Paul's Petition for Us to be Filled With God's Fullness

Our Old Testament scripture reading is from the book of Psalm, chapter 17, verse 15. If you would please stand. As for me, I shall behold your face with righteousness. When I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.

Our New Testament reading is John 1, 1 through 18. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him.

He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.

He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believe in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of the blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory. Glory is of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about him and cried out, this was he who I said, he who comes after me reigns before me because he was before me.

For from the fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, the only God, who is at the father's side.

He has made him known. Please remain standing.

Well, good morning.

I thought it seemed darker up here. It is, there's no lights up there. Open your Bibles to Ephesians three, please. Ephesians three. Oh, there it is.

Let there be light.

Thank you for your singing. It's a blessing to my heart, and I pray that the fellow saints around you, their singing was a blessing to your heart. These Lord's days that we are to come together and to remind ourselves that we are not isolated or islands, but rather we are the community and the church of God, it is a blessing.

I'll read the text and we'll go to the Lord in prayer. Let's start in verse 14 and we'll end in.

The end of the chapter.

So Ephesians chapter three, verse 14. For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who's able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever, amen.

Let us pray.

Oh God in heaven, you do abundantly more than we can ask or think, truly. And Lord, I'm relying upon that promise that we even just read now, that you would do abundantly more even here and now. Lord, that the preaching of your word would go forth, and I'm all too aware or not even fully aware of how it comes forth from weak lips, but I am thankful that it is the power of the Spirit that works with the word in the hearts of those who hear.

And so Lord, I pray that even my weak message here as I try to expose your word, I pray that even in weakness, you would make it strong, that the people would hear the truth that's found in it, and it would cause them to see Jesus more clearly.

And for those who have never seen Jesus, perhaps it would even cause them to see Jesus for the first time so that they will, Lord, grow in comprehension, that they would grow in their inner man, strengthen, that they would strengthen in their understanding of the love of Christ that has come to us unworthy people.

Lord, in heaven, this is such a high and mighty and lofty thing that we proclaim. So I just pray, God, that you would help us to have reverence, but also to understand our weakness, to proclaim and receive, and to rely upon the Spirit of power to do so.

Lord, thank you for this promise that you have given to us in scripture. May Christ be glorified now and forever in Jesus' name, amen. So I graduated high school in 2008, in which I went on to community college.

And on my way to community college, there was a, in my hometown, there was a new neighborhood that was being put up, a street filled with, and for my, the sermon's sake, I could say very nice and beautiful homes, but really they're your typical cookie cutter homes, and they're being built, and they're being built right prior to the housing crisis that happened around that time.

If you remember the great recession that happened in which there was a great fervor to make houses and to buy them, things were hopping, but then it suddenly crashed right around that time period. And so what you saw there was a new neighborhood, a new street being put up, and maybe a few houses, you could tell there was supposed to be more that was put up, and you could tell that they abandoned the project.

And so you have these houses that are structured and put up, but yet no one living in them. And for years, I would pass by it, and it was just an empty wasteland. It's kind of sad to see houses being built, the structure being built, put together, ready, but yet they aren't able to be sold, and so there they are, empty and lifeless, so to speak.

And I think here, what we have with what Paul has done in these first few chapters of Ephesians, as we're closing in on the end of the doctrinal part, or what God has done part of scripture, what we are faced with is a structure that has been put up.

This is what God has done, and the sad reality is is that we, as the readers, as Christians, we can look at it and not live within the structure that's been built. There could be a truth set up for us of what God has done, but yet it has no place in our heart, and so therefore, it's indeed lifeless.

And that's always the temptation or possibility that we would have the great truths of God laid up for us, for us to behold, and yet it finds no place for it in our heart, and so it becomes lifeless to us.

And so with that mindset, I think it's only fitting that Paul would then go from these lofty doctrines that we've seen, the lofty truths of what Christ has done for his people, and then he goes straight to his prayer.

He goes straight to his knees. He goes straight to the secret closet of prayer as he has this wonderful ending to this part of the letter of prayer. And if you notice in verse 14, he says, for this reason, right, that structure that's been put up that I proclaim, the truth that I just said, for this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, he says in verse 14.

Now, that prayer, of course, the bowing the knees, he's talking about prayer, and we gotta understand that it wasn't a typical way for Jews or that time period for people to pray with bowed knees. It wasn't like all the time when you prayed, you had to go on your knees.

In fact, this denotes a certain urgency of Paul. Even today, typically when you pray, it's sitting down in your favorite chair or standing up, right, behind the pulpit, but to be on bended knee denotes a certain urgency, right?

And so Paul has just laid out, for this reason, that structure that's been laid out, the doctrines of what Christ has done, and now there's this urgency to then go to prayer in light of it so it finds its home within our hearts.

And it's a very vital importance. We talked about this while we went through the Psalms. Prayer is vital for your life. Prayer is like the plow that loosens up the hard soil of your heart. It loosens it up so that you can then have the seeds put on so that fruit can then grow forth.

Or prayer is like the early rains that makes the seed germinate within your heart. If you have no prayer, these doctrines will lay lifeless as a structure and not be lived within. And so it's important, it's a good example that the Apostle Paul would go from the loftiness of doctrine, of these truths that Christ has done, down to his knees in prayer.

And what is the heart of this prayer that we're looking at this morning? Well, really what it's, how you can look at this is that it's three petitions, okay? And it's, you can understand that you've gotten to a new petition when he says that you.

If you notice, there's three that yous in this prayer. And it's not three different petitions that kind of don't have anything to do with each other. There are two petitions that then culminate in the third one.

Or maybe another way to think of it is it's like a ladder, right? And when you climb a ladder, you need to climb each rung to get to the top, right? And so I think there's three rungs here. The two bottom ones help you to get to the third one, which is found in verse 19, the culmination, the climax of this prayer, that is that you, the third petition here, may be filled with all the fullness of God.

This is his petition, this is his prayer, that you would be filled with the fullness of God. Notice it's present tense. That's something that needs to be done right now. And again, if you're being mindful of this letter, if you're being mindful of the main thesis of this letter, if you remember in chapter one, it can almost seem to contradict that petition that we'd be filled with God currently.

Well, what do I mean?

Look at chapter one, verse three. Do you remember what the main theme of the doctrinal or what God has done portion of the letter, what it was? You remember chapter one, verse three, blessed be God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

And that's the structure that he just laid out. If I notice, it's past tense. This is something that he has already done. He has blessed us already. We have all the blessings as Christians already laid up for us in the heavenly places that he's already done.

Yet now, what do we have? That he may fill you up with the fullness of God now. And so there can be a hard thing for us to understand is that if he's already done it, it's past tense. Why is there now a petition in the present tense for us to be filled up with the blessings?

Don't we already have it? Well, if you remember and go back to chapter one, verse four, we said, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

So remember, all the things that God has done is so that you would then walk in holiness and blamelessness, right? Now, that's like, there's two parts of holiness and blamelessness. That's like a standard that he has said, you are now forgiven, you are holy, you are blameless for Christ's sake.

But then there's also an aspect that we talked about where now we have the life of walking in that holiness and blamelessness that Christ has established for us.

In the gospel.

And so this is what's going on here, is that as we're transitioning in this letter from this is what Christ has done to make you holy and blameless, that we rely upon to be forgiven and to be right before God, now there's this great transition and now my petition is that you would then grow in this fullness in light of what Christ has done.

You would grow in fullness of God. And that's gonna then influence four through six, chapters four through six, and this is what you should do. We'll get to that more later. So the heart of the prayer here is that petition that you would be filled with the fullness of God in your day today, right now, in light of what God has already done for you already.

This is the heart of the prayer. God has made a beautiful house for you. He's made this beautiful come and behold and see what God has done in Jesus, right? And you are the saints who have said I behold it, I believe it, I am Christ's disciple, I am his.

Come behold, I have beheld, I believe. And now he says, and now my petition is that you would live in the house and find your joy there. Or perhaps another good analogy is that God brings you out of the slums of your slavery and sin and all the filth and death that's found there and he brings you into a beautiful estate, a home filled with many rooms, with many acres, a beautiful land set before you.

But without God then dwelling with you in that home, you will not even know how to enjoy the estate. And so not only does God bring you into a new home and say you belong here, but I'm gonna dwell with you in here all the days of your life.

And this, to a Christian, is something that we earnestly desire with everything within our soul. Being filled with the fullness of God, this great petition and this prayer, is living a life of all spiritual blessings in Christ today.

This prayer is dominated with this petition. With the two petitions set before it, with that great culmination, will tell us and show us how we are to live with all the fullness of God today. These two petitions leading up to it shows us, reveals how that is to be done.

But first, before we get there, he then, in verse 15, he describes the universality of this petition. In other words, this is a universal need that everyone needs, right? He says in verse 15, so again, verse 14, for this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.

God is the God of all people. He created all people. Now, there's a good chance, or a good reality, whatever you wanna call it, that Paul has in mind that we do not serve a regional God. Because you gotta imagine that he is right into the church in Ephesus and probably the region around it, and that area was known for the God of Diana or of Artemis.

This goddess who was their regional God. That's who owned them. That's who they were a child of, so to speak. And Paul says, we don't just have a regional God here. We have a God that has created all people throughout all the earth, and there is a universal need for this God to be filled up by him.

There is a universal need for him. And indeed, this is what we see in the scriptures, Romans 11, 36, for from him and through him and to him are all things, right? For from him, he created all things, are all things from him, and it's also to him.

All things being created from him, they ought to go back to him. And so we are from him, and we ought to give him the glory back to him. This is the whole purpose of our life, and it's the purpose of everyone's life.

God is not a regional God. He's a God of all creatures. All creatures are to glorify him. This is what he's saying, that everyone needs to be filled up by God, the fullness of God being brought in him.

This is the longing of everyone's heart, is what he's saying. In fact, if we're not living a life of being filled up with the fullness of God in light of Jesus Christ, we are like a fish out of water.

We're like a fish out of water. This is exactly what we're made for, and if we're not fulfilling that purpose, we are simply as if not even in our proper element. Sin is not our proper element. Glorifying our God, being filled with him is.

We, when we're not being filled up with the fullness of God, every one of us, we're like a spring that brings no rain, a summer that produces no fruit, a quick fall into a winter that never ends, depression after depression.

No, this is a universal need. All families were made from him, and all families are to then be filled with him. This is our whole purpose. In fact, just for an interesting note, he actually, you don't see it in the English, but he uses a play on words there, or he uses similar words in both verses 14 and 15.

He says, for this reason I bow my knees before the father, which is a similar word to from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. It's potter versus patria, right? Potter is father. In Greek, patria is family.

It's a similar word. He's using a play on words, and again, I think he's showing the universal desire of every heart that they be filled, this great petition that he has filled with the fullness of God.

So what are these two petitions? What are these two petitions? If this is the longing of every heart, if this should be the longing of your heart today more than anything else that you could consider, what are these petitions that lead us up to the great summit of the view of the fullness of God?

Well, before we get there again, notice before he, I told you that each petition, the three petitions, you can locate them by how he says that you, and then petition, that you, petition, that you, petition.

But the first petition has a that and a you, but then there's something in the middle that describes the power of that petition to happen, okay? So notice he says, again, in verse 16, that, there's the that, but the you, he holds off for a second, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant, and then you.

And so that first petition, before we get to it, we must see that he's actually underlining the power, where the petition, where the ability to do it comes forth from. And it's not gonna surprise us, it comes from God, whom he is praying to.

He says, that you, verse 16, where does the power of these petitions come from? That according to the riches of his glory, he may grant to you. This should sound familiar. Because he says it a few times now, and he's going to say it.

But you remember when he talks about, where does the power of the ministry come from? Remember when he was talking about that? In chapter three, verse seven, of this gospel, chapter three of Ephesians, verse seven, of this gospel, I was made a minister, how?

According to the gift of God's grace, which was given to me by the working of his power. It is a powerful God, who grants the blessings of being a minister to him. And this is the same thing here. This petition that he has, all the fullness of God to be filled in him, he says, before he even gets to the first petition, he says, the power is found according to the riches of his glory, and that he would grant you coming forth from it.

So God, again, is rich in glory. You can never out-petition his power to give. You can never ask too much from God. Again, you can never out-petition his power and desire to give to you. What a comfort that is, that we would begin our Christian walk with this mindset that I must go to the one who's rich in mercy, rich in glory, and ask, oh, give me Jesus for giving us the sins, and you can never then ask too much from him your whole Christian life.

In fact, God takes pleasure in you consistently petitioning to him, oh, give me more of Jesus. Give me more of him. Let me be more full of you, oh God. You can never ask too much from your Father in heaven who loves to give you good gifts.

Never allow you being in the disruption, the deceitfulness, the cloudiness of sin. Never let the sin that you're in cause you to stop you to know that you can never ask too much from God. You can never ask too much forgiveness.

He is always like a loving Father, more than willing from the richness of his glory to give you the forgiveness in Christ. And so, with that power found petition, because we're gonna see, to be filled with the fullness of God is no easy task in this capacity.

We're gonna see that. So you gotta keep in your mind, in your head, this is only possible because God is rich in glory and he grants it and he loves to. And so what is that first petition? Look at verse 16.

And we'll call it, we'll call it strength, strong inner man, or the strengthening of the inner man. That's the first petition. Verse 16. That according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you, what?

To be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being. So that's the petition, the first one, that you'd be strengthened in your inner being. Now, the inner being is as opposed, or is, you know, you are made, you are a human being, and you're made both outer being and inner being.

You have an outer being, that is your body, your physical frame. Your inner being is a spirit or your heart within you, right? There's those two things going on. That's what makes you a human. That's what makes us different from all the creatures on this earth, is that we are made both body and soul.

And Paul here is saying that your inner man, your inner being, would be strengthened. Now, it's easy for us as physical creatures, we can understand what it means to have an outer being that is strengthened, right?

That is to have a physical body that is fit, right? That's in shape. We just evangelized at the Arnold Classic, and that conference there in Columbus is all about people who are strong on the outer man.

This is a strong outer body. And indeed, a petition of Paul being in a prison of Rome, we could understand why he would get caught up in just simply the physical, right? Pray that I would have a strong outer man.

Pray that I would get out of here, right? All these outer stuff. But instead, we see that Paul is enamored with the idea of all the fullness of God. It looks like being strong in the inner being. 1 Timothy 4 .8, 1 Timothy 4 .8, Paul tells Timothy, he says, for while body, bodily training, think of outer man training, is of some value.

There's value in being fit. There's value of eating right and treating your physical frame well. There's some value there. But he then says, godliness is of value in every way. There's a greater value of godliness or inner man strength, which he says, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.

And so we can see there that the contrast, that there's the outer strength, the outer man strength, that is our physical frame, there's value there. But the inner strength, the inner being strength, he calls godliness, and that is practice.

So being strong on the inside is just as visible, visible, so to speak, as outer man strength. You can see when someone is strong on the outside and you can see someone who's strong on the inside, how?

By whether or not they're living godly or not. Godliness is inner man strength. It's something that's going on from within that then shows itself from without, that shows whether you have inner strength or not.

The ability to be godly comes from something without going within, right? Notice what he says in chapter three. Notice what he says, that the petition is that you would have inner strength, but notice where it comes forth from in verse 16.

He says, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit and your inner being. And so the point being said here is that we would have inner spirit strength, that within our spirit we would have godliness that reveals itself in the way that we practice our lives, and this is only possible by the power God gives us through the spirit within us.

If you remember in chapter one, verse 13, remember what he says in chapter one, verse 13. He says, in him, in Christ, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and you believed in Jesus, you were then sealed with the promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory.

Our inheritance is righteousness, is godliness, is being perfectly right before the Father. And he says the Holy Spirit then applies that to you and is a guarantee that you're gonna receive the whole thing now.

And how does he guarantee that? He grows us in godliness now. And so this is what the spirit does, and this is what his petition is, is that we would be strengthened from a foreign entity or from God who gives us a spirit to strengthen the inner man, the spirit within us, the heart within us, so that we would practice godliness.

This is what his petition is. And so how can you know if you have a strong inner man or a strong spirit within you? It's when the spirit has dwelt within you and he's causing you to walk in godliness.

And this is the promise of the gospel. This is the promise of Christ, that I would give, he says, Jesus says, I'm gonna return to the Father, but I'll give you of my spirit, I'll give you of my spirit within you, and it'll empower you, empower you to do what?

To be strong within your inner self, to walk in godliness. That you would choose obedience, no longer disobedience. That you would reject the passions of the flesh, the weakness therein, which is a cancer that kills you.

Instead, you walk in newness of life. This is what inner strength means. This is how you can practically know, is my inner self strong? Well, are you walking in new obedience by the power God provides in his spirit?

Now we can get even more practical though. We can get even more practical because Paul does, when he says in verse 17, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. How do you know when you have a strong inner man?

When you are dominated in this life that I want to walk by faith in Jesus. That every single thought, every single desire of your heart is I want to bring this captive to obey Christ. Faith is not just mentally assenting up to the truths of God, that will not save you.

There are many people who will mentally assent and say, yes, I have faith, I believe. But faith is a full-bodied faith in which you not only agree with your mind, but you also, everything within you, you ditch all your flesh, all your sin, you deny all yourself and you follow Jesus as Lord and Savior and you obey him.

Faith is all-encompassing with that. And so how do you know if you have a strong inner man? Is that when your inner man is dominated with the thought, the desire, the inclination, what does Jesus say I am to do here as my Lord?

I shall obey Christ, my Savior. This is what it means to have a strong inner man. Is that you're living a life of faith. A faith that has not this sort of focus on obedience and godliness, as Paul's describing here.

It's like a home that's been constructed, but yet not lived in. It's like having all these things that God has provided in Jesus and you're saying I believe in it, but yet you're not living in it. You are not finding the life found there.

Faith is a trust, a confidence, an obedience to Jesus with all your inner man that reveals itself practically in the outer man or what you do. Your thoughts, your desires, your emotions bow the knee to Jesus and the actions then follow suit from there.

Jesus says you want to follow me, deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow me. We talked about this recently. And Paul says we take every thought captive to obey Jesus. And so that inner strength is involved with that faith in Christ.

It's not some abstract principle that we can't witness, but rather it is something that can be experienced in your life today, that my life would be lived as an act of faith and obedience to my savior.

This is my dominant desire. So that it helps you to avoid sin and when you fall into it, you repent of your sin and you give it forth to your Lord saying forgive me of this and grant me by your power new obedience in light of this.

And as hard as it is to get your outer man into shape, especially if you are really out of shape, it is even harder to get your inner man in shape, especially as your depravity runs deep. And so it can only be done by God's power through his spirit as you strive to bring your entire man under faith or in faith to Jesus.

So this is the fullness of God being experienced in your life today, is a life of faith in Jesus today. Not just simply I agree, but also I'm bringing everything to him, my sins, my obedience, everything is to him.

So this is why when someone proclaims faith in Jesus, they're saying my inner man has been changed by the Holy Spirit, by Christ, and yet they walk in disobedience, we do not wink an eye at that, we don't just say okay, we'll just ignore that, but we say you are not actually living a life that Christ provides in the gospel, and this is what should dominate you in your prayer life.

Oh Lord, show me the different ways that my inner man is filled with weakness, and may your power overshadow me through Christ Jesus, and may I then obey him for the graces that's found in his work. You gotta understand this sort of dominates your mind in all that you do, and the very, even minor stuff, minor stuff, the big stuff, everything, it just dominates, I want to please my Lord.

My inner man's been changed by him, I just want to please him. I want the fullness of God to be found in me through him. I was thinking about this, it's amazing how just the most little detail of your life can be dominated by this beautiful reality.

I've been getting a water tote ready for my garden and for my chickens and everything, a big water tote, and I'm getting the PVC piping all together to make sure it drains in there right, and it comes out where it needs to come out.

And so I gotta put the, if you ever mess with PVC piping, you gotta get the primer on there, the purple, and then you got to get the glue on there, and you gotta put them together. And you probably don't need to do it as quick as I feel like you have to do it, but I feel like it needs to get done now, and if it doesn't, everything's gonna be ruined and it's all done.

And so when my kids are there, and I know it's, I should, as a father, want to show them these things, I'm just looking at, if you do it, you'll screw it up, and everything will be lost, right? But then there's that thing, it's like, well, what's so, we'll obey Jesus here, what does powerful or inner strength man look like here?

That is, patience, and to show them and let them do it, right, if they screw up, oh well, I cut it off and I do it again. Even if it was the worst case scenario, right, I trust that what Christ has called me to do, I'm gonna do here, right?

I'm gonna deny what I naturally want to do, and say, just let me do it, I'll get it done fast, and everything, I just, so caught up in it, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna let, I'm gonna reveal, I'm gonna actually take joy in seeing my child do this, right, I'm gonna be honest with you, I let him do a few, and then I just did the rest, so maybe next time I'll let him do a couple more, but I just say that just because, if you really are mindful of this, this is the petition that Christ, or that Paul has for us, that this doctrines of what Christ has done in forgiveness of sins and everything, is to actually come down to the most minute, and minor detail of your life, that your inner strength through Christ would be revealed in that.

In fact, you should be thinking that way, how can I reveal the inner strength that Christ provides in this right here? And it's a joy to live that way, because this is how we live a life of fullness to God.

The second petition comes off of that, right, that's that one rung that we now stepped on, right, inner strength and the inner man, and then the next petition comes forth from that, right, it's not disjointed from it, and we'll call it strong comprehension of Christ's love.

Look at what he says in verse 17. Again, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, right, strong inner man. That you, there's that second petition, you notice that, that you, by his power, don't forget the interruption of the last petition, right, the power that's found of the richness of God's glory that he gives grants to us, you can never ask too much from God, there's the second petition, now that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, length, height, depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

So notice strength in the inner man comes from your strength to comprehend the love of Christ. Strength in your inner man only comes forth from your strength to comprehend the love that Christ has for you, if you are a believer upon him.

You know, we're talking about obedience here, we're talking about living righteously, and it can be very easy for us to think of God as not so much a father, but a distant king that demands obedience of his subjects, right, and that's how we can picture obedience to him.

Instead of picturing it as a gift from God to be a strong inner man, so we can be filled with the fullness of God, we can picture obedience to God as something just very distant from him. But we need to attach it with a love that Christ gives us, that he displays to us.

The way I considered this is that there's a difference in my home, in my personal home, when my children are obeying me out of fear of a spankin' versus a love for me, because they know that I want their best.

They know that obedience to my parents is gonna be for my good. And especially as they get older, and I can communicate these things deeper, right, I can't communicate that to Owen as well, my little one, as much as I can communicate it to my eldest one.

But that's where, as a parent, I want them to see that it's not just about you're gonna get spanked if you don't obey me, but it's about that this is actually, I love you, and this is for your good. And there is a really, I can tell, the difference of the atmosphere in the home when obedience is happening because they love mom and dad, because we love them, versus I'm just simply fearful of a spanking.

A home with obedient children for fear will be a cold and lifeless home. But a home with obedient children driven by love is warm and filled with life. And so notice this obedience of the stronger inner man that we were talking about is rooted and grounded, he says.