If you have your Bibles, turn to Ephesians chapter 3. Ephesians 3, we're going to be looking at this prayer that Paul prayed for the Ephesians, starting at verse 14. Ephesians 3, 14 through 19. For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through the Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." The goal of this prayer is stated at the end, the objective of what Paul is praying for, for the Ephesians, and I think it's the greatest objective to shoot for. It's what you and I should long for more than anything else. is what seems to be an impossibility. We know that the fullness of God dwelt in Christ in bodily form. But could it be possible that God would dwell in us, not just a little bit, but all the fullness of God? All of God. All of His attributes. All of His essence. All three persons of the blessed Trinity. All the fullness of God. Is it possible that God could dwell in you? All of God dwell in you fully? To the point not just all of God is in you, but there's none, there's no room for the world left. The full capacity of your inner being, all that you are is maxed out with God. That's the goal, and that's the longing. That's what we should pursue for, and obviously Paul is praying for that to transpire for us. And in a sense, Paul is praying for revival, or at least for God to continue to work by His Spirit in power in our inner being. that we might be filled with all the fullness of God and be rooted and grounded in love." He's praying for that. Now, we think about what is revival. If it's a large one, or national one, or a small one, just in a local church setting, or if it's a corporate one where multiple people are affected by it, or it's just a single revival of your own soul. An individual revival where God comes to you individually and works in your life in a great way that's unusual and draws you closer to him. Regardless if it's a large or small revival, a revival is a powerful, life-changing, experiential encounter with the living God abiding within your soul. It's a personal encounter with God. It is not just God remaining on the outside of you. Just speaking to you from the pages of scriptures outside of you. And maybe a little bit of that knowledge of the text gets into your head because you understand what is being communicated in the Word. Revival is not just an intellectual awareness of God and learning about who He is and what He's done for you. Revival is when that knowledge, when that truth becomes ingrained and brought into you and dwelt more fully or more richly in your soul. This is what we should desire is to have a real personal experiential relationship with God And not just a kind of external knowledge of God, but one where we know God has come into our hearts. Where God comes and abides and lives from within. And that type of religion, this type of relationship of God is experiential. It's relational. It's personal. It's a felt knowledge of God. We live in a day that everybody wants to run away from a felt experience and a felt emotional relationship with Christ. It all just needs to be in the head or just academic. It just needs to be something we confess. And maybe we need to have obedience to what we know to be true. But there's nothing more than just robotic obedience. And I pray that that's not what you want out of your Christian experience. I pray that it becomes something real to you, something personal to you, something felt within, something that is full of life. You say, where's the felt experience? What about the joy of the Lord that surpasses all knowledge, a joy full of glory? What about the peace that surpasses understanding? What about love, the love of God that fills your heart? How can you experience peace and joy and love without it being emotional and felt? What about having a clean conscience before God? What about having the fear of the Lord? How can you have these emotions without it being felt and real? And so sometimes we become dry, we become intellectual, we become indifferent and we go through the motions but it doesn't mean much to our hearts. We're not longing and craving, we're not aspiring to be close to the Lord and to know the Lord and to dwell in the presence of the living God. And not just that we run to heaven and live with Him there, but to know that He comes and abides within us, and we know that He is in us, and we walk with God. This would be revival if the presence of God becomes more and more real to us. It'd be life-changing. But the question, according to this text, this prayer, is how? Can you and I, feeble humans, how can we, when we're limited to the five senses, and none of us have seen God, none of us have heard God with our ears, none of us have felt God with our hands. God's in heaven. Christ is in heaven. We're here. I can experience things that my senses, my five senses can discern, but how do we discern or encounter, connect with God who's invisible? How can that be? But it must be. We must have an encounter with God to be saved. We must have an ongoing encounter with God to be sanctified. How can that be? Well, there's four things. that lead to experiential Christianity, four things that lead to personal revival, prayer, power, faith, and love. Prayer, power, faith, and love. Now, first of all, we see in verse 14, if we want to experience God, we must first pray to the Father. Paul begins in verse 14, he says, for this reason, I bow my knees before the Father. for this reason. What reason is that? Well if you go to verse 1 he says for this cause or for this reason and then verses 1 through 13 is a digression so he's going back saying for this reason he's looking at what he said in chapter 2 and chapter 1 the fact that all spiritual blessings in heavenly places have been granted to you that the wall petition has been broken down that now you know Christ now that you know God now that you're a Christian And so even as Christians, we need this to happen in our life. We need more of God. And so what Paul is saying, now that you know God, I'm praying that you'll be filled with all the fullness of God. Now that you've tasted God, now that I pray that you taste Him more fully and more richly and that you would have Him more deeply and more impactfully in your life. That is, Paul was not content with the level of Christianity that the Ephesians had. And neither should we. Neither should we ever be content with what level of faith, love, power we have with God. In fact, the reason we have no more of God than what we do is because we're content with what we have. You can have as much of God as you want of God. God's infinite. There's so much more to be had. There's so much more to enjoy. There's so much more to experience about living in a relationship with Christ. And often we're distracted and often we are more worried about the cares, concerns of this world. And we have grown cold. And what's the remedy? We must bow our knees, we must pray, we must humble ourselves before the living God. And there's four reasons that we should pray. One is that we should not be content. And if we are content, it shows that we need reviving. It shows that we're still lacking in love for God. Second reason we should pray. is because God is the source of all spiritual blessings. For this reason I bow my knees to the Father, verse 15 says, from whom every family in heaven and earth is named. In the Greek the word family and father come from the same word grouping. Meaning the very name family is a derivative from the name father. And that makes sense because we get our names, our family names from our father. I'm a Johnson. I received my last name, my family name from my father, who received it from his father, who received it from his father. And somewhere way up there, there was a man named John who had a son. And we came from that man. But Paul is praying not to his He's praying to not just a father, his grandfather or great-grandfather. He's praying to the Father from whom every family in Heaven and Earth is named. He's saying, I'm praying to the ultimate source in which all humanity has flowed from in Heaven and Earth. He's the source of humanity. He's the source of of angelic beings. He's the source of all that is good. He's the father of lights and all good gifts come not from any other source but from Him. If there's anything lovely, anything good, anything noteworthy, He is the fountainhead. He's the source in which that comes. So this is why we must pray. If we want revival, we want encouragement, we want strengthen, we want to grow as a Christian, we want sanctification, we want to grow closer to our relationship with Jesus Christ, then we should pray to the Father of Christ. Thirdly, it tells us in verse 16 that we should pray because He is fully able to grant us the desires of our heart. Verse 16 says, that according to the riches of His glory, He may grant you. The Father has a treasure trove of riches. If all good things come from Him, He's the source of all these things. And ultimately, what we're asking for is for Him to show us His glory. And the glory is His power, it's His love, it's His presence. It's everything that He is, everything that He's done. Show us this glory. And from the riches of your glory, please come to us and grant us what we are petitioning to you. He is able to grant to us because He is wealthy. He has the grace, He has the glory, He has the riches. We don't pray to a God who cannot hear. We do not pray to a God who will not be able to do as what we ask. In fact, it is said of Him that He is far able to grant to us and to give to us way more than we could ever think or imagine. I think the reason we don't have more than what we have, more spirituality, more boldness, more of the Spirit, more love, more grace, more patience, why we fail so often is because we pray so little. It's not because God is unwilling. It's not because God's unable to hear us and deliver to us our needs. The fourth reason we should pray is because Without God, we can do nothing. We see here that Paul's praying on their behalf. He's interceding for them, and he's praying that he might grant them, give them. And that's why Paul is in a position of submission. I bow my knees. I humble myself before you, Father. I can't give it to them. You know, as your pastor, as one of your pastors, I can't do this for you. You can't do this for yourself. We would be hopeless. We're unable to grow in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord on our own. We're unable to know God and to comprehend His love. We're unable to progress without grace, without God giving it to us and granting it to us. You see, this thing about growing in the knowledge of the Lord is not just having a good IQ and going to college and having a good education. You see, there are some, such as the Church of Christ denomination, that doesn't believe that there is a supernatural quickening. It kind of undermines the role of the Holy Spirit in spiritual illumination when it comes to knowing God. All you need to know is to have a basic education, and if you study the book, study the Bible, you will grow in knowledge and you will understand. But that's not true. Paul says, where are the wives? Where is the wise? Where is the scribes? Where are the scholars? Where are the debaters? God hasn't chosen to reveal himself to the best minds among us. He's chosen to reveal himself to babes. So this is not something we can do on our own. We are finite creatures and how could we comprehend God? How can we truly understand God and know God experientially? We're not capable of understanding the weight and the majesty of God, it's too heavy. When Moses said, show me your glory, I want to know you, I want to see you, I want to experience you. God says you can't. You can't, you're not capable of me walking past you. I can't just come and show you myself fully unveiled. Jesus said to his disciples, there are many things I would want to tell you and I desire to tell you, but you can't bear them. You're unable at this point. You're too weak. You're too feeble. And we have to understand. He said, well, I'm a scholar. I'm a theologian. No, you are weak and you will know nothing. You will understand nothing, especially within your heart, unless God in his kindness reveals it to you. Flesh and blood cannot show you these things. If you know that Jesus is the living God, the Father has shown that to you. Not your own self-discovery. And thus we should pray. The natural man can't receive these things. You see, if we want a revival in the soul. Even it's just a personal revival. And that's what I want from my soul. I'm praying it for this church. I'm praying it for the nation, for the churches around the country. I'm longing for that. But I say, Lord, if you don't give it to the nation, give it to GBC. And if you don't give it to GBC, don't pass me by. Jonathan Edwards says, true revival is a divine work that cannot be manufactured or orchestrated by human efforts. Charles Spurgeon says, a church cannot be revived unless God revives it. Not a soul is saved, not a saint is quickened or made to grow except by the work of God. This is why prayer is so important. Lord, put thy hand to the work. Put thy right hand to it. We beseech you. We depend alone upon you. Will you not revive us, O Lord? If we want to grow spiritually and be revived within our soul, then we should begin by bowing our knees. E. M. Bound says, all true revivals have begun in prayer, when God's people become so concerned about the state of religion that they lie on their faces day and night earnestly pleading for God's blessing to fall upon them. In 1747, Jonathan Edwards called upon churches. to come together and set time aside to pray for revival. And they did. And revival came. Oh, would we not be brought to a burden? So I don't want to be burdened with that. And that's the problem. That might take more time. That's the problem. And it shows that's why we need it. Charles Spurgeon says, Oh, that men and brethren would feel the need and believe that there were some among there would be some among you who would go home and pray for a revival for men whose faith is large enough to lead them from this moment to exercise unceasing intercession that God would appear among us and do wondrous things here as in the times of former generations. Do you not long, would you not long for a sermon to be preached and there were just conversions throughout the sanctuary? For God to come down with power? That He would grant to us the petition that Paul prayed here? And this leads us to the second thing we need. We need prayer too. We need the power of the Holy Spirit. Look at verse 16, that according to the riches of his glory he might grant to you to be strengthened with power through his spirit. The reason we need strengthening is because we can't bear God. His weight of his glory, his majesty, his holiness, his purity, his power, all these wonderful things of God that we long to see, we're unable to take it in. It's too wonderful for us. Not to mention the fact that we're blinded by the flesh. Our five senses. We're more concerned about watching a movie than we are digging into prayer and reading the scriptures. It's easier to fill our eyes with things to see. To scroll social media all day than it is to look at God because we can't see God with our eyes. So the devil keeps us distracted. And we're weak, we're feeble in that way. And it's not just because we have human finiteness that hinders us, but we have a moral weakness that hinders us. And so we need to be strengthened. The idea is to be fortified. Several years ago, the leaning tower of Pisa was falling down. It kept on leaning and leaning and leaning and it was growing by a half an inch every year or something of that nature. And they decided if they didn't do something, it eventually would fall. And that would be terrible because tourism would go away. So what they did, and it took a lot of engineering, but they went and dug up the foundation and fortified the foundation. They could have made it completely straight. But they said that wouldn't do good either because now it's known as a leaning tower of Pisa. So they determined the exact angle they wanted and they set it and established that right angle. Now it's fortified to uphold the weight. The problem was the soul, the ground in which the tower was built upon. It didn't have the foundation. It didn't have the fortification, if you would, to uphold the weight of the building. You've got to understand, if God's going to dwell in you and if you're going to carry the weight of God within you, you've got to be fortified. Your soul, your soul in which the foundation would be laid is not strong enough to bear the weight of God. And therefore, if you're going to see God, to know God experientially, come closer into His presence, then you're going to have to have to strengthen. Your soul's got to be strengthened. And this strengthening comes with power of the Holy Spirit. You may grant you to be strengthened with power. This word power is usually implied even almost a miraculous miracle. This is why I believe salvation is miraculous. It's supernatural. It's not natural. You can't talk people into it. You can't lead your kids into a prayer and just get them baptized and say I got them saved. God has to come into their hearts. And it takes the power of the Holy Spirit. Colossians 1.9 says, From the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened or fortified with all power according to the glorious might, His glorious might. And this comes through the power of the Holy Spirit. When we think about revival, we think about the pouring out of the Spirit upon us afresh. The power that comes from Christ's Spirit. This is the essence of revival. Acts 1-8, we've learned that Jesus said to them, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. Romans 15.3, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace and believing, so by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. It's not by might nor by human power, according to Zechariah 4.6, but by my spirit, says the Lord. 1 Corinthians 2.9 says, as it is written, 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. But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of man except the spirit of a 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. And so we have to be fortified with power, and that power comes to us by the working of the Holy Spirit. And where does this take place? In the inner man, in the inner being. You see, it's not your mind that needs surgery. You say, well, I'm just not very smart. Well, that's not the problem. Your IQ is not the issue. It's not why you reject God. It's not because you don't have the mental capacity to understand these things. It's not a natural inability, it's a moral inability. It's a heart issue. The problem for us not being able to understand the things of God is that we don't love the things of God. If your child has a reading comprehension problem, most likely it's because he's not interested in the things he's reading. Put a science book, he says, I have to read the sentence over three times, read the paragraph over three times. Man, I just don't understand that. That doesn't make sense. I'm bored and I'm daydreaming. Put something that he's interested in and he has no problem comprehending what is being said. It's like we hear what we want to hear. We understand that which we are aspiring to know, what we have an appetite to hear and see. And natural man doesn't want to hear these things. He turns it off. He has no ears to hear because he despises what he hears. And even us, we still have the reigning corruptions in our mind that sometimes will get more pulled to the things of the world. We're more interested in all other things of the world to listen to and learn about But we don't really want to know God. It's because our inner man, our hearts, not the brain, but our hearts need surgery, need fortification, strengthening. So how do we experience God? How will we experience a revival within the soul? It will come by prayer. to come by the power of the Holy Spirit. So we should pray for the Holy Spirit to come. But thirdly, we see in verse 17, we experience God through faith in Christ. Now why should we pray to be fortified with power in the inner man? Through the Spirit, 17 tells us. So that Christ may dwell in your thoughts. Know that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. You see, the result of the power of the Holy Spirit working in your inner being, fortifying your soul, strengthening your hearts is Christ dwelling in your heart through faith. You see, faith allows us to experience God for two reasons. Now I don't experience God or know God through my physical eyes. I have not seen Him. I love the unseen Christ. I haven't seen Christ and neither have you. So how do we connect to this transcendental God? How can I be so certain that He exists? How can I be confident that I know Him? I've encountered Him. I have a spiritual relationship with the living Lord. It's through faith. Faith allows us to connect with God for two reasons. Faith transcends our experiences. It's like the sixth sense that allows us to see that which is invisible, to believe that which is unseen. Faith is more than just intellectual assent. It's more than just saying, I believe in Jesus, more than just saying, I know the right things to say. There are many unbelievers that have good theology. Even the demons know God. And just the knowledge of God, intellectual knowledge, doesn't mean you know Him experientially, savingly. You see, faith sees the invisible. Hebrews 11, 1 tells us, faith is the evidence of things not seen. It's the substance of things hoped for. It's by faith that you see God. You cannot see the kingdom of God unless you're born again. And when you are born again, you can see. You can see the things that are invisible are more real and more eternal and more lasting than the things that are visible. And the more you grow in faith, the more you don't live for this world that's passing away. Because this faith transforms you. It changes the way you think because the reality it brings you into. It translates you out of the kingdom of this dark world and puts you into a new reality. You become a new creation and you see things that other people can't see. And God is so real. You know, when you see someone with strong faith, it is as if God is real to their lives. And it affects everything they do. It affects their thinking, their behavior, their conversation. They live as if God exists. They live as if God is near them. In fact, they live as if God is within them. This is what faith does. You see, faith by its very nature rests upon the realities of God's Word. It accepts them as true. In fact, it would rather believe the word of God than believe what their eyes and ears sense. Faith also allows us to experience God because faith is what unites us to Christ. It says that Christ may dwell in your hearts. Not just stay outside of you, or not just be in the text of the scriptures, or live in heaven, but Christ can come in and dwell within you. How? How can He live within me? How does He make His abode and His dwelling place within my soul? How can that be? The Bible says through faith. unites us to God. The Bible says we have to walk by faith, we have to abide in Him and His words abide in us. And how does that happen? By faith. And so really this is a prayer that the Lord by His Spirit would strengthen our inner being so that we might have greater and greater faith. And so I believe all of you, if you're a Christian, you have some faith. Some of you have faith just enough to be saved. And your faith is not what saves you. Jesus is what saves you. Leith and I went to the World Gorge and there was a swinging bridge across it. And I mean, cars drive over this thing. But it does swing. Anyway, Lee and I walked, crossed it, and I don't mean to pick on her, but she's like on the side rails. Because the car would drive by, and that thing starts shaking, and she would get a little dizzy and woozy and grab hold of that thing. And I'm seeing what's happening, so I'm trying to make it shake. And she's telling me to stop. You know, which of the two were more safe? We're equally safe. It's not the level of faith you have that saves you. It's the trustworthiness of Christ. So you can be saved though you have a lot of fear and lack of assurance within you. But we shouldn't be content with small faith, little faith. The Lord rebuked His disciples, you have little faith. Little faith leaves you uncertain. leaves you without hope and confidence. We should all grow in faith. We should be like the Pharaoh Phoenician woman who won't let God go because we believe God will. Where he marvels at our faith is that we need our faith to be strengthened in order that we can see God more clearly and be more confident in his realities and his promises and live off those promises. And why do we not live on the promises of God and pray more? It's because we have such little faith. Well, we need more faith. We need greater faith. How are we going to have greater faith? We need the power of the Holy Spirit to quicken us and to fortify our souls and give us faith. And by greater and greater faith, the realities of Christ become more and more real to our souls. But that's not all we need. We don't just need prayer. We don't just need power. We don't need just faith. Thirdly, or fourthly, we experience God by love. Look at 17 and 19. So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. Now it goes on to say, now that's, let me explain what that looks like. What that means, that you being rooted and grounded in love. That is the result of the work of the Holy Spirit is union with Christ Jesus by faith. And the result of union with Christ by faith is Christ dwelling in our hearts or us being rooted and grounded in love. You see, faith is not love. Faith is not the same thing as having affection for Christ or desiring Christ, but faith always leads to affection and love for Christ. To know Christ, to see Him with spiritual eyes, the eyes of faith, is to love Christ. Faith works by love. Without love, your faith is dead. And the more you see Christ by faith, the more you see these realities, the more you're going to love Him. And that's going to be life changing. It's going to change your life from the inside out. And there's four reasons why love allows us to experience God. Why is love so important to know God, to experience God? One, we experience God by love because love is the power of God. In verse 16 it says, I'm praying, Paul's praying that you be strengthened with might, you be fortified, your souls, your inner beings, the inner man, your hearts would be fortified and strengthened. You need to be strengthened to be able to understand, to know, to comprehend, to see God. And now he's telling us that being rooted and grounded in love. is what gives us the ability to understand. You see, love is the power of God in our souls. He takes the stony heart out and puts a heart of flesh. He pours His love within the heart. And this love, the love of God, and God is love. It's not some external love. It is God Himself that is poured in our heart because He is love. And God dwelling in our hearts, or Christ dwelling in our hearts, gives us love. It roots us in love. And that's the power of God. There's no greater power in this world than love. And we must be rooted and grounded and established in love to be able to experience the living God. Although we've never physically seen God or audibly heard His voice, we have ears to hear and we have heard the voice of Christ. My sheep do know my voice." Is that experiential? Yes, it is experiential. Your conscious knows when God is speaking to you. There's nothing more glorious than knowing that God is saying something to you. That's why we like preaching, especially preaching that convicts because it's like, God has said something to me. Or preaching that encourages. Because you hear God, not the preacher, you hear God speaking to your soul. And there's nothing more valuable than to have the one you love most call you on the phone. I'm still here. I still love you. I'm still speaking to you. We long to hear his voice and all that we would hear it more clearly and more loudly and more regularly in our lives. But love allows that to happen. Although we've never heard his voice audibly, we have experienced it through love. You see, secondly, we experience God by love because love is that which fortifies the inner man. It says in verse 17 that being rooted and grounded in love then goes on to say that you may have the strength, you may have the ability through this love. The third reason we need love is to experience God is because love allows us to comprehend the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. It says in verse 18, you may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. You know, Jesus says there's a million things I have to tell you, but you're not able to bear it. I've learned this about preaching. and about communication and about marriage counseling. If you're upset with someone, have a little bitterness to that person, or if you don't like that person, it doesn't matter what they say, how brilliant it may be, how right it might be. If you don't like them, you don't hear them. You don't want to hear them. You want to criticize them. You want to reject what they're saying. And so we're already in a disposition to reject what's being said before we heard it because we don't like who's saying it. To hear, it's an ethical thing. You can't hear without unselfishness. You can't hear without love. And man cannot hear God. He has no ears to hear God because he's depraved. He's self-focused. He doesn't want to hear about the glory of God. He just wants to have Joe Osteen tell him how great he is. Tell me it's not true. We're all bent on wanting the praise of man, not the praise and the honor of God. Not to us submitting ourselves and bowing down to this God. We don't have ears for that. How are we going to have ears? We're going to have to have love. We have to be rooted and grounded in love. And once you love your spouse, you'll hear your spouse, you'll listen to your spouse. And the more love you have for the Lord Jesus Christ, the more you listen and the more you obey. And without love, you cannot obey God. This is the strength it takes. And this is why it says that through being rooted and grounded in love, you can have the strength to comprehend. And not just know about, I mean, the life of the Apostle Paul says, I forget about my past, I'm trying to comprehend, apprehend, obtain that which has apprehended me. God has a hold of you, but have you got a hold of God yet? And the Christian life is trying to get our minds, our hands, our hearts around God. And how can we do that? He's so large. He's so infinite. It's by God giving us more and more love. And the more and more love, the love of God, it takes the love of God to love God and to see God. And it takes the love of God to be able to comprehend and to know with all the saints what is the breadth, the length, the height, and the depth of the love of Jesus Christ. I could preach a whole sermon on the height, the width, the depth, the length of the love of Christ. How deep is His love? He came from heaven down to the pit of hell. How vast is His love? Though He was rich, He became poor. How deep is His love? I promise you that Christ gave everything He had to give. Love is the pouring out of oneself, and Christ poured out all that He had. Imagine this, think of this amount of love. Jesus says, this is the most amazing words in scriptures it seems to me. As the Father has loved you, no, as the Father has loved me, Jesus says. How much did God love Jesus? With all of his love, perfect love, full love. As the Father has loved me, Jesus says. So have I loved you. I gave you everything, no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend and Christ died for us." What vastness, what depth, what length. It surpasses, the Bible says, to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. I want to speak to the unconverted kid right now. To you who do not know the Lord, you don't want to know the Lord, you're not interested in the things of God, you're not interested in the Word of God, you don't really care about Jesus, can you not see Him dying on the cross for your sins? Can you not see that in Him you can be forgiven of all that you've done? Can you not see that He loves you more than anyone else in this universe? His love for you is real enough that you can be saved? and you want to turn that down? All that you could see, all that God would grant you ears to hear and eyes to see and love to comprehend and to know the love of Jesus Christ. And we too are seeing in a glass darkly. And this is why Paul is praying for you and me, because we only know just a little bit of the love of Christ. Our minds just can't comprehend it because we compare his love with our little love. And we don't know why anyone would love someone like us who are sinful and evil. Why? We can't comprehend it. And so the Lord says, I want you to see this. I want policy and I want you to know this. I want you to comprehend this. I want you to see just how much Jesus loves you. And if you could see it, it changes your life. Oh, the pity party is gone. The problems and cares and concerns and I don't know about this. I don't know about that. It becomes, once you can see the love of Jesus Christ, He becomes your God. I want that. I want the Lord. You can have my ministry. You can have my family. You can have my children. I'll sell everything. I see this pearl of great price, and I'll be glad to sell everything I have because I don't understand such love as this. And you see, brothers and sisters, if you can comprehend this love, and it's not just love, people try to make love into, it's not an emotion, it's not an affection, then why does Paul say, love the saints with a sincere heart? Love is not just an action, it leads to action, it leads to obedience, it leads to good works, but love is a heart thing. It's an affection. It's real. Can you not say with Peter, when Jesus asked me, do you love me, Peter? Is your response not, yes Lord, I do love you? Do you really love me? Lord, you know. You know I love you. You know all things. I love you. And see, right now, if you don't know the love of Jesus Christ in your heart, you don't have ears to see, you don't have ears to hear, and you think I'm a madman up here. You think I'm just crazy. Why are you going off on this? Why is this so important to you? Why are you acting like a fool? Can you not be more dignified in your preaching? But if you know the love of Christ, if you've experienced it, if it's real in your heart, then you know what I'm saying is true. And more than that, God is love. And if you've experienced love, the heartfelt emotion of unselfish surrender to the Lord, and you've seen His love for you and experienced that, than you've experienced God. You've come in contact with God. You know God is real. He's more real than the things that your eyes can see. More real than what your physical ears can hear. You'll give your life because it's so real. You won't deny Christ, you can't. Because he is life itself. But love let us love one another for God is love. 1 John 4, 7. 1 John 4, 12. No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love has been perfected in us. 1 John 4, 16. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love. And he who abides in love abides in God himself. Thus, if we have experienced the love of God, since God is love, then we have experienced God. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. See, this is the goal of knowing God, is to be filled with God, to be filled with love. Love for God and love for one another. This is the essence of the law, to love God with all of our hearts, with all of our mind and all of our understanding, to live for God because He died for us. You see, no wonder Paul's praying for this, for the Ephesians. May we have more love to Thee, O Lord. May we be rooted and grounded in love for the power of the Holy Spirit of Christ dwelling in our hearts. In conclusion, how do we know experience God? How do we experience a revival within the soul? By prayer to the Father, by the power of the Holy Spirit, by faith in Christ, and by the love of God. Look at verse 19, this is the end objective. So glorious, so amazing, this is heaven itself. This is what we long for. What does it mean to be glorified? What does it mean to be perfect? What does it mean to be fully and entirely in the presence of God? It means that you might be filled with all the fullness of God. We love God, but we're not yet perfect in our love. We're not perfect in our faith. We're weak in our faith, weak in our power, weak in love. May God give us these things, more love, more faith, more power. In conclusion, do you want to be filled with all the fullness of God? Then you need to comprehend the love of Christ. Two, you need to be rooted and grounded in love. Three, you need Christ dwelling in your hearts by faith. I'm working backwards here. You need to be fourth, strengthened with power by the Spirit. You say, that all depends upon God. Then it brings us back to the first point. May we pray. May this prayer, this very text, become our prayer. May we pray the words of scriptures. This is a wonderful prayer. I've been praying it for you all week. Pray it for me. And let's come together. Let's pray more fervently that we have more power, more love, more faith. Amen.