A Prayer of Strength

Introduction

This evening my goal is for you to walk away knowing God has made 3 three things available for us to strengthen us.

Those three things are:

Inner Being

Love

Abundance

In our text we see that Paul praying for the Ephesian Church to have real fullness and fight against shallowness.

If you were to read verses 14-15 that verse is communicating a deep truth about Paul.

He is in prison which is a hole in a ground with people on top of each other.

It’s cold, dark, no bathroom, and Paul is hurting.

Yet he throws himself on the ground and is pleading on behalf of the Ephesian Church.

Paul understands that the strength he is about to pray for won’t come from this Church doing the right things but it comes from the Holy Spirit.

Strength In Our Inner Being (v. 16)

This shouldn’t be a novel concept since I feel like I say it every week but you are born sinful.

We are stained with sin.

Out of all this though Paul knows that Jesus has the power to cleanse us.

The tail end of verse 16 Paul starts with strength for our inner being.

Paul isn’t praying to fix the surface level, but that our inner being is strengthened.

Our inner being means the core and character of who we are.

The question Paul asks is how are you reacting and behave internally?

Paul’s solution is that the Holy Spirit to strengthen us.

We love to say we agree with that but a majority of us lie.

Why? We believe right information leads to right actions.

If only I knew how to do this part of Christianity better I wouldn’t struggle.

Have your parents ever told you something you knew was the right thing to do but yet you didn’t do it? Teacher? Small Group leader? Myself?

We think God wants behavior modification but instead God wants to mold hearts.

This power from the Holy Spirit is available for us and can change us. We just don’t live on our knees pleading for that. We believe the right program or the right message will come along.

Strength in Experiential Love (v. 17-19)

Only when we are rooted and grounded in perfect love do we truly see God.

God embodied perfect love through Jesus Christ on the cross.

If we are not in love with Jesus than we cannot begin to understand who he is.

So what does this mean? We believe the objective but struggle with the subjective

Objectively we know that the love of God is far greater than we understand.

The breadth, length, height, and depth. Objectively we know the Bible teaches that God loves us.

Subjectively though, our experiences do not reflect that.

The Bible will often attack this idea of objectively knowing God without subjectively knowing him.

We talked about it the second week of this series but it’s more than just a head knowledge.

Head knowledge is a good start but it has to move past that.

We can define forgiveness amazingly but unless you experience it you don’t know the power.

I’m talking about receiving and giving by the way.

We believe the objective is enough but it’s not.

Israel and the Red Sea. Judas Iscariot and Jesus.

Paul is praying they comprehend this which is to understand they lay a hold of this. It takes root in their heart not just their head.

After praying for the comprehension it than goes to knowing the love the leads to fullness.

Strength in Abundance (v. 20-21)

This last one is a strength of abundance.

God is able to do more than we can fathom.

We don’t believe it though because if we did we would spend a lot more time in prayer that some of us do.

Or we would be praying a lot more specifically than just generally.