Silas
Beloved of All
Thank you for sharing this beautiful prayer from Ephesians 3. It expresses the deepest desire God has for every believer, and it is a wonderful thing to ask this for yourself and for others.
This prayer asks first that God would strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner person. God is not primarily concerned with outward strength, but with work inside, in the heart. When His Spirit dwells in you, you are no longer living according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. If the Spirit of Christ lives in you, you belong to Him, and a new law is at work in you, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, which frees you from the law of sin and death and writes God's desires on your heart.
That inner strengthening has a purpose, that Christ may dwell in your heart through faith. This is more than a visit. It is Christ making His home in you as you trust Him. The way we know that He is dwelling in us and we in Him is not by outward signs or experiences that can be counterfeited, but by His witness to our hearts that Jesus Christ, the Messiah, has come in the flesh as our Savior, and by the fruit that His Spirit produces in our lives.
That fruit is love. Scripture says God is love, and love is of God. Before we came to Christ our spirit was dead and we could not know this kind of love on our own. We cannot manufacture it or work it up by effort. It is the love of God poured out in our hearts through Jesus Christ, and it is given only by His Spirit. To be rooted and grounded in love means your life is established in that love, and from it grows joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. These are not separate fruits, but expressions of the one fruit of love. When that love is present, especially love for brothers and sisters in Christ and for the things of God, it is evidence that His Spirit is abiding in you and your love is being made mature as you dwell in God and He dwells in you.
Paul then prays that you may be able to comprehend with all of God's people what is the width and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge. His love is part of the unsearchable riches we have in Christ. It is deeper and wider than our minds can fully grasp, because He who was in the form of God humbled Himself even to the death of the cross for us. We come to know this love not by human understanding, but as the Spirit reveals it, and as we respond to the love with which He first loved us. Nothing can separate us from that love, not tribulation or distress or persecution or any other hardship.
Finally the prayer asks that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. God does not want you to live empty or half full, but to be filled to overflowing with His Spirit, controlled and led by Him, walking in the Spirit so that you do not fulfill the desires of the flesh, but walk in love. He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, and to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all generations.
So I join you in this prayer, that the Father according to the riches of His glory would strengthen you with might by His Spirit in your inner being, that Christ would dwell in your heart through faith, that you would be firmly rooted in His love and grow in understanding the greatness of that love which surpasses knowledge, and that you would be filled with His fullness and know the joy and peace of walking in close communion with Him as His child.
This prayer asks first that God would strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner person. God is not primarily concerned with outward strength, but with work inside, in the heart. When His Spirit dwells in you, you are no longer living according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. If the Spirit of Christ lives in you, you belong to Him, and a new law is at work in you, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, which frees you from the law of sin and death and writes God's desires on your heart.
That inner strengthening has a purpose, that Christ may dwell in your heart through faith. This is more than a visit. It is Christ making His home in you as you trust Him. The way we know that He is dwelling in us and we in Him is not by outward signs or experiences that can be counterfeited, but by His witness to our hearts that Jesus Christ, the Messiah, has come in the flesh as our Savior, and by the fruit that His Spirit produces in our lives.
That fruit is love. Scripture says God is love, and love is of God. Before we came to Christ our spirit was dead and we could not know this kind of love on our own. We cannot manufacture it or work it up by effort. It is the love of God poured out in our hearts through Jesus Christ, and it is given only by His Spirit. To be rooted and grounded in love means your life is established in that love, and from it grows joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. These are not separate fruits, but expressions of the one fruit of love. When that love is present, especially love for brothers and sisters in Christ and for the things of God, it is evidence that His Spirit is abiding in you and your love is being made mature as you dwell in God and He dwells in you.
Paul then prays that you may be able to comprehend with all of God's people what is the width and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge. His love is part of the unsearchable riches we have in Christ. It is deeper and wider than our minds can fully grasp, because He who was in the form of God humbled Himself even to the death of the cross for us. We come to know this love not by human understanding, but as the Spirit reveals it, and as we respond to the love with which He first loved us. Nothing can separate us from that love, not tribulation or distress or persecution or any other hardship.
Finally the prayer asks that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. God does not want you to live empty or half full, but to be filled to overflowing with His Spirit, controlled and led by Him, walking in the Spirit so that you do not fulfill the desires of the flesh, but walk in love. He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, and to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all generations.
So I join you in this prayer, that the Father according to the riches of His glory would strengthen you with might by His Spirit in your inner being, that Christ would dwell in your heart through faith, that you would be firmly rooted in His love and grow in understanding the greatness of that love which surpasses knowledge, and that you would be filled with His fullness and know the joy and peace of walking in close communion with Him as His child.
