Eph 3:14-19  For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. 
	Last time we were together, we looked at four elements that can serve as a means to increase our understanding of the life of Christ at work within our hearts. We saw that the development into Christ is accompanied by a desire to read the Word of God. What once was a need due to circumstances becomes transformed into a desire of love in our hearts. We read and study the Word of God because we desire to learn more and more about our God.
	The next element that we discussed was that of prayer. It is through prayer that our hearts are opened in an active communication with God. We need to pray, vocally, silently, in whatever manner gives complete expression to the fact that we love our God and desire to be with Him always. We talk to Him because He is our greatest joy and love.
	The third item we saw was that our growth into Christ is accompanied by our growth into each other. We are joined together in a living witness of the great Love of God manifested in Christ Jesus. The Church, the Beloved of God, is that aspect which will show forth all the grace and truth of the mighty work of God in this creation. As we are joined together, one with each other in Christ, so will this entire creation be forced to acknowledge the greatness of God in such a perfect plan of His very heart. 
	We finished, last time, with the truth that our relationship with the Holy Spirit becomes much more than just that of creation with a conscience. We grow and develop in Christ only as the Holy Spirit guides and directs. He becomes our greatest friend on this earth with every fiber of the love of God brought livingly into our beings. He is a gift, as surely as Christ is the gift of God. Apart from the Holy Spirit, we would be utterly lost in this realm. He guides, directs, and shares Himself freely with us, every moment of every day. 
	With that very quick review, let us now proceed with the consideration of spiritual maturity into Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior, as that is the focus of our deliberations together, and the nucleus of our Ephesian text. A parallel passage in the letter to the Colossians should serve to illuminate another depth of the heart of God in this consideration. 	Col 1:9-10 For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; This passage contains several of the vital aspects that are before us.
	Initially, there is the facet of lifting one another up in prayer. While this might well be part of the fellowship that we share, one with another in Christ, it also places an element of responsibility into the hearts of those who are desirous to grow in Christ. So often, we pray with ourselves as the target. We ask for the Lord to work this and that in us. We ask that the Lord would teach us His ways and His heart in this matter, or in dealing with others. We ask for patience and for longsuffering, the fruit of the Spirit to be in evidence in our lives, and those are valid and worthwhile prayers. But, both of these passages take the prayer of the saints far beyond the target of self. 
	We are to lift each other in prayer. We are not just to focus on our growth, but to lay the fellow believers before the throne of grace. Please note, it is not an aspect of since I have arrived, please bring the others with me, type of prayer. No, it is a lifting up of the other with an earnest desire that they are wholly brought into the fullness of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is an endless prayer, a ceaseless prayer on the behalf of the beloved ones of God. There is no condemnation inherent in it, like Lord please show them the error of their way. No, it is a laying aside of every thought of ourselves and a lifting up of all others for the Lord to bring forth a living knowledge of Himself in all the lives of those whom He has chosen.
	This is a prayer from our heart which corresponds with the heart of God. It is indicative of coming to a place where the Glory of God has preeminence in our lives. We are bringing forth the ones loved of God with His Love emanating from our entire beings unto His Glory. All the aspects of competition, superiority, ridicule and self-elevation are set aside for the Glory of God to be paramount in the whole of this creation. We live forth in this prayer for others. It is not just a vocalization, recited in a rote fashion for the soothing of our consciences. No, it is a life we live before the Lord, fully governed and led by the Holy Spirit. It is a desired life on our part, a desired life of putting self to death that Christ has free reign, because that is the very longing of our being. We want Christ to reign in all, and over all.
	Then there is the aspect of the prayer itself. We are to lift each other up to come into the knowledge of God in understanding …that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding;… We are to bring our brethren before the Lord for the knowledge of his will to become preeminent within their hearts and minds. This is no light prayer on the behalf of the church. It is the very basis of the body of believers before this whole of creation. As God’s will is understood and desired, so will the church become that vessel that the Lord will have for His own purpose in life.
	This requires an understanding far beyond the capability of the human mind. There are so many in this realm which promote the vast expanse of the human mind as the ultimate source of understanding. They so absolutely believe that there can be no other knowledge of value than what the human mind can conceive in its tremendous abilities to expand and to develop. Anything that would devalue the conscious ability of human reasoning is seen as foolishness and folly by the learned of this age. Ridicule is heaped upon those who would try to bypass reason for faith. The thinkers of this realm decry anything that does not make sense and does not fit neatly into the realm of earthly logic.
	This, however, is not the realm of the Holy Spirit, in His omniscience and omnipotence. He is not limited by the reasoning abilities of man. He is not boxed in by the limited logic of the human brain. He works in an entirely different and superceding realm of the spiritual truth of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no compromise nor limited thought processes in the reality of our God. He rules, overrules, and is Lord over far more than even our mind’s conceptions can create. 
	God has defined the very mind of humanity. He is the One Who has created the mechanism of the brain, thought, and reasoning systems of mankind. Without His grand architecture, nothing would be in place in our conscious, thought of development. We are but the thought of God, His creation, and no matter how much we elevate our ideas and our self-concepts, we are never, and will never be able to even approach the level of God’s heart toward us. 
	It is only by the Holy Spirit that we will be enabled to even have a glimmer of the thought of what is God’s intent in humanity. His will becomes engrained as a part of our lives. We begin to see the plan and purpose of God, to a small extent, as we follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We begin to think less of ourselves in the overall scheme of things, and more and more of what the Lord has in His heart. 
	This, in nowise belittles us. Keep in mind that the Lord fully had us in His heart before the foundations of the world was laid. He knows each one of us in an individual and personal way. We are each so prized of Him, that He sent His Son to die in our stead on the cross. Although this so tremendous salvation purchased all who would call upon His name, He still had you and me in His mind and heart as the object of His so great Love.
	Yes, He has us in His heart. Yes, we are each known to Him in very special ways. Yes, He knows what it takes in each life to bring about that after which we are in prayer. The reason that we need to learn His way and His will is because He knows what is the very best for us. While we must fully submit our will unto His will, it is not to our undoing. That is the way this world portrays it. It is presented as a complete giving up of all our intellectual properties to the over abiding will of a higher power, thus making us nothing more than cogs in the wheels of fanaticism. The comment is often made, “God didn’t give us minds to just be stupid cattle.” This world age sees the will of God as a threat to individualism and self-hood. It is decried as being a crutch for those who are too weak and too limited in their minds to deal reasonably with the struggles of this realm.
	The spiritual reality, however, is vastly different when seen from the perspective of God’s vantage point. That is the place and the viewpoint that the Holy Spirit is working to instill in each of us, and after which each of us are to be in earnest prayer for one another. God sees His Church as the perfected creation in Christ Jesus. We are seen in the final reality of what has already been accomplished in Christ. His mighty work in us is simply the outworking of what is now true of us inwardly, by the Holy Spirit. He is desirous that we see what He already sees, the completion of His Beloved.
	In that truth, we are losing, not our individuality, but the limited vision of humanity. We are becoming enlightened, day by day, as to what glory is awaiting God for the great Love that He has expressed in Christ. We are being made into the vessel through whom Christ can be livingly expressed, this day, on this earth. While our selfishness is being done away with by the effective working of the Holy Spirit, His selflessness is being established as the new life that is now ours in Him. We are being transformed from self-centered beings into the true manifestation of the Love of God unto others. Our central concern is being changed from the idea of our being the center of the universe, to bringing the glory that God deserves unto Him in the willing sacrifice of ourselves for others. This is nothing that we can do in any purposeful manner of the human flesh. Our very core of ideology prevents any selfless act from being truly perfect unless it is the expressed will of God in Christ Jesus. 
	There are many people in this world who try to do the right thing because they fear punishment, or they fear reprisal, or their consciences bother them, or they have a sense of duty and have been raised to be of service to others. While they are admirable in their efforts, their focal point of trying to make something good happen on their own terms betrays the hearts that are seeking after credit for work done. So many people do good things for the credit that they can receive. So often we are caught up in splendid schemes of good works because we feel we should give back to our communities. These are not bad things, but the motivation behind them is based in the self-hood of man, the idea that man does not need God to do good in this world. 
	The sad part of all of this is that the most well-meaning endeavor of mankind is merely a fleeting fancy in the passage of time. All of man’s best efforts will count as nothing in the eternity that is before us. The will of man is less than an instant in the time-frame of God’s eternal plan and purpose. Only the work of God’s Hands will endure through the ages. Consider the works of the great kings of old. They ruled empires and left legacies, good and evil, yet all that they did, in their mightiest days, have faded into nothing more than the history of man’s efforts to make something of oneself. 
	There is only One. He alone has the omnipotence and the omniscience to make any difference in the entirety of this realm. That He has already accomplished in Christ Jesus. Apart from Christ, there is nothing else of lasting value. That is the knowledge that comes in the wonderful reality of Christ. There is nothing else to be desired but Christ. There is nothing to dwell on through the ages, but the mystery of Christ in us, the hope of glory. It is God’s glory that should occupy our time, our thoughts, our desires, our dealings, our hearts, and our minds. He alone is the One Who makes the difference for all man-kind, for all time. To come into that understanding, that knowledge, to live our lives in that expressed will of God, is the prayer that should fill our beings.
	That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work,… When we begin to gain an understanding of God’s will through the effective working of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we also begin to find that our very walk on this earth is transformed into that which is pleasing to God and brings His truth into the lives of others. We become the living vessels of God’s Love. That is surely not to say that we become little gods unto ourselves. Very far from it. Our lives begin to show forth the One Who is now our very life. We begin growing in the understanding that God wants to reach others through living witnesses of the great Love that He has poured out in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
	As we walk on this earth, it is with the knowledge that we are, truly, passing through, separated from our true home in the heavenly places. We are now made ambassadors of a greater place, and our conduct is to be in reverence for the reality of where we truly have our lives. It is not unusual to find ourselves realizing that, if it were not for the Lord in our lives, we would not be able to survive in this hostile realm. Things that once were the focal point of our desires and our lusts now are seen as truly being nothing more than corrupting assaults of a depraved age. 
	The motivation for our actions and witness is no longer centered in the concept of doing the best that man can to make a difference. Rather, we are living forth in the only way that we can. Our entire existence is now centered in the same life that Christ lived as He walked on this earth, and as the Holy Spirit guides in every believer, that God will be receiving the glory that is due His wonderful Name. We live to bring forth praise and honor and admiration unto the Father, by Whom Christ was given to the whole of humanity. He is the core of our essence on this earth, and He is the center of our every involvement. We can do nothing without the consideration of His will being done. Where we go, how we live, how we conduct ourselves in word, thought, and deed are all centered in Him. 
	As that becomes the increasing truth of our lives, so will our beings bear fruit before the throne of grace and before the hearts of mankind. That fruit will be evidenced in the lives that are affected by His Love for the eternal ages before us. We mentioned earlier, that the best efforts of the kings of old were but a fleeting instant in the age of eternity. The work of the Lord, however, has an effect that is limitless in scope. Where Christ is proclaimed in lives that show the truth of His resurrection power, there eternal consequences are brought together in the person of Jesus Christ. It is through the body, the Church, that people all over this earth are brought to the crisis point of their lives. It is as the Church manifests the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ, not in words, but by the Holy Spirit, in lives that bring forth the fruit of the harvest of God’s glorious planting, that others will have to make a decision. Will they choose Christ, or will they choose the fleeting knowledge and limited understanding of this realm? Words will not be the decisive factor. It will be the living witness of the Lord Jesus in the willing vessels of His Body of Believers that will bring this entire creation face-to-face with its eternal destiny. As our lives reflect Him, in the purity of beings that are fully in line with all that the Father has purposed in His heart for the Church, so will the destiny of others be eternally sealed. They will choose Christ, or they will perish in the foolishness of the reasoning of this age apart from God. There is no other choice. Our place is to pray for each other, pray for ourselves, and pray for those who are brought into our lives to witness the effective ministry of God. 
	To know the Love of God, is to know the need for God to have His way, His will, His life, and His passion for others, infused into our souls. That ministry of the Holy Spirit is the great blessing that is ours to enjoy, day in and day out as we share together, and grow together, worship together, and lift our hearts in prayer together, in the Lord. 
	Next week, Lord willing, we will continue to examine the place that we have as the Body of Christ coming into the maturity of His life. It is nothing that we can develop, nor can we boast in it. It is only true as our lives are set aside for the glory of God to be fully and seamlessly who we are now in the living faith of Christ. As we see Him, so will our hearts grow in the vigorous course of His crucifixion, His resurrection, and His glorification.
		For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.