The Inner Man

There are so many things that you and I take for granted in our lives. The technologies, the comforts, indoor plumbing. I've thought about, and I don't know if you've ever considered this, I remember when I was a child knowing people who were born in the 1800s. They were very old at the time. And they would talk about what it was like to live in 1890 or 1910.

And I've often wondered, if you took one of those people and suddenly brought them back to life and put them into today's world, how could they even function? For one thing, the speed of things. I remember reading an article years ago about how the country had been changed by the speed of transportation, that it ruined people's lives, it made things so hurried that people couldn't think anymore, it was ruining children's education. I mean, which is this horrible article on how the speed of transportation had changed everything. And the article was about canals built throughout the United States in the 1830s.

And it was from a major newspaper how this was ruining the society. What would it be like to suddenly be in a world with air travel, the mobility that the car gives us, indoor plumbing, refrigeration, the computer, our cell phones, the technology, satellites, it would be beyond comprehension, they would be in shock. I don't know if a person from that world suddenly awakened this world could even function. The reasoning part of their mind, their emotions, how would they deal with the world that you and I live in?

Of course, the reality is that you and I are having a hard time dealing in the world that we live in. Sociologists are calling the Western world, this time period, the age of anxiety. There's an anxiety and an angst and a worry that people have and it stresses, the stress of time. We look back at those people and the stresses they had. They didn't have the health care that we have.

There was a time in the United States where the average age, this doesn't mean everybody died at this age, but the average age was 40. Because for one thing, so many babies died. You think the stresses people lived through in the 1800s, the early 1900s, the 1930s and 40s with the depression and World War II, and all those stresses, and they would look in some ways and say, how is there stress on us today?

And yet people are stressed all the time. The medical profession keeps saying, the reason we're so sick, one of the reasons, is we're so stressed. The mind is affecting the body. And you know that affects us too, doesn't it? We say, well, as Christians, that shouldn't affect us, but it does. Stressed because of work, stressed because of family, stressed just because of what we live in and there's this anxiety and this angst that no one even is quite sure why it's there.

Why do I feel this way? There was a book written back, it was in the 1970s, where the man predicted that within 20 to 40 years, the average person would be walking, it would be because of technology and the constant change. I mean, you buy a new phone for $1,000 and it has everything you could want until three months later. The constant change would create people that walk through everyday life in a constant state of anxiety. And I had the book at home because I kept it because I watched what he predicted happen. Now, we as Christians, we say, well, there's a simple answer to that. Just change your priorities.

Make God your number one priority. Now, you've heard that in sermon after sermon. I've said it, you've said it, you've said it to each other. Just make God your number one priority. And yet, it seems like the stresses, the external stresses, keep driving us to a different set of priorities so that we become obsessed with other things. And God isn't our number one priority. And so because of that, we come to church, we might get some kind of spiritual pickup at church.

But it doesn't take long before that starts to sort of wane. And then throughout the week, you're sort of disconnected from God, sort of half connected, sort of a half Christian. And where we're not motivated by what we should be motivated by, but we're finding ourselves overwhelmed with stress, distracted by so many other things. King Rehoboam is an interesting person in the scripture back in ancient Israel time. He was the last king to actually reign over a united Israel. And Israel split during his reign because he became, he made a lot of mistakes. They ended up turning into Israel and Judah, and they ended up two separate nations for the rest of their existence.

At times they fought wars with each other. They were all the same tribes. They were all the descendants of Abraham. And there's one interesting verse about him I want to read in 2 Chronicles. 2 Chronicles 12. Rehoboam isn't, we don't read about him much, we don't talk about him much. He's one of those kings that had all this potential, and he failed. And there is in 2 Chronicles 12 a statement that tells us why he failed. Verse 14, and he did evil. Now look at the rest of this sentence, because he did not prepare his heart to seek the Lord.

He did not prepare his heart. Now it's unfortunate in English when we talk about the heart in a symbolic way, not the literal heart. When we talk about the heart, we say the heart equals emotions, right? So when a child writes a little heart, and on a card it gives it to you, they're saying, I love you.

This is an expression of emotion. So the heart equals emotions in English. In Hebrew, it means something much more complex. So every time we read things like this, well, Riebo needed to have his emotions worked with. Well, that's partly true. But when you look through Hebrew and how the word heart is used, and it literally is physical heart, but it's used in a symbolic way, just like we do in English, but it meant more than that. The heart was the center of your reasoning power.

Now they knew there was a brain. They knew you and beings had a brain. But the symbol of the heart was it was your thoughts. It was your emotions. It was your motivations.

It was your character. It was your personality. The way they use heart is the way we would say that in the way we use the English language today is not emotions. It would mean the inner person. The inner person we talk about, and Paul talked about, the outward man and the inward man. There's the person we are externally in our actions, but that may not be the honest person, what everybody else sees.

The honest person is the inward man. Everybody here has part of the inward person that you hope nobody else ever finds out about. Maybe something in your past, wrong thoughts you have, wrong emotions you have. Maybe you have envy or whatever. That's part of the inward person. You can have envy and not express it. You can control it, but the inward person still has envy. You feel, you express, you think envy. So when we see the word hard here, don't just say, oh, he had emotional problems. He's talking about the whole inward person as opposed to the external person. He did not prepare the inward person.

Actually, Rehoboam was quite prepared externally to be king. He knew how to use these power. He knew how to do all the rituals. He knew how to rule. He wasn't a stupid man, though he'd made a lot of stupid mistakes. The problem is the inward person was prepared to rule Israel in the way God wanted it done. So his heart was not prepared to seek the Lord. We're going to talk about the inward man today. We're going to talk about preparing the inward person.

Preparing the inward person, preparing the heart so that you have contact with God, so that God truly is the center of your life and the priorities. We talk about Christ has to be the center of our lives. And there are nice words at church by Tuesday. Do we even remember that? I want to start with a very simple statement. This sets sort of a specific purpose for what we're going to talk about today.

It's something from the life of Jesus Christ. Let's go to Luke chapter 5. Luke chapter 5. Because how do we do this? And this sermon is actually based on a number of questions that people have asked me and even some suggestions for sermons that people have given to me over the last couple of months. How do we do something? How do we deal with the inward person? How do we deal with our inability to pray? How do we deal with our inability to make changes that we know we should do in our lives?

And we struggle with these things and we find ourselves disconnected from God. You're dealing with God externally. And you know what I mean. There's times when you pray and you are internally connected to God. And there's times when you're praying and you know God exists, but you're not really connected. It's an external thing. It's like, hi, how are you doing? Good to see you. You know when you're with another human being and you're just externally connected. And you know when you're with another human being and you're internally connected. Those are two different experiences. Where the inner person is connected. I'm not talking about these psychological terms.

I'm talking about the terms, the way the Bible uses, when it talks about the heart, especially in the Old Testament and where it talks about the inner man in the New Testament. Luke chapter 5 verse 16. Talking about Jesus. So he himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed.

If we are going to have this connection with God that we so desperately want, that many times we do experience on the Sabbath because you're coming together to worship Him on the day that He says to do so. And you experience an interconnection with God. But how did Jesus do that? What is the example He set us as He became a human being and lived as a human being, suffered as a human being, and showed us how a human being connects to God.

He went to the wilderness to pray. And when it says wilderness here, it meant the wilderness. He went out into the desert by Himself. Often He withdrew. He withdrew from the cares of this life. He withdrew from all the noise and all the clutter and all the people and all the problems and even His own disciples. He withdrew from them to have solitude with God. You and I cannot ever truly connect with God in all of this clutter. We can't. To do so, you and I are going to have to have times where we withdraw to find solitude with God. Now, you don't have a desert to go to. I remember Big Bend National Park, which is the most desolate of the national parks I've ever been to.

I mean, it's 200 miles to the nearest shopping mall and 70 miles to the nearest town, which isn't much of a town. And when you're out there at night, 10 miles from even the little campground with the coyotes and the snakes and the mule deer and the stars, it changes you. Now, you and I can't do that, can't we? Your desert might be a little walking trail. It might be a chair on the back porch. It might be one room that you can go to and shut the door and you'd find solitude with God.

I remember a woman telling me one time she washed the dishes even though she had a dishwasher because she would take a long time to wash dishes. Because she'd look out her back window, there was a beautiful mountain scene that she'd be looking at, and she says, all I did was pray. And then I'll throw out, look, and all the dishes had been washed, and I didn't even know I washed them. She was praying. I know what I've done in my life to seek that solitude because I can't find it in the clutter as I walked. I walked five, six miles just to be able to pray, just to get away from all of it so that God can do something that we can't do.

We're overwhelmed with the clutter, and there's only one way, and Christ showed us the way.

You've got to get away from the clutter. You have to withdraw from it. Now, when you came back, by the way, He didn't stay out there and be a hermit. That's not the example He lived.

He came back and got a little of it again. You and I are going to have to have our wilderness moments with God, and it's not five minutes. These wilderness moments were five minutes. He had to walk long ways out to where he was alone, spend the time, and come back. I know no other way to do it, and it's the only example Christ gave us. This is how you do it.

You go be with God. That's how you do it.

It's not easy. It's okay. We're going to go be with God.

I've decided tomorrow morning it's Sunday. I have nothing planned. I'm going three hours, and I'm going down to the local park, even if it's raining, and I'm going to go be with God. Now, what do I do? Hi, I'm here.

Let me tell you all my troubles. Let me complain a little bit.

What else do I do? I don't know what to do. There's a very interesting scripture in James. Let's go to James.

James chapter four.

There's an interesting little passage here which says an awful lot. James is just packing all this in. He's almost writing it like Paul. James is different than Paul. James is very practical in his Christianity. Paul has got the bigger picture and the theology of things, but here he's just rambling like Paul. He's boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and you say, wow, you can spend hours just studying what he says here. He says, therefore, verse seven of James four, submit to God, He will draw near to God and He will draw near to you.

He's a good boy. All the people of the world are not Christians. No, he's not talking to non-Christians here.

James was not writing. This is not a gospel message to outside the church. James wrote to the church. This is a message to the church.

He was writing to people who were in the church, and he says submit, therefore submit to God.

Let's break this down a little bit.

Therefore, submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

God will prompt us to respond to him.

Submit to God. Okay, I'm gonna go submit to God.

God will prompt us. Now, I'll show you what I mean. Sometimes it's the scripture. You're reading through the scripture. You'll say, oh, and you actually experience, I should do that, or I shouldn't think that. Oh, boy, I feel better now.

Your thoughts will change. Something about your personality is being changed by God. Something in your emotions is a prompting. The scripture prompts us. Sometimes something that somebody else says will prompt us. Even in a conversation with someone who's saying, well, you know, this is what God wants. And you'll think, you know, they're right.

God will prompt us with other people. God will prompt us through his spirit.

And that prompting is a thought. It's in the inner person.

It is an experience where something will happen and you'll think, well, you know, boy, I should do this. And you'll actually feel sort of a pull.

You know, that person has really been down. They haven't been to church for a few weeks. I need to call him. It's not in the blue. It's prompting.

Now, God has to make us do it. That's the incredible thing that God could make us do things.

He does not. But he prompts us. And we have to have this sensitivity to God's prompting.

That, hey, I'm giving you a hint here. Sometimes it's not a hint. It's a slap in the face.

And we still will ignore it. We'll still ignore it. Submit to God.

Every time you and I are prompted by God and we don't submit, Satan will get involved in your life.

But you are prompted by God and you have this pull to do something or say something or change something and you don't do it. You just ignore this prompt by God. Satan will get involved. Submit to God and what happens to Satan according to this? What James says, he goes away.

You follow God's prompt and Satan goes away.

Because the power is coming from God and he's overmatched.

You and I don't want to have to go into Satan and fight Satan without God there.

But with God there, he's overmatched. He goes away.

So this is very important. We have to submit to God and we resist the devil. How do we resist the devil? We submit to God. At which point he goes away. Satan is real. He's always trying to convince us to do something against God in an attitude and in manipulating our thoughts and manipulating our emotions, manipulating events around us. And that he flees whenever we do this. So that means we have to understand when we take these times to seek, to go into our wilderness, to get away the solitude of being with God, we have to resist the urge.

Well, I've been here five minutes. I guess I'll go home now. I mean, let's see, the game starts in a half hour.

Right? We have to resist. We have to submit. I am here for solitude with God. Everything else has to be pushed aside until God and I are connected. He says, draw near to God and he will draw near to you. You know, here we've been talking about preparing our hearts to draw near to God, to be connected to God. You know, you and I, you say, well, wow, how do I do that? Actually, on our own, we cannot. You and I don't have the power to say, God, come and to see you. Right? That doesn't work that way. We don't have the power to say, God, I'm going to draw near to you. We want to draw near to God. We submit to God, which is part of this drawing near to God. But David understood this. Let's go to Psalm. We'll come right back here, but let's go to Psalm chapter 10.

When we read the Psalms, we find these poems and these songs, but you also realize that many of them are actually prayers. They're prayers that he put the music. Psalm 10 verse 17.

We're going to talk about what he says here in a minute. He says, Lord, you have heard the desire of the humble. Humility is absolutely essential if we are ever going to be connected with God.

He says, you have heard the desire of the humble. You will prepare their heart. You will cause your ear to hear. When we go into the seeking of the solitude, I must be connected with God. I come to submit. I do not know how to connect to you. I come to pray. I come before you, and we're doing these things that James talks about. He prepares our hearts. He does what we cannot do. So, yes, we have to come. We have to express our willingness. We have to do the things James is talking about here. But in the end, it is God who reaches into the inner man and draws us to him because you and I can't get there. We ask for it. We cry out for it. But see, if we never go to the solitude, then we don't give God the chance to do it. We don't let him do his work.

Once again, he can make us, but that's not what he wants. We don't let him do his work.

Then, if we go back to James, he says, to clench your hand, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. That's a whole sermon right there. Clench your hands. In other words, he says, as you are drawing close to God, some things are going to become very aware to you. God makes things aware to you the closer you are to him. And one is actions that are offensive to him. Clench your hands. It stops certain actions. The closer we get to God, the more prompting there is.

You understand? There's more input that's coming from him. One of the things we receive, and this is uncomfortable, the closer we are to God, we receive these messages, this prompting, whether it's from the Scripture or from somebody else or just God's Spirit working in us, that says, don't do that. Stop that. Don't be that way.

And when we resist that, we pull away. See, here we are with this desire. This is part of the double-mindedness. Purify your hearts. Purify the inner person because we're double-minded. We want to be close to God, but we don't want the cleansing of the hands. We don't want the purifying of the hearts. We want this relationship with God on His terms, or our terms, on His terms.

We want to determine the terms of the relationship.

And God does not allow that. The terms of the relationship are His. That's where He must trust His love. Faith is this trust in His goodness and His greatness and who He is. That's why we seek this solitude. That's why we prepare our hearts and then we go to God and we say, prepare my heart. I'm here to prepare my heart because my ways don't work here. But we're sort of double-minded. We live a half Christianity. We're sort of half Christians. We become comfortable with being half Christians. God's there when we need Him and the rest of the time we sort of do things the way we want them. This isn't acceptable. This isn't what God wants. This isn't... Of course, Jesus never sinned, but can you imagine the communion with God when He went into the wilderness and He is back at being one with His Father? An experience you and I have never had. The oneness between the Father and Christ. He goes to the wilderness to go back, to have time. As a human being, He had to do it.

He's showing us something. We need to do this. We need to seek the solitude, the time where we are with God, with the Bible. We are crying out to God and He is drawing us to Him. He's drawing us to Him. He says that lament and weep. That needs to repent. If you start to cleanse your hands, purify your heart, this is uncomfortable. To be with the Almighty God is a comfort and a peace that we can't experience of ourselves. When you experience it, it's like, that's God.

But being with the Almighty God is also at times uncomfortable because He's God and we're not.

It's uncomfortable. He said, so when you go before God and you're drawing close to God and your heart is being purified, so you're preparing your heart, which we evolved into, it can get uncomfortable. And you lament and you weep because you understand the greatness of God, the goodness of God, and you understand who you are before God, that we are all absolutely dependent on His mercy. We're absolutely dependent on Him for everything.

That's part of preparing of the heart. It's the understanding of our absolute dependence on God.

Let's go back to Psalms, Psalm 32. You know, every once in a while I end up in a sermon where back and forth into Psalms, because once again we're into something that David understood because he dealt with the inner man all the time. Just like Paul, David and Paul were two individuals who really dealt with the inner man, who understood and looked at the core of who they were, and struggled with the core of who they were. Verse 1 says, blessed, no blessed, sorry, that's my Texas accent. As I said before, it's blessed. My Texas accent says blessed, and in Tennessee it's blessed. So here we are. Blessed is who so...

Now, if I ever get transferred again, I'll be saying it in Tennessee. But blessed is he who transcends, whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. When I kept silent, my bones grew old. Now, blessed is the person who before God, and this lamenting, he's lamenting, who before God is forgiven. Blessed is the person whose guilt is gone. Blessed is the person who is before God as a little child in the presence of their father, as a little child in the presence of an older brother who takes care of them. Blessed is that person! But he's lamenting because it's like, it's not easy to do. You will find that David had a lot of wilderness moments, where he many times, all night he said, all night alone crying out to God. All night struggling with who he was and who God is, and how this life is supposed to be lived, and this desire for the resurrection, which is at the heart of everything in this book. He says, but when I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was turned into drought of summer. He's struggling. He's separated from God.

Now, this is before his issue with Bathsheba, by the way. This is just looking at his life, whatever stage, whatever's happening to him at the time, and he's looking at himself and saying, I'm separated. I pray, but it doesn't go very far. I can't break through. I'm drawing near to you, and I have to have my heart prepared, and you have to draw me. I come to be drawn, and I come to be prepared. Verse 5, I acknowledge my sin to you, and my iniquity I have not hidden. And I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.

In drawing to God, we're always brought back to, God, have mercy on me, because I know you've forgiven me, but I still sin. I still need your mercy every day. I still need your forgiveness all the time so that I can have this relationship with you. And that's what makes it what James is going through. It's almost like a point by point. Submit to God, then you get to this place. Well, you're lamenting and just submitting to God, because there's a point where you're going through what David went through right here. It's like, I got away from it. I drifted, and I was all day and all night. He says, I was just going through this turmoil, this anxiety, this stress. I couldn't handle anything. I felt like I was going crazy. Couldn't get along with anybody. And then I went to God and said, I'm pretty messed up. Please forgive me. Verse 4, For this cause, everyone who is godly shall pray to you, at a time when you may be found, surely a flood of great waters, and they shall not come near him. So what happened when he prayed this prayer?

He says, the godly will pray what I just wrote. He said, they will realize I must, before the great god, be acknowledging that I'm not perfect, acknowledge that I am flawed, acknowledge that I need forgiveness and help and guidance and love. I need these things. We have to go express these leads to God. And he did. And he said, all godly people will do this.

And what was the result? Look at verse 7. You are my hiding place. You shall preserve me from trouble. You shall surround me with songs of deliverance. He said, I'm singing songs all the time of how you have entered into my life and how you have been my savior.

Wilderness moments are intense when the breakthrough happens because there is a renewal of your need for God, which is what we're struggling with all the time. We're pretending we don't need them. What we're doing is we're sort of pretending we have control, and we're pretending that we are making our own decisions. We're doing all this. God said, yeah, you're making your own decisions, but they don't work. And what happens is when we go and we have this solitude where it's just you and God. And it's God, I don't know, I'm here. I don't know how to draw close to you, but I'm here. I don't know how to prepare my heart, but I am here.

And God begins to do this, and we go through this, and then you get to verse 7.

Then you experience as we go through this. It's, boy, am I glad I'm here.

I'm so glad I'm here because it is God. It is the creator of the universe who is hiding me, who is taking care of me. This is what we need, folks. This is what we desire.

We must accept this need. We must accept this desire, and we must go do this.

Because the inner person was designed to have a relationship with God.

The outward person could just be a half Christian. We can get real good at it, but that's not what God wants. Now, think about all the things He listed. Submit to God, resist Satan, draw near to God, cleanse your actions, purify your heart, repent by lamenting. We can do none of that unless we humble ourselves before God. Which brings us to one of Jesus' teachings about prayer.

This begins with prayer. It begins with prayer and usually the Bible.

You're praying and you have the Bible with you. Luke 18. If you don't have time for this, you don't have time to connect to God. So whatever you're doing, enjoy. Because it's all your life is.

If we don't have time to connect to God, then enjoy what you're doing because that's all your life is.

It's supposed to be more than this. It's supposed to be eternal.

Luke 18.

I read this quite often in my own life because this passage scares me.

I try to say I don't want to end up like one of the men in this parable.

Luke adds this little comment that he spoke a parable to them that men always ought to pray and not to lose heart. I'm sorry, that's not where I want to be. I want to be in verse 9.

He says also, because Luke actually gives two explanations of the parables. It's very interesting. Luke wasn't there. Luke's writing later, but he knows the meaning of the parable. So he gives a little sort of commentary in front of both of these parables. Verse 9. And he spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. It's going to be about prayer here. And we're going to look at one person who he says this kind of person trusts in their own righteousness and they despise other people.

Two men went up to the temple. We know this, but let's read it. We can't let this become old hat. Two men went up to the temple to pray. One a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. One, the most respected religious person in the Jewish community.

The other, the most disrespected person in the Jewish community because they worked for the Romans.

They collected taxes for the evil pagans. Of course, they usually didn't have much choice. The Romans just picked people and said, you're a tax collector. But, you know, whatever reason that drove this person to do it, who knows? The important thing is, understand something. Both of them are practicing Jews. Both of them are in the temple.

Both are in the temple, worshiping the true God.

Both are in the temple, worshiping the true God.

A Pharisee, the Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself.

Very cognizant of what he was saying, very aware of why he was saying what he was saying, what he believed about himself. Remember, he trusted himself and despised others.

God, I thank you that I am not like other men. He starts with, God, I thank you for your greatness, for your mercy. He says, I thank you. Wow. I'm just a good guy.

I really appreciate that. He says, I am not like other men. Extortioners, just adulterers, or even as this tax collector.

I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I possess. You know what? He probably wasn't an extortioner. He probably had never committed adultery. These are true statements. This man had never worshiped an idol. This man had never gone out and stole a rob from anybody. This man had kept the Sabbath all his life. Externally, externally, he did what God asked. Internally, he trusted in his own righteousness and despised other people. The inner man and the outer man weren't connected here very well. And that's what it means if I double-minded. Remember, James said, purify your heart so you're not double-minded. You're not trying to be two things at the same time. The problem with the Pharisees, he's being two different people at the same time.

I have tithed. He did tithe. Now, God commands us not to be extortioners.

God commands us not to be adulterers. God commands us to tithe. We can't say, oh, I guess we could do those things. No. He did those things. He's not condemned because he did those things. He wouldn't have understood that. He would have said, but I do those things. The whole point here, the inner man is not in alignment with the outer man.

His real motivations, his real thoughts, his real emotions, the personality, the character, what is inside was not the same as what was being externally projected. God expects both things to happen. He says that the tax collector standing afar off would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, God, be merciful to be a sinner.

I tell you, this man went down to the house justified rather than the other.

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. To be humble before God is to be more aware of your state than the state of other people.

It's not that we're not aware of other people. I mean, if someone is an extortioner, you should not hang around with them, right? They're going to extort from you.

If someone is violently angry, we're not to hang around with them. Proverbs says that because they will cause you to end up in trouble.

So he's not saying, you know, well, these things are okay. Remember, the tax collector is a Torah-observant Jew, or he wouldn't be allowed in the temple.

It's his attitude. I am a sinner, and I only come before you, God, because you have given me this privilege.

That's what grace is. It's a privilege. You gave it to me.

Now, we understand even more than this parable here, because we understand what Jesus was saying. He is the reason we're allowed to go. Without his death and resurrection, and our stead, we don't get to go to God. We're allowed to go to God.

We go to God through Jesus Christ.

This man was justified.

I read something, I can't remember how it went. It was earlier this week. It was a saying, and I can't remember who said it. It just, oh, Jonathan Edwards, who's a hell-fired brimstone preacher from the 1800s. I usually don't quote Jonathan Edwards. This little quote was so amazing.

No, no, I'm sorry it wasn't him. I don't remember who it was. It was, don't hide behind your dignity, because that is where pride hangs out.

We stand, well, it's my dignity. It's my honor. There's a lot of pride behind that.

When we start hiding behind our honor, there's usually a lot of pride behind that.

So we have to be humble. When we go seek these wilderness experiences, when you say, I'm going to go spend an hour with God or two hours with God or whatever, and I'm going to go do this, you will suffer being humiliated, and it will be a benefit to you. There was a passage in Romans, we won't go there, but Paul talks about when we pray, we can't sometimes even say what we want to say. We don't even know how to express what we're feeling. It's in Romans 8, and Paul said, God's Spirit, because of God's Spirit in you, God knows exactly what you're going through. So when we go to God and cannot connect, God will make the connection because God knows. God understands.

And God can connect with us.

Let's sort of wrap this up here with Ephesians 3. This is a prayer. Ephesians 3.

Ephesians 3.

Paul is writing to the church in Ephesus.

And he says, For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He says, This is my prayer. I am on my knees for you people in Ephesus. This is what I'm praying for you. I'm bowing before God for this reason. And that he gives the reason. He gives what he wants them to get. What he's praying to God for them to experience. He says, From 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 through his Spirit in the inner man. He says, This is what I pray. And this prayer is for all of us.

Paul says, When I pray is that through God's Spirit he will strengthen this inner man. But if all we do is live our lives with the outer man.

It's amazing how many people are not even self-aware.

They go through life not even understanding the effect they're having on other people.

All they understand is their immediate feelings and immediate things around them. And they have no concept of actually how to relate to other people or have people relate to them.

Children are like that. Little children are like that.

And when we watch them break out of that, like when they come, you know, it's your it's Father's Day and they finally come and they made a little gift for you. And you realize they broke out of something here. They've actually gone above their own They're aware of something else besides their own little feelings, their own little world.

They become self-aware. This is another person. And I love this person.

The inner man is supposed to be aware of God and aware of others.

That Christ might dwell in your hearts. This is how we prepare our hearts so that Christ can dwell here in the inner man through faith. In other words, our faith that God is going to do this.

That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints. What is the width and the length and the depth and the height to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Paul says, I want this inner man to be open to God. Why? Remarkable statement. So that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. That God's Spirit may dwell in us. That the Father and the Son are both abided in us. That's what Christ said. The Father and I will abide in you and will live in us. And will live in us. That's what this is about. The outer man doing certain things is good.

But God says the whole purpose is to get into the inner man that he lives here, that we truly are his children.

You know, I can't do that. We draw, we submit, we humble ourselves, but he does this. Verse 20, Now to him, God, who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.

We all struggle with our connection with God because we're physical and he's not.

But his Spirit will give us the ability to do that. But to do that, we can't just say, make God our priority. There is no other way except you and I must, on some kind of regular basis, seek as Jesus Christ did, seek our wilderness experience, seek to go find solitude with God, to connect with God, and let him prepare our hearts.