Preached 5/17/08 @ FCC
Ephesians 3:14-21
Explain “Question” cards – put in collections plate (red cards in bulletins)
Page ____ and ____ in your Bibles.
3:14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
3:20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
Imagine with me for a moment. Let’s pretend that you are walking down the street one afternoon, minding your own business, enjoying the sunshine on your face, the spring air, the fresh breeze with the scent of flowers on the air. A well dressed but unfamiliar older gentleman approaches you and asks if he can share something with you. He seems harmless enough, so you say sure. The man informs you that he is in his last days on this earth, and that he has no heirs. And he has chosen you from all the people who have passed him by to bless one final time. He liked your smile he says, you look friendly. He hands you an ATM check card, you know, one of those plastic cards that you use to get money out of the machines at banks and gas stations and places like that. With that, he thanks you and quickly walks away, leaving you on the side of the street shocked and confused.
You stick the card in your pocket, and later that day, you call the bank to make sure that it wasn’t a stolen card or anything illegal. The bank teller informs you that everything is legitimate, and further informs you that the gentleman set the account up with very specific instructions. You aren’t allowed to know how much is in the account, and in fact the tellers can’t pull up a balance. You can access it as many times as you would like, there is no limit to transactions. You are also told that all you can be told when asking the balance is that “it is enough”. Nothing more, nothing less. It is enough.
How’s your imagination doing? Are you interested? What would you do? Would you run to the bank to see how much you could withdraw? Would you save it for a rainy day? Would you take a little bit out at a time hoping it would never run out? How would you handle this? (Pause)
In many ways, our prayer life is like this story. We can access God whenever we want. There is no limit to the number of the transactions. The difference with our prayer lives and the ATM story I just told you is that we don’t have worry about using up all the resources. God is greater than anything we could ask, and his response is always enough. Even if we don’t understand what enough means.
Ephesians 3:14-21is a prayer by the Apostle Paul for a far off church, a church he could not go and visit. Paul was in chains at the time of his writing of Ephesians. Chained to a Roman guard. A prisoner because he refused to stop talking about Jesus. In chains because he was spreading the Word among the Gentiles.
So let’s look at these verses and talk about prayer for a while. Paul is praying this prayer for another church, but it applies to us as well. One of the things that Paul wishes for us is that we place a proper priority on prayer and worship. Much of the book of Ephesians is a written prayer. This is Paul’s way of modeling for us how we should have a prayer life. Paul is showing us how we should pray throughout his writings. Paul was a man of prayer. What we see in the life of Paul is that he prayed at all times. Good times, bad times, with his life on the line it didn’t matter, Paul was praying to God. The good news for you and for me is that we don’t have to be superstar Christians like Paul to communicate with God our Father. We don’t have to wait for things to be going bad with our spouse or our kids or our jobs. We don’t have to be struggling financially, or have health problems or anything of that sort. Prayer is a form of worship. Somewhere in the last century or so the Western culture has perverted the meaning of the word worship. Worship isn’t something you do on Sunday, it’s something you do every day! Worship is a way of life, living in a way that honors God. Worship isn’t only singing songs at church and listing to a boring sermon. It is all of that and a whole bunch more. Worship is how you fold laundry. Worship is how you drive. Worship is how you talk about people at school. It’s how you do your job, how you spend your money, how you use your retirement. Within this larger definition of worship comes prayer. Prayer is our way of tapping into the power of God. We see in verse 18 that Paul tells us that there is power in prayer, and it is his hope that we embrace that power and that we allow it to inform us of the greatness of God.
Here’s something I know about prayer – I’m going to let you in on a little secret – I’m not all that good at prayer. Sometimes it may sound like I am, but believe me, I just got my training wheels off not too long ago. But the good news is that I am growing, I am improving. And here’s what I’ve been learning along the way. The more I pray, the better I get at it. Simple isn’t it? THE MORE I PRAY, THE BETTER I BECOME AT IT. Just like anything else in life, we have to practice at it to get better at it. None of us were born able to pray like Billy Graham. Not even Billy Graham! Just like anything else that we want to become good at, we have to spend some time on it, focus on it, making it a priority.
One of the great side effects of prayer is listed in verse 18. Through prayer, we will come to a deeper, more intimate relationship with God. That’s never a bad thing. We can learn through prayer how deep and wide Christ’s love is for us. A love so deep, a love so wide he died for us, for you, and for me. Oh how I love the descriptive language here. (point left, right, up, down) Imagine as far that way as the universe goes, and as far that way, and this way and that way. As far as the ends of the universe are from each other, Paul tells us even greater is God’s love for us.
Another thing prayer does is that through prayer, God will begin to work in us and on us, shaping us, changing us, making us more usable to Him for his work. It is God working on our insides, changing us, rearranging our priorities to His priorities says verse 16.
Through prayer, we will quit seeing God as a magic genie in the sky. Anyone else ever find themselves giving God their wish list? Dear Santa…I mean God, I want a new pony, grandma to be healthy and for there to be world peace. Right? (raise hand) How many of you pray like this? Why am I the only one with his hand up? There is so much more to prayer than just our wish list. Prayer is how we can communicate with God. We can ask God for guidance, for wisdom, for protection. We can praise him for his work, his creation his sacrifice. We can simply tell him that we love him and why we love him. We can confess our sins and ask for forgiveness and ask for help and guidance to avoid those sins in the future.
If we do this, we will find ourselves in a place like Paul mentions in verse 19. We will be filled with the measure of all the fullness of God. Our goal as Christians should be to fill ourselves so full of Christ that there is no room for anything else. Have you ever gone to the gas station, put the card in the machine, put the handle in your gas spout, pulled the trigger and locked it on with the little clicking lever? I’m sure most of you have. Have you ever had the pump not shut off when the tank was full? I did once. I had clicked it in place, and was washing the window on my car, and I heard something strange, not a normal gas filling sound. It was splashing. And I smelled gas. I quickly shut the pump off and rinsed off the side of my car. Thankfully only a gallon or two had spilled, but enough to make quite a mess, and even worse, quite the stink. We as Christians need to be like that gas story. We should fill ourselves with Christ until we overflow so that everything we touch, every person we come into contact with, everywhere we go we can’t help but to have other people see Christ in us and to be impacted themselves and changed by Christ.
So here’s what I suggest we all do. First, I am committed to praying for you. This is one of the reasons I want each of you to fill out one of those red sheets that have been placed in your bulletin. If you didn’t get one, we have some more in the back, raise your hand and we’ll get you one. If you need more time to fill it out than just the few minutes today during the service, I encourage you to spend a few minutes after church and fill it out. Fill it out before you leave the building, otherwise there is a very small chance that I’ll ever see it. Nobody else will see these, they are just for me.
So that’s what I am going to do for you. I’m going to pray for you. Here’s your homework, what I want each of you to do especially this week, but also for every week to come. Pray for me. Every time you use your ATM card, pray for me. When you pull your wallet out, when you open your purse, when you see someone at Hy-Vee using their credit card, let it remind you to pray for me. Every transaction send up a prayer. Gas pump, groceries, buying Ginsu knives on late night TV…you get the idea. If you don’t know what to pray for me for, pray for my growth as a pastor. Pray that I continue to seek God and that I follow his leading in my personal life and for this church. I want to lead this church well, I think I know how to lead this church well, but what I need is spiritual support and protection. Honestly, there is nothing that you could do to support my ministry better than to pray for me. I appreciate everything else everyone does around here, really I do, but if you aren’t praying for me you are letting me, and the church down. I need your prayers. The other thing you are going to be praying for is for our church. I want you to pray for our church daily. Pray for our leaders. Pray for our children. Pray for the building. Pray for the people in our church. Pray that Christ would be glorified and made known.
I think God has great things in store for our church, but it is going to require a lot of prayer to make it happen. So let’s get started right now, would you pray with me.
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