A Prayer for You

Our reading this week is Ephesians 3 to 6, and there were actually two sections that really spoke to me this morning. I hope they speak to you as well.

The first begins in verse 16 of chapter 3. Paul tells the Ephesians that he is praying for them. And more than that, he tells them what he is praying for them. He is praying

that [God] would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

My initial feeling at reading this was conviction. I was convicted for the smallness of my own prayers for others. I mean, honestly, when was the last time you prayed a prayer like this for someone else? Are we not much more inclined to pray quick prayers for help or healing or strength for the day or peace for the grieving? Band-aids for the deeply wounded and broken, but seldom reaching for an understanding of the God's deep plans or the heights of God's love. When was the last time we actually disciplined ourselves to pray for our families and our friends and our church members and our neighbors that Christ would dwell in their hearts through faith and that they would be filled up with the fullness of God? The fullness of God!

Yet this is precisely what the Apostle Paul prays for his friends in the community of Ephesus.

So I was challenged to pray this very prayer with Paul for those I know this morning - and I hope that you will join me in that prayer.

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Then moments after I prayed this prayer of Paul's, I read the opening verses of chapter 5 where Paul says:

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.

 The imagery here is so powerful - as a fragrant aroma! And the command is so clear - be imitators of God [by] walking in love. No wonder Paul prayed such a prayer in chapter 3! We need the strength of the Spirit in our inner selves. We need Christ to dwell within us. We need to be rooted and grounded in his love so that we can accomplish the task set before us - the task of being a fragrant aroma! A powerful, memorable, and meaningful presence in the lives of others!

So I was moved to pray again - to pray for those of you who read this, and to pray for those I know in my own community - to pray the prayer of Paul in Ephesians. May the love of Christ fill your life until it overflows from you! Amen.