Ephesians 3 (Part 3) :14-21 Paul's Prayer for the Church

we're going to be picking it up in the 14th verse and then reading through the end of the chapter goes like this 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 we ask or think according to the power at work within us to him be glory to the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever amen let's pray Lord speak to us now through your word as we go through these verses and begin to talk about them and unpack them we pray that our hearts would

be tuned to your voice that you would speak words of wisdom and insight and grace and that we would walk out that word in our daily lives we ask it in Jesus name Amen with the conclusion of Ephesians chapter 3 we're coming really to the end of the first part of the book of Ephesians which is separated into two parts actually here at the end of chapter three the first three chapters of Ephesians are all about the church Paul has been talking about the church he's been talking about what a miracle it is and he's

been talking about the majesty of the church he's been talking about the mystery of the church you know we talked last week how the church doesn't appear in the Old Testament the Old Testament prophets speak nothing of this period of time that you and I are in called the church age and we think so weirdly about the Church to us church is something we go to you know I'm gonna go to church there's the church over there I wonder if the doors are open to the church it's so weird because see we're the church the

church isn't a building it's not something we go to the church is something we are we are the church capital see body of Christ and Paul has been talking about this mystery of the church which in this age is this amalgamation of Jews and Gentiles who have come together as the body of Christ and are the literally the the the the body of Christ to the world in other words the heart the voice the ears the hands the feet and so forth to the world in which you know we live and so as we look

at this last section of Ephesians chapter 3 Paul is in light of his speaking about the church he's now going to get begin to pray for the church and we're gonna actually get some insights on how Paul prayed and I think that whenever we come to a section of Scripture that deals with prayer we should probably take note and try to learn what we can from it because let's just face it we struggle with prayer and I think that's fairly universal except for those of you in the body of Christ who have a gift of

prayer you know we're all called to pray but there are some of you who have a special gift and I love you guys I mean I really do I love you who just for whom praying comes easy oh we need you so bad to encourage and help the rest of us kind of stay on task but praying is hard it's hard work isn't it if if I were to put a date on the calendar and say we're going to get together and we're gonna have a prayer meeting I would have one of the smallest groups

ever and I know that because I've tried it we don't come together very easily for prayer and you know when when people are going to a Bible study they'll want to know whether or not there's prayer during that Bible study because if there is they probably won't come we've had people tell us that they are not going to come to a Bible study because of prayer let's face it it's hot it's hard for all of us right we struggle we're intimidated praying in front of other people we don't want anybody to hear us praying and

we find it difficult to pray ourselves and to hold on to prayer and to persevere in prayer it's a challenge so Paul begins speaking to us about prayer his prayer for the body of Christ and we can learn some important things from this Paul begins here by saying you know for this reason which is what he's been saying previously all about the church for this reason because in other words because of God's purpose in creating this thing called the church he says I bow my knees before the Father people ask me from time to time

is there a preferred biblical posture well you know it's interesting you can get legalistic about it but you see pretty much every posture in the Bible we see people kneeling lots of times we see people standing we see people you know walking and praying you know prayer is not something we're limited to a one particular bodily posture but but kneeling is is a powerful posture for prayer because kneeling puts us in a in an attitude of surrender and humility before the Lord and and Paul says 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 and that inner being is what is being renewed in the image of Christ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith well for the very first thing I want you to see here in this passage that really has nothing well I shouldn't say that's nothing to do with prayer it does have something to do with prayer but the first thing we see is

the Trinity I want you to notice here that Paul says I kneel before the father Paul says I I'm asking that you might be strengthened by the Spirit and then he says that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith so you see all three persons of the Trinity right their father spirit and son and not only does Paul reference all three person of the Trinity but he also gives us some insight into the organization and function of the individual members of the Godhead notice that Paul begins by saying I bow my knees before the

Father I come to the Father in other words he addresses the father in prayer and again this is not a legalistic thing again people often ask the question who should I pray to well you know I know there's the Father Son and the Holy Spirit so who do I pray to well God and remember guys there's only one God there aren't two gods or three gods or five gods there's only one God so when you say dear God you're addressing all the persons of the Trinity but the point is there is some insight from the

Word of God related to this as Paul is giving us here addressing the father in the power of the Spirit in the name of Jesus Christ and so forth but that doesn't mean that if you address Jesus you're wrong or if you even pray and speak to the Holy Spirit that you're wrong or that God isn't gonna listen or you didn't get the formula right God is not so much concerned about protocol as he is about relationship okay so don't worry about it but we you know we see what we see here in the word

so we you know we often begin our prayers father I come to you in the name of Jesus and in the power of the Spirit and and there's nothing wrong with that this is what Paul is laid down for us here but again it's not a legalistic sort of a thing but I want you to see here what Paul is saying about this reference to the indwelling presence of the Spirit because you'll notice that he says here look at verse 16 with me again please in your Bible Paul prays that according to the riches of

the glory of God that the Lord may grant them to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being look at verse 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith now that's an interesting statement but it almost sounds when you read it kind of superficially or casually like he's praying that you'd be strong enough to have Christ living in your heart it almost sounds that way it sounds like he's saying you know I'm just praying for you guys that you're strong enough to be able to have Christ dwell in your

hearts by faith but that's not what he's praying about the issue here is not a question of having Jesus in your heart it's a question of making sure he feels at home in your heart you see when we come to know Christ as our Savior when we accept what he did for us on the cross Jesus comes to live in our hearts he comes to live in our lives that that happens okay what Paul is making reference here to is having Christ lived there or dwell there if you will without any kind of grieving or

any issues or feeling unwelcome and of course that kind of begs the question of you know what might make Jesus feel unwelcome in my heart well you need to understand first a couple of things here first of all in in the Greek in the original Greek language there were two different words that were used to describe living in something and one of those words described living in a community or a house or a family where I am kind of a guest or a stranger okay the other greek word speaks of living in a house or

a town or a country or wherever you're what you're living in and living there as a permanent resident it's interesting that Paul is using that second definition here when he speaks of the Holy Spirit or Jesus living in you through the Holy Spirit he's talking about him living in you as a permanent resident and so he's saying I'm praying for you that you would be able to a that you'd be able to let Jesus live in your life in your heart as a permanent resident without issues all right now what are some of those issues

in my life that might make Jesus feel unwelcome Wow how much time do you have I mean there's all kinds of things but what what what Paul is really encouraging us to do is to take inventory of our lives and to ask myself the question is my heart an environment where Jesus feels welcome or is my heart an environment that is constantly putting him at odds with my behavior my thoughts my actions and that sort of thing you know probably one of the most beautiful prayers that we find regarding this thought process of is my

life one that is a blessing to you God comes from David in the Old Testament and it's found in the 139th Psalm let me put this on the screen for you so we can see it together David said search me O God and know my heart and then he said try me in that word try means test test me and know my thoughts and see if there be any Grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting do you understand what David is praying here he's asking the Lord is there anything going on

in my life that is grieving you is there anything going on in my life that is grieving you in any way or causing any discomfort to you related to you living in my life isn't it interesting that when we think about the Holy Spirit coming to live in our life we just assume that he has a very happy habitation it's like Jesus lives in my heart hallelujah now let's go watch that r-rated film but is that the habitation that you want to create where Jesus feels at home does Jesus feel at home living in your

life with your life you want to know what's interesting about David's prayer that the prayer that we just got done reading from Psalm 139 David was living in during a time when the holy spirit had never yet come in to live inside of a human being you may not realize this but in the Old Testament God's Spirit did not end well people not like in the new God's Spirit was with people and at times when they needed his power he came upon them but he never came within until the New Testament took place and Jesus

first breathed on his disciples and said receive the Holy Spirit so David didn't even have the indwelling of the Spirit and yet his heart was so tender toward not wanting to grieve the presence of the Lord he was daring enough to pray that kind of a prayer Lord turn on the spotlight the searchlight of your presence and see if there's anything going on in my life that you wouldn't approve of or that might in any way be Grievous to you let me ask the question do we have the guts to pray that prayer or are

we afraid that he of the things he's going to find or make us aware of I think that's one of the things that made David such a man after God's own heart and he was not perfect by any stretch of the imagination David had issues in his life believe me in and there in the Bible for you and I to read thank God your issues aren't in the Bible for people to read the point is he still had the courage to come before God and say search me O God test me try me and see

if there's anything in my life that is Grievous to you in any way and then lead me in the way that's right good and everlasting because if there's all this stuff going in here that shouldn't be there that's the opposite of what's good right and everlasting and that's what Paul is really encouraging us to do here when he says I'm praying for you that Christ might dwell in your hearts by faith I'm praying in other words that you're going to live your lives in such a way that the presence of the Holy Spirit in your

heart is a welcoming one for him and what that means is I'm praying that the lordship of Jesus Christ would extend into every aspect of your life yeah even those websites that you visit when no one else is watching I'm talking even about the thoughts that you and I think when our minds are free to think what they want I'm talking about the way we treat one another when there's nobody else around to see how we're treating those people who are closest to us I'm talking about the way we spend our money and the words

we choose to speak to others are we creating an environment that is welcoming to the presence of God's Holy Spirit living in our life now if you're feeling condemned I want you to know that's not my intention but it is the intention of the enemy however if I if what I've been saying to you has been making you feel a little bit condemned like yeah I don't think I measure up at all join the group none of us do and the fact of the matter is creating a welcoming and environment for for the the Holy

Spirit isn't always so much the issue of living this pristine life it's responding quickly when the Holy Spirit convicts us of something in our life that isn't right I mean you saw what David did in Psalm 139 he said Lord search me and test me and try me and see if there's a problem what do you think David's response was when God showed him about the issues in his heart what was he gonna do then he was gonna repent he was gonna confess he was going to agree with the Lord say yeah you moon busted

you got me I confess that do you know that confession just saying to the Lord yeah that one's not good is so welcoming to his presence when you agree with him when you say Lord this is me this is me and in the sin that you've revealed in my life this is me I confess to you these things and I need your forgiveness you have just created an environment where he is welcome in your life so you see it's not about living this perfect life but it is about learning to respond to the conviction of

the Holy Spirit when he reveals those areas and and by the way this is not an easy thing to do and that's why Paul prays in here that you and I would be strengthened with power through his spirit so that Christ would dwell in our hearts by faith do you get that he didn't just say you know I'm just I'm praying for you guys that you'll have the inner strength he didn't say that he's saying I prayed that you will have the power through the Spirit to do this because listen it's got to be through

the spirit the power that we have to live this Christian life even the power to recognize our sin and confess it before God comes through the spirit as we yield to him you know man when I think about my relationship with God and I think about in relationship with my kids speaking of Father's Day again here today I wish I would I I look back on my past Christian life I wish I would have been faster to say I'm sorry both to God and my kids I mean I did say I'm sorry quite a bit

to my kids but I wish I would have been faster to do it and I wish I would have been faster to do it with the Lord I'm trying to get faster as I grow up in him when he reveals something to me just to say Lord I'm so sorry forgive me forgive me for these areas these wrong attitudes these wrong thoughts forgive me because I want and IIIi I'm I'm guessing you - you do - I want to have an environment in my heart that he's welcome to be there in you know let's take

a look at the the rest of Paul's prayer here I'm in the middle of verse 17 Paul says 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 and depth you know he's talking about the love of God but he's using two word pictures here one of them is the language of you gardeners or botanists I guess if you're into that sort of thing I can't grow anything but we do know that from the plant world trees and that sort

of stuff that the root of a plant is vitally important because it provides nourishment it also provides stability you know we've had so much windy conditions here this spring and early summer sometimes I'm afraid that my trees are gonna topple over but I know that they've got a root structure that goes down into the ground and it anchors them you know to to the ground so when the wind comes they can they can they can stay strong and so forth Paul says I pray for you that you would be rooted in the love of Christ

how far do your roots go down in the love of Christ so that when the wind and waves come around you're not constantly doubting his love you know boy after all the things going on in my life I'm wondering if God even loves me that's a sign that your roots don't go down far enough and you need to be rooted more in that understanding of his love he also talks he uses another word picture he says I pray also that you would be grounded in love and that word grounded is borrowed from building construction and

it speaks of a foundation I pray that you would have a foundation of understanding because you see that you can you can build on a foundation and you know that your structure is gonna be stable right if your foundation if you're founded on the love of God then your you know there's there's a stability and a strength to your understanding and so Paulus is praying these things and so forth for the body of Christ and of that love Paul prays look at look at verse 9 very interesting verse Paul says aneesa's I pray for you

guys to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge now I want you to stop there for a moment I want you to think about how potentially ridiculous what he just said is I want you to know that which surpasses knowing that's what he said see that's the way I used to feel about mathematics when I was in grade school I felt like they were asking me to know something that surpassed knowledge at least my knowledge but it sounds kind of an interesting statement doesn't it but I want you to know what Paul is talking

about here because when he says I want you to know that which surpasses knowledge when he speaks of the love of Christ he's not talking about an intellectual knowing the word no here speaks of experiential knowledge so what Paul is praying for you and I is that we would experientially know the love of Christ he's praying I want you to come to a place in your life where you experience the life-changing power of Christ's love I like that not just knowing it here I want you to know it here and you know why Paul's praying

that prayer because he knows that once we come face-to-face with the love of Christ and we know it experientially it changes our lives it literally changes our lives and if you're sitting where you are right now here today and you're thinking to yourself you know what I'm not really sure I've ever experienced experienced the love of Christ I've heard a lot about it I've read a lot about it you know the Bible talks a lot about his love nothing can separate us from the love of Christ da-da-da-da-dah you know for God so loved the world

we run into that l word all you know over the place in the Bible but maybe you're sitting there today and you're thinking I I'm not positive that I've really truly experienced that love in a life-changing sort of a way well I want you to know something I want you know something that the enemy doesn't want you to know it's not because God doesn't love you see that's the first thing the enemy comes to suggest to people when they hear about the love of Christ and they begin to ponder it and think to themselves you

know I don't think I've ever really experienced that the enemy is very quick to say well it's just simple it's because he doesn't love you he loves other people but not you I mean other people are fairly easy to love but you are way out there and you are actually fundamentally beyond his ability to love and the enemy would love nothing more than to sow the seeds of that lie in your heart but I want you to know it is a lie God loves you but you and I have not many of us have not

experienced that life-changing love and and there are a lot of reasons for it I couldn't even get into them all today but can I encourage you for those of you who are troubled about this can I encourage you to make part of your regular prayer time with the Lord let me experience your love just simple as that Lord I want to experience your love I want to experience what it is to be loved by you and don't give up on that prayer and don't get frustrated and don't let the enemy whisper in your ear you

keep praying you keep pressing in and you wait on the Lord to reveal his love to you and I'm telling you when he does you will be changed it will change your entire outlook on everything Paul ends this prayer that that with this beautiful doxology excuse me and he says 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 and I think this

passage and pretty particularly verse 20 has been a huge blessing and and and encouragement to a lot of people throughout the years because it tells you and I in this verse that God is able to do even more than we could ask or think and and when when you take a look at what Paul is saying here in verse 20 you begin to see this progression of expansion and what I mean by that is Paul starts with a very simple thought and that is that God is able but he builds on that thought to the

point where he keeps going outward farther and farther and this is basically referred to as the pyramid of of the promise of this thing and what God could do let me put this on the screen so you can visualize it it begins by simply saying he is able and that's where we often begin in our walk with the Lord he is able and then we realized he is able to do okay you can do all kinds of things well like what well he's able to do what we ask next we have this further progression he's

able to do what we think and then Paul goes a little bit further and he says he's able to do all that we ask or think and then he adds to that he's able to do more abundantly than all we ask or think and then finally he is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think do you see the progression and do you see what Paul is trying to communicate to you and I he's he's trying to enlarge our understanding of the power the Grace and the goodness of God as it

relates to prayer and when we come to him in prayer so that we would not hinder you know that work of the Lord by our faith being so small that we're kind of you know we're not even sure if God's even listening let alone that he's able to do abundantly far more abundantly than all that we could ever ask or think when you begin to get that idea in your heart and you begin to really it begins to consume you it changes the way you pray and the things you pray about it's pretty amazing but

I I think that even so there might be some people who read a verse like verse 20 God is able to do far more abundantly than all we could ask or think and they might be thinking to themselves you know God doesn't seem to be doing more than I could ask or think and I want to just address that for just a moment because I think there might be two reasons for what appears to be a discrepancy between what God's word has to say and your life because sometimes that happens doesn't it and I think

the first reason for that possible discrepancy is because you and I haven't truly learned to come before the throne of grace and what I mean by that is that and you've heard me talk about this before we live in this culture of convenience where we're just so accustomed to walking up to a vending machine and putting our coins in the machine hitting the button and outcomes what we want and we apply that same principle to God and we have learned to be impatient and we've learned to - well we've we've forgotten the whole idea of

just process learning that there's a process to things you know even to prayer we don't really want to think about the process of Prayer and waiting on the Lord tarrying you know before the Lord I want to just say my prayer and get what I want you know yeah III think about the process of life that biblical characters had to deal with you know you and I were we're hungry you know we we go home and we're looking in the refrigerator you know we do we stand there and we're looking and it's totally empty and

I don't know why we're still looking but we're just looking just wasting electricity and then we close it and say well there's nothing there and so what do we do well we hop in the car we go to a restaurant and you either sit down and have somebody serve us I'd like the hamburger with cheese and bacon please or we go to the grocery store and just pick up something quick and even if we don't want to fix it you know they've got a deli there so we can just get it ready and we can

be eating before we hit the car that's our life that's the world in which we live do you guys remember how the Bible talks about remember when those three visitors came to Abraham it was actually the Lord and a couple of angels which I think he probably wasn't totally aware of at first but anyway he invited these people to stay and cool themselves under the the tree of Mamre there and he began to talk to them and finally he went to Sarah his wife and he said Sarah quick go pick how to goat and slaughter

it and need some bread and bake it cuz we're gonna have a meal with these guys can you imagine so she's got to go to the flock you know with I'm assuming one of the servants picking that one right there catch that one all right get it over here and then we have to slaughter the thing I'm not gonna get into all the detail there and then you've got to you've got to clean that mean then you gotta you know get it start preparing it and by while that's going on you're making bread and this

thing and flour and dove and and you putting this whole meal together and it's a process you see the people in the Bible understood process they didn't live in an instantaneous world they understood that when you start here and you want to get here there's a process to get there you see and so when it came to prayer they applied that same understanding of life there's a process in it it's not instantaneous there's a tarrying there's a coming before the throne of grace and waiting there and the process of waiting in the process of faith

and the process of petition and and and all the things that go along with it you know Jesus Jesus gave us an example of this in his life we're told in the Gospels that he often withdrew into lonely places where he would pray isn't that what you read in your Bible we're also told that when he had big decisions to make like picking the twelve closest disciples who would then be apostles he stayed up all night long and pray all night long you ever tried to do that stay up all night long and pray I

won't tell you my story but boy what a process that is a lengthy process that takes it's challenging it's physically challenging to stay in it to stay in the game to persevere you know through the difficulties of that sort of thing and then Jesus of course gave us parable after parable during his teaching of persevering in prayer you can read those parables for yourself listen to this statement about prayer from the book of Deuteronomy this is this is very interesting but from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him if

you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul this is actually repeated as a promise by the Prophet Jeremiah who says roughly the same thing Jeremiah chapter 29 you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart that's a process that's a time involved process that's not a quickie that doesn't mean put your coins in the vending machine I need that one little good I got it that's the way we look at approaching God many times and that's one of the reasons why we look at some

of these promises in God's Word you know God is able to do you know bun dn't ly you know more than all you could ask or thinking we think wow it doesn't really match up to my life let me show you a passage from Hebrews chapter 11 verse 6 it says without faith it is impossible to please God for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him I honestly think that one of the reasons we struggled to get people to pray is because we're not

really convinced there's a reward at the end of that seeking time and praying time we pray because it says we should in the Bible but we're not really convinced about that reward and I think the second reason that may appear a discrepancy - walking out the promise of God that's here in Ephesians chapter 3 between what it says and what's going on in our lives is because we're applying our understanding to what God is doing and that's always a recipe for futility we lacked so much understanding I want to show you give you an example

of this I found something on the internet this last week it was a little meme that went like this god is good and takes great joy in doing good to you that's nice thing to say I mean and fundamentally I think it's probably true the problem arises when God and I disagree on the definition of good and that happens quite frequently in my life he promises me that he will work all things together for good in my life right I just disagree with him on what good means because he's working good and it looks to

me like it's anything but in fact it looks to me that it's actually bad and so what you see I'm trying to do is I'm trying to interpret the purposes and and the will of God and the and the goodness of God through my own understanding and my understanding falls so incredibly short and then there's that troubling passage in Isaiah 55 man I run into this every so often and and I'm reminded that God tells me that his thoughts are not my thoughts he says neither are your ways my ways declares the Lord first the

heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts and I read that and I'm kind of reminded again oh yeah and you see here's the problem I'm not taking that into consideration and I'm judging what God is doing in my life according to my thoughts and my understanding and so what I end up doing is I end up judging him according to my understanding which is incredibly limited I found another and this is an amazing statement that's in that same chapter of Isaiah check this

out this is a word from the Lord he says incline your ear and come to me hear that your soul may live and the reason I think that's significant is because what the Lord is telling you and I to do in that passage is to incline our ear to his voice you see because when I come into the place of prayer and I start asking things from God my ear is inclined to my voice or even possibly the voice of the world and that's going to be an exercise in futility almost every time I go

to pray so the Lord speaks to me and says here's what I want you to do I want you to incline your ear to my voice and then begin to hear and you're gonna find that it's gonna be life to your soul because when we come to God with our ears tuned to our own voice then basically it's my demands that are on the table it's my will that is on the table it's my desire that I'm laying before the Lord God here's what I want you to do and the Lord says when you come

to me incline your ear to my voice would it be something if we began our prayers without asking a single solitary thing of God but simply coming to him saying Lord incline my ear tune my ear to your voice and I'm not going to ask one single thing of you until I know that my ear and your voice are in sync and I'm hearing you because then I'm going to be able to have a conversation with you without frustration you