Breaking The Wall Of Hostility

I'm looking forward to what God is doing not only in the sanctuary, but also in small groups throughout the whole city. And Ben, Jody and I are in multiple groups. I'm in a group on Monday night with Jody and some other couples, and we'll pull out the discussion guide. And then Tuesday morning, I'm with a group of business guys that we meet over Tuesday. And we actually use the Emmanuel M&AAP to pull up the digital discussion guide and go through the questions. And there's something about not just getting the monologue of Sunday morning, but getting the dialogue with each other. Turn the person next to you and say, I need you too, so that we can really dive into the word. And I have a phrase that was used each week in this series that, in an isolated world, together is better than alone. Say that with me. In an isolated world, together is better than alone. And I think there's something powerful as we gather each week. In fact, when we worship, how many like worship? You love worship when you come in, you love to sing. How many wish it went longer some days? You're like, I'm just getting into the holy ollies. Well, we have a worship night next Sunday night for all locations coming together in Spring Lake Park. We invite you to come. We have childcare up till through preschool. And then families can worship together.

And we're just going to wait on God. And somebody said, well, what's going to happen that night? And we're like, I don't know. We're just going to worship God and wait on him. And then God's got his own agenda. Come on, somebody. So when we're together, powerful things happen. In the first two weeks of the series, we've looked at how we have to move beyond just thinking only about me. And of course, in Jesus, we have something powerful. But God was the message last week. When Jesus steps in, he changes us. And because me and Jesus together, we can take on the world, right? But then it expands beyond that, as Paul is writing to the church in Ephesus. And he's including not only me and Jesus of vertical relationship, but it's also about the body of Christ coming together and being connected together. And we're called his masterpiece, not just individuals being called the masterpiece, but we are God's masterpiece. Did you know God's not done shaping and creating a masterpiece in 2026? But literally, in this day and age, he's shaping us for what he wants to do now. And it's not going to happen alone. We need each other. And as we've been looking at Ephesians,

and we're going verse by verse through Ephesians, I just have to tell you that there are some people in our church and Emmanuel kids that are doing way more than we are with Ephesians. As a matter of fact, I was walking through the hallway last week, and I was stopped and introduced to a young man from Emmanuel Kids, his name is David. And he did something with Ephesians that I'm not sure any of us have done yet. Once you see this, I put my phone out to record him, what he's done, and I want you to go ahead and show that. What did you do? I remember I was a whole local Ephesians Spanish. Oh, my goodness. How long did I take? - That's it, I got two more. - Wow, we know we're doing a whole series on Ephesians, this month. It's pretty cool. I might have to have you come and quote it. - Yeah. - That's awesome. - He did it, he did it. - He memorized the whole book of Ephesians in Spanish. Wow, how many, you have a hard time with just a verse sometimes, let's be honest. If we really dive into the Word of God, it really does change us. I want to encourage you to keep diving in and as we look at the eternal Word of God,

it's the one thing that's not going to change. You know, you've got the era of AI and the era of digital things that are changing, but one thing that doesn't change is the Word of God. Can I get any amen to that? All right, as you go with me to Ephesians chapter two, we're going to pick up where we left off last week. I'll get there in just a moment. I want to highlight something that happens in our culture. People love to put us in groups and pit us against each other. So I'm going to ask a few things. I'm going to ask you for a show of hands. How many of you are Android users? Let me see, all right. Be bold about it, tell me something you're like. (audience laughs) How many are your iPhone users? Okay. How about your cat people? Dog people? Ooh. How about nothing? You don't like either cats or dogs, all right. (audience laughs) How about between paper and paper? Vikings are packers. Ooh, that's getting serious. Now, as I get a little bit more serious, don't raise your hand. Conservative Liberal. One denomination versus another. Ethnic groups pitted against each other. In some cases, a label could cause people to cancel others, even from their family, or their faith, or their church. How we navigate these big issues of division and families and

societies and neighbors is all found in Ephesians. Paul sends a letter to address the group and Ephesus and points them toward a path that we can all bring into 2026. How do we follow Jesus' vision for life in a divided world? Ephesus chapter 2, starting with verse 11 here, and just as a reminder, when Paul writes, he's writing to the church and they're gathered in living rooms. And somebody gets up and they're reading it, and then there's a discussion about the text as he's writing from prison, by the way. And so they're hearing from their apostle and starting with verse 11, it says this, "Don't forget that you Gentiles used to be outsiders. You were called uncirconsized heathens by the Jews who were proud of their circumcision, even though it affected only their bodies and not their hearts. In those days, you were living apart from Christ. You were excluded from citizenship among the people of Israel, and you did not know the covenant promises God had made to them. You lived in this world without God and without hope." Now, this is Paul speaking to the church. The church consists of both Jewish Christians and Christians that are called Gentiles. In the religious world of the Jews, there were only two categories. There was the category of the Jews, the people of God, chosen by God in the Old Testament, and then they're the outsiders. Now, consistently throughout the Old Testament, the prophets actually would address an issue here about exclusion of outsiders. In fact, it talked about the, in Isaiah, it talks about the Lord, including the outsiders in among the people of Israel, but it never really happened. In fact, it was so deeply ingrained in the hearts of people that as people were coming into the church, some of the pre-existing biases against each other were still there. And he talks about here in the verse 11 and 12, how the Jews kind of looked down their nose at those that were Gentiles, and they called them names. The names are, there's a nickname and they're calling them uncircumcised hevans. Now, the Jewish people, I'm not going to go into detail this morning, but circumcision was a physical act done to Jewish males that identified their connection to God. It was holy devotion under God. And so it became really a big deal to them. And then the Gentiles didn't grow up that way. They didn't have that kind of cultural distinctive, but they became Christians. And now both groups are in the church. And Paul is speaking to these people and he's basically going to address the conflict or hostility between them in this letter. And he says, don't forget that you used to be outsiders. All right, verse number 13. He says, "But now you have been united with Christ. Once you were far away from God, but now you have been

brought near to him through the blood of Christ." So he says, essentially, you once were far away, and now you're close. Now, the Jewish believers, they harken back to the Old Testament and the temple, they were always allowed to be closer to God. And the Gentiles were on the outside. In fact, in the temple courts, there was an outside and an inside. was called the court of the Gentiles. Even physically, they were distant from the inner court and from everything else. And so there was kind of a hierarchy to it, but Paul reminds them because of Jesus, you've been brought near by the blood of Jesus. Now this is really cool for us. I wanna just pause here and keep going on the text. But for some of you, you grew up in the church and a lot of churchy things are like, intuitive to you, you get it. But for many of the people sitting around you, they didn't grow up in a Christian family. They didn't grow up with all the Bible verses in their head and they didn't grow up, not speaking swear words. They didn't grow up with certain things going on in their life. And so when they've come in, sometimes they can feel like they're outside looking in. I didn't get what you got. In Paul is saying to the church, listen, those of you that feel like you're on the outside that you're not a full member, that you don't really belong, because of the blood of Jesus, you belong here. You actually do belong here because of the blood of Jesus.

All right? But now you have been brought near through the blood. In other words, you're not outside, you're not in the outer courts, you're close again. All right, then, verse number 14. For Christ Himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when in His own body on the cross, He broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. This is a big phrase. In fact, the title of my message today is breaking down the wall of hostility. There is a text here that really says, this is what Jesus did. He broke the wall of hostility. Now I want you to see this. He says Christ has brought peace to us. In other words, it wasn't here, but He brought it to us. How does that happen? And what is peace? Peace, the biblical word for peace shalom is complete. Nothing missing. You got everything that you need. And even if circumstances aren't correct on the outside, on the inside, it's gonna be all right. Because we have peace and the peace of God kind of brings a calmness into our story when we couldn't have without Jesus. And Jesus delivered it to us.

How many of you have ever been to a potluck? Come on now. Thank you, Jesus, for potlucks. I think COVID might have done away with potlucks at some point or another the last few years. But I grew up, my daily bread was potlucks. It seemed like every Sunday, we'd have potluck at church and somebody bring casseroles. I skip the salads every single time. I went right for the desserts, you know? And if I was gonna get meat and jello, I had to make sure there was enough space between them. They were my mashed potatoes touching the strawberry jello and all of that kind of stuff. And everybody brought something, right? Everybody brought something. I want you to think about when we gather together or you think about your life, Jesus brings the peace. Who's bringing my peace? It's Jesus. If you know Jesus, K-N-O-W, you can have peace. But if you don't know Jesus, there's N-O, no peace. If Jesus is in your party, you got some peace. Out at the party, you don't have any peace. And it says, in his own body on the cross, there in verse 14. In his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. So much happened on the cross.

Many times we just think about our sins being forgiven and on speed made new, or we only think about the cross at Easter and Good Friday weekend and all of those parts of the story where we watched the story, we're thankful for the blood of Jesus in that way. But I just want to remind you, one of the benefits of what Jesus went through was the peace the cross brought. Because of the brokenness of Jesus body, he was able to take on the brokenness of the world, the shattered parts of the world, the incomplete parts of the world, and he took it on himself so that we could have shalom. This is the benefit of what Jesus did for you. He brought you peace on the cross in his own body. in humanity, the walls of hostility run deep all the way back into Genesis. Between Adam and Eve, marriage, between Adam and Eve and their sons, their sons Cain and Abel, hostility, hostility passed down throughout the world in world history. Great hostilities. And so, when we talk about hostility here in this verse, Paul is saying to the church, "Listen, Jesus broke the wall of hostility that separated us, separated us from God, and separated us from each other." The temple had a wall separating the Gentiles from the inner court and the Jews. He would break down a historic generational wall. He would break it down. And in the church, as these new Gentiles were coming into church in Ephesus, they were coming out of pagan backdrops. They had come out of behaviors that the Jews considered to be evil. And yet Jesus has brought them in and there's still a historic hostility, even though both groups are Christian. And Paul is saying, "Listen, even in the church, Jesus brings down the wall of hostility. I'm going to break it down. I'm going to break it down. Let me ask a question today of you. What walls of hostility are around you today? What walls of hostility are around you today?"

Because they are around us. I had already put my notes together, sent them off. And then last night I was sitting and I was reading through the Wall Street Journal. There was an article that popped up and go ahead and put that graphic up there that was amazing to me. It says, "Why are so many adults cutting off their parents? Family estrangement is on the rise, driven by sifting family norms and changing therapy practices were at a cultural tipping point." In that article, it said that many experts believe that estrangements between adult children and their parents are becoming an epidemic in the U.S. You know what happens when generations separate from each other? Both generations suffer. The younger generation misses out on the wisdom of the generation ahead of them and the older generation misses out on the relational connection to those that they love. I just would say this, those type of walls of estrangement are happening throughout our society. There's all kinds of reasons that are behind that in the article. They talked about the psychology of the generations that are being raised and new definitions of what harm is to children. Now, if a parent draws a boundary or disciplines their child, then they're being taught that that's an unsafe environment. And so, now they can strue strength in the older generation as harm or abuse. And then, if you have that abuse there, then you have justifications for cutting them off. That same pattern happens in so many ways. And listen to me, by the way, if there's abuse, you need to draw boundaries. If you're in a relationship with somebody's physically harming you, call the police. I'm not saying to say it at all, at all. What I do think is it's now moved to an extreme level where not only are we trying to resolve, we're not trying to resolve anything anymore, we're not drawing boundaries, we're not going to counseling. People are just simply canceling each other. What walls of hostility are around you in perhaps your family relationships, husbands and wives, things that you used to talk about, but you no longer talk about. A wall has emerged. Conversations between you and your children, and it's kind of moving apart, and now a wall has emerged. Or relationship with aren't and who doesn't get invited to Christmas this year and what anxieties emerge during that time. Hostilities are all around us. It's like walls being erected, generations against everyone. And I would just say this, everyone being against everyone, the algorithms in your social

media like that, they like to see us pitted against each other. And Jesus knows the way for the walls to come down. So I want you to see it in verse 15, he says, he did this by ending the system of law with its commandments and regulations, he made peace between Jews and Gentiles by creating in himself one new people from the two groups together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of His death on the cross and our hostility toward each other was put to what? Death. See, in Jesus, I know how the world tries to resolve hostilities and how's that work in for you, but in Jesus way, there's a different way. Instead of us being two separate groups, he knows how to bring us together into one group. And only he can do this. Our hostility towards each other was put to death on the cross. All right, let's keep going, verse number 17, he says, he brought this good news of peace to you Gentiles who were far away from him and peace to the Jews who were near. Now, all of us can come to the Father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done for us. This is getting straight, you guys, I mean, we are in a world of hostilities and some of those hostilities have made their way inside the church. And as they've made their way inside the church, we aren't going to resolve the issue by separate sides of the pew, so to speak, or going from one, I'll say, I'll go to first service, you go to second service, trying to be separate. No, Jesus way is when we come to the Father and we lay open our conflict, our hostility abilities, our walls, and we submit to Jesus, Jesus steps into the picture. He recognizes if there is sin in our hearts and he removes the sin and he gives us the capacity now to be sitting next to each other in the same place, one body. We need each other. Turn to the person next to you, say, I'm so glad you're sitting next to me. Verse 19, "So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers in foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God's holy people.

You are members of God's family together," everybody said, "together. Together we are His house built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets in the cornerstone is Christ Jesus Himself." Listen, there are no strangers or foreigners in the family of God. These people come in, you might feel like an outsider and you might not look like sound like whatever you think, everybody else does, because in a manual, we are like a box of crayons, baby. We're all kinds of colors and shapes and sizes, right? We got all kinds of, but even in that there's socioeconomic differences, there's geographical differences, there's generational differences, and yet when we come into the family, we come into his family, now there's something beautiful that happens, we're all called citizens of that family, and then Paul shifts in his language and he begins to talk about how in the family together we're His house. This language is really important because you need to understand that Jesus is building His house. There's a project at work in this moment. He's actually building something and he starts off with the cornerstone Jesus. It's the right height depth for the piece of land that you're gonna build it on. And it's gotta be exactly right. If that's right, then you can build everything else around that. Anything and any house that's built without the right cornerstone. And you're gonna have crooked walls and things aren't gonna work out. And what starts off as a minute difference becomes a massive difference later on. And so you have to understand that everything is built upon Jesus.

In our relationship to each other, this isn't gonna work if we aren't agree that Jesus is the cornerstone. Jesus is the cornerstone. Now in a day and age at which it seems like the whole world wants everybody to believe everything and accept every other religion as if they're all the same. I just have to tell you this. We will treat other people with respect, but I will never give in. The word never gives it. Jesus alone is the savior of the world. There is no way to the Father except through Jesus. Get it straight. And when you see something else flipping through your TikTok that makes you start wondering, you need to go back and remember this. Your house is built on the cornerstone, Jesus Christ. And then it says the prophets and the apostles. That's speaking directly of the word of God. Listen, I'm preaching more scripture than I've ever preached before. Why? Because you will forget my good ideas. You will forget my slick statements. You'll forget the shirt I wear or the jacket I have on a Sunday. But the word of God if it gets in you

is your only hope, baby. It's the word of God. And this is why I want to encourage you to read it. Not just listen to it on Sunday. That's where we're talking about groups right now. You need to get out of monologue mode and get into dialogue and talking the word. The more you talk it, the more it gets in you. I'm starting to preach now. I gotta be careful here. But I was listening to a podcast about AI this week. It was a podcast by Harvard Business Review about CEOs using AI to help them in their job. And one of the cautions to them was the more you do it, it gives you good information before you go talk to a board or you make a presentation to investors or whatever. The more you do it, you can get used to reading it beforehand and then presenting it. But the problem is if all you do is reciting somebody else's thinking and you aren't really ingesting it in yourself, when you get asked a question, you might get caught as a fraud. Because you're spitting out somebody else's stuff. Let me tell you this when it comes to the word of God. You gotta have it inside of you and you need to dialogue about it so that when you face down the enemy in the middle of your fire, you preach the word back to the devil himself just like Jesus said.

When he was tempted, he said, it is written. You gotta have it inside of you so you're ready on Tuesday morning. When you get thrown off by your boss being all snarky at you, you gotta have the word of God ready to go out of you with a living response to the words that you've already been put inside of you. Come on with somebody. Yeah, I told you I gotta watch it, I'm starting to stray a little bit from my notes. He joins us together in the holy temple in God where God lives by his spirit. Look at verse 21, he says, we are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord. Through him, you Gentiles are also being made part of this dwelling where God lives by his spirit. That's a capital S by the way. It's not just a spirit, it's the Holy Spirit. What he's doing when we gather together is so important and so powerful. We have got to be the kind of people that when we gather together, the Holy Spirit and his gifts are activated. And the only way that happens is when we start into this process of following Jesus and we begin to pause and we let him do his work in us. It's not just worship God and receive all his blessings, it's also worshiping God and letting him see into you. That's intimacy, see into me. And while we're gathering, he begins to expose.

a wall between you and your sister. You've got to do something about that wall so that I can do other things in your life. See, the conditions for the spirit of God to move in the temple is that we have to have right relationship as his house. We have to be connected. This is what Paul's whole entire letter is about. He starts with talking about re-enreconciled to Christ, but very quickly he moves to the body, and later on he's going to talk to practical ways. We'll talk about next week and chapter four of how we connect to each other in practical habits, and then it moves to spiritual warfare and what we do in the heavenly's in the unseen world. So it really matters how we relate to each other. You see, I know that under the sound of my voice I've got more than just one type or group of people that are part of the manual. There are people in our church today that have been a part of the manual longer than I've been alive. And they have seen amazing things. There's others that came to faith or came to our church or other churches in the last part of the last millennia in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. And then there are others that came in in the 2000s and the 2010s and the 2020s. And as you came in, your experience really affects how you see the church

and how you see what God can do. And I can tell you that not everybody's experienced the same thing, but in this church I know that there have been moments in decades previous 'cause I've been here for 36 years now. 34 years, excuse me. As I've been in this church for this long, we've had moments where God moved in power in our services. And the Holy Spirit shows up and as the Holy Spirit is moving amongst people, there's a major move of God. People were getting out of their seats and coming to the front to kneel down and repent because the Holy Spirit was stirring them about the walls that they had either between them and God or the people around them and they had to do something about it. And as they did and they were willing to repent before God and change their ways or repent with their spouse or forgive people that have offended them or whatever the move was. Now all of a sudden the way was paved for a different second level of a wave of the Holy Spirit. Now all of a sudden people began to receive the mission of God because when they stopped worrying about themselves and they weren't just going through the motions and the walls came down. Now the Holy Spirit began to equip and empower and the gifts of the Spirit began to flow because people were open to what God would wanna do. And let me just say this today

that I'm believing because I know that under the sound of my voice there's whole generations that I've never experienced a revival before. You haven't experienced, you've heard about it, you've heard your parents talk about it, heard other people talk about it, but you've never personally experienced it. And I am believing for God to do a move of the Spirit in our church in a new, in a fresh way where the move of God comes in and we will never be the same again. And how does that happen? It starts with the walls. We gotta deal with our walls of hostility. We leave the walls up and the Holy Spirit doesn't move that way. We gotta listen and allow him to move in. Paul is in prison and in chapter three as we turn the corner into chapter three, he has some reflections that he has and so I wanna read these. He's in prison and he's talking to the church and he is the apostle to the Gentiles and he says, when I think of all of this, this miracle of what God is gonna do between the Jews and the Gentiles and the power of God that follows that and the mystery of God that is coming. He says, when I think of all of this, I Paul is a prisoner of Christ,

Jesus for the benefit of the you Gentiles. Verse two, assuming, by the way, that you know God gave me the special responsibility of extending his grace to you Gentiles. As I briefly wrote earlier, God himself revealed his mysterious, what, plan to me. As you read what I have written, you will understand my insight into this plan regarding Christ. God did not reveal it to previous generations but now by his spirit, he has revealed it to his holy apostles and prophets. Verse number six and this is God's plan. Both Gentiles and Jews who believe the good news share equally in the riches inherited by God's children, both are part of the same body because they belong to Christ Jesus. By God's grace and mighty power, I have been given the privilege of serving Him by spreading this good news. Paul was planting churches everywhere, and he's spreading this news. Verse number eight, though I am the least deserving of all God's people, he graciously gave me the privilege of telling the Gentiles about the endless treasures available to them in Christ. I was chosen to explain to everyone this mysterious plan that God, the creator of all things, it kept secret from the beginning. He has this astounding plan, this miracle that's gonna happen,

no more separation between Jews and Gentiles. And by the way, that meant that it would be a miracle outside the church then. It would be a sign that would change the world outside. And this is what it says, God's purpose, verse 10. God's purpose in all this was to use the church to display his wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was his eternal plan, which he carried out through Christ Jesus our Lord. I don't know how long to get into this, but when he talks about the unseen places and the spiritual forces, there is a spirit world that is controlling the natural world. And you can see it in world history when you look back that when darkness reigns, there's really a spiritual power that is propelling people to murder, to lead worldwide history places, you could never convince me that Hitler was not demon-possessed. He was demon-possessed and you see the result of a demon-possessed leader and what resulted in worldwide in the death and extermination, specifically of the Jews because the ancient spirits of darkness are after God himself. So they go after his people called the Jews. And it's still happening today. In church, don't you be caught hating what God loves? Don't you be caught hating what God loves, okay?

(congregation applauds) In the middle of all the wars and rumors of wars and all the other things that you can throw through TikTok and people are even at the UN, they're arguing, they're getting up and walking out one of the very speakers come to the front and there's tensions and hostilities everywhere we look. And you might be tempted to think we're gonna win the battle only by winning an election. You might be tempted to think we gotta get the right person, the right place at the right time and then everything will be fixed, but that is not how it works. No, the way that Paul is saying that it works is when the church who's in the middle of the world called out ones in all of our diversity and complexity. And we gather together and we've got all our backgrounds. When we gather together and the spirit of God begins to move in our hearts and the walls of hostility between me and my wife, me and my family, me and the neighbors around me, me and the world around me, me and those that I judge that don't look like me, sound like me, aren't maybe when we're born in this country, whatever it may be, when those walls come down inside of us, now something begins to happen. God begins to use the church and he uses the church not only physically outside the walls of the church, but because we're unified in the church. When we pray, we begin to target the darkness.

We target the authorities and the supernatural in darkness. And because the church is powerfully unified, the enemy can't stop. When we're unified, the power God comes through the church. I believe that God is calling you and me to look at what God wants to do. And yes, darkness is invaded Minnesota. Yes, darkness is all throughout the whole world. But if we are unified and we are saying, Lord, forgive me of my racism. Forgive me of looking down the nose of the Christian that's not just like me. Forgive me of all those things that I've done. And I begin to hold your hand and we pray together then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven. I will forgive their sin and I will heal their land. That's where the miracle happens. (congregation applauding) That's where it happens. (congregation applauding) Paul sifts to how it happens in verse number 12. He says, "Because of Christ and our faith in Him, we can now come boldly and come." I am suffering for you so you should feel honored. Then Paul begins to pray hundreds of miles away. He prays for the church. And as he's going to pray, he says in verse 14, when I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the creator of everything in heaven and on earth.

He starts off by saying, "I can't do this. I can't fix it. So I go to my knees." That's a sign of humility coming underneath the only one that can change it. And he begins to address the creator of everything. Listen, if you're in a place right now where you've got hostility, walls between you and people, walls between you and things around you, it starts with recognizing, "I can't do this on my own. I need to bow my heart before heaven. God, would you save my marriage? God, would you save my kid? Would you save our relationships? Lord, would you do something we cannot do?" That's what he does. He begins to pray. And I want you to stand with me today as we end. I'm going to pray. I'm going to read Paul's prayer over the Ephesians, but I want you to receive it as though he's praying it over you. As I read the prayer, I want anyone that has a wall of hostility to receive and trust God that your walls will come down in your family, in your neighborhood, the co-workers, your classmates, in your orbit of relationships, that the walls would come down in the church. And that could be anything. It could be busyness, indifference, not caring for one another, but also for this nation around us and the society that God has planted us in. He wants to show us off in the supernatural and the walls of hostility coming down. The people of God, the church, would have this strength to bring the walls down. For the gospel to reach people of every ethnicity, socioeconomic staff, every generation, the gospel must get out. The peace must be passed, but we need a revival in us around us for the walls of hostility to come down. Would you put your hands in front of you like and open your eyes? I want you to visualize pictures of the people that perhaps you have hostility or they have hostility with you. They're in your hands. I want you to add in there the things around us that you see, walls of hostility. And then I want you to hear this prayer that Paul prayed over the church that now I will read and pray over you. He says, "I pray that from his glorious unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God's love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand as all God's people should, how wide and how long, how high and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to fully understand then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Now all glory to God who is able through his mighty power

at work within us to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever. Amen, amen, amen. Let it be Lord. Let it be Lord. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Lift your hands to the Lord church. Father, we come before you and we that you would move in our midst, that you'd move in our midst. Bring the walls down, Lord, in our relationship, so that your spirit can move in new ways in the winds of God. Can we move into our city, we pray, we trust in you to turn it all around. We thank you in Jesus' name. (upbeat music)