The Prayer We All Need

The past several weeks have seen days in which many of us have flooded God with tearful prayers. All around my church family things are going on in our lives that are difficult. Nationally another terrible act of violence has occurred. In my personal family we have also had to cry out for God’s intervention. As I woke this morning and spent time in my Bible and my morning devotion, I found myself in Ephesians where Paul is praying for God’s people. Certainly we can and should call on God to answer our physical needs but this morning’s lesson is found within Paul’s prayer. Paul’s prayer is not for specific physical help, but is instead a prayer that focuses on our need for spiritual help. It is a prayer for our hearts and we must all bend our knees as Paul does in this scripture and pray the same things for each other so that we can lay hold of the deeper inner needs of our hearts. This will allow us to bear up under the pain and difficulty of life. Here now is the prayer of Paul.

Ephesians 3:14-21
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 is 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.

So what can learn from Paul’s prayer? Let’s break it down.

Notice that Paul “bows” his knees before the father. We are not commanded in scripture to pray from any specific posture. In scripture we find many different men praying from various postures. Abraham stood before God when praying for Sodom, as did Solomon when praying for the dedication of the temple. We find that David “sat” before the Lord when praying for his kingdom. Jesus “fell on His face” in the Garden of Eden. There are many postures we can assume but here Paul bows before God as an act of humbling Himself before God. The most important posture of prayer is not physical but is the posture of our hearts. Let us come before Him in humility.

Paul also refers to God as Father. Again Paul is declaring God to be the one who is our father and has the ability to take care of all our needs. Fathers protect and provide and we have the greatest father of all in our God. And Paul prays according to the riches of God’s glory. We have a Father who has riches for us we cannot even fathom, but they are a better type of riches then the world knows of. We can pray in complete faith and confidence.

Notice the four requests in Paul’s petition. He asks for strength, depth, apprehension, and the fullness of God. These are spiritual requests for we need spiritual help.

When Paul prays for strength, notice it is not physical strength he requests; he asks we “be strengthened with power through his Spirit in our inner being.” This power is the same as the power that raised Christ from the dead. It is the power to be born again in Christ and to live as He calls us to. This is how we can do the “greater” things Jesus spoke of in John 14:12.

Then Paul asks for depth. He prays this “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.” This is the type of inner depth that allows us to know peace that transcends all understanding and the ability to praise God even when our world seems to be falling apart. This allows us to be rooted and grounded in our faith. When the storms come only trees that have deep roots and only buildings that are grounded on a solid foundation can stand. That is what we must have in the midst of life’s storms.

Paul prays we apprehend and what we must apprehend is this; “the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.” Love covers a multitude of sin. Love can overcome all. And what we must apprehend is that the love of Christ is beyond our ability to apprehend it. It is a wonderful paradox that we understand a love so vast that we cannot even understand it. Paul prays we take hold of the knowledge of such a love.

Finally Paul prays, “that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” What is the fullness of God? Again it’s not even possible to express it. I think it can be summed up though by suggesting it is the Holy Spirit dwelling in us for the Holy Spirit is God and when Christ ascended to be at the right hand of the Father He sent us the Holy Spirit to live inside of every Christian. We are the Temple of God and we must pray that we allow the Spirit to empower us and to help us die to ourselves and to live through Him. This, my friends, is how we persevere in the Christian life in spite of the trials and storms we face. It is how we live it out and defeat the schemes of the devil who comes to steal and destroy.

Paul finishes the prayer with a wonderful benediction. It stands on its own and needs no explanation.

“Now to him who is 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 this prayer be our prayer for each other and ourselves. God bless each who read God’s Holy Word.