Ministering Through Prayer
Ephesians 1:15-20
Shiloh Lutheran Church, State College PA
When I became a Christian, in the summer of 1974, I received some interesting advice from my friends. I was living in Sonoma, California, and had graduated from High School the year before. Neither I, nor any of my friends, had any interest in Christianity, so everyone who knew me was surprised when I started going to church. But they also knew my life was going nowhere, and they thought this might be a good thing, as long as it didn't get out of hand. Their main concern, and I heard it over and over again, was "don't let this become a crutch." They were afraid I'd go too far, that I wouldn't keep it in perspective, that I'd become a fanatic and let religion dominate my whole life. In their view, religion had its place, but it needed to be carefully confined and kept under control. "Faith is a good thing," they said, "but don't get carried away with it."
The apostle Paul exemplifies the sort of thing they were worried about. While he was on his way to Jerusalem, a place where he knew he'd be in great danger, he stopped in Ephesus and called the elders of the church together. And he told them this: "I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me--the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace" (Acts 20:23-24). The most important thing to Paul, the thing that consumed his life, was knowing God and walking with Him faithfully to the end. And his prayer here in Ephesians reflects that same concern. His overwhelming passion as their spiritual leader is their relationship with God, and when he prays for them, this is the thing that receives the most attention. The most important reality in our lives is the fact that God has created us to know and worship Him. In the famous words of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, our chief end is to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever." That's what we were made for, and that's what God desires for us.
Notice, first of all, that Paul isn't praying for them because they're in trouble. We sometimes think of prayer as sort of a last resort, something we do when things go wrong, or when everything else fails. If you tell people you're praying for them, some will respond, A"things are going pretty well right now, it hasn't come to the point where I need prayer." As people living in a fallen world we very often find ourselves in trouble, and God calls us to seek His help. But the purpose of prayer is not only to ask for God's help when we're in trouble. The purpose of prayer is to seek God Himself.
How do you decide who you're going to pray for? (We're thinking here about intercessory prayer. There's more to prayer than intercession, but we're thinking today about this one aspect of prayer, lifting the needs of ourselves and others before God). There are so many people in need, and it's just not possible to pray for everyone. It's not even possible to keep up with praying for all the really desperate situations that we hear about on the news each day. But Paul's prayer life is not only consumed with praying for people who are in trouble. Paul prays for the recipients of this letter because God is at work in their lives. He begins verse 15 with the words "for this reason," or "because of all this" (NEB). He's spent the last paragraph enumerating, in detail, all God has done in calling them to Himself. They've received, in Jesus Christ, every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (v.3). He describes some of these blessings, then he concludes this section in this way: "And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God's guarantee that he will give us everything he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people" (1:13b-14a). God has called them to Himself, and He has good intentions for their lives. Paul isn't praying for them because they're in trouble; he's praying for them because he knows that God is already at work in their lives.
Notice, next, what Paul asks for on their behalf. In verse 17, he asks God to give them "a Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better." He's asking for two things: wisdom and revelation. Wisdom includes an understanding of who God is and what He calls us to do. But it's more than just understanding. Wisdom is knowing God's will and seeking to obey it. Revelation is the unveiling of things we couldn't otherwise know, things that are hidden. But more than that, it's God making Himself known to us. Jesus said, in John 14:21: "Those who obey my commandments are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them, and I will reveal myself to each one of them" (John 14:21, NLT). That's what Paul is praying for, that as they walk with God and seek Him He will make Himself known to them, reveal Himself to them in new ways.
He goes on, in verse 18, to pray that they'll be able to understand what God has given them in Jesus Christ. He prays for the eyes of their heart to be enlightened. The heart, in Scripture, refers to our inner being. The New American Bible translates it in this way: "May he enlighten your innermost vision." Or, here's the New Living Translation: "I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light". Sin has darkened our minds, it's dulled our perception of spiritual things. That's why we can hear these things over and over again and never really grasp them. Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 2:14: "The unspiritual self, just as it is by nature, can't receive the gifts of God's Spirit. There's no capacity for them. They seem like so much silliness. Spirit can be known only by spirit--God's Spirit and our spirits in open communion" (The Message).
Our hearts are dull by nature. We hear that God has done wonderful things for us in Jesus Christ, and we know it's true, but it doesn't seem to sink in. We know we should be moved, but we're not. Our hearts, very often, are dead to the things of God. Even after we turn to Jesus and are indwelt by the Spirit and have the capacity to understand spiritual things, our hearts still tend to be dull and slow to grasp the things that matter most. Throughout the first half of this chapter, Paul has been enumerating all the blessings that are theirs in Christ, but he knows their hearts will be dull to grasp them. So he prays that their hearts will be flooded with light. Have you ever been reading the Bible and had it suddenly come to life? Maybe you've read the passage many times before, but then it's as if your eyes were opened and you grasped it in a way you never had. It's as if you're reading that passage for the first time. That's what Paul is praying for here.
He wants them to understand three things: the hope to which God has called them, the riches of His inheritance, and the power He exercises on behalf of His people. The "hope to which he has called us" is our inner sense of hope. It's what Paul is describing when he says, in Romans 5, that we "confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God's glory" (Romans 5:2, NLT). The "riches of his glorious inheritance" is the object of that hope, it's the thing we confidently and joyfully look forward to. And God's "incomparably great power for us who believe" is what guarantees that inheritance for us. All three of these things are oriented toward the future. We can have assurance in the present, because we truly have something to look forward to, and because God is with us to bring us safely into our inheritance.
The Christian life is lived in anticipation of the future. God brings good things into our lives now, but they are only a foretaste of what is coming in God's eternal kingdom. Back in the 1970's I remember hearing a popular Christian song that claimed even if heaven wasn't promised it would still be worth it to be a Christian, because of all the great things God does in our lives now. I understand what the writer meant, but that really wasn't Paul's perspective at all. He said "if we have hope in Christ only for this life, we are the most miserable people in the world" (1 Corinthians 15:19).
1 Peter 1:3-6, which was written to Christians suffering persecution, is full of hope for the future: "All honor to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for it is by his boundless mercy that God has given us the privilege of being born again. Now we live with a wonderful expectation because Jesus Christ rose again from the dead. For God has reserved a priceless inheritance for his children. It is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay. And God, in his mighty power, will protect you until you receive this salvation, because you are trusting him. It will be revealed on the last day for all to see. So be truly glad! There is wonderful joy ahead, even though it is necessary for you to endure many trials for a while" (1 Peter 1:3-6, New Living Translation). The Christian life is a life of hope, of anticipation. But often we don=t see it, we become blinded by the things of this world. So Paul prays that the eyes of our hearts may be enlightened.
Several years ago I watched a PBS special about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who was executed by the Nazis near the end of World War II. When the war began, Bonhoeffer was lecturing in this country, and he was given the opportunity to stay here and teach theology. Friends begged him to stay, knowing that he would be in great danger if he returned to Germany. But he responded that his people needed him, and that to stay in safety here would be a denial of everything he believed and taught. Near the end of the movie, as Bonhoeffer is standing ready to go to the gallows to be hanged, the Gestapo officer who's been interrogating him for months walks up and says, "So, Dr. Bonhoeffer, this is the end." And Bonhoeffer replies, "No," and walks calmly to the gallows. He was able to face death confidently because he lived in hope, because by faith he was able to look forward to something beyond the horrible evil he had witnessed in Naziism. He knew that what he was facing there was not the end.
Paul prays that these Christians in Asia Minor will be growing in the knowledge of God and that they will be enabled to see what He has given them, especially that they will be enabled to live in joyful anticipation of the hope that is before them. And he's able to pray with confidence because the answer depends not on their efforts or his, but on God's incomparably great power for us who believe. In verses 19-21 he describes that power in more detail.
The power at work in us who believe is the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Paul is so concerned to emphasize the magnitude of this power that he uses four different words for power in these verses. The strict definition of each word is not the important thing; there's some overlap in meaning with these words. What Paul is doing is piling one phrase on top of another, hoping to get his idea across. "That power is like the working of his mighty strength which he exerted in Christ...." Eugene Peterson, in The Message, brings Paul's idea across well: "oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him--endless energy, boundless strength!"
And yet, much of the time we're unaware of God's work within us. We don't feel His power surging through us. It's easy to miss many of the things God is doing as He works silently to transform us into the image of Jesus Christ. And even when we do see evidence of God's work in ourselves, this doesn't give us an accurate measure of His great power. Watching a beach ball rise and fall with the tide doesn't tell us much about the power of the sea. Nor do we get an accurate picture when we sit in a rowboat and feel the waves tossing us around. But that sea which moves a beach ball or a rowboat will do the same thing to a supertanker loaded with oil. And God's silent work of transformation within us, the power that is guarding us until the day when we stand in His presence, is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. Paul wants us to be aware of something of the magnitude of what God is doing in our lives.
What's the most important thing in your life right now? Is it your work? Or a hobby, or another person? Where does God fit into your list of priorities? The main attraction of eternity is that we will be in God's presence and will see Him face to face. Are you cultivating a relationship with Him now? As you cultivate a relationship with Him, and as you grow to know Him better, you'll find yourself more and more longing for that day when nothing will cloud your vision of Him.
And yet, it's important to remember that the Ephesians aren't being instructed to do something here. Paul is praying that God will do things for them and within them. He wants God to give them the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that they may know Him better. They can't just go through the right formulas to obtain this. It's something that is given by God. In verse 18, when he prays for them to be enlightened, he uses a passive verb. This is not something they can do; it's something that is done to them. It's not under their control. So Paul prays for them, because he knows these things will only come to them from God's hand. They could give intellectual assent to all the right ideas, and with sufficient will power they might be able to get their behavior in line. But the Christian life is more than this, and if they want to know God--if they want to glorify God and enjoy Him forever--they are dependent on His intervention in their lives. The things Paul is asking for here will only come into their lives if they are given to them from the hand of our gracious and merciful God.
When we pray for each other we are truly serving one another as members of the body of Christ. Not just when people we know are in trouble, but all the time. If it's true that: 1) our relationship with God is the most important thing in our lives; 2) we can only come to know God truly as He makes Himself known to us; and 3) God, in His infinite mercy, has promised to answer prayer; then surely our prayers for one another are important beyond our comprehension. Sooner than we know, we will all be in the Lord=s presence. We're passing through this life, on our way to God=s eternal kingdom. Many things press for our attention now, but the most important thing we do over the course of our lives is cultivate a relationship with God our Creator and Redeemer in preparation for the life of eternity. Let's press on to know Him. And let's help one another through prayer, as Paul did with these Christians in Asia Minor.
