Prayer for the Saints

Paul, in prison for preaching the gospel, writes a powerful prayer for the church in Ephesians 3, focusing on spiritual power. He prays for believers to have the power for Christ to dwell in their hearts, comprehend the vast love of God, and know its dimensions. This prayer challenges us to surrender, absorb, and embrace God's love, symbolized by its breadth, length, height, and depth, as seen in the ultimate sacrifice on the cross. The story of Joseph Bau exemplifies selfless love, choosing others over oneself, akin to Jesus' sacrifice. A man sits in a prison cell, not because he's a criminal, but because he preached the gospel. And instead of writing a letter begging for his freedom, he writes one of the most breathtaking prayers in all of Scripture. Not for himself, for the church. Welcome to He Guides Me podcast. Today we are sitting with Ephesians 3, 16 through 21, the Apostle Paul's prayer for the saints. By the end of this conversation, you'll understand three specific dimensions of spiritual power. Paul prays for every believer, what it actually means for Christ to dwell in your heart, and why God's love is described as something that surpasses knowledge itself. I'm joined today by our pastor, and I want to start right there, with that image of Paul in prison, because that context changes everything about how we read this prayer, doesn't it? It really does. You know, Ephesians 3 comes right after two chapters where Paul has been laying out this magnificent theological foundation, describing who we are in Christ, what God has done for us, how he's reconciled Jew and Gentile into one body. And then Paul starts chapter 3 by saying, for this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles, he's writing from prison. And rather than asking the church to pray for his release, he turns around and prays for them. That's a remarkable inversion. Most of us, if we were locked up, our first letter home would be, please get me out of here. Right, exactly. And I think that's part of what makes this prayer so arresting. Paul's priorities are completely reordered. He's not consumed by his circumstances, he's consumed by the spiritual condition of the people he loves. And so he prays, and this prayer in Ephesians 3, 16 through 19, is one of those passages that, as I've said before, can initially leave you feeling weak and breathless. But if you stay with it, that surprise weakness transforms into something like overwhelming joy. I love that framing. So let's get into the prayer itself. What is Paul actually asking for? So Paul opens in verse 16 by praying that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his spirit. And the word translated power, there is the Greek word dunamis, which means the ability or capacity to do something. It's where we get the word dynamite. And Paul is praying that the Ephesians would have this dunamis, this God-given ability to do three specific things. And those three things structure the rest of the prayer. Okay, so dunamis, power, what are the three things? The first is the power to dwell. The second is the power to comprehend. And the third is the power to know. And I want to take each one slowly because they build on each other in a really beautiful way. Let's start with the power to dwell. That phrase alone is interesting. We don't usually think of dwelling as something that requires power. That's such a good observation. In verse 17, Paul prays that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith as you are being rooted and grounded in love. And the word dwell here means to establish a residence, to be at home. It's not a visit. It's not a weekend stay. It's permanent residency. So there's a difference between Christ being in your life and Christ being at home in your life. Exactly. And Paul is writing to believers here, people who have already accepted Christ. So the question he's raising isn't whether Christ lives in you. The question is how welcoming he is in your heart. Is Jesus the ruler of your life or have you confined him to a specific room? That's a convicting distinction. There's a book I read years ago called My Heart, Christ's Home, written by Presbyterian pastor Robert Munger. And Munger wrote about Ephesians 3, 17, that without question, one of the most remarkable Christian doctrines is that Jesus Christ himself, through the Holy Spirit, will actually enter a heart, settle down, and be at home there. Christ will live in any human heart that welcomes him. That's a beautiful quote. And the book uses a house as a metaphor, right? It does. Munger imagines the Christian life as a house that Jesus moves through, room by room. He goes into the library, which represents the mind, and finds worthless things there and replaces them with his word. He goes into the dining room of appetite and finds sinful desires on the menu and replaces them with humility and love. He goes to the living room, the workshop, and finally to the closet, where the hidden sins are kept. And only after cleaning every room can he genuinely settle down and be at home. So the question Paul is really asking is, which rooms have we locked Jesus out of? That's it. And here's the distinction that really lands for me. Inviting someone to spend the night in your home is not the same as officially welcoming them into your family. Jesus is not just a temporary visitor. He's meant to be the leader of the household. You might tidy up for a guest, but you don't clean the same way for family. Family gets access to everything. Wow, that's a really practical way to think about it. So the power to dwell is really about surrender, making room, giving access. Surrender and welcome, yes. And it requires power, Dunamis, because our natural tendency is to hold on to control. We want to manage our own households. Paul is praying that God would give us the supernatural ability to open every door. Okay, so that's the first dimension, power to dwell. Let's move to the second. Power to comprehend. Verse 18 says, I pray that you may have the power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth. And the Greek word for comprehend here is katalambano, which comes from a root meaning to take into oneself. So Paul isn't just praying that the Ephesians would understand God's love intellectually. He's praying that they would embrace it, absorb it, make it their own. So it's not a head thing. It's a whole person thing. Exactly. And the dimensions Paul uses, breadth, length, height, depth, are describing the love of Christ. And I think the reason Paul prays for the power to comprehend this is because God's love is so vast that we can't grasp it on our own. It requires divine enablement. Break those dimensions down for me. What does it mean that God's love has breadth and length and height and depth? So God's love is long, long enough to endure for eternity. Human love fades. We see that all around us. But God's love will never cease. It's long enough to outlast everything. And wide, wide enough to be everywhere. There is no place you could go where God's love is not with you. You will not always feel it. Sometimes you're going to feel alone, but you will never be alone. That's the width of it. It's everywhere. And deep, deep enough to handle everything. There is no problem, no pressure, no stress, no difficulty that goes beyond it. There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still. And high, high enough to overlook all your mistakes, no matter how big they may have been. God loves to forgive. He loves to help you start over. That's the height of it. Long, wide, deep, high. You know, I grew up singing that VBS song, Deep and Wide, and I never really thought about what the fountain was. Right. And the author left no commentary on it. But I want to suggest that the song is a metaphor for God's love flowing freely from heaven for all. I think the author may have had Ephesians 3, 17 and 18 in mind. And I'll go out on a limb and say there might be another verse that goes something like long and high, long and high. There's a fountain flowing long and high. I love that. Okay. So to really feel the weight of this love, Paul points to the cross, right? That's where we see the price tag. Yes. John 3, 16. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. And John 15, 13. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. The cross is the ultimate demonstration of the breadth and length and height and depth of God's love. And Jesus told three parables in a row in Luke 15 that all make the same point, didn't he? He did. And that's remarkable in itself. Three consecutive parables, all with the same central message. The lost sheep, the shepherd leaves the 99 to find the one. The lost coin, the woman searches her whole house until she finds it. And the prodigal son, the father sees his son from far off and runs to him. Three stories, one message. You are valuable to God and he will pursue what is lost. The repetition is intentional. Jesus really wanted that to land. Absolutely. And the common thread in all three is the unwavering effort to rescue what was lost. That's the love Paul is praying we would have the power to comprehend. Not just nod at, but truly take into ourselves. There's a story that connects to this for me. The story of Joseph Bau. Have you shared that one in this context before? Joseph Bau was born in 1920 in Krakow, Poland. He was an artist. He'd started studying at the University of Arts there at 18. But the war disrupted everything. His family was moved to the Jewish ghetto and then to the Plaszow concentration camp. And because of his artistic skills and expertise in Gothic lettering, the Nazis recruited him to create maps and signs for the camp. And he used that position for something extraordinary. He did. He used it to forge false documents and identity papers. And in doing so, he helped over 400 Jews escape the camp. Oskar Schindler eventually saved Bau's own life. And after the war, someone asked him, Why didn't you forge documents for yourself? And his answer was, Then who would have done it for the other Jews? That's stunning. He chose others over himself at enormous personal cost. And when Jesus was on the cross, a similar question was posed. He saved others. He cannot save himself. And Jesus had already answered that question. He said, What should I say, Father? Save me from this hour. No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. He surrendered himself on the cross for us, obeying to the point of death, relinquishing everything. Joseph Bau's story is a human echo of that divine self-giving. \That parallel is powerful. Okay, so we've covered the power to dwell and the power to comprehend. Let's get to the third, the power to know. Verse 19 To know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. And the Greek word for know here is ginosko. And ginosko means more than intellectual agreement. It's the same word used for a husband's intimate knowledge of his wife. Knowing someone both before and after your wedding day. It's relational experiential covenant knowledge. So Paul is praying that we would know God's love the way a spouse knows their partner. Not just facts about them, but genuine closeness. Exactly. And here's what's remarkable. Paul says this love surpasses knowledge. So he's praying that we would know something that is beyond knowing. That's not a contradiction. It's an invitation. It means the love of God is inexhaustible. You can spend a lifetime knowing it and never reach the bottom of it. And this is relational, not religious. That's a distinction that matters. It matters enormously. One of the reasons the religious leaders of Jesus's time were so upset with him was because he taught that we could address God in an intimate and loving way. We can say our father in heaven instead of, oh, powerful and supreme ruler. In Aramaic, the word is Abba, which means daddy. We can call God daddy. We can call him our friend. That's the kind of relationship he's inviting us into. That's not what most people picture when they think about religion. No, and that's the tragedy. The world often thinks the church is all about rules and regulations, but the heart of the gospel is that God loves you and longs for you to experience that love. Your purpose in life is not just to make money, retire, and pass away. You were specifically created to be the object of God's love and to have a relationship with him. And this invitation is open to everyone, not just people who feel like they've got it together. Everyone. You may think you've committed the unpardonable sin. God wants a relationship with you. You may have done something you're deeply ashamed of. God wants a relationship with you. You may feel unworthy, hopeless, too old, too young. There is nothing you can do that will make him love you any less. There is nothing you can do that will make him love you any more. His love is based on who he is, not what you've done. That's a statement worth sitting with. His love is based on who he is, not what you've done. And there's a story that illustrates this beautifully. A little humorous, but it makes the point. There was an atheist who lived in a certain village. He wasn't a terrible person, just had no interest in the traditional church there. One day, the church building caught fire and the whole town ran toward it to help put out the flames, including the atheist. Someone said to him, Hey, this is something new for you. It's the first time we've ever seen you running to the church. And he replied, It's the first time I've ever run to the church because it's the first time I've ever seen the church on fire. That's both funny and convicting. Jesus said the world would know that we are Christians by our love. To communicate God's love to others, you have to first know it yourself. That's the whole point of Paul's prayer, that we would know this love in a powerful and personal way and then live it outward. So when you step back from everything we've covered today, the power to dwell, the power to comprehend, the power to know, what's the through line? What's Paul really after with this prayer? I think Paul is after transformation, not just information. He's not writing a theology textbook. He's interceding for people he loves. And the progression is intentional. First, you make room, you let Christ dwell. Then you begin to grasp the dimensions of his love. You comprehend. And then that comprehension deepens into something intimate and experiential. You know, it's a movement from invitation to embrace to intimacy. Invitation to embrace to intimacy. I think that's a framework people can actually use to examine where they are in their own walk. Exactly. And the question isn't just theological, it's personal. Which room in your heart is still locked? Have you truly embraced the dimensions of God's love? Or is it still mostly head knowledge? And do you know God the way Paul is praying with that Gnosko intimacy? Or is he still more of a concept than a companion? Those are questions worth carrying into the week. And I think what strikes me most is that Paul prayed this. He didn't just preach it. He got on his knees in prison and asked God to do this work in people he cared about. And that's why God placed prayers in his word, not just to show us what prayer looks like, but to show us that prayer is essential for a healthy relationship with God. He wanted to show us the miraculous power of prayer. And he wanted to show us that he wants us to pray, that great things happen when we do. Here's what this really comes down to. Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3 is not a passive wish. It's a bold, specific, spirit-empowered intercession for the people of God. And it's a model for how we can pray for the people in our own lives. And the closing thought from this passage is worth holding on to. In Christ, we have a love that can never be fathomed, a life that can never die, a righteousness that can never be tarnished, a peace that can never be understood, a rest that can never be disturbed, a joy that can never be diminished, a hope that can never be disappointed, a glory that can never be clouded, a light that can never be darkened, a purity that can never be defiled, a beauty that can never be marred, a wisdom that can never be baffled, and resources that can never be exhausted. That list is extraordinary. Every single item on it is unbreakable. That's the inheritance of the saints. That's what Paul is praying we would have the power to dwell in, comprehend, and know. Not just believe in theory, but live in reality. So here's my challenge to everyone listening today. Take Paul's prayer and make it your own. Pray it over someone you love this week. Pray that Christ would dwell in their heart, not just as a visitor, but as Lord. Pray that they would have the power to comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth of God's love. And pray that they would know that love, not just know about it, but know it the way you know someone you've given your whole life to. And if you're the one who needs that prayer prayed over you today, receive it. Because that's exactly what Paul is doing in Ephesians 3. He's praying it over you. Across 2,000 years, this prayer still stands. And the God who inspired it is still answering it. Remember, Paul wrote this from a prison cell, not from a comfortable study, not from a place of ease. And yet the prayer he wrote from that cell has been strengthening the inner being of believers for two millennia. If God can do that through a prisoner's prayer, imagine what he can do through yours. Amen to that. Thank you for joining us on He Guides Me Podcast. We'll see you next time.