Ephesians 3:14-19
"For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."
I love these verses, for they reveal Paul's heart as a pastor. Nothing thrills a pastor more than when those of his congregation grow in their faith towards Jesus Christ.
In Paul's prayer for the church at Ephesus, we learn that this maturing comes as the soul is strengthened by the touch of the Spirit. That is how we must pray, that the Spirit would be at work in the church, strengthening our spirits in faith.
We're pretty good about praying for all sorts of other things. You know, those things weighing heavy on our minds—our struggles, our needs, our wants, our hurts and our difficult situations. We're filled with "our" prayers, and we might even pray for these same needs in others. But what about praying for others to be strengthened in their inner man? Maybe that ought to be the primary intercessory prayer we lift up before the Lord.
This prayer needs to begin our homes, with every parent praying for their children and immediate families, all the way through their lifetimes. Then we need to lift up those of our local congregations in general, and those in our smaller groups in particular. In this way, we all become in a sense pastors in our prayer ministry before the Lord.
The Spirit's touch seems to be empowered to strengthen us in the Lord when we pray specifically for his action in our lives and in others. May we be faithful to those prayers.
LORD JESUS
Lord, I thank you for your Spirit's strengthening of your church. May I ever be faithful to life up the church to which you've entrusted my ministry and my family before you. Amen.
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