Facing Prometheus — Week 24 (Sacred Lives in a Secular World) | “I’ve Got the Power” | Guest: Pastor Gerald Fadayomi, Lead Pastor of Home Church in Roswell, GA.
About the series: We’re currently in Facing Prometheus: A Letter to the Ephesians and the Future Church Dilemma, a 48-week look at how Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus can transform our lives. For more on what the series is about, watch the prequel message here.
This week the series returns to Ephesians 3:14–21, the prayer Paul prays for the Ephesian church from a prison cell. It’s a prayer about power, and it raises a pointed question for anyone who has been a Christian for a while: if the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is alive in us, why do so many believers live powerless?
This week’s message comes from Pastor Gerald Fadayomi of Home Church in Roswell, Georgia. Titled “I’ve Got the Power,” it first clarifies what kind of power Paul is actually praying for, then walks through three ways we experience it: through the Spirit, through the church, and in a posture of surrender.
The Text — Ephesians 3:14–21
“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”
— Ephesians 3:14–21 (NIV)
What Kind of Power?
When Pastor Gerald says power, he does not mean physical strength, influence, authority, followers, or success. He means the strength to become who God has created you to be. And he named two ways people miss it:
Many non-believers are powerless but think they are powerful. They have built successful businesses, amassed wealth, reached positions of authority, gained platforms and fame. None of those things are bad, but none of them are power:
- Status doesn’t give you power over sin.
- Success can’t silence your conscience.
- Wealth doesn’t make you valuable.
- Fame doesn’t make you immortal.
The world sells a version of power that, in the end, is just weakness, and it leaves us empty.
Many believers have been filled with power but live powerless. There is a version of Christianity that says, “I’m just a sinner, I can’t change, I’ll always be this way, I don’t know how to lead my family, I’m a victim, I’m just waiting for Jesus to come back.” And the loving word to that is simply: stop. Yes, we are sinners. But in Jesus we are sinners who have been saved by grace. Ephesians 1 says the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is alive in us. Second Timothy 1:7 says God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. And 2 Peter 1:3 says his divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life.
★★★ A powerless Christian is an oxymoron. It’s like jumbo shrimp.
Paul’s prayer shows us how to experience that power, so we can become all that God created us to be.
1. God’s Power Through His Spirit
Ephesians 3:14–17 (NIV) — For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
Paul prays on his knees, a posture of deep emotion and submission, and from it he asks God to strengthen the church through his Spirit. This matters. The Scriptures are inspired by God and reveal who God is, but the Bible is not itself God. Without the Holy Spirit we cannot understand it, cannot apply it, and cannot become who God has called us to be. As the Puritan pastor John Owen said, without the Spirit we can do nothing; we are like “ships without wind, branches without sap,” coals without fire, useless.
The Spirit is the one who brings the power of God into our lives. He leads us when we don’t know where to go. He comforts us when our hearts are breaking. He convicts us when we’re drifting. He teaches us what the Word means. He reminds us we’re sons and daughters. He gives gifts, produces fruit, gives boldness, brings healing, prays for us when we don’t have words, seals us, sanctifies us, and transforms us. He is God in us, allowing us to experience his power.
★★★ The power of the Christian life isn’t self-discipline. It’s the Spirit of God living in you.
2. God’s Power Through His Church
Ephesians 3:17–19 (NIV) — And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Don’t miss the phrase “together with all the Lord’s holy people.” Paul is saying we cannot fully comprehend the love of Christ without each other. Your experience of Christ’s love is different from mine. Your story is different, and the sin God rescued you from is different from the sin he rescued me from. Not a different God, not a different sacrifice, but a different experience of how his love showed up in your story. When we understand his love and live out of it, the church becomes powerful.
But love has been so co-opted by culture that we barely know what it means anymore. Scripture defines it in 1 John 4:10–11: this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins, and so we ought to love one another.
★★ Love is a sacrificial commitment to desire and seek another person’s good, even at personal cost.
That is what Jesus has done for us, and what he has called us to. When love leads us to give sacrificially to meet a need, to show up in the hospital room with a hurting family, to forgive the person who hurt us, it is powerful. History bears it out. When a plague struck Rome around 260 AD, most people abandoned the sick and fled the city, leaving even their own dead in the streets. But Dionysius of Alexandria recorded that Christians cared for the sick heedless of danger, many drawing the sickness onto themselves and dying in the place of others. When the church is a community of that kind of love, it is a powerful place.
This is why being connected to the church matters so much. There’s a popular phrase now: “I don’t have to go to church to be a Christian.” That’s technically true. But it’s a bit like saying, “I don’t have to live with my wife to be her husband.” Being a Christian isn’t about attendance for its own sake, but it is about accountability to God and others, submitting to the leaders God entrusts to care for his people, offering your gifts for others’ benefit, helping each other become all God intends, submitting to Scripture, and experiencing the power of God by showing up for one another.
★★ If you want to experience the width and length and height and depth of God’s love, you need to be connected to his church.
3. God’s Power Is at Work in Surrendered People
Ephesians 3:20–21 (NIV) — Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
We usually quote this verse about what God can do for us. But it may be more about what God wants to do in you and through you.
★★ God’s power is at work in surrendered people.
Acts 4:13 (NIV) — When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.
God did immeasurably more through ordinary men than they could have asked or imagined, and he is still writing that story today. But it runs through surrender. God is only interested in dealing with the real you, not the version you’re pretending to be. He has no interest in working with your persona, but he will work with your person. And surrender means making space for him. We so often try to fill a God-shaped hole with things that will never satisfy, and the invitation is to clear that space and let him fill it.
★★★ When we put ourselves in a posture of surrender, we put ourselves in a position to experience the power of God.
That posture is exactly where Paul’s prayer began: on his knees. There is nothing magical about kneeling, but there is something powerful about surrender, offering God his power in your marriage, his power to heal, his power to change you, and his power to save you.
Closing
The power to become who God made you to be is not something you manufacture by trying harder. It comes through the Spirit of God living in you, through the church you’re connected to, and through a life surrendered to him. Paul’s prayer opens and closes in the same posture, and so does ours.
