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“I’m Praying for You”
Paul’s Model Prayer
Ephesians
1:17-23
Lord, Teach Us to Pray
Easter, 2003
I wish there was some prayer that I knew, absolutely knew, would be answered. I wish I knew of a prayer that I had absolute confidence would be prayed within the will of God!
Is there such a prayer? Yes!
Prayers that you find in the Bible as models for us—from the lips of Jesus, or from the Prophets, or from the Apostles—are surely perfectly in the will of God. When we look to Scripture to learn how to pray, we are going to that one sure place for examples in how to pray perfectly in the will of God.
To finish our series called, “Lord Teach Us to Pray,” we look at one of those model prayers from the Apostle Paul. This passage in Ephesians is so packed with wonderful things to pray for people that we could spend the rest of the day just working through it in detail. But we won’t—so you can rest assured of that.
So, the purpose of this passage is to model for us how we should pray and also to tell us what is real and true and remarkable about the Christian life, because of Easter. This passage is my prayer for you, as your pastor. This is what you should be praying for others in this church, and for those around the world. This is how you should pray for your spouse and your children.
Look at our passage in Ephesians 1:17-23—at what Paul prays.
1. I pray that you might know God better.
"I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better."
(Ephesians 1:17)
Do you feel that you know God well enough? We Christians often go around boasting that we “know God,” but in reality, we have only scratched the surface of our relationship with him. If we are finite, and God is infinite, then your relationship will always have room to grow.
But how do you get to know God better. The clues are right there in the verse—and they are tied directly to who God is in the Trinity.
First, God is the “God of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The way in which to know God is through Jesus Christ. God has supremely disclosed himself through his Son, Jesus Christ. To know God, you MUST know Jesus Christ. There is no other way…as devout as those who follow the other world religions may be, they are still seeking to know God through faulty means.
Jesus said,
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well.”
(John 14:6-7)
If I am devout in trying to get to Canada, but start down Route 71 toward Columbus, it does not matter how devout I am, or how purposeful I am, or how sincere I am in my quest to reach Canada. The route simply will not take me there. So it is with every world religion. Only in Christ did God come to earth to reveal the way to him. Only Christ dies on Good Friday and was raised on Easter Sunday. Not the Buddha, not Confucius, not Mohamed, not any cult leader. Only Jesus.
Know Jesus in order to know God—and he will introduce you to the “glorious Father.”
That’s the second clue in how to know God better: Meet God as your Father, not as some wrathful guy seeking to throw lightning bolts at you to snuff you out. Meet God as a loving Father who wants to lead you, care for you…only as a perfect Father can. So, know God better through the Son, who will introduce you to the Father.
The third clue as to how to know God better is tied into the third person of the Trinity:
The Holy Spirit. Paul prays that God “may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation.”
Get this: To know God is a spiritual endeavor. You cannot know God simply by reading Theology books. You cannot know God simply by going to church. There must be something that makes all that a spiritual exercise of actually, intimately connecting with God on the heart level. We need a special, spiritual wisdom from the Holy Spirit. We need the Holy Spirit to reveal to us the wonder of God, so that we fall deeper and deeper in love with him. It is the Spirit’s task to take things that belong to the secret domain of God and bring them to us so that we can receive them.
So, how to know God better? Meet Jesus. Get to know Jesus. He will introduce you to the Father. Get to know the Father. And all this is accomplished through the power of the Holy Spirit, giving us supernatural wisdom and revelation of the wonders of God.
I pray that God would give you the joy of knowing him through the power of the Holy Spirit giving you supernatural understanding into the things of God!
2. I pray that you would know and feel the hope that comes from salvation.
Paul prays in verse 18 this prayer for the Ephesians.
“I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints”
(Ephesians 1:18).
What a great prayer to pray for someone!
He prays in very beautiful, poetic language that “the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.” The Holy Spirit may be revealing incredible things to us,
but if the eyes of our hearts are too dark that we do not receive the light of the wonders of God, what good is that? But here is the incredible truth of the prayer: It is
God, and God alone who can reveal himself to us, and it is
God and God alone that can open our spiritual eyes so that we can actually receive that wondrous revelation!
That is why Paul prays!
And that is why I pray for you! And that is why you MUST pray for others—your family, your friends, your co-workers, your neighbors, your spouse, your kids.
We can never grow in our relationship with God (we can never really KNOW God) if we
do not ask God for it! If we are not asking God to do his spiritual work in us, instead of our constantly trying to religious work for him, we are just PLAYING CHURCH. We are either experiencing the spiritual transformation that comes only from God, or we are playing religious games.
What do we need the eyes to be enlightened to see? The first thing is HOPE.
What are we “hoping” for? Nothing less that life in the new heaven and the new earth, life living in perfect bliss in the very presence of God for all eternity. We need to see that the next life blows this life AWAY!
In our culture and in our generation, we must pray this prayer with even greater fervor. We are so entranced with the NOW. We are so wrapped up with meeting our needs NOW. We are so enmeshed in a belief-system that says all that is important is what I can get out of it NOW.
The results of only living for the now is that we lose our eternal perspective. If this life we live on this planet is really only a small part of our existence, we will live each moment more FULLY, not less fully. We will take greater risks, we will live further out on the edge. We will cherish each moment more because of the fact that each one of those moments impacts more than my immediate comfort or security or joy, but all of eternity!
And how do we break out of simply seeing life as what we experience in the here and now? How do we start living in light of the hope of eternity? How will I start FEELING this hope and not just “believe” it? I’ll tell you this: It ain’t gonna happen naturally. This, again, is a supernatural process.
God must enlighten my heart to the HOPE which he has called me, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the
saints.
3. I pray that you would know and feel the power of God to transform your lives.
Paul opened the prayer with saying that he asks God to enlighten the eyes of their hearts. This illumination into our hearts is for two things: so that they would know HOPE, and then in verse 19, so that they would know God’s amazing power.
"I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,
and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength,
which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms…” (Ephesians 1:18-20)
So, I pray too, that you would know God’s “incomparably great power for us who believe.”
I don’t know about you, but I know that I am not satisfied with a kind of Christianity that is orthodox but dead. I start to dry up inside when Christianity gets reduced to nothing more than knowing the right things, looking the right way, saying the proper things, carrying the right Bible…
I want more than churchianity, or religiosity, or any of the other weak-kneed imposters to true powerful interaction with the living God.
God offers us POWER. Incomparable power. That means that you cannot compare the power of God with any other power; it is that powerful.
How powerful is God’s power?
Look again at verses 19-20.
"That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms…”
(Ephesians 1:19b-20)
Can you even imagine what kind of power it takes to raise someone from the dead? This is not just some incredible resuscitation like you see on an episode of ER. This is not just reviving a heart that has stopped. This is a man who was dead. D.E.A.D.—dead. Jesus was CRUCIFIED by experts in killing. Roman law even laid the death penalty on any soldier who let a capital prisoner escape in any way, including bungling a crucifixion. And there is no record that it ever happened. The fact that they did not break Jesus’ legs, as they did to the other two crucified criminals (in John 19:31-33), means that they were sure Jesus was dead. Blood and water come from Jesus’ pierced side, showing that Jesus’ lungs had collapsed and he had died of asphyxiation
(Even The Journal of the American Medical Association
confirmed this).
The body was totally encased in winding sheets and placed in a tomb. From Friday until Sunday, Jesus’ dead body lay in that tomb. And he was raised from the dead. Not only that, but he was raised to never die again (which is different, even from the resurrection of Lazarus, who eventually died again).
That is a lot of power. And now, I want you to know that power is, according to verse 19,
“for us.”
Jesus was raised and seated at God the Father’s right hand in the heavenly realms. Where he now has overwhelming power as the Lord of all
creation—"far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come."
(Ephesians 1:21)
The power of God revealed in the resurrection of Jesus is now for us in the form of Jesus sitting on that throne—ruling over everything and everyone both now and forevermore.
And for a purpose: "And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church,
which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way."
(Ephesians 1:22-23)
Don’t miss this! He is there in incredible power for you. For me. For anyone and everyone who is in the
“Church, which is his body.” That is, for everyone who has submitted their lives to following the head of the Church, that is Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior.
On Good Friday, we focused in on the VICTORY of the Cross. Far too often, we feel like we have been defeated. We look at ourselves and realize how far short we fall of the God’s glorious standards of righteousness. Our tongues are wicked, our tempers flair, we feel malice, greed, lust, jealousy, pride. And we throw up our hands, realizing that these things are out of our control. That is the proper response, after all, to humbly admit that we are sinners, through and through. And no matter how much we work at it, we still end up doing the things we know we should not do.
But, I have a question for you here on Easter morning. Are your weaknesses beyond the power of God?
Paul does not seem to think so. He claims that the victory of the Cross and the power displayed in the Resurrection is more powerful than our weakness. Toward the end of this letter to the Ephesians (in chapter 6) Paul wraps up his encouragement to them with these words:
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.” (6:1)
This is the power of God that raised Jesus from the dead, and raised us with him spiritually. It is the power that put all things under Christ’s feet. And it is the power that can overcome even our weakness and can win our battles against the evil one.
"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,
to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen."
(Ephesians 3:20-21)
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