Jesus Doesn't Want to Just Visit Your Life|09.13.26|Transformed by Jesus, Together, for Others pt.1

There’s a difference between being a visiting guest somewhere, and feeling at home. Because when you’re a guest, you know you’re not staying long-term, so you don’t fully rest or let down or get plugged in.

I remember the first apartment Megan and I had when we were first married. I moved in a month before our wedding and started getting things set up. And Megan was bringing boxes over, and some jackets to hang in the closet, but we didn’t feel at home, you know?

And then, right after the wedding, we spent the first few weeks living there, but not QUITE unpacked.

There were still boxes stacked in the corner. Still unsure where certain pots and pans should be organized, so they just sat out on the counter.

We slept there, we ate there, but we still felt like we were visiting, we weren’t fully MOVED IN yet. It wasn’t REAL yet. It kind of felt like we were camping in our own place.

Have you felt that? The difference between just visiting, and feeling at home?

For some of you, this church still feels like a new place, and you still feel new. You haven’t quite found your people yet. You’re still unsure if you are at home here.

For some of you, that’s actually how you feel about your faith in general, because faith and church still feel like something you “visit” on a Sunday, and then go back to the rest of your life.

Well, today, we’re kicking off a message series that is digging into our mission statement as a church, because we’re trying to become apprentices of Jesus, not just attenders of church.

And we exist as a church to help you become Transformed by Jesus, together, for others. That’s our mission statement for why we exist. It’s on the slide every Sunday, it’s on our website, it’s on your bulletin… but what does it actually mean?

Well, we’re going to look at each of those phrases over the next few weeks, because it’s going to help us understand the fully alive life that Jesus is inviting us into.

Because as we are transformed to become more and more like Jesus in every part of our lives, we also learn how to engage in Christ-focused community with each other: helping each other grow and pointing each other deeper into our faith in Jesus. And THAT prompts us outward, reaching others and serving others that God places in our lives so that they can begin to experience his love and grace too.

And some of you might be like: ‘what? What does it even mean to be transformed by Jesus? I thought I was just trying to be a good Christian or get better at reading my Bible or get better at showing up to church more consistently.’

‘And I don't know what it looks like to be in Christ-centered community that genuinely propels me out to be on mission. That seems scary or heavy’… and if you’re feeling that way, you’re not alone, and that's why we need to make sure that we're starting from the right place: with Jesus.

And to be transformed by Jesus means to be transformed by his love, transformed by his leadership, and transformed by his life. And today, we're going to talk about what it means to be transformed by the love of Jesus, because he is our Savior, and his finished work on our behalf is what plants us into his divine love.

Are you excited? Are you ready? Turn to your neighbor and tell them, “Jesus loves you.” Now turn to your other neighbor and tell them, “I’m loved too.”

Now, love is a word that is thrown around a lot, but there aren’t ANY other examples of love that do any justice to what the love of Jesus is. The type of love that everyone else talks about usually has to do with pleasure, or comfort, or security. It’s usually self-focused, because people are trying to figure out what to do or be in order to get more love from others.

And then you hear about the love of Jesus, and it almost seems too good to be true! Because it’s sacrificial, and servant-hearted… but it also doesn’t seem real because the love that we see demonstrated by followers of Jesus isn’t always the lay-your-life-down type of love that is supposed to be what Jesus is all about.

And the longer we follow Jesus, we realize that Jesus didn’t just lay down his life for us as a one-time act of love, but his love is a never-ending source-of-life that he wants us to stay connected to, to become at home in.

[Scripture Ref]

And to discuss this idea more of what it means to be transformed by Jesus’ love, we’re going to look at one of my favorite prayers in the New Testament, so open your Bibles with me to Ephesians ch3 (???).

I love this prayer, because it’s written from the Apostle Paul back to people he spent over two years living with, and seeing them grow in their faith and join Jesus in his work so that the whole region heard the good news of Jesus.

And he’s writing from such a place of love and compassion for them. And as I read it, I think of how I pray for these things for all of YOU. It moves my heart for you to have this, and I want these truths spoken over each and every person in our New Life church family. So let’s RISE for the reading of God’s Word…

[Ephesians 3:14-21]

[Ephesians 3:16]

Paul starts by bowing before the Father, and recognizing that all of us are family because we all have the same father who has adopted us into HIS family. And then he starts praying for some incredible things, but notice that it’s “according the riches of HIS glory.”

Paul is asking for an outpouring and a bestowing of power and love… But not from his own riches. Not from his own supply. Not from his own belongings or experience, or wisdom.

Paul is praying that they may receive according to the riches of GOD’S GLORY! The immeasurable, unknowable, insurpassable riches of God’s glory. Out of THAT unlimited, never-ending supply… may God grant that you be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, AND…

[Ephesians 3:17]

…that Christ may DWELL in your hearts. And this is important, because we were just talking about visiting someplace and MOVING IN. Well, Paul is praying that Christ doesn’t just visit our lives, but that he DWELLS there. The Greek word used means to live there, to reside… to settle down and get comfortable.

Paul is praying that Jesus will make himself at home in your life, because he has planted you in his love, and he wants you to stay “rooted and grounded in his love.”

Now THIS is the central image I want to focus on today: to be rooted and grounded… I love how the NIV says it: “to be rooted and ESTABLISHED in his love.”

I was thinking about roots a couple weeks ago, because we had those pretty big windstorms back to back in our area, and I was driving around one day and there were multiple, huge trees that had just been toppled.

There is something awe-inspiring… and a little scary… about seeing a towering tree ripped out of the group and thrown down. Power lines taken out. Roots exposed.

There’s something not right about seeing roots exposed, because the whole point of roots are to keep you planted. To be rooted means you are firm. Secure. Strong. It means you’re drawing your nutrition and energy right from the source in the soil. Your life is drawn from the soil.

And Paul prays that we are rooted and grounded (ESTABLISHED) in the love of Christ. Not to the measure of our faith. Not to the measure of our works. But according to the riches of God’s glory.

Because it’s God that planted you in the love of Christ to begin with. Go with me for a second, because think of the image of the tree that is growing it’s roots down and becoming established there: It didn’t choose where to get planted.

If you go buy a young tree for your house, you’re actually transplanting it, because it’s already been grown and established in a nursery somewhere. And so you get a three-foot shrub delivered to your house, you dig a hole and get the soil ready, and you plant it where you choose, and you help it get rooted there and established there with the best soil imaginable, because the tree wasn’t able to grow legs and walk over to better soil once it outgrew the pot it came in.

It was picked up, carried, planted, and tended by a gardener to make sure it becomes rooted and established and connected to a source for life that helps it flourish.

[God has planted]

In the same way, we don’t drag ourselves to the love of Christ so that we can have a better life. We are CARRIED there by the grace of God and planted there by the work of God.

God has planted you in the love of Christ! Jesus’ finished work on the cross has already done everything necessary to bring you to where you need to be to have life and have it to the full.

And this prayer is that you would be rooted and grounded in that love: to become secure and strong and firmly connected to the love of Jesus as your source for life. You don’t need to uproot yourself to go searching for anything else to feed your life!

[Ephesians 3:18]

Because the love of Christ is never going to run out of supply for you! That’s why Paul prays that we would spend the REST of our lives trying to comprehend and experience that love:

“I pray that you have power to comprehend” (not OUR power, power that is given to us by God) “power to comprehend, together with all the saints” (because being adopted into God’s family isn’t just a solo thing)

“Power to comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ’s love.”

The breadth of God’s love is the wideness of his love. And I know it’s pretty wide because his arms opened up to welcome me. But the longer you spend experiencing God’s love, the wider you find it to be! Because those arms that opened wide to receive you were stretched out on the cross, reaching around all peoples, all nations, all tribes, all tongues, all families, all experiences. His love is wider even than THAT!

So spend the rest of your life exploring the breadth of his love and the LENGTH of his love. To find the lengths that he goes to seek out the lost, to search for the One. To experience the unrelenting nature of his love to keep pursuing, no matter which remote, hidden, dark hole where shame tries to keep us prisoner. His love goes further than that!

I pray that you have power to comprehend the HEIGHT of God’s love. That causes you to incline your eyes upward and upward, an unending looking up, drawing your sight and your heart and your whole being up into the Father’s love.

And the DEPTHS of his love, to see that you can never go too far down, you can never be so far down in the depths of despair and darkness to find the bottom of God’s love, because it reaches even further and even DEEPER than that. No place is too deep, because God’s love reaches deeper than the GRAVE to redeem and restore and resurrect.

[Ephesians 3:19]

I pray that you have power to spend the rest of your life exploring and experiencing how far God’s love extends, and “to KNOW the love of Christ that SURPASSES knowledge…”

That’s how impossible it is, because it SURPASSES knowledge itself. So how could we arrive at the knowledge of something… how could we understand the mysteries… how could we become familiar with this love that is too big to contain in our human minds and experience?

Only with the power of Christ. And only with a lifelong, never-ending pursuit. And here’s the crazy part: our exploring of the love of Christ won’t even end when we experience heaven, because we’ll spend ETERNITY continuing to comprehend and explore it.

And as if he hasn’t drilled the point home enough, then Paul prays that we would be “filled with all the fullness of God.” The NIV says to be “filled to the measure of the fullness of God.”

What’s the measure of the fullness of God? Do you measure it in cups, or gallons? Clearly, it’s too large to measure with tons or truckloads. So, if God has a measurement, one “fullness” of God has to be more than all of creation and all of time could contain.

So for Paul to pray that WE would be filled with the fullness of God is like taking a thimble and pouring the entire Mississippi River into it! It just keeps flowing and flowing and filling and filling and OVERflowing and overflowing.

[blank]

Are you overwhelmed yet? Because that’s what he’s trying to get at. There will NEVER be a time when you have learned “enough” about God. There will never be the possibility that you can fit your relationship with God into one hour on a Sunday a few times a month!

If we are to be TRANSFORMED by the love of Christ that God has planted us in, we need to realize that knowing “about” Jesus is different than KNOWING him. Having head knowledge about the Bible is different than having your life ROOTED and established in God’s love.

And that’s why Paul prays that Christ would DWELL in our hearts through faith, because our connection to Jesus isn’t one to visit every once in a while and then go back to the rest of our lives. It’s meant to fill us full the rest of our lives and overflow out of us into every place and relationship around us.

And you might be listening to me and realizing that you’ve been holding yourself back from that. You might be thinking you don’t deserve that type of unending love.

And that’s missing the point entirely, because God has ALREADY planted you in his love. He’s inviting you to stay there, to STOP uprooting yourself and stop choosing to unite yourself to lesser things that can never sustain your life.

And some of you listening to me right now feel like a parched tree. A bit withered. Maybe you’ve even been at church a long time, and you used to feel like you were connected to the source. Passionate, excited, filled with energy about serving and learning. But now you’re feeling like you’ve run a bit dry, because you’ve unknowingly been reaching for different sources to root your life in.

And trying to draw life from other things results in shame, hiding, disconnection, doubt, insecurity, and fear.

And so you come back to church to try and apologize to God for how you’ve forgotten him, and to vow to do better. But Jesus doesn’t need you to vow to do better. He’s inviting you to stop uprooting yourself, and to let your roots grow down into his love. To let your heart be filled under the never-ending torrent of his grace.

[Ephesians 3:20]

That’s why Paul ends this little prayer by focusing on the fact that God is the one who is at work here: “Now to HIM who is using his power at work in us… to him who is able to do ALMOST AS MUCH as we could imagine.”

Wait, that’s not what it says! It says “abundantly far more than ALL we could ask or imagine…”

And this is actually a super cool (and a little bit nerdy) thing that I wanted to share with you, because Paul actually makes up a new word in Greek for this. He takes a word (perisseuo) that means “to abound” or “abundant” and he’s got a couple different options to up the ante.

He can use “ek” perisseuo which means “with great emphasis” so it can be translated as “great abundance.” Or, he could use the modifier “hyper,” which means “excess” or “to exceed.” So “hyperperisseou” means “in great excess,” or “exceeding abundance.”

But Paul says, “No, that’s not big enough to describe how much EXTRA God can do beyond our wildest imaginations.” So he creates a new word: hyper-ek-perisseou, which is what is translated in our text as “abundantly far more,” or “above and beyond”, or “immeasurably far more” than all we could ask or imagine.

“To HIM be glory throughout all generations, forever and ever, amen.”

[blank]

Do you see why this is one of my favorite prayers in the Bible? Because it’s all about the unrelenting, unstoppable, inescapable torrent of God’s love. Because it’s all about all the things that God does TO us and FOR us: we’re strengthened, indwelt, rooted, grounded, and filled with the fullness of God.

And this is why we want to grow as apprentices of Jesus, not just be attenders of church. This is why we want to KNOW Christ, not just know about him. This is why we want to be a church that is transformed by Jesus… by his love, his leadership, his way of life.

So that we can grow TOGETHER. So we can see God work in us and through us FOR OTHERS.

Not to earn his forgiveness and blessings in our life. But because we know that he has already planted us in his love… it’s his presence and work in us that are spurring us on to live this way.

[This week]

And we’re going to spend the next few weeks discussing in more depth how we can order our hearts and our lives to stay rooted and grounded in our connection with God. But for today, I’d like to just give you this suggestion:

This week, pray that God would fill you to the measure of the fullness of Christ. Pray that every day. And when you find the places you’ve tried to root yourself in something other than him… allow his grace and kindness to carry you back to the soil of his love.

And anytime you feel empty, or worn out, or parched… let that be a moment to pray again, and remind yourself that God is the one filling you.

A thimble under the flow of the Mississippi. Filled to overflowing with the never-ending supply of God’s love and grace for you.

[END]

Because it’s as we are filled to overflowing that we GET to experience what the prophet Habakkuk saw. Just listen to this:

“Then the LORD answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it… [for] the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.” Habakkuk 2:2,14

God is at work in and through his people so that the whole earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. Isn’t that what Paul prayed in our passage? To know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge…

For the whole earth to be filled… as the waters cover the sea. Now THAT sounds like total saturation. That sounds like being filled to the measure of the fullness of God!

And we want to be a part of that vision here, because nine out of ten people who live here in the Sauk Valley are not connected to a church. 90% of the people who live near you, work with you, come and go here in the Sauk Valley… are trying to root themselves in lesser things that leave their lives withered and parched.

And WE are called to be filled to overflowing with God’s love, to be transformed by Jesus, together, for others… so that we can be sent out into our neighborhood… sent out into our workplaces… sent out into Monday through Saturday… overflowing with the love that God never stops pouring into us, so that he can work through us to saturate the Sauk Valley.

To the glory of God throughout all generations, forever and ever.

Isn’t that good news?