After digging
deeply in the quarry of Paul’s prayer, “that
according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with
power through his Spirit in your inner being,”[1]I
discovered that the golden chain of thoughts flowing out of this prayer added
wonderful treasures of their own.
One thing that
stood out was the way the word “that”
connected the hopes of this prayer with the specifics of what was prayed. It
helps us to see why Paul prayed as he did, and what he wanted the believers to
experience as a result of God answering the core requests.
The first “that” continues on from this prayer
with, “so that Christ may dwell in your
hearts through faith.”[2]Paul
was not praying for two different things, one that the Spirit would bring God’s
power into our innermost being, and the other that Jesus would dwell in our
hearts through faith. Instead, he was praying for one thing that would bring
about another.
What happens to
believers when we are strengthened with power through the Holy Spirit in our
inner beings is that Jesus Christ dwells in our hearts. This is of special
significance to me because of the numbers of church-going people I have met who
have a titanium wall of self-protection around their hearts. They limit their Christian
lives to some form of pretense and mask-wearing, never knowing what it is like
to feel the presence of God in their innermost places.
This is
typically because the inner places hurt too much. At a young age we learn to
keep people out. Things get broken and messed up. Pretending appears easier.
Much of church-experience has rewarded good behavior, ostracized those who
exposed their hearts, and trained people to color within the lines to be
accepted.
And along
comes the apostle Paul with the greatest hope ever. There is nothing in his
prayer that depends on brokenhearted people doing better, feeling good, fixing
themselves, or succeeding at inner-satisfaction. He gives us a prayer for the
poor in spirit who mourn how they are doing, who meekly acknowledge they could
never fix what is broken in them, and so hunger and thirst for the
righteousness they see in God.[3]
When we pray
that God will strengthen us with power through his Spirit in our inner beings,
the reality corresponding to the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit
strengthening us from within is that we also have Christ dwelling in our hearts.
Instead of the
limitations of a superficial relationship with God, restricted by our own
inability to live in our hearts, Paul turns the focus from us, to God, for our
benefit. As long as we keep the focus on us, we lose out because we keep
blocking God’s work to fill us with his Holy Spirit. As we focus on God,
through prayer, we seek what only God can do, and so we reap the benefit of
God-sized transformation.
For a long
time I struggled to appreciate what Paul meant by praying in such a way that it
would result in Christ dwelling in believer’s hearts. The common evangelism
message was that people just needed to ask Jesus into our hearts. When we are
sorry for our sins, and believe that Jesus died and rose again, we ask Jesus to
come into our hearts and we are saved.
However, Paul
was praying for people who were already Christians. He had earlier called them,
“the saints who are in Ephesus, and are
faithful in Christ Jesus.”[4]He
wasn’t praying for their salvation. He was praying for their experience. He prayed
for what would maintain their first love.[5]Keep
the focus on the inner being, the heart. Pray for the Holy Spirit to fill us.[6]Pray
because we cannot fabricate what we need. Pray because that nourishes the
fellowship through which God answers prayer, through which he fills us with his
Spirit in our inner being, and so gives us Christ dwelling in our hearts by
faith.
Now, the
second “that” continues on from here, but I will leave that that for another
day’s meditation. For the moment, the thought that, being strengthened with
power through God’s Holy Spirit in our inner beings brings about the awesome
experience of Christ dwelling in our hearts through faith, makes me want to
experience even greater devotion to such prayer. Why be satisfied with sarky
superficial when God invites us to pray in the way that fills our hearts with Jesus
Christ?
© 2015 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
[1]
Ephesians 3:16
[2]
Ephesians 3:17
[3]
Following the Beatitudes of Matthew 5:3-6
[4]
Ephesians 1:1
[5]
We know that some decades later Jesus rebuked the Ephesian church for losing
their first love (Revelation 2:1-7). That is not because God fails to answer
the prayer Paul gave us, but because we give up praying for what has already
been clearly revealed as absolute necessity.
[6]
Ephesians 5:18
No comments:
Post a Comment