Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Paul’s Prayer (Part 1)

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on August 22, 1993. Series: Salvation From the Outside In. Scripture: Ephesians 3:14-21. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. Behind every worldview is an attempt to answer life's biggest questions. Who are we? What gives our lives meaning? And is there hope for the future? Today, we continue Tim Keller's extended series of teachings from the Book of Ephesians as he takes a deeper look at how the Christian faith offers the only identity, purpose, and hope that can sustain us through every season of life.

Those of you who are church historians know that we start the book of Ephesians, a long time ago in the evening service. And many of the people who, of course, began this study with us are dead now. But a few of you have survived, and we're actually in the last part, because we began with Ephesians chapter four and look at five and six, and then we started at the beginning in the chapters one, two, and three. It's not as odd as you may think. Because chapter three, the end of chapter three,

and the prayer we're looking at this week and next week is actually the pinnacle, I think, and the height of the entire, it's the highest and loftiest point in the entire book. What we're going to do is read this prayer, and it's a little dangerous to do this in the summer, especially here at the end of August, when almost nobody is here week after week. We're always here for a week,

then we're away for a week or two, and then we're here, and so on. But this prayer is such a powerful prayer, and the prospects it holds out for us. It's so amazing. and there's no way we can really, I think, unpack the whole thing in one week. So this week and next week we're going to look at this prayer and what it is that Paul holds out for us.

Let me just read the prayer to you. It's printed in your bulletin. For this reason, I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole 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 life. your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power

together with all the saints 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 forever and ever. Amen. Amen. Well, I know that a first run through that thing does not look all that unusual. It looks like a typical Pauline prayer, kind of high and lofty and kind of vague in general. I tell you that Paul is asking for something from God for all of us. don't forget of course you've forgotten as i said when we started the book of ephesians

back in the mid-50s or whenever it was uh that the book of ephesians was almost for sure a circulatory letter it was not a letter that was written strictly for the ephesians it was probably a very general letter you notice very few references to individuals like the other letters very few references to specific problems instead it's a very general letter and probably it was a very general letter and probably it was sent out to all the churches everywhere, and the one that came down to us happens to be the one that went to Ephesus and had the Ephesian name put at the top. So this is really a letter, really for all of us, of course. Of course, all the letters are, but in particular, this was really written for all the churches. And Paul is asking for something here that is so astonishing

that when I describe it, in fact, all the way through this week and next week, I'm going to have to continually remind you that that which Paul is asking God for and exhorting us into, is not just for super saints. It's not just for absolute spiritual titans. It's for every single person who names the name of Christ, every one of us. And what he is therefore saying by this prayer, that there's something available to us that actually should make us ashamed. It's available and we aren't seeking it.

We aren't experiencing it. It should absolutely, I hope it will, shame us for our low ambitions. I hope that when you understand what this prayer is really holding out for you that you will give up your small ambitions. The main point of the sermon, I might as well tell you now, but I hope most of you will not leave yet

and stick around for the elaboration. The main point of the sermon is just this. That we are not actually seeking what God wants. We have such low ambitions. We are settling for far, far, far, far too little. When it comes to experience of God, there is a feast in the next room. And all we're doing is nibbling on the Melba toast. It's out on the coffee table, you know, when you first come in,

maybe putting a little bit of dip on it or something. Paul says, there is something here that is available for all. of us. He prays for it for every one of us. Let's look and see what it is. Now I'm going to have to give it a name because Paul doesn't actually. I got to give it a name that will sort of encompass everything we're talking about. It's an old name that the older ministers and older teachers used to use communion with God. See in the old King James Bible, the old authorized Bible, in the very, very beginning of the book of 1 John, 1 John 1, in the very beginning it says we have communion with God the Father.

Now, that word communion in modern translations is translated fellowship, and the word fellowship is such a namby-pamby word that it's useless for getting across all the stuff that Paul's talking about. When you think of fellowship, you think of cake and games and things like that. Fellowship. Now, that's not a good word. For our purposes, I'll use a word that's a little bit odd. It's a little bit strange.

It's not a normal kind of word that we use. communion. We can have communion with God. Communion means we can actually share, we can have a common union with him, and we can actually experience him, not just believe in him, not just obey him, but experience him. I know it's going to be odd for a lot of you to hear a Presbyterian minister of all people talking like this. But that's what he's talking about. Look, what he is praying for. First of all, I'm going to talk to you about the reality of this communion with God. Then we'll talk about the preparation for it. Then we'll talk about the dynamics of it. And next week, and only next week, we'll talk about how to seek it and experience it. And wait till next week. I'd have you

come back, right? But the first let's talk about the reality of this thing. Now, the reason I'm mentioning it, the reason I have to talk to you for a minute about the reality is I tell you that you do not believe in the magnitude yet of what Paul is holding out for all Christians. First of all, let's see what he's praying for. Verse 17, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts faith. And then he puts it in verse 17 and over into 18 that you may so grasp Christ's love that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Okay. First, that Christ may dwell in your hearts. Secondly, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now, some confusion here is appropriate. Some confusion here is absolutely appropriate. Why? Because Paul is praying for

things that by definition Christians already have. In Romans 8, in John 14, in places too numerous to even mention. The Bible says a Christian by definition is somebody in whom Christ dwells. By definition. You can see it in John 14. Said, if you believe in me, I will come and dwell with you. See it in Romans 8. If Christ be in you, if the Holy Spirit be in you. You're not a Christian if Christ doesn't dwell in you. Not only that, even the second. thing that he's praying for, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith and that you may so grasp Christ's love that you may be filled with a measure of all the fullness of God. In Colossians 2.9, even, there's a place where it says, in Christ, all the fullness of the

Godhead dwells bodily, and when you believed in him, you came to fullness of life in him. What I'm saying is, Ephesians, Colossians, John, everywhere in the New Testament, says that Christians by definition already have Christ dwelling in them. They already have the fullness of God in them. And so what we're faced with is that Paul is praying for things that are already true. So how do we explain that? And the only way to explain it is this. It's one thing to have a bank account. It's another thing to draw on it.

There's a big difference. Now, you know, abstractly, you might say from one perspective, if somebody puts $10 million in your bank account, then at that very moment, are you worth? You're worth $10 million. And see, from a certain point of view, you are rich. You're rich. You'll be written up in some magazine. It's somebody in this category. You'll be in some census, you know, you'll be a statistic in a census track. But the point is, you are rich. By definition, from one point of view, you've got it. But it's one thing to have it. It's another thing

to draw on it. To draw on it means that you're actually appropriating it, and it means that it's actually having an impact on the way in which you live, on the choices that you're making, on the clothes that you're wearing, on the places that you're going, on the people that you're helping, and so on. So there's a certain sense in which when you have $10 million in your bank account,

you have it, it's not the same thing as drawing it out. And Paul is clearly saying, it's one thing to have God as Father and Jesus Christ as your lover. That's what the Bible says. It's another thing to experience God. his father and Jesus Christ is your lover and your brother and your spouse and your shepherd and your builder and your king. There are two different things. Now there are, if you take a look

here, what Paul is actually saying is he is praying therefore that Christians won't just have these things true of them in the sense that it's in the bank account. He is saying, he is praying that Christians will actually experience these things. And there's at least three things that he says, I pray that you will have common union, you will actually share, you will actually draw on, you will actually experience these three things. First of all, he says, we already mentioned it, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. That means that you experience the presence of Christ intimately within. You experience the reality of his presence, that he's really here, not just that you know he's here, but that you sense that he's here.

His reality. Secondly, not only communion with the presence of Christ, but secondly, he's He also prays that we might grasp the height and the width and the breadth and the depth of the love of Christ and the know the love that surpasses knowledge. So the second thing he's praying for is that we might have communion in Christ's love, not just have an experience of his presence, but have an experience of his love. Then thirdly, he also prays, as we already read, that you might be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. and that means not to simply know and believe that the glory of greatness of God is within you, but to actually be overwhelmed and filled with the glory of God. To have an experience of the glory of God always means, since the word glory means wait, you experience that God is infinitely more important than you thought,

and that everything else looks very light. Everything else looks ephemeral by, you see, there's a hymn that ends like this, one of the lines ends like this. Turn your eyes upon Jesus, you know, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of the earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. You know, to have an experience of the weightiness

or the glory of God means that the things of the earth grow strangely dim. That means that you become so remarkably placid and so remarkably steady. Because the great things, eh, and the awful things, that's an experience of the glory of God. About everything except God himself.

The things of the earth grow strangely dim. And anybody who's had an experience of the glory of God at that moment that you're not just knowing about the glory of God or even having the glory of God, but experiencing the glory of God and abasing yourself before the glory of God becomes a person of absolute courage. Complete fearlessness.

Everything else looks dim. Everything else is ephemeral. Everything else is light. everything else is weightless those are the three things experience his presence experiences love experiences glory now paul is not blowing smoke he really means this this is really possible and in the past i've occasionally read some of these things but what i want to do is i would just like to read to you some journal articles i mean some journal entries and some diary entries of some people some men and women in the next couple of minutes uh who actually experienced this

kind of communion. Now, the only problem is that I'm going to be reading those to you of people who had fairly heavy experience of communion with God. And so they sound pretty overwhelming, and they were pretty overwhelming. And it won't be wrong of me to do what I'm about to do, as long as you remember that communion with God is subject to degrees. And if you listen to this and you say, oh, my word, I've never had communion with God, you probably haven't, at least not like that. But the reason that we want to read some of these things and think about some of these things is to understand the nature of communion with God and the possibility of communion with God. Let me just give you a couple.

Now, the one, let's start with an experience of his love. He talks about that you may grasp the love of Christ, the height, the width, the breath, and the depth, and know that which is beyond knowing. Now, when Paul talks like that, see, if you yourself have got any kind of acquaintance with communion with God, And if you have studied and known the great works of the men and women who have also really sought communion with God, you will be amazed at Paul's description. Paul has been through the same experience as these other people to grasp the height, the width, the breadth, and the depth, and to know the love which you can't know.

You see what he says? That you might know the love that surpasses knowledge. What kind of contradiction is that? that you may know that which you can't know, but that's exactly how you feel. Look, Daniel Steele was a British teacher of philosophy and not a particularly prominent guy in any way, but this is what he wrote.

He wrote a letter to a friend because he'd been experiencing very excellent communion with God, particularly experience of Christ's love. And he says, in his letter, listen to these things. Almost every week, and sometimes every day now, a pressure of his great love comes down upon my heart in such measure as to make my whole being grown beneath the most unsupportable plethora of joy. He has unlocked every apartment of my being and filled and flooded them all with the light of his radiant presence.

The inner spot has been touched, and its flintiness has been melted in the presence of love divine. All loves excelling. Jesus, the one altogether lovely. Now, I'm going to try to show you here. Look at this language. He says there's a pressure of his great being almost every week. Notice, and sometimes every day. Not every day.

He prays every day. It doesn't happen every day. The pressure of his great love comes down upon my heart in such measure is to make my whole being grown underneath the almost insupportable, I think I said, und, and almost insupportable plethora of joy. He has unlocked every apartment of my being and flooded them all with the light of his radiant presence. Insupportable. Now you're going to find

that when the men and women who have experienced communion with God talk about it, they almost always say the same thing. Dwight Moody, the very famous 19th century preacher, who founded a number of institutions in Chicago, but often came to New York, actually had an experience of communion with God on the streets of New York, which proves that it can be done.

But he wouldn't talk about it. None of these people will talk. much about it and explain that too he says in what but one of his very famous accounts Dwight Moody says it happened to him one day he says quote well one day in the city of New York oh what a day I cannot describe it and I get this I seldom refer to it it's almost too sacred and experienced a name I can only say that God revealed himself to me and I had such an experience of his love that I had to ask him to stay his hand

I can only say that God revealed himself to me. It's too sacred to talk about. I had such an experience of his love. I had to say, enough. Love came down upon my heart, says Daniel Steele, in such measure as to make my whole being grown underneath the most insupportable plethora of joy. Or George Whitfield, in one of his journals, he said, The Freeness and Richness of God's Everlasting Love broke in with such power upon my soul

that I was awed into silence and could not sleep. to stop it, God, I got to get my rest. The love's too much love. My being feels like it's groaning under something insupportable. I had to ask him to stay his hand. Charles Spurgeon in a sermon on Luke chapter 15. I read a, Spurgeon was an English preacher in London in the middle and late part of the 19th century. And he's got an unforgettable sermon, which of course is exegetically quite unsound.

Maybe it isn't. He used to like to preach on in the very, very, very short little text. And there's a place in Luke 15. It talks about the parable of the prodigal son and about the son who had gone off and he was in the pigsty and he decided he was going to come home. And he says, in my father's house is bread and despair and here I am eating these husks. And I'm going to go back and say, Father, I've sinned in thy sight and heaven in thy sight and take me back in.

And of course the parable tells how he came on back. but before the father even heard the son's confession when he was still afar off the father ran to the son and jumped on him and hugged him and kissed him Charles Spurgeon has an entire sermon not on the parable not even on the verse but on the word he kissed him the whole sermon and the whole thing was all the title of the sermon was the kiss of the father and all the sermon was about

was about the fact that God's love, though it's many other things, is meant to be experienced. And at one point in the sermon, he says, quote, Some of us know what it is to be so happy as to be too happy to live. The love of God has been so overpoweringly experienced by us on some occasions that we almost had to ask God to stop the delight, for we could endure no more. If God had not shielded his love and glory a bit, I think we would have died for joy. Now, you know, these guys all get together and say,

hey, let's all write the same thing. Let's make believe that this is what we're all going to say, and everybody will think we had the same experience. No, what are these people talking about? I ask that you might be strengthened by might, by his spirit, in the inner being, that you may grasp the height and the width and the breadth and the depth of the love of Christ and to know the love, which you can't know.

What is Paul saying? The same thing. I want you to know something which is beyond description. It's too much. That's what Paul says. That's what they all say. Oh, just a couple more just to remind you. It's not just love.

Jonathan Edwards, now let me just remind you, I'm sure I've referred to these two guys in the past, and I'll tell you why I'm going to refer to him again. Jonathan Edwards had a very important and significant experience of the glory of God, the fullness of God. The glory and the fullness of God. And he writes this account. Now, again, these accounts, in this case, these accounts were found after he died.

It's normal not to want to talk to people about this sort of thing because they think you're crazy. Or they think you're bragging. And it's almost impossible to even want to talk about it. You know, like, that's why Moody says, I hardly ever talk about it. I don't like talking about it. I don't want to talk about it. Here's Jonathan Edwards. And these accounts came out only after he died.

He says, one day I rode out into the woods for my health in 1737, having alighted from my horse in a retired place, as my manner commonly had been to walk for divine contemplation and prayer. And on that day, I had a view that for me was extraordinary, which is probably saying something, of the glory of the Son of God, as mediator between God and man, and his wonderful, great, pure, and sweet grace and love, and his meek and gentle condescension to me. This grace that appeared to me was so calm and so sweet, it appeared great above the heavens. The person of Christ appeared to me so ineffably excellent, with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thought and conception, that I continued in this state, near as I can judge, for an hour, which kept me the greater part of all the time in a flood of tears and weeping aloud.

I felt an ardency of soul to be what I know not otherwise how to express empty. and annihilated, to lie in the dust, to be full of Christ alone, to love him with the holy and pure love, to trust in him, to live upon him, to serve and follow him, to be perfectly made pure with a divine and heavenly purity. I have, several other times, had views very much of the same nature, which have had the same effects. Wiven into our slogans, songs, and social media feeds are the stories that our culture tells us about life's biggest questions, like, what gives my life meaning? Can I have a happy and fulfilling life?

And why is there so much suffering in the world? We don't really choose these stories, but our culture is telling them to us every day. So what are these stories our culture tells us about who we are? And do they actually deliver what they promise? Tim Keller and his son Michael Keller explored this in a brand new book, The Stories We Live By. Tim began this book before his death, compiling hundreds of pages of notes and collaborating with Michael before giving it to him to complete. In it, they explore some of our culture's most prominent narratives about topics like identity,

freedom, happiness, and progress, unmasking how these narratives shape our lives. They examine why these stories resonate with us so deeply, and yet how these narratives ultimately aren't able to help us through the hardships and sufferings of life. The stories we live by offers a challenge to skeptics and to Christians alike to examine the underlying narratives that drive our lives and an invitation to discover a story that's big enough to make sense of the beauty and the brokenness of the world. When you give to Gospel and Life during the month of September, we'll send you this new book, the stories we live by, as our thanks for your gift to help Gospel in Life share the love of Christ with people all over

the world. So request your copy today at Gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give, because the gospel truly changes everything. Notice no mention of love, and that doesn't mean he doesn't believe in the love, but you see, this is one of the great things about communion with God. What very often happens is a particular aspect of God's nature. You know, it strikes you. Communion with God always means you actually share in an experience of the divine nature. If you think of the attributes of God as a diamond, that gives you the idea.

You know, a diamond may have a hundred facets. Frankly, every facet is just another way of looking into the whole diamond. facets aren't actually individual parts of the diamond you would never say if facets apart it's an aspect and every as you turn the diamond it flashes and you look into the diamond with new perspectives well that's exactly what communion with god is the glory of christ you see the excellency of christ he suddenly got overwhelmed with the excellency the perfection the purity you see the magnitude not so much the love in this case why not i don't know that's why paul is trying to show you the richness of what he's holding out and what he's saying is possible.

In this case, very clearly, Edwards experienced what it meant to be filled the full measure with all the fullness of God. See that? As I was weeping a lot. I felt an ardency of soul to be what I know not otherwise how to express emptied. You see, that's the way he experienced fullness. I said, I want to be filled with you. And you see, the point is you would never ask to be emptied and to lie in the dust and to be made holy and absolutely pure unless you were fool of him. And then, of course, just one more, which I've mentioned not too long ago too, someone who had an experience of the presence of Christ, Christ dwelling in his heart.

You know, the first of these three things that Paul talks about is Pascal, remember? I'll just, this is a brief one, but I'll just make a reference to it, in light of this passage. Pascal was a great French mathematician, and he was a Christian. Christian intellectually until 1654. And the experience he had was a movement of God from of Jesus Christ from becoming an abstraction into a presence. He experienced Christ, he experienced Christ dwelling in him. And he did not simply have Christ dwelling in him, but he experienced it. Again, some of you may have heard this story, but when after Pascal died, they found that he had actually taken this journal entry and sewed it into his coat, that every time he bought a new coat,

he would put, he would sew the journal entry into it and when he would get a new coat he would rip it out of the old coat and put it in. So he never, ever, ever was far from the remembrance of this experience. And this is what he wrote. After he died, they found it. It said, in the year of grace 1654, Monday, 23rd November, the day of St. Clement, Pope and martyr from about half past 10 in the evening till about half an hour after midnight fire.

Remember this? But listen, see what kind of experience it is? He wrote this down. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob. Not of the philosophers and of the learned. Certainty. Joy, certainty, emotion, sight, joy. Forgetfulness of the world and of all outside of God.

The world has not known thee, but I have known thee. Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy. My God, will you leave me? Let me not ever be separated from you. I think what's intriguing about this. Reality, see? presence, certainty, not the God of the philosophers.

What happened was he didn't, so much of an experience of his love or even of his glory, but of his reality, of his presence. See, another flash as the diamond turns. One of the things that's so wonderful about Pascal's experience, I think, in a way, is just this.

Pascal, of all the men that I've just mentioned, most of them aren't that famous. Some of them were particularly in eloquent, for example, Dwight Moody, who didn't have much schooling, and who was really fairly backward educationally. But of all these people, Pascal has been well known as the most eloquent. In fact, some of his letters are considered the way in English we look at Shakespeare's,

consider some of the most incredibly beautiful French prose ever. This is just phrases, just gobbledygook. I mean, it's beautiful, but here was a man, so overwhelmed, one of the most eloquent men ever, and all he could do is just write phrases out on a paper. It was beyond knowledge. It was beyond his eloquence. And one of the reasons why it's intriguing and important, why do I come back very often to Pascal and Edwards, and I'll tell you why. When we talk about communion with God, how easy it is for us to think that this is emotion.

Now, it's a lot more than that. But why we go to Edwards and Pascal, I'll tell you why. Here are two people who everybody knows, Christians and non-Christians know, were two of the greatest geniuses in history. Two of the greatest intellects. And they were extremely, they weren't just intellectual. They were intellectual intellectuals. I mean, they were very analytical, very rational. Pascal himself was a mathematician.

And a brilliant mathematician, just something that's hard for me to realize, but I was reading an encyclopedia entry that he essentially laid the groundwork for the whole field of probability of statistics. Nobody even had thought of the field of probability, and he basically thought it up. A brilliant man. Edwards also was a brilliant man, extremely rational, not at all prone to emotion. excess. What is this? This is communion with God? It's communion with God. Now, before, wait, move on, all I've been doing is trying to tell you about the reality of it. Just trying to show you what Paul's actually after here, what he's after, what he's talking about.

Before moving on, let me just exhort you for a second. In some ways, this is dangerous. Let's talk about married love for a minute. It's the best of the best of you. way we can do this. If I tell my wife I love her in letters, if I tell my wife in a kind of, you know, detached way, I love her. If I say, now, listen, because I love you, I would like to do many things for you, could you give me a list? And every day she gives me a list of 50 things that she wants me to do for her, and I do every one of them. To the letter. Do I love her? Well, yes, and I know this is hard. Love, you know, the greater something is, the harder it is to define. That's why it's impossible to define God. You can say what he's not, but you can't say what he is. And love is not quite as great as God,

but the fact is it's also very great and it's very, very hard to define it. You can basically not really define it. You can't say what it is, you can just say what it's not. If you love somebody, you will do for them. You will meet needs. You will notice lists like that. If you love someone, you will write letters and say so. If you love someone, you will verbalize it. But there's got to be more than that. There's got to be, my wife has got to not just know that I love her, see that I love her, she's got to experience that I love her. There has got to be a personal exchange.

There's got to be an eye to eye, not just a brain to brain. There's got to be an eye to eye, a face-to-face, a lips to lips. There's got to be brace. There's got to be an experience of love. Now, in the same way, you know, when Paul says, Romans 5, 5, the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts. The word he uses there is inundate. Listen, love is less, is more than personal exchange. It's more than hugging and kissing, of course. It is doing for one another and so on, but it's not less. Why in the world would God

give you a love that you never experience? What kind of love is that? His love seeks to inundate us. His love seeks to embrace us. His love seeks to be heart to heart. Now, this is dangerous. Why? Because sin warps feelings. And because sin warps feelings, you must never, ever, ever base your day-to-day walk with God on your feelings. Like, I mustn't base my day-to-day behavior toward my wife on my feelings.

Because your feelings are up and down. You're both a physical creature and you're a sinful creature. And as a result, if I index how kind I am to my wife. see how committed I am to my wife on the basis of how much I feel and experience my love for her on that day, we'd be in a terrible state. It's one thing to go on a roller coaster, that's fun, but to live on a roller coaster is death, I think, and that's what you'd be living, and that's the kind of marriage you would have. And that's, of course, you know, that's another sermon. And in the same way, you must never follow your feelings in the Christian walk if they contradict what the scripture says you have to do. you must never follow your feelings

you see if it's out of accord what the scripture says you should do you must not base your understanding of God's love for you just simply on your feelings but having said all that and having qualified that

and having told you about the dangers of that and about the fact that here in modern world we are so starved by our technological and our high-tech society for experience that it's a danger to you can talk like this because many people are going to make an idol out of experience and say good I do want to become a Christian

because I want that wonderful feeling, which would, of course, make an idol out of the feelings. You must make an idol. You mustn't let it run your life. You mustn't let it contradict the Word of God. You mustn't base your Christian life and your behavior on your feelings anymore than I should base my marriage to my wife and my feelings. But having said all that, God's love is meant to be experienced. It's meant to be known. And if you don't know it, and you can see that his love by definition by nature would be seeking for you to experience it and have it flood your heart. then you are doing something to block it. You are, we are too satisfied with so little,

with nibbling the melba toast out in the parlor instead of going into the banquet room. Where's the joy and the boldness that the world should be astonished at? It's because the love of Christ doesn't flood our hearts like that. Now, the second thing we've got to teach, and I want to get as much this teaching done so that next week I really can just give you the most practical. I mean, in some ways, it's unfortunate. I'm sorry.

I mean, in some ways, this is a sermon that's going to get you motivated to do something and then I'll tell you real specifically how to do it. But I'll tell you basically here. The second thing that this passage teaches is not just the reality of communion with God, but the fact that we have to be prepared for it. Prepared. It says, for example, verse 16, I pray that out of his glorious riches,

he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being. now listen carefully and this is this is very important because a lot of people rightly so should say I'm going to pray I'm quitting

I'm going to I'm calling in sick tomorrow which of course is a lie which is a bad way to start off your communion with God I'm going to take a day a work out

and I'm just going to pray and I'm going to wrestle and I'm going to say Lord I want to actually experience your love I want to know you now might you not

then in that situation if you spend eight hours praying and reading your word reading the word of God and singing and fasting and seeking him that you might really begin to experience communion with God. I mean, that's a great step in the right direction. I don't know what's going to do to be financially. But I think in light of this verse and in light of the

experience of men and women of God over the years, I think you'd realize that a crash course is probably not what you need. What is Paul saying? Paul is saying when he asks that the spirit may strengthen you with power through a spirit in your inner being, what's amazing is he's saying that the communion with God is such a magnitude that there is a need for God to actually prepare our inner being otherwise we just crack under the weight of it. Do you remember Daniel Steele actually said I feel a pressure of God's love that is almost insupportable?

Now what Paul is saying here is I first pray that the Spirit of God would strengthen you in your inner being so that you can commune with God so that you can experience the dwelling of Christ you can experience the love of Christ you can experience the full measure of the fullness of God. There is a preparation. The analogy would be,

if you are completely out of shape and you have done absolutely no physical conditioning, don't go out tomorrow and run 20 miles. Why not? Because you would not be able to take it. You have to work up to it. I am not saying that God cannot just come in and intervene,

but I'm trying to say that ordinarily communion with God is something that is a journey. and not only that it is a journey that not only takes discipline but it always has ups and downs just to give you a kind of interesting example

and I want to qualify this briefly by saying I would not immediately run right out and buy her material and think wow this is what I'm going to read because I think a lot of you would find it very hard to understand at this stage

in your Christian walk but Teresa of Avala was a 16th century Carmelite nun and she wrote some of the more searching material on prayer and experiencing communion with God. That was her life's work. And after having gone through many years of seeking real communion and experience of God and mentoring others, she wrote a book called The Interior Castle in which she said, I perceive that there's seven stages as people march toward and move toward intimate communion with God.

Now, I doubt it. I doubt that you can make its stages. I doubt it very much, because the Bible doesn't indicate that there's seven nice and easy stages. But it's intriguing to see what stages she went through and her friends went through. And this is what she said. She said, she talked about them as mansions. That's why she called it an interior castle moving in. She says, the first mansion, the first stage, most Christians are in, and that is, she calls it sleepwalking.

They have no idea what communion with God is. They don't know what they're missing. Their hearts are so full of worship for other things. you spend all of your time contemplating without knowing it, meditating, worshiping, communing with other things in your life that you think are going to make you happy, seeking to suck love out of them. Whether you know it or not,

you are right now worshiping and communing with other things, and that's the reason why you don't know communion with God. These other things can't possibly give you the glory that God can. But your heart's so filled with it that most people who are Christians have no idea what communion with God is. That's the first stage. And the second stage, she calls Tug of war. Now, this is my paraphrase, of course, tug of war. She says, ordinarily what happens is you have a problem. Not a huge problem very often, just a problem. And because you have a problem, it kind of shakes

you up, and you realize these other things that your life are filled with are not going to save you, and you actually pray. I mean, you actually spend a lot of time praying more than you ever used to. And so you're surprised you experience a little bit of peace, a little bit of communion with God. But then as soon as the problem goes away, you get out of the habit of praying, but things have changed. You're in the second stage now, she said. You know what her second stage was? She now realized there was such a thing as communion with God. And at this stage, you establish a daily quiet time, and you try like crazy to get in and to get back and to experience that.

But most of the time, you're just back and forth, back and forth, up and down, praying and starting to feel close to God, and then getting out of it, getting upset about something, or getting undisciplined or getting sick or something like that. and you're back and forth, back and forth, you know, never able, tug of war, never able to really feel regularly like you're walking with God. That's the second stage of the seven. That's where most Christian leaders are. You know, people actually have a quiet time every day who know that there's communion with God out there. She says that's stage two.

And then for her, what happened was, and for many of her friends, she said in stage three, finally something happens that brings you to the end of yourself, something breaks you, and you finally have an experience of your complete unworthiness. Now, it might be because something goes wrong in your life and you realize you're powerless and helpless. Or it might be that just through study and reflection, you come to see that you cannot possibly deserve anything from God but his rejection. But something finally brings you to the place where you feel utterly unworthy and utterly

unlovable. And yet you keep on seeking God. Now, most of the time, she says, when you're in this third, this third, mansion or this third stage, you feel like it's regress. You feel like you're getting worse, but she was wise enough to realize it's advance, it's progress. And what she was saying is in this period of time, you're actually having, for the first time, an experience of your own sin. Maybe you believed in sin kind of intellectually, but now it becomes a reality to you. And in a sense, you're communing with your own sin. You're realizing it, it's come home to you. Then she says,

stage, you get into what's called the prayer of simplicity, or the prayer of quiet, she calls it. And she says, in the fourth stage, after many time, a good period of time and realizing how unworthy you are, finally you realize that salvation is by faith alone and grace alone, and that he just loves you, just loves you, just loves you, he just loves you. He just loves you because, not because you're perfect, but because he's perfect. Not because you have done so much, but because he's done so much. and you just experiences love and she says that just picks you up and lifts you up

and you realize it's free and then the fifth stage now finally understanding the grace of God you go back to really disciplining yourself you begin to see the things in your life that had actually been the things that you really were communing with and the things that you were really loving and the things that you were really absorbed

and you start to reject those things those false gods you start to throw them out and in a more disciplined way you learn how to meditate on the word of God and you learn how to really seek his face and finally for the first time in your life you begin to experience a regular not always not relentless not total not always but a regular and a periodic experience to a greater lesser degree of communion with God now you know the sixth in the seventh state for the life of me I can't figure out I have no idea what they are I mean I don't see any difference when the fifth six and seventh when I read them and read them and read them and I

I figured this is a lady who's beyond me. I don't get it. But you see what she's saying? What am I trying to teach you with? What am I trying to tell you? Am I trying to say, run out and buy the book? No, I'm not. I don't even advise it, by the way.

Even though she was obviously a great woman of God who knew a lot more about God than me. Am I saying that there are four, five, six stages is what to do, that they last, you know, five months each? No. What I am saying is that you must go on a journey and you don't go from something. strength, the strength, the strength, but usually from strength, the weakness to strength, the weakness, and it takes discipline and it takes seeking, and very often it takes being broken. But the fact of the matter is, the spirit has got to prepare you. This is not something, as great as it is, that you can just go out and push a button for. There's not three easy steps to it. Now last, the reality of it,

the preparation for it, the nature of it, and here we get into what we're going to talk about next week, I'll just lay it out. If you look carefully, and this is something you've heard before, but I really want to get into detail on it next week in a way I haven't usually done. The nature of spiritual experience is not as mysterious as you might think. It's all in this word, grasp. I pray that out of his glorious riches, he may strengthen you with power through the 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 saints to grasp. The word grasp, as it's used here, is an intellectual word. It means you think you know the love of God. Now I want you to completely comprehend it. So it starts with the truth. But the spirit takes the truth and drives it down. And I'm using a physical metaphor, but it's the best way I can think. In communion with God, the spirit grabs the truth that's in your brain and just starts to push it down through all of the floors between your mind and your heart. bam bam bam bam so that that truth thrills you comforts you disturbs you annihilates you that's why all these guys and the men and the women i was talking about talk about getting big like teresa vavalo when it gets down to the fifth stage she says this consolation the sweetness the delight of god's love are incomparably greater

is a glorious foolishness, a heavenly madness, I often have been as though bewildered and inebriated in this love. The soul would desire to cry out and praise and be beside itself. It can hardly bear so much joy. See, the love becomes real. It's being pushed down. The truth begins to shine. And that is communion with God. It's the spirit and the truth. The spirit grabs the truth and pushes it through. All of those incredible barriers that you have put, that sin has put, that the world has put, between the truth and the way you really operate, between the truth and that part of your heart that adores,

between the truth and the imagination through which you really experience reality. The truth captures that imagination, takes it over. And the truth begins to shine, and you grasp. And you realize that I know something that surpasses knowledge.

Now, we're going to look next week at what it means because the fact of the matter is there have been throughout the years and the Bible even talks about it. In fact, I will submit to you that Paul's actually doing it in this very prayer disciplines by which you move the truth from the mind of the heart. That's what communion with God is from mind to the heart, moving the truth. Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were encouraged by it and that it helps you apply the gospel to your life and share it with others. For more helpful resources from Tim Keller, visit gospel and life.com.

There, you can subscribe to the Life in the Gospel Quarterly Journal. When you do, you will also receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other great gospel-centered resources. Again, it's all at gospelandlife.com. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X. Today's sermon was recorded in 1993. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.