©2003 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

10/19/03

From Prayer To Prayer Pt. 3

Ephesians 3:10

10/19/03 From Prayer To Prayer Pt. 3

EPH 3:14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father...

What is it that motivates you to pray?

What events or circumstances in your life

cause you to reach out to your God,

to call out to Him?

Is prayer just a part of your religious ritual,

something you do as a matter of routine

in the hope that the exercise will help keep you on better terms with your Creator?

If so then your prayers are very likely repetitive

and unrelated to what’s really going on in your life.

Or are your prayers rooted in what’s really going on around you,

and within you?

And if they are,

do you ever find yourself struggling with knowing what to pray,

or how to pray,

for yourself and for those you love?

Prayer is such a fascinating thing.

When we are young in our conversational skills with God

we approach prayer from the perspective

of believing it is a tool through which

we can, at least at some level,

conform God to our will.

We make our requests known to Him

and then hope that He will take notice of our requests.

“Lord, won’t ya give me a Mercedes Benz?

My friends all drive Porches,

I must make amends...”

We don’t normally go that far, of course,

but most of us begin our conversational skills between us and God

by bringing our flesh-based value systems to Him

and asking Him to fill in what we believe to be lacking

in those things we are convinced we need

in order to be more happy,

more secure,

more fulfilled.

And in the back of our minds

is the assumption that prayer is a tool through which

we have the hope of conforming God to our will.

And before I say anything else here,

let me just say that I in no way mean to be critical of us for doing that.

It is where we begin

and it is all a part of the process through which

we learn about ourselves and our Lord.

Clearly He not only allows us to share ourselves openly and honestly with Himself,

He strongly encourages us to do so.

PHI 4:6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

HEB 4:15 For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.

HEB 4:16 Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Our God really, truly does take us just as we are,

right where we are,

without conditions,

without restrictions.

He doesn’t ask us to “pray correctly”,

He simply flings the door wide open

and invites us to pray.

He invites us to live in His presence

and to share ourselves and our lives with Him on a daily basis.

He doesn’t want our prayers,

He wants us,

and He takes us right where we are

with all of our confused and muddled thinking

about what we believe we really need for a truly fulfilled life.

But, having said that,

there is something else I have discovered about this whole prayer thing

that I find to be truly amazing.

I have begun to realize

that with prayer,

as with most things in my walk with God,

I’ve had it all backwards for most of my life.

For, most of all,

prayer is not my tool that enables me to bend God to my will,

it is God’s tool that enables Him to bend me to His will.

I’ll be honest with you,

I don’t understand exactly how this whole thing works,

I just know it does.

I know that,

when something really matters in my life,

and for me, the things that really matter

are the people I love,

and when they matter enough

for me to pray for them,

I find myself longing to be able to pray for them

in a way that is consistent with what God really wants to do in their lives.

After more than thirty-five years

of watching the Lord’s involvement in my own life,

there is one thing I am now certain of -

what I really want most of all,

what I need most of all,

what my spirit longs for more than anything else

is what He has for me.

He cannot,

He will not ever cheat me.

Would you like to hear it in His own words?

MAT 7:9 "Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone?

MAT 7:10 "Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he?

MAT 7:11 "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!

And I know the same is true for the ones I love that I bring to Him through prayer.

The problem, of course,

is that I don’t know what it is

that they, or I really need.

I know our spirits hunger,

but I don’t know what it is that will meet that hunger.

I don’t know what will bring us into greater conformity with God and His will.

I just know that,

whatever it is,

it’s what we long for in our lives.

And so,

increasingly now when I pray,

I find myself seeking not to express my will,

but rather to understand His will

so that I can then pray in conformity with it.

And in the most remarkable way

God uses that whole process

to bring about changes within me as His child.

I bring all of this up at this point in our study of Ephesians

because the prayer we are going to look at this morning

has become one of the most valuable gifts I have ever received from my Father

when it comes to this whole area of prayer.

The prayer itself takes less than 30 seconds to read,

or to pray ourselves.

But it contains some of the most remarkable insights

ever revealed to us by our God

about what really brings deep fulfillment and satisfaction in life.

And I’ll tell you right now that,

if you have someone in your life,

someone in whose life you long to see the reality of God,

someone you want to pray for,

and yet don’t even know exactly what to ask,

or where to begin,

I would strongly recommend this prayer to you as a guide.

The prayer itself is remarkable,

but its power and significance is dramatically intensified

by its position in the letter.

It comes at the very end of Paul’s revelation

of the central truth contained in this letter,

the truth he prayed that the eyes of our hearts would see.

And, immediately following the revelation of that truth he says,

EPH 3:14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father...

And what was that revelation?

What was the knowledge he wanted us to see?

It was the knowledge,

the understanding of the kind of relationship that God has established

between His Son, Jesus Christ,

and His people,

and what He now accomplishes in his creation

as a result of that relationship.

And let me see if I can pull it together in just a few phrases.

God has established Christ as the supreme authority in all of creation.

He then gave Christ to His people as their head

and gave His people to Christ as His body here on earth.

Then, through this union that now exists between us and Christ,

God proclaims and reveals His manifold wisdom for all to see,

both in this world,

and in the unseen world around us.

EPH 3:10 ...so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.

This world in which we live

is nothing like what we think it is.

The things that really matter,

the things that have great significance,

the things that change the course of history for all eternity

are not the things we see displayed on the evening news

or read about in the morning newspaper.

The battles that hold the attention of those in the unseen world

are not the battles raging in Washington D.C. or the middle east.

They are the battles for good and evil

that take place in each of our lives each day.

Was there a time in your life this past week

when you faced a choice between righteousness and evil,

between honesty and dishonesty,

between faithfulness and impurity,

between the truth and the lies,

and you reached a point in that battle

where your spirit hungered for faithfulness to your King

and you chose His way?

Do you think no one knew?

Do you think your choice went unnoticed?

At that point,

because of that choice you made,

the manifold wisdom of God was made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.

Was there a time when you discovered within yourself

a willingness to reach out to another person in kindness,

or in patience,

or in gentleness,

or in compassion,

or in honesty,

not because it was what you were feeling,

but because you knew it was what your God was asking of you

and you said yes?

Do you think that was some small thing?

Do you think no one noticed?

No one cared?

In that choice once again

you proclaimed the manifold wisdom of God ... to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.

You demonstrated for all those who look on

that a person born in sin,

who entered this world with a heart fixed only on himself,

a person who once cared nothing whatsoever

for his God,

who viewed God as the great enemy of all that was to be desired

that such a person

could be recreated at the spirit level,

and recreated in such a way

that the mind and the heart of God

could now be revealed through your life.

If we could see things as they really are,

we would know that this is no small thing,

that there are no small people,

and there are no small acts of righteousness.

OK, it is God’s recreation of us

and then His creation of this remarkable relationship between us and His Son,

a relationship in which He dwells within us through His Spirit

and then expresses Himself through us each day,

that brings Paul to the point where he says,

EPH 3:14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father...

He is saying,

“Because of the significance of what has happened within you,

and what has happened between you and your Lord,

and what is happening through you each day,

I pray...”

And what he prays

reveals to us the three things that must take place within us

in order for this whole remarkable plan of God to become a living reality in our lives.

And the first thing He asks God on our behalf is “...that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man...”.

And I do hope you see

how this first request of Paul’s

forever separates the true life with God through Christ

from the whole world of flesh-based religious effort.

This is not Paul praying

that we would give of our best to the Master.

This is not Paul saying,

“He’s done so much for you,

what are you going to do for Him?”

This is not Paul’s attempt

to stir up within us

some emotion-based religious response

in which we take the best of our human skills, and efforts, and talents, and abilities

and then attempt to use them to accomplish the work of God on this earth.

This is Paul laying out for us

the only foundation that can ever make this whole thing work -

either God Himself equips us,

either He gives us the power within

through the presence of His Spirit

to accomplish what needs to be done

or there is no hope.

This is not God saying to us,

“You do it for Me.”,

this is us saying to our God,

“Please, You do what needs to be done in me and through me.”

And through his own example here

Paul is revealing to us

where our own communication with God must start.

“Lord, I cannot live this life for you.

I pray that this day Your Spirit will once again do in me and through me

those things that You want done.

I need You, Lord.

And apart from You and Your life within me,

I have no hope.”

The healthy Christian life

is built upon a daily desperate dependance

upon the reality of God within us.

Which brings us to Paul’s second statement

which is not so much a request

as an explanation of what the power of God will accomplish within us.

EPH 3:17 ...so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith...

And I must admit

that, when I first encountered this prayer,

this one phrase troubled me more than anything else Paul said.

Why would Paul pray

that Christ would dwell in the heart of the Christian?

Isn’t He already there?

Isn’t that, in fact, what makes us Christians?

And the answer, of course, is yes, Christ is already present within every child of God.

ROM 8:9 But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.

But there is something else going on here

that I did not understand

until I looked closely at Paul’s wording in this statement

and did some research into that word “dwell”.

The word that Paul uses here

is not the word that simply means “to be present”,

it is the word that means “to settle down, to be at home”.

In this phrase he is telling us

that the thing that allows Christ to feel at home within us

is those choices we make to trust Him

and to trust what He says.

Throughout most of my adult life

my Lord has, on a regular basis,

brought young people into my life.

We use words like “disciple”

or “mentor”,

but in truth all I try to do

is to build the best friendship I can with those He gives me

and trust that He will then use that friendship in their lives for good.

I know there are those

who believe the reason I’m as good at it as I am

is because in many ways emotionally I’m still about 16...or maybe 13 years old myself.

But over the years

I’ve noticed a fascinating turning point

that so often has to take place in those relationships

before I can really be of value to a kid.

He has to reach the point

where he is convinced he can really trust me.

He has to decide

I am really a safe person.

I can’t tell you for sure what brings that about.

I think it has a great deal to do

with them discovering that I really do care deeply about them,

that I really do love them,

and that they’re not just some project or religious duty to me.

But I do know that transition has to happen

before that young person will truly let me into their life.

And once it happens

their whole attitude toward me changes.

I mention this

because I believe Paul is praying

for that same sort of transition

in our relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ.

The truth is

we all start our relationship with Christ

by trusting His death for our sins,

but we do not start out trusting Him.

We’re not at all sure whether His goals for us

are the goals that we really want.

We’re not sure whether His ideas of the good life

are ideas that we can buy into.

We’re not at all sure that He might not make a royal mess of everything we value most

if we let Him have His way in our lives.

And we are definitely not at all sure He’s safe.

When Paul prays

that the Spirit of God will strengthen us in the inner man

so that we can then begin making choices to trust in Christ

he’s talking about our movement into that kind of relationship between us and Christ

in which we finally relax with Him.

We trust Him in a way

that enables Him to feel at home within us.

Until that happens

we will continue to hold our God at arm’s length away from us,

forever afraid of what He’s really about in our lives.

And there is only one thing that will make that transition possible in our lives,

and it is that one thing

that Paul offers as His third request to God on our behalf.

EPH 3:17-19 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 fulness of God.

We must discover at the heart level the true nature of our God’s love for us.

Fear can never get us there.

Religious duty can never get us there.

The hope of either present or future rewards can never get us there.

Only the personal discovery of His love for us can get us there.

And only the Spirit of God can get us past all our fears,

and all our confusion,

and all our twisted ideas about our Creator

to the point where we begin to see the truth -

that our God loves us with everlasting love.

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 fulness of God.