Evan Wilkerson closes out Ephesians 1 by tracing Paul's prayer for spiritual eyes, showing through a story of unexpected obedience in a parking lot how believers can know God not just intellectually but intimately, which enables us to grasp the hope, the inheritance, and the resurrection power that already belong to us.

Main Points:

• In October 2017, Evan sensed the Holy Spirit directing him to a specific neighbor's car window. When a startled couple rolled it down, the wife broke into tears because their son had just been arrested for heroin possession. Faith lets us see beyond the natural into what the Spirit is already doing.
• Paul thanks God for the Ephesians' faith and love, not just saving faith but practical, everyday trust that God will provide, protect, and lead. He also praises their agape love for one another, the same love Jesus modeled by washing his disciples' feet before commanding them to do likewise.
• The word "knowledge" Paul uses is not mere information about God. As Martin Lloyd-Jones explains, it's an immediate, personal, relational knowing, the way a husband and wife know each other, not a theological fact sheet.
• Evan describes a night when his air conditioner broke in summer heat. His kids were cranky, and a fan he bought didn't even work, yet simply remembering God's loving presence kept him calm instead of losing his temper, showing how conscious awareness of God changes daily reactions.
• Paul prays believers would grasp three realities: the hope they've been called to (both a present reality and a future glory), the riches of God's inheritance in the saints (meaning believers themselves are God's treasured possession, not the other way around), and the immeasurable power available to those who believe.
• That power is demonstrated by nothing less than Christ's resurrection and his sitting at the Father's right hand above every rule and authority. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is the power now at work in and through every believer.
• The church is called "the fullness of him who fills all in all" because while Christ fills all creation, only the church fully acknowledges and submits to him. Believers are meant to reflect Christ's kingdom now, while awaiting his return to establish the new heavens and new earth.

https://wcmin.us/WS260902c

Gary Wilkerson tells the story of Zacchaeus climbing the sycamore tree to show that holy dissatisfaction, the ache for more of God, even if you've faithfully followed him for years, is not a lack of gratitude but one of the greatest gifts God has ever placed in the human heart.

Preached: August 16, 2026

Main Points:

• John Muir, instead of hiding from a fierce Pacific storm, climbed a Douglas fir to ride it out at the top, becoming a standing rebuke against choosing creature comforts over the Creator's confrontations. Psalm 107 says the same of sailors who go into the deep waters to see the works of the Lord.
• Zacchaeus was rich, powerful, and politically connected, yet excommunicated from his own people as a traitor. All the wealth in Jericho, including a front-row seat at Herod's lavish winter palace, never touched the emptiness inside him.
• Zacchaeus didn't casually wander over out of curiosity. He fought through a crowd that shoved him back, then hiked up his robe and climbed a sycamore tree, refusing to let his dignity or his station in life stop his pursuit of Jesus.
• Gary once accidentally called a pastor for directions from inside a bar, and heard U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" playing over the sound system while watching lonely men nurse drinks. That restless anthem, he says, describes an entire generation, and secretly describes Zacchaeus too.
• After decades in ministry, Gary confesses he spent his first two or three decades trying to get rid of the ache in his own heart, feeling guilty for not being satisfied, until he realized that holy dissatisfaction is itself a gift from God, not evidence of ingratitude.
• Zacchaeus's transformation was instant and costly: half his wealth given to the poor, fourfold restitution to everyone he'd defrauded. Jesus never demanded repentance in the text. It simply exploded out of an encountered heart.
• Jesus is interruptible, disruptive, and subversive. He stopped on his way to his own crucifixion for one desperate man in a tree, and he still topples the towers we've built so something new and better can be planted in their place.

https://wcmin.us/SS260830c

David Wilkerson redefines passion for Christ as far more than tears, emotion, or private devotion. A genuine passion for Jesus can never remain a personal pursuit but must burn with the same intensity for the whole body of Christ. It is proven not by feeling but by humility and total dependence on God.

Preached: November 25, 2001

Main Points:

• Under the Old Covenant, God raised up individuals like Abraham, Noah, and Enoch to pursue him personally because the body of Christ didn't yet exist. Under the New Covenant, a purely private passion is not enough, because we are members of one body, and what happens to one member happens to all.

• Pursuing Christ only so your own family stays blessed, saying "I got mine" while the rest of the church compromises around you, is a trap. That's not biblical passion no matter how sincere it feels, because your sin and your pursuit both ripple through the whole body.

• True passion has almost nothing to do with emotion or forceful preaching. It's impossible to have real passion for Jesus without a walk of obedience. Every tear shed in the secret closet of prayer cannot produce one iota of passion if you refuse to obey what's revealed.

• Jesus rebukes the self-exalted religious leader in Matthew 23 who preaches holiness he doesn't practice himself. David Wilkerson confesses his own struggle with this, admitting his wife has had to catch him inflating numbers about his books and church attendance to impress people.

• Humility is not meekness, self-deprecation, or a long face. It is total dependence on the Lord. Jesus himself modeled this: "I can do nothing of my own self" was not weakness but the very definition of passion, complete reliance on the Father for everything.

• Just as one Christian's bitterness can defile many in the body according to Hebrews 12:15, one obedient, fully dependent Christian can bless and affect many in the body. Passion for Christ pursued rightly becomes contagious rather than isolating.

• This sermon closes by describing what pursuing this kind of passion actually costs: your life becomes a laboratory where God lets you feel pains and burdens that have nothing to do with your own walk, because he's drawing you into ministry to the whole body, not just personal blessing.

https://wcmin.us/SS260823c

Evan Wilkerson closes out Ephesians 1, wrestling with how God can be sovereign over all things without causing evil. He shows through Joseph's story and a mechanic shop conversation that being sealed in Christ means true belonging. God's goodness holds even when life feels shattered.

Main Points:

1. God works all things according to the counsel of his will, but that doesn't mean he causes all things to happen. Joseph's brothers chose to sell him into slavery out of their own jealousy, yet God wove even their evil into a plan that saved many lives.
2. Malcolm Muggeridge, a wealthy, famous, successful agnostic writer, said after coming to Christ that multiplying all his earthly triumphs by a million still amounted to nothing measured against one drink of the living water Jesus offers.
3. We are called Christians three times in Scripture but described as "in Christ" over two hundred times. That's not a minor detail. It's the truest thing about our identity, more foundational than any label the world gives us.
4. Being sealed with the Holy Spirit works like a king's signet ring pressed into wax: it marks the document as authentically his. God has pressed his own mark on every believer, meaning we belong to someone, radically and permanently, in a world constantly searching for exactly that.
5. A conversation at an auto repair shop turned from rising oil prices to the manager saying "the world is ending," which opened the door for Evan to talk about the living hope only found in Christ.
6. Sharing the gospel is rarely comfortable, but the goal isn't a perfect delivery; it's opening your mouth. Even a stumbled conversation that gets shut down is never wasted, because every attempt is practice for the next one, and God is watching for willing hearts.
7. The Spirit inside every believer is a down payment, a guarantee of an inheritance too glorious to fully imagine yet. Whatever feels broken right now—relationships, finances, mental health—God is the God of shalom who restores what seems too far gone to fix.

https://wcmin.us/WS260819c

David Wilkerson takes the call of Abraham, a man told to leave everything and go to a land he didn't know, and shows that God is asking every believer for the same total surrender of tomorrow. Through Paul's chains and his own granddaughter's death, he reveals that suffering isn't the question; our reaction to it is.

Preached: April 2, 2006

Main Points:

• Abraham had no map, no timeline, no idea how he'd be financed, only a command to leave his country and kindred. God is asking the same total dependence of every believer today: give me your tomorrows, not just your past.

• Two little words disturb us more than anything else: what if. What if the economy fails, what if I get sick, what if my insurance runs out? Jesus turns us from our anxiety with a simple redirection: your Father knows what you need.

• Paul sat chained between two hardened Roman guards, watching his own protégés like Apollos and Timothy thrive in ministry while his own hands were tied. He had every reason to spiral into why me, but chose instead to ask a different question: How will I react?

• An elderly woman told David Wilkerson her husband spent his final years bitter that his stroke had robbed him of his future, never once considering that she too had lost her future as his full-time caretaker. Suffering steals from everyone in the room, not just the one visibly afflicted.

• Two weeks before his granddaughter Tiffany died of cancer, the Holy Spirit told David Wilkerson to put her in his hands and trust that nothing he does is contrary to his will. His wife and daughters still wear a small chain with her picture, and it opens gospel conversations in stores everywhere they go.

• Paul wrote from prison that his chains had actually furthered the gospel, because the guards chained to him for hours at a time went home and told their families about this strange preacher who wouldn't stop praising God. Paul made his affliction a defense of Christ's faithfulness.

• The real question every believer faces isn't, "Why did this happen to me?" but, "Is Christ being preached through my reaction?" Wilkerson pointed to an elder named Sam who has years of raging, sleepless pain yet quietly prays for the pastors backstage, never once preaching a sermon but preaching Christ with his life.

https://wcmin.us/SS260816c

David Wilkerson stands at the foot of Mount Sinai and asks why a people who just heard the audible voice of God begged to never hear it again, revealing that hidden idols cannot survive the presence of a holy God. That same voice is still speaking today through his Son, shaking everything that refuses to let go.

Preached: August 8, 1999

Main Points:

• Fire consumed the mountain, thunder split the earth, and the audible voice of God spoke to Israel, yet within hours the elders begged Moses for a softer message delivered only through a man. David Wilkerson points out the strange logic: they said they knew hearing God's voice meant death, even though they had just heard it and lived.

• The reason they couldn't handle God's presence wasn't awe; it was guilt. Many had just come from their tents where they secretly bowed to golden idols brought out of Egypt. It wasn't the fire they feared. It was what the voice commanded: no other gods, no graven images.

• They had all the right religious vocabulary, spoke well, sounded humble, yet God said through Isaiah that they drew near with their lips while their hearts stayed far from him. David Wilkerson compares this to modern believers who know all the Christian lingo but keep a secret sin nobody else sees.

• Anyone hiding secret sin does not want to sit under convicting preaching. They will find soft, flattering prophets instead. God answered Israel's request for a human mediator by promising a prophet like Moses, ultimately fulfilled in Jesus, a man of flesh and bone seated at the right hand of the Father who can still be touched, kissed, and embraced, in touch with the feelings of our weaknesses.

• Hebrews 12 warns that the voice speaking from heaven now demands even greater accountability than the voice at Sinai, because this time God has promised one final shaking of nations, courts, economies, and especially his own church, so that only what cannot be shaken will remain.

• David Wilkerson confesses his own conviction about murmuring and complaining despite God's abundant blessings, revealing that the same voice that shook Sinai is still speaking directly into individual hearts today, asking backsliders and those clinging to hidden sin: why have you not listened to my voice?

https://wcmin.us/SS260809c

Evan Wilkerson continues his Ephesians series by tracing what redemption actually costs, showing through John Bunyan's imprisonment, C.S. Lewis's Edmund, and a haunting World War II story, that Christ has already won the war against sin, death, and the devil. The only question left is whether we're proclaiming the news that the war over.

Main Points:

• Redemption means a price paid for someone's freedom, the way a kinsman could buy back a captured relative or a master could purchase a slave's liberty. Jesus didn't pay with gold or silver, which could never be enough, but with his own blood, because the wages of sin is death and life is in the blood.

• Edmund in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" shows the trajectory of sin: it starts as teasing, grows through temptation, and ends in betrayal for a plate of Turkish delight. When the witch ties him up to kill him, Aslan takes his place, and Edmund walks away permanently changed, humble, wise, and grateful.

• Grace is not given in careful portions. God didn't hold anything back. He lavishly poured out his grace. God's ultimate plan is not just personal salvation but cosmic reunification: everything in heaven and earth united under Christ. We don't see that fully yet, and that's not a contradiction; it's a gap between victory declared and victory fully realized.

• A Japanese lieutenant kept fighting a war on a remote Pacific island for 29 years after Japan formally surrendered, refusing to believe the leaflets dropped from planes telling him the war was over. Christ defeated sin, death, and the devil at the cross. The war is over. Yet many refuse to submit to the rightful King.

• Being a bond servant of Christ is not a part-time arrangement where you hand over Sunday mornings and 10% of your income while keeping the rest for yourself. It's handing over everything, not because everything has to look outwardly spiritual, but because nothing is held back as off-limits to him.

• If you've accepted Jesus, live boldly as someone already free, and carry that same news to everyone still in rebellion, that Christ's gracious pardon is available, offering eternal life.

https://wcmin.us/WS260805c

David Wilkerson uses Peter's rooftop vision in Acts 10 to expose how even the godliest believers can unknowingly circumscribe Christ into a small circle, calling other denominations, other nations, and even their own unsaved children common or unclean, when God has already declared them cleansed and worthy of fellowship.

Preached: December 15, 2002

Main Points:

• Peter had raised the dead, healed the sick with his shadow, and shaken prisons by his presence, yet in one area of his life he was misrepresenting Christ. Every believer is a definition of Christ to a world that reads us instead of the Bible.

• On the rooftop, God let down a sheet filled with unclean animals three times and said, "Kill and eat," meaning have fellowship. Peter protested on solid scriptural ground, and God answered, "What God has cleansed you must not call common." The Greek word for common means unworthy of fellowship.

• When Peter finally ate with Cornelius's household and the Holy Ghost fell on uncircumcised Gentiles, the circumcision party in Jerusalem contended with him because he went in to uncircumcised men and ate with them. Their theology said God couldn't work outside their circle. It happened anyway.

• David Wilkerson watched a Pentecostal bishop walk out of his own conference calling a young charismatic worship team an abomination because they clapped and waved flags, even as the Holy Ghost was visibly moving in the room. The man's imprint of Christ was too small to contain what God was doing.

• Celeste Horvath was the most notorious madam in New York City history, condemned by her own brother as beyond redemption, while she secretly played "Amazing Grace" on an organ between clients and cried out to God every night. Ten years of hidden work by the Holy Ghost preceded the moment she finally broke.

• When God is doing his greatest work, you will often see the least evidence.

• Letters were pouring in from Muslim countries reached by Times Square Church radio broadcasts, testifying that Islam gave them no peace but Christ did instantly. God is not looking to raise up another star evangelist. He is looking for ordinary believers willing to stop drawing circles and call no one common or unclean.

https://wcmin.us/SS260802c