Matt Chandler - Strength, Love and the Fullness of God

If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab those. If you don’t have a Bible, there’s a hardback black one somewhere near you. Grab that; we’re going to be in Ephesians chapter 3. While you’re turning there, in 2012, we were looking for some language to explain or at least help shape some feelings we had as a church. Jared Musgrove wrote a blog for us called «Gospel Goodbyes.» What we were trying to highlight and make sense of was that God was answering our prayers, and we were witnessing amazing things, such as people being sent out and churches being planted. However, He was raising up and sending out people whom we deeply loved. In that season, if you remember, Blake Chilton was here. Blake was our student minister, and it became clear that God had placed a desire on Blake’s heart to plant a church in Bryan, Texas, where he was from. I was the best man at Blake’s wedding, and Blake was the best man at my wedding. We met during our freshman year of college, and God was so kind to weave our lives together. Our wives were very close, and our kids, Reid and Crew, were close as well. They were our people, and it became clear that God was calling them up and sending them out. We needed some framework for how excited we were, while also allowing space for us to be genuinely sad about losing a close friend.

The reason I’m talking about this is that today is the last day that Plano will be part of our stream. Over the past several years, they have been with us; they are us. They became Christians at the Village Church and matured in their faith there. The Holy Spirit has brought significant breakthroughs in their lives at the Village Church. As of this sermon, they will be off this stream and will be part of Citizens Church over there in Plano. So, I am feeling, yet again, a gospel goodbye. It’s not just about Hunter Halt—I’ve known Hunter since he was 16 years old, and he will be one of the pastors over there now; he’s not just a campus pastor anymore. Jamin Roller is still just 16 years old. We have Taran, Adam, and Andre; I mean, those are our people. We are their family. God has raised them up and established them in Plano to do ministry for the people of Plano, and that couldn’t be a bigger win. Yet, I can feel a tinge of sadness within me, as I’m old enough now to realize that we are separated by 40 minutes. This means we love each other and would like to get together, but it’s rarely going to happen right now. If you’re 22, yes, it will happen more often.

I wanted to say out loud to you, Plano, that I’m so grateful for what God has done there, how He’s working, and I’m excited about what Citizens Church is going to become and how God is going to use you all. You are in great hands, and I’m not talking about Hunter, Jamin, Taran, Adam, and Isaac; I’m talking about the hands of God. He has uniquely placed you in the middle of a suburb of Dallas that is exploding right now, with the nations all around you. I am eager to see how God uses you. This is a bittersweet day for me, as I know many of your names and faces, and many of you were with me in the red brick building 15 years ago before you, by faith, went along with this crazy idea to start a campus. So, I’m happy today, and I’m sad today. God bless you, and I’m so grateful for how He’s going to use you.

Can we thank Plano for just hanging with us? Love you guys. Okay, so you don’t have to wander at all. Let me tell you what I’m going to try to do out of Ephesians chapter 3. My hope today, in the middle of this quick six or seven-week series leading up to May 12, is that I might provoke or incite your imagination around what God has available for you and me right now. We should earnestly seek and desire for it to be a reality in our lives. I love the passage we’re going to read because it’s not primarily about you and me; it’s primarily about God and what He can do. I always feel safest in those spaces. We’re going to read a prayer that the Apostle Paul is praying for the church at Ephesus. What we’ll see in this passage is what’s available to us, and it’s available in a way that we can’t do it on our own. However, if we earnestly seek it, God will bless us with it. Are you with me on that? If you’re looking for application, you may be disappointed because there are no four steps to glory; it’s just going to be, «Look at Jesus.» Isn’t that incredible? Won’t He do it? So, that’s where we’re headed.

With that said, let’s look at this together: Ephesians 3. We’re going to pick it up in verse 14: «For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven…»