word heart here, we need to understand its meaning as it's used here. We use the term heart today to refer to emotions, feelings. Valentine's Day is around the corner here, and what do we see everywhere? Hearts, speaking of love and emotion, feelings, but this is not the term that the Jews and the people of Paul's time used for emotions. The heart was a place of reason, of thinking; it was the bowels that expressed emotion. 

In the Song of Solomon, you know the Song of Solomon, the love story, she said, "...my beloved put in his hand the hole by the door, and my bowels were moved for him." That's not how we talk today. In Lamentations 2:11, it says, "...mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured out upon the earth." So I'm going to tell Bobby next time I'm upset, my liver is poured out upon the earth.

But we do still say this today; if we have something that really brings us to our knees and hits us hard, what do we say? I could feel it in my guts, right? So the bowels were the seat of the deepest emotions and passions, but the heart was representative of the thoughts and reason, understanding, as it fits in the context of our text. So what Paul's praying for is that we might know and understand the greatness of our salvation, the resources that we possess that are ours in Christ.

My brothers and sisters, God's method for our growth, God's method for our understanding, our fruitfulness is through the mind, through truth, through thinking, rolling over the truth of God's Word, renewing our minds by truth, thinking God's thoughts, and choosing to believe and obey what he says through faith. I think very often in the Christian world this gets turned upside down. 

So many are looking for some new revelation, some fresh work of the Spirit, some new blessing. But verse 3 says that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. We have all the spiritual blessings that there are in Christ. We do not need some experience, we do not need some emotion to more fully experience Christ; we need a knowledge of the truth of what we have and who we are in Christ and a full understanding by the power and the work of the Holy Spirit in us, energizing our spirit and giving us wisdom and strength. 

Emotions must always flow from knowledge, from truth, not the other way around. We don't come to know God more through experiences and emotions and feelings; we come to know God more through truth, through his Word, through an ever-growing understanding of our salvation and of Jesus our Savior. And out of this knowledge, this truth, and a reckoning of it in our lives, emotions and experiences and feelings will flow. 

Think of it this way: we may sing a great hymn here in worship and as you're singing you're reading the words, you're processing them in your mind and relating them to your knowledge of the Word of God, of your salvation. Boy, this is a really good hymn. Why is it a really good hymn? Because the words are filled with truth from the Word of God, of who Jesus is, what he has done, and that truth, that greatness of that truth you are singing fills you with gratitude and praise, and you sing out with all your heart in praise and worship.

Emotions and experience do not bring truth, do not bring growth and knowledge and understanding, only revelation. Truth from the Word of God about Jesus can renew our minds, give us understanding, cause us to grow, and it's out of that truth that emotions and experiences and feelings come. Thus, our emotions and feelings should always be regulated by truth first. 

This is a very important thing to understand; we should not be seeking out experiences, emotions, and feelings; we should be seeking out truth from the Word of God by exercise of our minds and thinking and our volition to believe and hold fast to those truths. And if the emotions and experiences of worship and praise flow from that truth, as they did for Paul, I think, as he wrote this first chapter of Ephesians, then bless God. 

Let's go back to verse 18. He says, "...the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe." Paul prays that the Holy Spirit would give to our spirit wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of him, that the eyes of our understanding being enlightened we would know. 

What is it Paul wants us to know? Three things we see here in our text. First, the hope of his calling. Second, the riches of the glory of his inheritance. Third, the exceeding greatness of his power. We've learned that God has called us into this salvation, and that in this calling he has a purpose. What is the hope of his calling? 

Well, the hope of his calling here refers to the eternal plan of God to bring all things to consummation in Christ, as we saw back in verse 10. And as we saw before, this speaks of glory. Romans 5:1, "...therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice..." What? "...in the hope of the glory of God." Colossians 3:1, "...since you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things of the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, appears," listen to this promise, "...then you also will appear with him in glory." 

This calling, this hope refers to what now is, and what is yet to come in the fullness of our salvation. For example, look at Ephesians 4:1 with me. When we get to Ephesians 4:1, we get to the application section of the book where Paul begins to exhort us to apply these truths that we've learned in the first three chapters. He says, "...therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, I the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called." 

The calling here speaks of holy living. Now, today, walking, the words are literally equal weight, like a balance of scales. We need to walk, live outwardly in consistency with who we are inwardly because of salvation. So we are called to be holy, we are called to give him glory. Colossians 3:15 says, "...let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which you also were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord."

We were called to peace; we were called to praise, to thanksgiving. 1st Thessalonians 2:12, that you would walk worthy of God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory. We were called into His own kingdom and His glory. And Romans 8 and 1st John 3 tell us that this glory will be revealed in us when we see Him face to face. We've been called to suffer as we look forward to the hope of our salvation. 1st Peter 5:10, "...but may the God of all grace who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a little while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you." We've been called to eternal life, to glory by Christ Jesus.

So we see that the hope of our calling includes not only the future hope of resurrection, of glorification, of revealing of the sons of God, but also a holy life now of praise and worship and thankfulness and witness. The hope of our calling, Paul wants us to know this, he wants us to understand this.

Next, we see he wants us to understand the riches of the glory of His inheritance. Notice that it says His inheritance; this calls us back to what we studied last week in verse 11, where we saw that we are God's inheritance, His own personal possession. Remember the purpose? To the praise of His glory.

You see, my brother, my sister in Christ, this section we've been studying certainly emphasizes who we are and what we have in Christ and the truth that He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ, but the picture is much bigger here than just us as individuals in the body. Paul is laying the foundation in this section for the great truth of God's purpose in saving us and creating the body, the church, Jew and Gentile, one in Christ. 

And we see glimpses here in verse 10 and verse 18 and verses 21 to 23, and we will see Paul develop this further as we go through the book. God saved us, the church. He did this great work in us and called us and redeemed us and regenerated us and made us holy so that He might ultimately display us to the whole of creation and the principalities and powers in order to manifest His glory. 

You believe this? Can you believe the purpose that God has for you? And it's sure, it's certain, it's going to happen. We see this dimly now in the world, but it will come to consummation fully in the glorious revealing of the sons of God, the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. We see this purpose in this letter. Go to Ephesians 2:5 with me. 

Ephesians 2:5, "even when we were dead in trespasses, He made us alive together with Christ; by grace you have been saved, and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace and His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." 

Now go down to 3:8. "To me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God, who created all things through Jesus Christ, to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in heavenly places according to the eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord."

It's amazing. Go down to verse 20 in Ephesians 3. "Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us," look what he says in verse 21, "to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever, amen." 

God saved us to bring glory to Himself, and this salvation that He has accomplished through Christ, Peter tells us, is a salvation that even the angels desire to look into, to understand. This is a now thing, as God has saved us, changed us, made us in this world to shine into the darkness. We are the fullness of Christ on this earth, the church, His body. Did you notice that in our text? He says in verse 23, "which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all." 

Amazing things to ponder here. And so God, through His inheritance, the saints, the church, the fullness of Christ on this earth, shows His glory by our transformed lives, by our love, by our witness, by our praise and worship of God and thankfulness to Him as we walk worthy of our calling. And this is an eternal future truth as well when we will be glorified and Jesus comes and we are revealed for who we are. The world did not know Him; the world does not know us, but when Jesus comes, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and He will judge and He will set all things right and He will come in the fullness of His glory, and we shall be glorified together with Him as a display of the glory of God as God brings to consummation all things in Christ.

Paul prays he wants us to understand what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. And third, Paul prays that we would have fullness of understanding of the exceeding greatness of His power. Verse 19, "and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places." 

This is the real emphasis of this prayer and passage. We've talked about position and we've also talked about practice. God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing; He has regenerated us, made us alive together with Him; He's given to us the Holy Spirit to enlighten and empower us to strengthen our inner man to live for Him, and the call is for us to live in light of these truths to put them into practice in our lives that our outward living might come into consistency with who we are inwardly as Paul explains in Romans 12 to the application section of that epistle. 

But here, here in our text we see the link between position and practice, and my friends, it is power. The power of the Holy Spirit, the power of Jesus living in us. And this is such an important lesson for us for our understanding of the Christian life. The Christian life is not something that we live by some external code or law or list of rules. It's not something that we live by our power or our effort, something we can accomplish on our own. It's not something that comes by religious right or ritual or observance of days or conformity to a system or a culture. 

There's only one who can live the Christ life, and that is Christ. And this is God's plan for our victory day-to-day. Jesus has come to live in and through us by His life, by His power. 

Listen now, Paul uses four different words for power in verse 19 alone. Not a long verse. He's trying to emphasize that the accomplishment of God's will and purpose in us in the church for His glory can only be accomplished by His power. The first word is “dunamis.” You know that word; we get our word dynamite, it speaks of His mighty force, His power. The second is “energia,” which speaks of energizing, working, effective power. This is the idea of the Holy Spirit imparting strength or energizing our spirit that's an effective working power. 

And the last two words speak of force, might, strength, power. The very power, he says, the same power that He raised Jesus from the dead. The very power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in you. We must know, we must understand, we must grasp the power that is effectively working in us to accomplish God's will and purpose. We must understand the resource that we have available to us in the indwelling Holy Spirit in the very life of Jesus in us. 

Jesus described this life in a wonderful illustration in John 15, turn over to John 15 at verse 1. He said to the disciples, "I am the true vine, and my father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away and every branch that bears fruit he prunes in order that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Here's what I want you to do, men. I want you to abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 

I am the vine; you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing." We're driving down Jay last week on the way here, and Bobby said, look at the leaves on the oak trees still on the side of the road. I don't know if you ever noticed that. I remember when I was into deer hunting a lot we would rent a plane and fly, and you could find oak stands late in the winter because the oak trees hold their leaves till spring. 

Well how do those leaves come off? What happens in the spring? The moisture and the nutrients start to come up through that tree and they begin to push out the new buds and push those leaves off, those old dead leaves, and new life comes out through the branches. This is the picture that Jesus is talking about. It's not that we need to pluck off our dead leaves; it's not that we – I remember Pastor Krenz had a great illustration about this when he talked about going out in the middle of winter like this with a ladder and you go down to Super One and get a basket of apples and some string, and you go up there and you tie those apples onto the end of those branches. 

He said that's the way most people see the Christian life, but that's not how Jesus said we live the Christian life. Jesus said abide in me, remain in me, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, walk in the Spirit. All these are synonyms and what it means is that He is the source, the sustenance, the power that as we remain in Him, abide in Him, He brings that up and out through our lives like the nutrients and water that flows up through a branch and produces that fruit. This is how we are supposed to live. 

The key to our fruitful living, fruit that brings glory to God, is understanding that we walk, we live this new life in Christ by faith, independence on Jesus one day at a time, looking to Him, learning about Him, spending time with Him, getting to know Him more and more through His Word, praising Him, thanking Him, proclaiming Him. My brothers and sisters, it's all about Jesus. Without Him we can do nothing, but I have to tell you something, we have Him. I am His and He is mine forever, and it's God's very will and purpose to glorify Himself through me, and not only has He made every provision to make that a reality, it's His very life and power working in me that will cause that to happen as I abide in Him by faith, as I seek to know Him, to know the salvation He has given me by grace, and to believe Him and obey Him by faith. 

I have been crucified with Christ, do you know that? You've been crucified with Christ, too. We read that in Romans 6 earlier. I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life that I now live in this body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain. Christ did not die in vain. He accomplished the will of the Father, and He lives. He lives in me; He lives in you, and the Holy Spirit lives in us to impart strength to our inner man so that Christ might be at home, might be fully functional in and through our lives to produce His life through us. 

That is God's purpose in saving me, and He who has promised will perform it. Ephesians 3:20, "Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen."

Let's close in prayer. 

Father, we're so thankful for the salvation you have provided in Christ and the truth that you have equipped us, that you have given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, that we have that in the Holy Spirit indwelling us and the release in our death with him, with Christ from sin and law and death, and we thank you that you now live in us. And it's by your great exceeding power that you accomplish your will. Help us to trust you, to believe you, to look to Jesus, to talk about Jesus, to talk to Jesus, to tell people about Jesus. That's why we're here. That's the key, that He might live His life through us as we walk by faith. In Jesus' name, amen.