How to Pray

How to Pray for the Church

Ephesians 3:14-21

I don’t know if you are aware of it or not, but the modern church is infatuated with the early church. What I mean is, Christians today look at the power of God on display in the lives of the very first Christians, (The Christians of the New Testament) and we believe if we could just duplicate what they did, and live for God the way they did, we could see the power of God on display in our lives and in the church today.

For example, I am amazed when I read how giving the early church was. We read in the book of Acts how they were selling their possessions to take care of each other, so that no one was in need. That’s amazing, but then I realize how benevolent we are as a church, and how in times past we have gone above and beyond to help people. And I’m sure we are not the only church that does that.

I am amazed when I read how devoted the early Christians were to their Bible. They really understood the Word of God and certainly we don’t spend enough time studying the scripture, but we have greater resources available to us today. We are surrounded by Christian literature, and we meet every week for Bible study, Sunday school, and small groups.

I am amazed when I read how evangelistic the first Christians were. We are told that 3000 was added to their number on the day of Pentecost. But the bible clearly says it was the Lord who was adding to their number daily. So, there wasn’t anything they were doing that was special.

Except for one thing. There is one thing they were doing that sets them apart from us today, they prayed! Every time you read about these people, who were so powerful in Christ, they are praying.

The elders of the church in Jerusalem thought of prayer as so important when they got too busy feeding the orphans and the widows, they reorganized the church, not because feeding orphans and widows was beneath them, but because prayer was so important.

Today prayer is the Achilles heel of the church. We just don’t think prayer is important. We believe in working. We believe in being busy, and getting it done, not taking time to pray.

AJ Gorden wrote, “You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you can never do more than pray until you have prayed.” I believe that because we don’t think prayer is important, we live Christian lives without power.

Maybe the problem is too many Christians don’t know how to pray. We have never been taught to pray. So, we go to God with a laundry list of to dos, like He is some kind of genie in a bottle, and when God doesn’t respond, we give up, and our prayer life is unfruitful.

Well in our passage this morning, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul teaches us to pray for the church. He teaches us how to go to God and what we should ask for. (Read Eph. 3:14-21)

For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father,

15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name,

16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man,

17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love,

18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,

19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

20 Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us,

21 to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen. (Pray).

In our passage this morning, we have the second of Paul’s prayers for the Ephesians. The first came in 1:15-23. I want you to notice each time he prays, he prays they would have strength and understanding in the Spirit. He prays that God would empower them and enlighten them to live for Him.

Notice how Paul’s prayers are for the spiritual condition of the man and not for their material needs. Now, there is nothing wrong with praying for our material needs, but it is obvious that Paul felt the spiritual condition of a person was more important. He believed if we were right with God, we would have everything we need. (Matt. 6:33)

Have you ever noticed we take the opposite approach? When we get together for our prayer time (small groups) it seems like we only pray for physical needs. (We pray for aunt Betty’s bunions, we pray for Uncle Joe’s back) We never pray for the power of God to be at work in each other’s lives. In our passage this morning Paul teaches us how to pray for the church, and each other. He teaches us how to go to God and what we should ask for.

The first thing I want you to see in this passage is the posture of Paul’s prayer, Vs. 14. Paul teaches us to pray by the posture of his prayer. He says, “For this reason I bow my knee before the Father.” Now it might come as a surprise to you but I’m not talking about the posture of Paul’s body. I don’t think that’s what is important in this prayer. But it is the posture of his heart that matters. He had a heart that was humble before God.

Notice how he begins with the phrase, “For this reason.” And we have to ask, ‘for what reason.?” Well, Paul was going to begin this prayer back in the very first verse of chapter three, notice this phrase, “For this reason,” is repeated there, but Paul got distracted. He began to think about the stewardship of God’s grace. He began to think about the mystery of Christ that had been revealed to him.

Does that ever happen to you? Do you ever get distracted when you pray? I know I do. Sometimes the moment I begin to pray, all I can think of is my agenda for the day. Paul teaches us it’s okay to get distracted. When you become focused again you go back to God in prayer.

So, what is the reason for his prayer? Everything that he told us in chapters one and two. Paul was amazed by the grace of God. He was amazed God would send His Son into the world to save sinners like you and me, and use us to build His church. And it prompted him to pray. in fact, It drove him to his knees.

When we think of all that God has done for us, it should humble us and drive us to our knees as well. We have been adopted as sons and daughters of the King. We have been chosen by the Father, redeemed by the Son, and sealed by the Spirit. We have an inheritance waiting in heaven. Paul says, “For this reason I bow my knee before the father.” What about you? Are you humble enough to pray.

There are a lot of prayers recorded for us in the bible, but we really don’t read about people bowing down to pray. Abraham stood before God and interceded for Sodom. Solomon stood and prayed with his hands in the air, as he dedicated the temple. David would sit on the throne and pray. Jesus fell on his face and prayed in the garden of Gethsemane.

You see it wasn’t the Jewish custom to bow down and pray. We are all familiar with the images of the wailing wall in Jerusalem. The orthodox Jews stand and rock back and forth as they pray.

So, when Paul says, “I bow my knee before the father.” What is important is his attitude. To bow the knee is a sign of humility. It’s a sign of reverence and honor. It is a sign of submission. In the ancient world they would bow to their knees before the King. There are some of us that can’t bow our knee, but we can bow our head and we can bow our heart, and really that is what is important to God.

You can have a heart that is grateful sitting in your car. You can have a heart of reverence putting make-up on in front of a mirror. You can have a heart that longs to honor God standing on your front porch with a cup of coffee. It’s not the position of our body that matters but it is the attitude of our heart when we go to God in prayer.

My dad told me a story about preaching a revival in the south and when he got up to preach, he read the scripture and said, “let’s go to the Lord in prayer.” While he was praying, he opened his eyes, and everyone was gone. He thought to himself I haven’t even started preaching yet and they have walked out on me. So, he finished praying and said amen, and he realized everyone in the church had bowed down in their pews to pray. Dad told me God did a lot of amazing things among those people, but it wasn’t because they bowed down every time they prayed, it was because of their reverence for God.

Jesus teaches us the same thing in a parable in Luke 18:10-14, Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. “The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ‘I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ “But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ “I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

What I want you to see here is that you don’t have to be perfect to pray. You don’t even have to be right with God. What we have to be is, humble, and then we can bring our mistakes, our failures, our regrets and we can find forgiveness and grace.

So, the first thing Paul teaches us is, to pray with humility, that is the posture of his prayer.

The next thing I want you to see in this passage is the Petition of Paul’s prayer, Vs. 16-19. Paul teaches us how to pray for one another by his petitions. And I love this because it’s almost as though Paul is searching for words to describe the glory of God.

Notice Vs. 16, “that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthen with power through His Spirit in the inner man.” Notice it is God doing the granting, we are always the ones receiving from God. And it’s as though He has this vast storehouse of riches He is just waiting to pour out into the lives of His people.

To be strengthened with power in the inner man is talking about our soul. The depths of our being. It’s talking about our mind, our will, and our emotions, the very center of who we are, the you deep inside of you that no one knows. Paul is praying that we would be renewed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

He would teach us the same thing in 2 Cor. 4:16, He says, “Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.” It doesn’t matter how young or how old you are, you can be strengthened on the inside.

You see we need to be strengthen on the inside because that is where sin and temptation take place. And Paul says, I pray that He will make you strong inside. Why?

Vs. 17, “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” Wait a minute. I thought Christ dwelled in our hearts the moment we got saved. We know Paul is writing to believers here. We know he is writing to the saints of Ephesus. Doesn’t Christ already dwell in there hearts? This phrase dwell in your hearts literally means “to make Himself at home.”

When Tammy and I first moved to Monroe we bought an old house that needed some work. It was a little uncomfortable at first. Now we have painted the house, updated the kitchen, replaced the roof, and put new flooring in. Now it feels like our home. Well, the same thing is true when Christ comes to live inside of you. There are some changes He has to make to be comfortable there. There are some closets that need to be cleaned out, and some attitude adjustments that have to be made. And God does that through the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

Paul continued to pray, “that they would be rooted and grounded in love.” Why would we need to be rooted and grounded? Well, because if a tree is going to grow tall it’s roots have to grow deep, and the same thing is true in the life of a believer. And the word grounded is a building term. It speaks of having a strong foundation that’s not going to sink. So, Paul prays that they would be strengthen by the Spirit of God so they could grow tall and strong in their faith.

Then Paul says we need the power of God to understand Christ’s love. How wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love is, that you might be filled up to the fullness of God. Why do we need to understand the love of Christ?

Imagine a child that was raised in a home without love. Especially the love of a father. We know from experience that creates all kinds of emotional distress in that child’s life. But the same thing is true spiritually. If a person doesn’t believe that God loves them, they are not going to respond to the things of God. The only way we grow healthy as Christians is to believe that God loves us.

Let me ask you this, how wide is the love of Christ? Well, it is wide enough to include every lost sinner in the world. It is wide enough to include the prostitute, the homosexual, the drug addict, and the drunk. It is wide enough to include the adulterer, the liar, the cheat, and the thief. Anyone who is willing to repent and come to God through the cross of Jesus Christ can know the love of God..

It is a love that is high. It is too high for us to comprehend. Five times Paul uses the phrase in the heavenlies because it is so high. It is a love that reaches into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God interceding for us everyday.

It is a love that is deep. Well, how deep it is? He tells us in chapter two, we were dead in our trespasses and sins, but we have been made alive in Christ. This is a love that reaches into the grave and resurrects life. And it doesn’t matter who you are or what you have done you are loved by God.

There will always be people who will say they don’t feel loved by God. They will say things like, look at my life, look at what I am going through, how can you say God loves me? Listen we don’t measure the love of God by our circumstances. Think of Jesus He hung on a cross. He suffered and died. Was it because God didn’t love Him? No, it was because of God’s great love for us. (John 3:16)

So, Paul prayed we might be strengthen by the Spirit and he prayed that we might know the love of Christ. But why is that important? So, that we can live in the fullness of God. Now that doesn’t mean that we contain all of God with in us. That would be like drinking in the Atlantic Ocean. That would be impossible. What this means is that we could be filled up to the top with God in our life. That our cup would be overflowing.

So, the second thing Paul teaches us about prayer is, we are to seek God for one another to have strength and understanding of the love of Christ.

The third thing I want you to see in this passage is the praise of Paul’s prayer, Vs 20-21. In these last two verses of chapter three Paul teaches us how to praise God.

“Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.”

This is what we commonly refer to as doxology. A doxology is a hymn of praise addressed to God. Notice Paul isn’t talking to the Ephesians anymore He is just absolutely praising the Lord! He is shouting from the roof tops “gloria in excelsis deo.” Glory to God in the highest.

That is amazing. Don’t forget where Paul is at when he is writing this. He isn’t sitting in a church service like you and I. He is not in the comfort of his own home or in his personal prayer closet.

He is in prison, and he has been there for two long years, chained to a Roman soldier, waiting for his trial. Yet Paul isn’t defeated. He isn’t feeling sorry for himself, he is triumphantly praising God. Why? Because there is power in praise. That’s why praise is so important to our prayers.

God’s glory is the theme of this passage, and praise is the climax of Paul’s prayer. Why? because He is able to do even more than we can think. Whatever we have need of in our lives, God is able to do it.

A woman once came to G. Campbell Morgan, after he spoke and asked, “Do you think we should pray for even the little things in our lives, or just for the big things?” In his dignified British accent he replied, “Madam, can you think of anything in your life that is big to God?” Well, the same thing is true for you. Is there anything in your life that is big to God? God can do more in one moment of prayer than we can do in a lifetime of worry, and work.

So, he is worthy of our praise. Our prayer life should always include praise. Not because God needs our admiration but because He deserves it.

What this prayer from the apostle Paul teaches me is, when I pray I am way to focused on the material world, and I need to give more time and attention to spiritual things. (Tammy’s phone calls). That is exactly how I felt when I read this passage, I felt like I had missed something.

Paul will say later in chapter six that we don’t struggle with flesh and blood but with principalities and powers of darkness in high places.

I am afraid as a church we spend too much time struggling with flesh and blood, and not enough time praying for the power of God in each other’s lives.

So my request is that you will go with me to the Lord in prayer, and with a humble heart ask Him to strengthen His people in the inner man that we might be able to comprehend the love of Christ.