Potential

 

Text: Ephesians 1:15-23

Focus: The Spirit

Function: To help people realize the potential of the Holy Spirit inside of them.

¹⁵I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason ¹⁶I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers, ¹⁷that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, ¹⁸so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may perceive what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, ¹⁹and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. ²⁰God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, ²¹far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. ²²And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, ²³which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Again, in this passage, Paul talks to us about the power of the hope that we have as believers.

And I have been focusing on the hope of the second coming of Christ, but in this passage, when Paul is speaking of the hope that we have, he is speaking of something entirely different.

He isn’t speaking of the future hope of believers, but of the present hope of the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us.

This is in the introduction to his letter to the Ephesian Christians and his introductions tend to be lengthy and are oftentimes filled with prayers for the people to whom he is addressing.

So, here is his prayer that he has for the Ephesian believers. He prays that they might understand, as he says in the passage, “the immeasurable greatness of his power” for us who believe. He makes the prayer for the filling of the Holy Spirit a priority in his pastoral ministry.

God loves everyone equally, black, white, Christian, Jew, Muslim, female, male, citizen or not, rich and poor alike. God loves everyone because everyone and everything is a part of the whole of the Creation.

So, we don’t get proud or arrogant, but he does mention the unique fact that those who believe are also made aware of the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of them.

It does not make is better than other people, or “more loved” by God. But it does give to us the power that we need to transform both ourselves and the culture that we live in.

Jesus didn’t accept the status quo, and they killed him for it.

We are following in his footsteps and we do not have to follow the status quo as well. That means we change the narrative. That means we change the story by our actions. We are called to love everyone and to see in them the potential that Paul is talking about that is given to us by God through the Spirit.

Jesus died and rose again to transform the world into a place where wars cease and people stop being greedy and start treating others as well as they want to be treated. I believe the golden rule is the perfect application to the command to love God by loving our neighbor as we do ourselves.

Again, the status quo of our culture is to live for ourselves and to hoard our wealth against a rainy day.

We sometimes forget that the scripture, in Deuteronomy 8:17-18 tells us that even if we have prospered by our own industry and hard work, a commendable thing, something to feel good about, it was God who gave us the strength and the opportunities correlated with that. We have to remember that many people are poor simply because they are unlucky and we are called by God to care for the least of these.

Remember, we are talking about the hope that we have that dwells inside of us, the power of God to fulfill the missions to which Christ has called us.

But what does this mean for us to be filled like this with the power of the Holy Spirit?

I am a bit of a mystic, and I glimpse it, but I don’t really understand the mystery of God’s Spirit. Every time think I have her figured out, she blows me away with new possibilities. God’s Spirit is still moving.

He reminds us that we, as believers, are Christ’s body here on planet earth.

The scripture calls us the ones who are called out of the worldly values into God’s value of loving our neighbor as ourselves. He means “called out” from the selfish values of the world in which we live.

We are both called and commissioned by God to be Christ’s peacemakers, filled with his Spirit in this broken and fallen world.

We are, as Jesus said, the light of the world. We are here. I believe, not to curse the darkness but to light a candle to show the way.

Jesus did not come to judge the world but that the world might be restored, saved and healed through him. He is the first one who is called the light of the world. And we are his body, so we share in that distinction.

It is an interesting phrase when Paul says “...with the eyes of your hearts enlightened….” It is his prayer that they have Spirit of Wisdom and revelation while they are in the process of learning to know Christ Jesus.

God’s Spirit leads us to be like Christ. These people didn’t have the access to scriptures that we have today. God depended then and still does, not on the preacher with the scriptures as much as God depends on the internal leading of the Spirit in the life of the believer.

When he prays that they understand, he hints that they have a level of ignorance that needs to be corrected, again, BY GOD through the Spirit’s leading and not necessarily through him. He trusted in the work of the Holy Spirit and made the filling of the Spirit a priority for them in his prayers.

I do the same here in my pastoral prayer and in my preaching. But as Paul is leading by example to me here, do not depend on me but rest in the fact that God promises to give the Sprit to you because you believe.

He uses the word “revelation” here. He is speaking of the mystery of the infilling of the Spirit .

When I was a Charismatic praise team leader and wanna be Pentecostal preacher, I thought I knew a lot about the Holy Spirit because I was familiar with the more outward manifestations of the filling of the Spirit recorded in the bible such as speaking in tongues, interpreting tongues, prophecy and discerning of evil spirits.

To me, faith was about power. Mainly the power to prove that God existed by praying for and seeing miracles happen. And I have seen a few miracles in my life.

In Matthew 16:4, Jesus said it was a wicked generation that needed signs to prove the faith.

And Paul prays that they will know the power of the Spirit inside of them. He understands like all of us that we are growing and are still learning things as we grow from level to level by the leading of the Spirit.

The power is important. But not to do miracles, as I once believed, but to transform both ourselves and the culture in which we live. We pray by faith for God to do acts of justice and to stop the violence and we don’t lose hope. We don’t lose hope even though it seems as if we are becoming numb to the frequent mass shootings.

We have the power and God is with us. We believe that if we act, God will help us. That is why I keep on preaching that we cannot be silent in the face of injustice. Silence is oftentimes consent.

And I mention this because God sends the Spirit inside of us to transform both us and through that process the culture around us.

Jesus said, the witness of the Spirit of God in our lives, of course, is the way we love others.

So, I corrected my thinking from when I was a wanna be Pentecostal preacher and switched my focus to the loving justice that Jesus preached so much about.

I realize now that the proof of the faith, this love that overwhelms us, is a result of us drawing near to God.

Paul is praying here and there is power for us in our prayers.

As we pray, we learn to submit to the will and love of God in our lives and we keep on being filled with the Holy Spirit.

And the fruit of the Spirit, Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness, Faithfulness, and Self-Control will become more and more manifest in our lives.

Sisters and brothers, take your time for your own prayer and meditation. Take time to listen to God and be honest about your doubts and fears.

The Holy Spirit is here to lead us and will not let us go. God h as filled us with potential. We were made to thrive.