Ephesians 3: 14 – 21 NLT
Paul’s Prayer for Spiritual Growth
14 When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, 15 the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. 16 I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. 17 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. 18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
20 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. 21 Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.
In the first chapters of Ephesians, Paul has given us the doctrine of Christianity: how God loved us and sent Jesus to pay the price for our sin. Becoming a child of God isn’t something we have to do, but rather something we believe. It is summed up in Ephesians 2: 8 – 10 “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.”
Now Paul falls on his knees and prays for us. Sometimes, if we’ll admit it, we live mostly by our own strength. We don’t get involved in obviously sinful practices, and we plan our days in well thought-out ways. We get our work done, we help those around us, we give some money and time to the church, we pray occasionally – life is going fairly well until a crisis shows up. Then we turn to God and hope he helps us. When the crisis is over, on we go, basically in our own strength.
Today, let’s stop and take a look at the first 3 verses of Paul’s prayer. “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. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit.”
When you pray do you really believe/comprehend that we are praying to “the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth“? You probably say to yourself, “Of course I do. I believe he created everything out there – sky, stars, planet, animals, plants, etc. … Do you also really believe that “from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit”? I know from my own experience, that I can believe God is the Creator, but down deep, I will wonder if he really pays that much attention to me, one of the billions of people on the planet. Is he really that amazing and powerful that he is very aware of little me?
Paul prays that we will understand that God will empower us with inner strength through his Spirit. We know that when we believed in Christ’s death and resurrection for us, we became God’s children. Romans 8: 14 – 16 tells us “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, ‘Abba, Father’. For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children.”
God’s Spirit is in us, and “from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit”. Throughout today, take some moments to think about that promise. God wants to give you inner strength. He wants you to become that person who lives in his strength, not your own. On those ordinary days when all is going well, pause and thank him for his presence and help. On the days when life gets tough, turn to him with quiet confidence because you know he gives strength from his “glorious, unlimited resources”.
Just in case you might be wondering if this is really true, here is another scripture that tells you God will be your strength. Isaiah 40: 29 – 31:
He gives power to the weak
and strength to the powerless.
Even youths will become weak and tired,
and young men will fall in exhaustion.
But those who trust in the LORD will find new strength.
They will soar high on wings like eagles.
They will run and not grow weary.
They will walk and not faint.
Our song for today is Lord Reign in Me by Brenton Brown.