©2003 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

10/05/03

From Prayer To Prayer Pt. 1

Ephesians 3:10

10/5/03 From Prayer to Prayer Pt. 1

EPH 3:14-19 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He 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 of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

Even without knowing the context of these six verses

the significance of what we find Paul saying, or rather praying here is tremendous.

But when we understand where Paul placed this passage in his letter to the Ephesians

and know what has lead up to it,

and why Paul placed it where he placed it,

the power and significance of his words

will be amplified profoundly.

The passage is a prayer

prayed by Paul for the people who will read his letter to the Ephesians.

If you’ve been involved in this study with us for any length of time

you’ll remember that this is not the first time we’ve heard Paul praying for us.

In Ephesians 1:18-19 Paul wrote,

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.

Then, immediately following that first prayer,

he went on to reveal to us

the most remarkable insights into both God’s design and purpose for the church, the body of Christ on this earth.

And it was in response to the revelation of that truth

that Paul then wrote these words, “For this reason I bow my knees...”, sharing with us his second prayer.

He begins by praying that God will open our eyes to what he’s about to say.

And then, after he’s said what he wanted to say,

he once again drops to his knees

and makes one final request of the Lord on our behalf.

And with this final prayer

it’s as if he’s saying,

“Because of what I have just told you,

because of the importance of these truths to you,

and because of your importance to God

and to His plans and purposes on this earth,

I pray that God will bring one more crucial, essential understanding into your hearts.”

During the next two weeks

I want us to try to attempt to move from prayer to prayer

in one unified statement

that will, hopefully, bring us to an understanding

of why Paul prays what he does both in the first prayer and in the last.

We’ll accomplish most of that next week,

but I at least want to get us started today

and lay a little more essential background.

OK, Paul begins with his prayer for our understanding of what he’s about to say.

Then, right after that prayer,

he moves us into a description

of the remarkable relationship

that God has created between Jesus Christ and His church.

And if what we look at here is to be of any value to us

we must let go of that “Jesus is a great teacher and we should all follow his words more closely” mentality

that forms the foundation for so much of the religious garbage in the world.

I’m certainly not suggesting that Jesus was not a great teacher or that we should not follow what He said.

In truth, He’s the best there ever was.

But God did not bring Christ onto this earth

so that He could provide us with good teaching about life.

He brought Christ onto this earth

so that, through Him, He could establish between Himself and each of us

a real, living, growing, dynamic relationship

that is designed by Him to form the foundation of our entire life.

And just so you know where I’m coming from,

let me say that, if you are here this morning mostly to pick up a life principle or two

to help you make it through this next week

you have misunderstood what’s really going on.

True Christianity is not a collection of life principles

designed to help us better understand how life operates.

True Christianity

is establishing and growing in a living personal union between us and our Creator,

a union in which He literally lives inside us through His Holy Spirit

and lives His life out through us on a daily basis.

And my responsibility as the fellow up front each week

is to help us to better understand how that relationship works -

what helps it to grow,

what works against it.

If I thought that, when we end each week and you walk out the door,

the only thing you were taking with you

was a little pile of life principles

I would have quit what I’m doing years ago.

The only thing that gives me strong hope for each of us

is knowing that when you get up tomorrow morning

and walk through the doorway of your school,

or the place where you work,

or face the endless responsibilities that surround you at home,

that you do so

not with a little pile of principles to cling to,

but rather with the living reality of your God with you,

beside you,

inside you,

supporting you,

giving you strength, and wisdom, and understanding,

walking with you each step of the way.

And it is that kind of relationship

that Paul reveals to us

immediately following his prayer for our heart understanding in Ephesians.

It begins in the final few verses of chapter one

as he talks about how God, “... raised (Christ) from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet...”

In clear, powerful language

he talks with us about the position of supreme authority

that has been given to Christ in all of creation.

But that isn’t where Paul stops,

because the very next thing he said is this:

And (God) put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

There it is...

 in that single sentence

Paul begins his revelation

of the heart of what he wrote this letter to reveal to us,

a revelation that rests upon

the most amazing relationship in all of God’s creation,

a relationship in which Christ,

as supreme authority over all that is

is not just elevated above all other rule and authority,

but a relationship in which

He is given to the Church, the people of God,

and the people of God

are given to Christ

to serve as His physical body on this earth.

And then he describes us as,

“...the fullness of Him who fills all in all.”

We are the fulness of the One who fills us.

We complete the One

who completes us.

Nice theory, huh?

But I think maybe we don’t see it in reality so much.

We don’t even know what it looks like.

So let me try this.

This past week each of us here have lived 168 hours on this earth since we were last together.

We all filled those 168 hours with all sorts of activities.

Some of those activities were thrust upon us by others,

some we chose for ourselves.

But I want to suggest this morning

that there are a possibility of three distinct motivational forces

that could have provided the driving force behind our involvement in each of those things we did.

First of all there is the motivation of the flesh.

And if you think I mean by that

overtly “sinful” motivations

you are misunderstanding me.

When I talk about the motivations of the flesh

I’m talking about that entire life view,

with all of the goals,

and the values,

and the priorities,

and the techniques for achieving those priorities

that we have been handed by this world in which we live.

We are told in countless ways that we “need” certain things,

we are convinced that we want certain positions,

we try to get the people around us to do or not do certain things.

Each of us have wired into us

our own personal concept

of what “the good life” looks like,

of what “success” looks like.

For one person it might include building a great financial or social or political or religious empire.

For another person it might involve living a life free from all social contact

and avoiding all of the risks that social contact brings.

And, as we look back over this past week,

with all of us

there have been at least some of our life activities

that have been driven by those flesh motivations.

We did certain things,

sought certain things,

approached certain relationships in ways designed to move us toward those flesh goals.

For some of you it’s quite possible

that virtually everything you have done this past week

has been driven by those flesh goals.

In fact, it’s the overwhelming dominate motivational force in your life.

If you happen to be in that group,

I know some things about you.

I know there is no deep sense of joy in your spirit.

I know that, though you may feel “successful”,

you do not feel truly fulfilled in life.

And I know that, when that emptiness within you forces itself to the surface,

you very likely tell yourself that the emptiness will finally go away

when or if you can make a little more progress

toward achieving those same success goals you are so frantically pursuing already.

You see, the truth is

the flesh is incapable of ever providing us with life goals

that bring the kind of deep, abiding fulfillment and joy in life that we hunger for.

But the flesh can never honestly evaluate itself,

and as that emptiness within us persists

the only conclusion the flesh can reach

is that it just hasn’t gone far enough, fast enough to get what’s needed.

Then there is a second motivation

that may have been active in many of our lives this past week.

It’s the motivation of religion.

You can recognize this one

because underlying your actions

is the hope that what you’re doing

will in some way make things better between you and your God.

Some of you may be here this morning

because you made some immoral choices this past week,

choices that have created within you a sense of moral guilt, a sense of shame before God,

and you came here this morning

in an effort to help balance the moral scales in your mind.

You have no intention of changing your behavior,

but you very much want some religious activity you can add onto your life

to help reduce the guilt load.

That’s what religion does.

It promises us something we can do

to improve our standing before God.

If that happens to be true in your life,

I know some things about you, as well.

I know that the immorality you are clinging to

is creating a tremendous tension in your life.

I know that you are afraid to let go of it

because you have believed the lie that you must have it in order to meet your needs.

And I know that you will never find the kind of deep inner peace you long for

with yourself and with your God

until you stop playing religious games with your Creator

and choose to trust and obey what He’s been saying to you.

But the force of that religious motivation within us

can be among the most powerful motivational forces in human experience at times.

And then there is a third motivational force

that has been active in many of your lives as well since we were last together.

Paul describes this third motivational force perfectly in a single phrase in Galatians 2:20 when he says,

"I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me”.

And just so that we understand what’s being said here,

let me make a few comments about it.

First, let me say that we are not talking here simply about the “ideas of Christ”

or the “teachings of Christ”

or the “values of Christ” being lived out through us.

We are talking about God Himself literally living His life out through His people.

When we come to Him in simple faith in the death of Christ for our sins,

and we place our lives into His hands,

Paul says that we are “... sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise...”(EPH 1:13).

God’s Spirit takes up permanent residence within us

and begins expressing Himself both in us and through us,

blending His life within us

with our unique personalities

in a way that flows right out of us.

Second, let me say that this process of Christ living through us

is not intended to be some sort of a rare or occasional experience in the life of God’s child.

It is designed to be the default setting for the life lived with God.

Most of the time we are not even aware on a conscious level that it is happening.

I had several friends this past week

that I knew were facing some hard things.

On impulse one afternoon

I grabbed the phone and asked how things were going.

As a result of that call

we ended up getting together

and some good things came out of our communication.

Am I saying “God told me to pick up the phone”?

No,

any more than I would say God told me to get up in the morning,

or God told me to eat my lunch,

or God told me to go to bed at night.

But I will say that, as God’s child,

my Creator literally lives within me through His Holy Spirit,

and He is actively in the process of living His life out through me on a daily basis,

usually in ways I’m not even consciously aware of.

And I cannot emphasize strongly enough

that this process of the life of Christ through us

is designed by God to be such a natural part of our walk with Him,

and it is so perfectly matched to our own unique circumstances and personalities

that we are rarely consciously aware of what’s happening.

In fact, it is such a perfectly matched process within us

that, if we find ourselves consciously aware of some overt “spirit leading” in our lives

I believe we should be strongly suspicious of its source

until God has given us clear, absolute confirmation that it is from Him.

I remember when I was in my early 20's

during my second year on the Island of Trinidad

there was a young fellow in the valley I was working in

who started attending our youth meetings each week.

He was clearly interested in us as a group

and in what he was hearing.

Our lives fascinated him.

Then one day I found within myself

this strong compulsion to go “witness” to this fellow.

It wasn’t something that was flowing naturally out of my life,

it was something that I felt almost driven to do.

The young man lived way up on the mountain side

and I started hiking up the path to find him.

When I finally got to his house I was soaked with sweat,

and the sweat just kept pouring off of me the whole time I was there.

I found the fellow at home,

sat down with him,

and then, in a very forced way,

blurted out my little “witnessing” recital.

He was obviously utterly unmoved by my words

and as quickly as I could I left.

He never returned to our youth meetings

and I never saw him again.

Looking back on it now

I realize that I’d allowed the life of Christ within me

to be replaced by a little religious system I’d learned,

a system that my young friend could spot a mile away.

Some time later I came across a statement made by Paul to the Corinthians

that captured that whole experience so well.

2CO 2:17 For we are not like many, peddling the word of God, but as from sincerity, but as from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God.

Only, of course, I’d done it the wrong way around.

Rather than resting in my God’s ability to do through me what needed to be done,

when it needed to be done,

I’d gone out and tried to peddle the word of God.

So how do we cultivate this third motivational force within us?

How do we go about allowing Christ to live through us?

Well, if I can borrow Paul’s example,

I can answer that best in the form of my own prayer

a prayer that, in attitude, should be our starting place for each new day.

“Lord, thank you for the presence of your Spirit within me.

Thank you for Your commitment to live through me this day in exactly the way You know is right for me and for those around me.

This day I will once again trust

that You are doing just exactly what You said You would do- living Your life through me.

Please give me eyes to see when my flesh motivations

and my religious responses war against Your life through me,

and give me the strength and the courage to choose Your voice rather than theirs. Amen.”

It’s always all about attitude, you see.

I find it interesting that

the same day that I made that phone call I told you about,

several hours earlier

I was sitting in my office,

trying to write up the notes for our time together this morning.

I knew, as I sat there, that what I was putting down

was just words without life,

but I wanted to get it done

and I just kept trying to make it work anyway.

Then, I finally closed the lid on my Dell laptop,

wandered out into the garage

and spent several hours cleaning things up.

Those several hours I spent in the garage

were every bit as much an expression of the life of Christ within me

as the phone call I made later that afternoon.

I didn’t realize it at the time,

but the next day when I returned to my notes

I discovered my mind heading a completely different direction from where I was trying to head the day before.

And I can’t emphasize enough

that this whole arrangement between us and our Lord

requires a constant reaffirmation of trust in Him -

trust that He really is present within us,

trust that He knows how to express Himself through us in ways that fit us perfectly,

trust that He both can and will use us in the lives of those around us

not because our actions are flawless or because our knowledge is perfect,

but because our heart attitude is open and right before Him.

There is a statement found in the Psalms

that is one of the most misquoted

and misunderstood statements in all of Scripture.

It’s found in Psalms 46:10 and in the King James Version it reads, “Be still, and know that I am God...”

In my own church heritage

that verse was used as a tool to get children sit quietly in church,

or as some sort of call to silent meditation before the Lord.

But a more accurate translation of that verse does not say “be still”, it says,"Cease striving and know that I am God...”

It is our God telling us

that we should stop our frantic efforts to live this life for Him,

and rest in His commitment and His ability to do what needs to be done in and through us.

Now, I know that doesn’t get us very far

in our efforts to move from prayer to prayer,

but what we’ve just seen here this week

will help us when we pull this all together next time.