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Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Pastoral Pings ~ The That That Makes That Much Difference to Prayer


          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

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