Ephesians 3:14-21

&nb= sp;

We pray for knowledge and love,

to= grow into the fullness of God.

A sermon preached by

Rev. William O. (Bud) = Reeves

First United Methodist Church

Hot= Springs, Arkansas

August 19, 2007

Theodore Roosevelt was= one of the most popular and vigorous Presidents ever to serve our country. He was the 26^th Preside= nt, serving from 1901 to 1909. He= was an avid athlete and outdoorsman; entertainment at the White House in those = days often including boxing matches, judo demonstrations, and long, strenuous hikes—and the President participated! TR (his nickname) was an explorer,= a big-game hunter, and the leader of a cavalry outfit in the Spanish-American= war called the Rough Riders. His = enthusiasm and energy seemed boundless.

But it was not always so. In fact, Theodore Rooseve= lt grew up as a rather sickly, puny child of well-to-do parents in Manhattan. He suffered from asthma and poor eyesight. But at the age of t= welve, he received a challenge from his father.&n= bsp; “You have the mind, but you have not the body,” he said, “and without the help of the body, the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must make the body.”

So Theodore Roosevelt = began spending time every day building up his body as well as his mind. He lifted weights, rode horseback, hiked, hunted, rowed, boxed, and did anything else physically challenging he could do. By the time he was = an adult, he was a picture of physical fitness.

In the world of politi= cs as well, Theodore Roosevelt followed a long process of growth. He started out as the police commissioner of New York City<= /st1:place> and eventually worked his way up to the highest office in the land. While President, he made the United States a world naval power. H= e got the Panama Canal built. And he won a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating an end to the war between Russi= a and Japan.

After he left office, = Roosevelt continued to lead expeditions to remote p= arts of the globe. When he died in= his sleep in 1919, then Vice President Marshall announced that “Death had= to take him sleeping, for if Roosevelt had = been awake, there would have been a fight.” When they removed his body from his deathbed, do you know what they found under his pillow? A book! To the very end, Theodore Roosevel= t was striving to learn and improve and grow.[1]

A successful life is a process of growth. What does = not grow dies. We are a people of= life, not death. So we believe in growth— spiritual, relational, emotional, numerical, financial—= if it’s good, positive, beautiful, or true, we want to grow it.

I enjoyed the story ab= out a lady who was having her yard landscaped.&n= bsp; She asked the landscape gardener to design a beautifully landscaped = yard—plantings, trees, fish pond, rose garden—it was a big project. She handed the gardener a picture = from Better Homes and Gardens magazine = and wanted to know if it could look like that.

The gardener looked at= the picture and said, “It’s hard to know. We’re dealing here with livi= ng things. I can show you a patt= ern, I guess, but these things grow. So you’re going to have to keep on planting, cultivating, trimming. Who’s to say what it will lo= ok like someday? It’s just= never going to stop growing!”

The lady later confide= d to a friend, “I had no idea I was hiring a philosopher. But that little speech reminded me= that growth doesn’t stop when we reach our full height.”= = [2] Indeed, we don’t stop growin= g just because we reach adulthood. G= rowth goes on until we die. The day= we stop growing is the day we die, if not physically, then in a hundred other ways.

The Christian life is a process of growth. Too often we confuse becoming Christian with an event, a moment when we are saved or commit our lives to Christ. But life in = Christ is a process of becoming. It = begins when we are baptized, and it never ends until we enter our heavenly home at= the end of our life. Christianity= is not something you do for a while and then quit, because when you quit, you = stop growing, and when you stop growing, you die spiritually. We can’t always say what our= lives will look like in a year or two or five or ten. But this we do know: between now a= nd then, we can grow.

The apostle Paul praye= d for growth. He was all about star= ting and growing new communities of believers wherever he shared the Gospel. He wanted these new believers in C= hrist to grow as disciples. How do = we pray for growth today? How do= we pray to keep on growing as disciples of Jesus?

First of all, we pray for knowledge. The truth of God is so immense, it’s like the words of the old spiritual, “So high, you can’t get over it; so low, you canR= 17;t get under it; so wide, you can’t get ‘round it.” But Paul writes to the Ephesians, “I pray that you may have the= power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and heig= ht and depth.”[3] We want to understand, to comprehend the reality of God—to the extent= we can. A Biblical faith is neve= r a shallow faith, and vice versa. There is so much to learn. God calls us to go deep in comprehension, to grow in our understandi= ng. So we start where we are, and we l= earn something. Then we learn something else, and we continue learning until we = do have a better grasp on what God is all about.

Knowledge is a valuable thing. Charles Steinmetz was a pioneer and a genius in the development of electrical engineering. He retired from General Electric, = but one time they called him back to consult on a problem that none of the engineers could figure out. Steinmetz spent several minutes walking around the complex of machin= es where the breakdown was occurring, then he took a piece of chalk out of his pocket and made an “X” on a particular piece of machinery. When the engineers took the machine apart, the source of the problem was right under the “X” that Charles Steinmetz had made.

When the engineers got= the consulting bill from Steinmetz, they were even more amazed, because he char= ged them $10,000—a huge sum of money in those days—for just a few moments work. They returned t= he bill with a request that he itemize the charges. A few days later it came back with= this explanation: “Making one cross mark--$1.00. Knowing wh= ere to put it--$9,999.00”[4]

We may not get $10,000= for knowing the length and breadth and height and depth, but we will have treas= ure in heaven. Knowledge of the t= hings of God is very valuable, because one of the ways we keep growing is to keep learning.

However, growth is about more than knowledge; it’s also about love.= The head and the heart work togeth= er to produce Christian growth. Paul prays in our text today that the Ephesians will be “rooted and grounded in love,”[5] and will “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.”[6] This is where the real po= wer of faith comes into play. Love i= s the power of life. It transforms = our lives and sets us free and puts us in motion.

Martin Buber, the 20th century Jewish philosopher, told about his grandfather, who was lame. Someone once asked him to tell the= story of his master in the Law, and Buber’s grandfather, who loved his old teacher, began to talk about how he would hop and dance as he prayed. As he told the story, Buber’s grandfather got so involved that he rose up out of his wheelchair, and he himself began to dance and hop, to show how his master had done. From that moment, he was cured of = his lameness.= [7]

We love our Master, too. He is the Son of God. He is our Lord and Savior. He has showed us the way to live.<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> He has taught us many things. But he has also showed us the way = to love, as he gave his life for us. We love him, and rooted and grounded in love, our relationship with = him surpasses knowledge. It heals= us from spiritual lameness. It g= ives us strength to stand on our own two feet.&= nbsp; It gives us power to tell and retell the story. It fills our hearts with so = much joy that we just want to dance! Love keeps us growing.

Love causes us to grow because love is the indwelling power of God.= Love in our hearts is the Spirit of= God alive in us. Listen to what P= aul prays: “I pray that, accordin= g to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.”= = [8] Love is the foundation of= it all, the power for growth, the presence of the Spirit. When we love, the Spirit is alive = in us, there’s no way around it—we grow.

Robert Webber was a se= minary professor and expert on early Christian worship who died of cancer justthis past April. He once told abou= t a bicycle journey he took with a colleague of his. During a rest stop, Dr. WebberR= 17;s friend said something he would never forget: “Bob, all I really want = in life is for the Word of God to take up residence inside of me and form me i= nto Christ-likeness.” That = hit Robert Webber so hard because all of his academic knowledge and training had taught him to ask, “What does the Word say?” but never “H= ow can it live in me?”[9] That’s the real deal. It’s one thing to know what = the truth is, but yet another to have it live in your heart. It’s one thing to know all a= bout Jesus and the Bible and church history and theology. That’s all well and good, but it’s not the same as knowing Jesus Christ personally. That takes love.=

The goal of this process of growth is living a life completely fill= ed with God. It is something I have not achieve= d yet, but I long for it with every fiber of my spiritual being. Paul calls it “the fullness of God.” “I pray,” he says, “…that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”= [10] What does that mean exactly?<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> I don’t know. But I know it will be glorious. At the beginning and at the end of= our Scripture text, Paul talks about the glory of God living in us. In Colossians 1:27, Paul refers to “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” The fullnes= s of God is Christ in us—that has to be glorious!

It’s also abundant. Jesus came to give = us life in all its abundance, and here Paul prays “to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.”= [11] That’s it—massive, overflowing, extravagant, humongous, abundant—that’s the fullne= ss of God.

Where do we look for t= he fullness of God so we can grow into it?&nb= sp; In Jesus Christ! As Colossians puts it, “In him a= ll the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”[12] Jesus Christ is the power at = work within us to bring us to fullness, glorious fullness, abundant fullness, the= fullness of God.

So we pray today to be engaged in the process of growth—to know more, to love more, to be indwelt by the Spirit. It doesn’t happen in a day, but it happens daily as we walk the walk with God.

John Maxwell, a former= pastor and leadership guru, tells a story about a woman named Anne Scheiber. She was 101 years old when she die= d in January of 1995. She li= ved in a shabby apartment in New York= City, paint and wallpaper peeling, her halls lined with bookcases covered in dust. Anne never married; she= lived on Social Security and a tiny pension from the IRS, where she had worked un= til her retirement. Even while she worked, she never got a promotion, and she had to scrimp to get by after she retired.

But Anne Scheiber was a model of thrift. She never sp= ent anything unnecessarily. She completely wore out her clothes and furniture before buying new things. She walked to the public library t= o read the newspaper rather than subscribing to one.

Imagine the surprise of everyone who knew Anne Scheiber to find out that when she died, she left her entire estate to Yeshiva University in New York City, a school she never attended and never contacted about her bequest. = The amount of her estate? $22 million!

How did that happen? When she retired from the IRS in 1= 943, Anna had saved $5,000, which she invested in stocks. She bought a little more along the= way, but never sold any of it. Eve= ry dividend she ever made she reinvested.&nbs= p; Her stock split and grew over 52 years, growing in value from $5,000= to $22 million. Anne Scheiber wa= s not a financial genius; she just stuck with the process for the long haul, and = it paid great rewards—at least for Yeshiva University<= /st1:PlaceType>.= [13]

What Anne Scheiber did financially, we can do spiritually. Pray for the length and breadth and height and depth of knowledge of God. Pray to be rooted and gr= ounded in love. Pray for the Spirit = of the living Christ to dwell in you. Do it every day. Re-invest yours= elf continually in the process of Christian growth. One day you’ll discover that= you are rich, rich in the fullness of God, so rich you’ll be touching heaven! Amen!