EPHESIANSSample
Given what God has done for humans – vertically and horizontally – Paul turns to him in prayer; after all, as the ‘Father’ of the household, who else is the household dependent upon? Paul’s prayer is first for God to work in the lives of his people, to strengthen them by his Spirit and to enable them to accept the new landlord in their lives – Jesus (vs.16-17).
Secondly, Paul’s prayer is for the Ephesians to grasp the magnitude of God’s love; the very same love that moved them from corpse to Christian (vs.17-19). The whole point of this prayer is so that God’s mob can display God to the world (vs.19). The prayer is so big that we need to be reminded of the bigness of God – he can do so much more than anything we can imagine (vs.20-21).
Question:
Take a moment to just read, and re-read, this prayer a few times. Compare it with so many prayers we offer and hear. Ponder again how immense it is!
Prayer:
Father, you know where we live and what aches our bones and what we eat for breakfast, and you exercise power to raise Jesus from the dead so that we can have life we do not deserve. Please use that same power to make Jesus our landlord, to enable us to grasp your love, and to display your fullness to this world. Amen.
Scripture
About this Plan
In rural Australia - we are very keen on "identity" - who we are, what drives us, where we are going, where we fit in life. God is pretty keen on identity too - and Paul writes Ephesians with that in mind. As we move through Ephesians, God lovingly draws us back to know the confidence of who we are as his people, in this world, moved by his purposes.
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