Write the names of 5 people you commonly
pray for, and your prayer request for them:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Keep these in mind as we study our
passage today!
Big Idea: For God’s glory, Paul prays the Ephesians would be
given spiritual power to comprehend God’s amazing love. ~ Eph. 3:14-21 ~
-Chapter 3 is a transitional chapter
between doctrine (chs. 1& 2) and life application (chs. 4-6). Here in
chapter 3 Paul:
a.
Reminds them of his apostolic calling and ministry to the Gentiles (vss. 1-13)
b.
Prays for strength and insight for these very Gentiles (vss. 14-21).
c.
“This is a crucial transition from learning to living, doctrine to doing,
academics to action” (Dr. Bud Brainerd, Pastor of Crozet Village Church).
-“For this reason” in vs. 14 continues the
thought he started, but broke off, in vs. 1. He is referencing back to the reconciliation
and peace we have on a vertical plain with God, and on a horizontal plain with
our fellow man. (Specifically, here, the peace between Jew and Gentile.)
-This doctrine of reconciliation leads
to humility and intimacy in his prayers.
a.
“I bow my knees” – submission & surrender to God “who created all things”
(v. 9).
b.
“before the Father” – relational & personal. Think “Abba, Father” of Rom.
8:15, Gal 4:6 and certainly Jesus’ own use of it in the Lord’s Prayer and in
the Garden of Gethsemane.
c.
How does humility lead to intimacy in our prayer life?
I. Paul prays for strength and spiritual POWER
so that:
1. By
faith, Christ would dwell in their hearts – vs. 16. (Think John 14:17-21.)
a. What
does Paul mean by “heart” or “inner being”?
b.
“In a culture
where so many people are desperate for good health, but not demonstrably hungry
for the transformation of the inner being, Christians are in urgent need of
following Paul’s example and praying for displays of God’s power in the inner
being” (D.A. Carson, A Call to
Spiritual Reformation. Baker, © 1992, pg. 185).
c. The
verb “dwell” literally means take up residence.
d. Who
can we pray for that needs God to take up residence in his/her heart?
II. Paul prays for strength and spiritual
POWER so that:
2. They
would comprehend the limitless, all surpassing love of Christ – vs. 17-19.
a. What
is Paul assuming by using the past tense, “rooted and grounded in love”?
b. Can
our experience of Christ’s love be to the exclusion of loving others? In other
words, can we be a “Marlboro Man/Lone Ranger” Christian?
“Because
the God we worship is unity in plurality, the experience of Christian love is
the same kind. It is not in lonely cultivation of our souls, but ‘with all
God’s people’ that we begin to grasp the love of God which defies language. …
God wants his children to emanate that warmth and light of love. But we cannot
give it out until we take it in…”
(Michael Green, A
Prayer Journey with the Apostle Paul. Zondervan, © 2004, pg. 141).
c. God’s
love is ______; it covers the breadth of our lives. (Ps. 103:11-12)
d. God’s
love is ______; it was before we were born & into eternity. (Ps. 139:13-16)
e. God’s
love is ______. “Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens” (Ps. 36:5-6).
f. God’s
love is ______; no matter how far we fall into sin, nothing can “separate us
from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39).
g. How,
or who, are we filled with so to experience “the measure of all the fullness of
God”? In theological terms we call this ________ with Christ.
“For
God was pleased to have all his fullness
dwell in him…for in Christ all the
fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the
head over every power and authority” (Colossians 1:19; 2:9-10).
“A
doxology is an expression of adoration which rises above the level of ordinary
speech, being more the language of ecstasy. It is a fervent utterance of
praise: yet it is not so much the act of praise as it is the realization of the
praise which is due to God and the consciousness that He is due infinitely more
than we are capable of rendering to Him. We are lost in Him, overwhelmed with a
sense of His ineffable glory” (A.W. Pink, Gleanings
from Paul, pg. 147).
-If
God is omnipotent and generous (Luke 11:9-13), shouldn’t we expect Him to be
“able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine”?
-Then
why don’t we pray like that?
-Why don’t we
press into Him and expect great things?
-And when we
do, we can be assured that He will be glorified “in the church and in Christ
Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”
-Paul’s
primary concern is God’s glory, and thus, it should also be our primary
concern. We must remember that, “prayer, like everything else in the Christian
life, is for God’s glory and for our benefit, in that order” (R.C. Sproul, Does Prayer Change Things?” pg. 10).
**Think back to the people and prayer
requests you wrote down…how have those thoughts/requests been challenged or
encouraged in light of how Paul prayed for these Gentile believers in Ephesus?
**How will you pray differently going
forward?
“Has God become so
central to all our thoughts and pursuits, and thus to our praying, that we can
not easily imagine asking for anything without consciously longing that the
answer bring glory to God?”
(D.A. Carson, A
Call to Spiritual Reformation. Baker, © 1992, pg. 203).
