How do you pray for people in your small group or this church? Do you pray for people in other churches? Do you pray for other churches? When do you pray for them? Why do you pray for them?
My guess is
that most of our prayers for other Christians are confined to when they are
sick or stressed. Now praying for the
sick is a good thing. After all, Jesus
prayed for many sick people. But it
shouldn’t only be people’s physical and emotional well being that concerns
us. We should also be praying for their
spiritual lives.
In this
morning’s passage we see a model of how we can pray for each other, and indeed
how we can also be praying for our brothers and sisters in other churches. The apostle Paul beings by thanking God for
His readers, and then prays that the eyes of their hearts would be further
opened to our hope
We should be thanking God for His people
Do you ever
just sit in prayer and thank God for your brothers and sisters in this church
and other churches? The Psalmist can
say, ‘the saints in the land are my delight’ (Ps. 16:3). There is something every wrong if God’s
people don’t delight us!
Last Sunday
we saw that in the Greek verses 3-14 are actually one long sentence. This morning’s reading is also one long
sentence. It begins, ‘For this reason,
ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the
saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my
prayers’ (15-16).
For this reason, looks
back to what he has just written about.
We have every spiritual blessing in Christ. We have been chosen by the Father, redeemed
through the Son and now indwelt by the Holy Spirit. We are loved and adopted by God. We have been forgiven all our sin. All this is to the glory of Christ. Now, and for all eternity, the fact that He
has rescued sinful people like you and me, will speak about His goodness and
mercy.
Paul has
heard that what has been done in them is now working itself out through them. He thanks God for their faith in Jesus and
their love for His people. The reality
of the Holy Spirit working in them is shown by the fact that the believe the
right things about Jesus, and that this is causing them to be loving. Now remember a saint is a description of
every Christian, and they love ‘all’ the saints. But not every Christian is easy to get on
with. Some of us might get on your
nerves. However, you cannot obey Christ
and keep His people at arm’s length. You
must be willing to overcome bitterness.
You cannot simply pour out your affections on your favourites. In some ways people we find annoying in the
church are a blessing, for they cause us to pray for a love that is not natural
to us.
Pray that we would know Him better
The apostle Paul prays that
they eye of their hearts would be opened so
that you may know him better. The
heart in the New Testament is more than the centre of affections. Jesus can speak of people thinking in their
hearts. The heart is the centre of our
personality. He wants them to know God
better.
I have been thinking a bit
about what it means to grow in Christ.
In this church we tend to have a very educational view of
discipleship. That is good. We want to learn more about the God who has
revealed Himself to us in His word, the Bible.
But that is enough. Knowing God
means a lot more than knowing about God.
Knowing involves a deepening relationship with God. I could learn all about president Higgins,
but I won’t really know him if we never become friends. To those people who knew about Jesus, but
refused to let Him change their hearts, Jesus says on the last day, ‘I never
knew you’ (Matt. 7:23). True
knowledge of God shows itself in how he is changing our lives.
Pray that we would
not be defeatist
I have a friend who is
frustrated that he is not the Christian that he used to be. He looks back on a time when he was much more
enthusiastic about his faith and laments that he is not like that anymore. However, I wrote to him to remind that his
best days can be ahead of him. In fact,
our best day as Christians does lie ahead of us. Paul prays that the eyes of their heart would
be enlightened to know the hope for which he has called us. We are to look forward with joy to the fact
that we ‘are going to stand with Christ at the final press conference of the
universe, and our photograph is going to be taken with him, and we are going to
look like him’ (Kent Hughes).
The apostle John, in the
letter we call first John, says that this truth should motivate us towards
purity (1 John 3:3). We are inspired by
what we will be. We are on a journey of
being transformed into the likeness of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18).
Pray
that we would realise how much we matter to God
Notice that Paul speaks
of the riches of his glorious
inheritance in the saints. It is not our
inheritance that is being spoken of here, but God’s inheritance. God is looking forward to an inheritance that
includes you and me. It shows how
precious we are to Him. He looks forward
to enjoying us forever.
Pray
that we experience the power to change
If becoming more like
Jesus involves loving ‘all’ His people, I am not sure I can do it. I am not patient. I find it hard to forget hurtful things
people have said to me. I find some
people irritating, and have no doubt that some find me irritating. How can we change?
Paul speaks of the God’s
incomparably great power for us who believe.
The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is available to change
us. When Yuri
Gagarin was launched as the first people into outer space, but Jesus has been
raised from the grave to heaven itself.
That is greater power and it is at work in us.
Don’t underestimate the
power for Christ. The devil will tell
you that you will never overcome that habitual sin. That’s not true. You have power in Christ. You may think you could never love that
irritating person. That’s not true. The apostle James tells us that the tongue is
a wild fire set on fire by hell (James 3:6).
But God can change the way we speak about people and to people. If God raised Jesus from the dead and seated
Him at His right hand, and put Him above every power and dominion and
authority, then God can work in you the power to change.
Paul will latter tell the
Ephesians that God can do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine through
His power at work within us (3:20).
Don’t ever believe that God can’t change you.
Pray
that we would realise that they are secure in Christ
In the book of Acts, we
can see that the people of Ephesus were very into witchcraft and the
occult. Today, people read horoscopes,
use tarot cards and read books about angels (that have no reference to Christ). But we do not need to be afraid of any power
of evil, for Jesus is far above all rule and authority and power and
dominion. Our lives are not the subject
of some sort of fate that we must desperately try to manipulate. We are secure in Christ.
Pray
that they would be connected to Christ’s church
We live at a time when
there is a growing number of people who say that they are Christians who have
no meaningful connection with the church.
At best they go from church to church.
At worst they don’t attend any church at all. The apostle Paul would have no place in his
thinking for church-less Christianity. Christians
must be a part of a local church.
We see that Christ exerts
His power over everything for the benefit of the church. Jesus loves His imperfect people, and so must
we. The church—which in Ephesians refers
to all of God’s gathered people everywhere—for all its imperfections is the
body of Christ. How can people expect to
be a part of God’s purposes in the world if we are not connected with His body?
The church is where is fullness is
known. It brings no pleasure to Jesus
when our attitude to the church is harsh and critical.
We end with these amazing
words, the church, which is his body, the
fullness of him who fills everything in every way. This means that the church is the
representative of Jesus to all of creation, and we will help this global
community of Christ be beautiful when we love all of its members.
Conclusion
George Herbert, the
seventeenth-century Christian poet, wrote, ‘You have given me so much. Give me one thing more: a grateful heart.’
Please don’t stop praying
for those who are sick or stressed. But
please also pray for all God’s people everywhere. Pray with a grateful heart. You may be gifted at seeing the flaws in
God’s people, but that is not always a helpful gift. Instead, like the apostle Paul, learn to see
God’s grace in them. Thank God for their
love of His people. Ask Him to show them
how precious they are to him. Pray that
they would be inspired by what he can do in their life. Pray that they would experience his
resurrection power breaking pattern of sin.
Pray that they would grow in love with the local and global church.
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