26th July 2009 (Trinity 7)
Ephesians 3:14-21
I would like us to look, not at the familiar stories of the gospel reading, but at Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3.
Paul prays because he is so excited about both Gentiles and Jews becoming members of God’s household, fellow-citizens in God’s kingdom. The barriers between them and between them and God have all been broken down, so we can all approach God with freedom and confidence. In his prayer Paul prays that the Ephesians (and us) will experience that closeness to God as fully as possible.
First, Paul looks at God the Father, and sees him as the pattern for all fathers and the
source of all family life. In both Jewish and Roman families the father figure was very important, not only as an authority figure but also as the one who set the whole tone for family relations and activity, and the chief provider for the family’s needs. God is that for us. So Paul approaches him with freedom and confidence, and with big requests, asking him to answer ‘out of his glorious riches’.
The first request is for strength and power from the Holy Spirit within us. The Holy Spirit sets our roots and foundations solidly on the rock of love. He gives us faith for Christ to be at home in our hearts. Paul asks that the Holy Spirit will do that work in us. The reason is this: he wants us all to grasp strongly the full extent of Christ’s multi-dimensional love, so that we may know it in our own experience even though we cannot ever fully understand it. We can’t know such love as isolated individuals; we can only grasp it and experience it together with the other members of God’s family. But the extent to which we have grasped the love of Christ is the extent to which we are ‘filled with all the fulness of God’.
Why does Paul ask for us to be filled with God’s fulness? How is it possible? There is a sense in which it has already happened: when the Spirit lives in us, Christ is living in our hearts, and God himself is at home in us. We cannot receive only a part of God; we can only receive God as himself, in all his fulness. But in our experience there is a difference between having God in our hearts, and being filled with his fulness. The more we know of God and believe in his presence and activity in us, the more full of him we will be.
God is well able to answer this prayer, for his glory. Let’s pray it for each other, so that God may be glorified in all our churches!
Questions:
1) How can this prayer help us to pray?
2) Who should you be praying this for?