Episode 922: Rooted and Grounded in Love
[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining me on episode 922 of the inspired stewardship podcast.
[00:00:07]Stacy Henry: [00:00:07] I'm Stacy Henry owner and coach at center branch, where we grow great leaders. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling.
[00:00:27] Having the ability to deal well with change is key. And one way to be inspired to do this is still listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Nader,
[00:00:39]Scott Maderer: [00:00:39] but as I got older and wiser and visited with more people and heard from more people upon their own journey in different. I've discovered that for most of us, it's a struggle from time to time, even pastors and people that maybe we would think of as having it all together and having it all [00:01:00] figured out are usually dealing with this journey themselves.
[00:01:04]Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your truth. In the inspired stewardship podcast, we'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.
[00:01:31]And today's spiritual foundation episode about investing in others. I talk with you about a Feagins chapter three verses 14 through 21. I share how this passage talks about the key to finding faith. And I also talk about how hard this is when we are struggling with finding faith. Ephesians chapter three, verses 14 through 21 says that.
[00:01:55] For this reason, I bow my knees before the father, from whom [00:02:00] every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that according 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.
[00:02:15] As you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power 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 so that you may be filled with all the fullness of it. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.
[00:02:49] Amen. Passage is one that I've been reading as I've been working through a Feagins you, you heard a couple of weeks ago, a sermon series that [00:03:00] I delivered in Brownsville that, that used this text as a basis for the sermon. And so I've been working my way through the whole chapter, and this is the, towards the end.
[00:03:10] This is the closing of this chapter or this letter to the church there. And I love how in this, it wraps up the whole message and the whole journey that this is on, that. This is talking about how it's talking to the church about finding faith. The truth is, I think a lot of times people think that Christians are people who have already completed the journey.
[00:03:37] They've found faith, but I would argue that for many of us, it's a constant. This idea that we have faith in Christ, faith in God. And yet at the same time, we live in a world where that is not necessarily easy to do it. It creates a conflict both [00:04:00] internally and externally, where we have to figure out what does it mean to find faith in today's world?
[00:04:08] And the truth is that this idea that we are. According to the riches of his glory. He may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his spirit, the idea of the holy spirit dwelling within us, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. In other words, that to walk the path that Christ puts us on to, to go about and do the journey that Christ is asking us to do to reach out to others with love.
[00:04:40] This is saying it requires faith. And it's saying that faith is not necessarily something that's easy to get. It's not necessarily something that comes to us easily on this journey. Instead, it's something that, that we have to work to have it [00:05:00] saying that we work by working on our reality. You should ship with Christ by working on our relationship with the holy spirit, because we have to comprehend.
[00:05:12] What is the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ to be able to love ourselves, to be able to love God, to be able to love each other. This is part of the Christian journey, recognizing that we are on a journey and we are not yet at the destination. It's hard whenever we're struggling, whenever there's a day where things are not going well or where we're not hearing and feeling that God is on our side, when we're distant from God, when we're having those struggles of the relationship.
[00:05:47] And I would argue that most Christians have those struggles from time to time from day to day, some of us from moment to moment. Where we feel like maybe the path we're on, isn't [00:06:00] really the path that God wants us to be on, where we feel that we're not hearing and feeling the word of God or we're not hearing and feeling what God wants us to do when we struggle with those things then is when we really need to be working on having this faith.
[00:06:20] And yet it's also the time and the moment when it is the hardest. To feel that touch. And that's one of the reasons that this is asking for us to be in relationship with God in a humble way to bow our knees. And it's also asking for us to remain in community with other followers, because it talks about the glory of the church.
[00:06:45] It talks about the glory of the community of fellow Christians and how we're all in this journey together. And how we all struggle from time to time. That's one of the things that I've learned over the [00:07:00] years, as I used to think that everyone else had it all together. And I was the only one that would struggle from day to day, from time to time from moment to moment.
[00:07:11] But as I've gotten older and wiser and visited with more people and heard from more people upon their own journey, Into faith. I've discovered that for most of us, it's a struggle from time to time, even pastors and people that maybe we would think of as having it all together and having it all figured out are usually dealing with this journey themselves.
[00:07:36] And as I read through Ephesians this month, I really thought about how this message to the church is still a message for us today. Because we're still dealing with the walls and the barriers of conflict. We're still dealing with those that feel that they are in power and turning around the relationship that we have with each other.
[00:07:59] And with [00:08:00] God, we're still dealing with the walk of faith and not knowing which is the next step on the journey. Just like the church back in those days. And these words still speak to us today. Thanks for listening.
[00:08:16]Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoy this episode, do me a favor. Go over to facebook.com/inspired stewardship and like our Facebook page and market that you'd like to get notifications from us so that we can connect with you on Facebook and make sure that we're serving you to the best of our abilities with time and tips there [00:09:00] until next time, invest your time.
[00:09:02] Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world.