All right, hey, welcome everybody in the room. Everybody tuning in online. Yeah, get excited.

Let's go, man, y'all are out of eatin' tonight. Ports live. Welcome all the Ports live locations in particular Scottsdale, Boise, Midland, North Houston, Tulsa, wherever you are joining us from. We're

continuing this series of Ephesians. I'm going to read the passage we're going to be in and it is a prayer that comes from chapter three of the book of Ephesians. If you don't have a Bible, it'll be up on the screens. And I'm going to start in verse 14 where Paul lays out one of the best prayers in the New Testament. And he says this.

Speaking to the Ephesian church. For this reason, talking about the gospel and how it is for all people everywhere, I kneel before the father from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of the glorious riches, out of his glorious riches, he may strengthen you with power through his spirit and your inner being.

So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you being rooted in established in love may have power together with all of the Lord's people to grasp how high 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 fullness of God. Not him who is able to do a measurably more than all we could ask or imagine according to his power that is a work within us to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever.

And all God's people said amen. Hey, in the room, anybody grow up playing soccer in here? Yeah, there you go. I didn't grow up playing soccer, but you know, you get it. It's a ball two goals. You figured out. And I coached my kids and my son.

I coached the soccer team last year and it was a bunch of at the time five year olds and you know how hard could it be. And so day one show up practice teach him how to do it. It's five year olds. They're just there for the Capri Sun and orange slices anyways and try to teach him how to play soccer.

And so for 11 consecutive weeks, the same thing happens over and over and over and that's called a loss. A lot of teams having history gone undefeated. This was the first team I'd ever been a part of that just simply went defeated.

And every week we would show up and just get destroyed. And so I knew soccer season was coming back, coaching the team again, going to hopefully have a better record than last year. And so practice has been happening the last few weeks, getting them ready, trying to teach him, you know, these are midfielders and trying to teach him something about the game and to be aggressive and you're going to take that ball down the field. Don't score in our goal.

Score in their goal and we're practicing. First game came this past Saturday show up. Game face is ready. It's going to be awesome. And about 32 minutes later, we had acquired another loss seven to zero.

And I'm just watching these kids and I'm like, man, you guys are this is clearly I have failed you as a coach. I mean, this is a picture of us this Saturday out on the field where I'm like, all right guys, here's the deal.

I need you to stop losing. Okay, who wants to be a loser here? Anybody? And that's not what I said at all. But I'm trying to go through strategy. I'm like, you can take the ball. Need you be aggressive. You throw a little elbow. That's okay. And I didn't say that, but man, I was so tempted to.

But these are kids that just we're not able to succeed and it can't really they really didn't know how to how to not just survive in the game really thrive and even be any sort of competitive and the loss was seven to zero, which is pretty significant among six year olds.

Now, why do I start there? Because the apostle Paul is going to in this prayer give us a formula, so to speak, for how to succeed in your faith.

Or how do not just survive with the thrive in your faith. And apart from knowing that in life, we're all going to have valleys in mountaintops or highs and lows, good times, hard times.

He's going to give the formula that you and I are to go back to and he's praying over the sufficient church that no matter what they face, this should be a part of their journey so that they could not just survive but thrive and succeed in living out their faith.

And so we're going to walk through, but this is going to give an answer to a lot of some of the questions that all of us have just in life of how do I go through life and like be okay when things are not okay.

He's going to give some of the ingredients that make up people in the room right now that man, you're going through trying times but you just have like a piece about you and it's because of your awareness and your practice of the things that Paul is saying.

And he's recording some words that I hope very into your heart for the rest of your life because as things go well and things don't, it is knowing and understanding these that will allow you to be okay in that journey and not just to survive but to thrive in your faith.

As we said, the Book of Ephesians, if you were joining us for the first week, about three weeks ago we were in the book or chapter two of Ephesians and if you missed it all that's available on the podcast or on YouTube or anywhere that you listen to stuff and basically the Book of Ephesians was a letter written to the church in Ephesus, where is Ephesus?

Today it's a modern day turkey, it was a coastal city, very influential city, very wealthy city, had a climate that made it something akin to LA. It was incredibly just fluent, nice place to live right on the coast, you can go visit it and get on a plane today and there's still a large city that exists there.

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