I was praying this morning, and it turned into praying for someone to know more of God’s love. Paul prayed a prayer in Ephesians 3, and it became the core of my prayer this morning. I’m putting a blank, instead of a specific pronoun, so that it can be an example of how to pray scripture. In this context, it isn’t about the person for whom I prayed, but rather, hopefully, a help to others as to how to pray.
Father, I lift _____ to you, and ask that you would give him/her the heart of a child toward you – a heart that trusts – eloquent in its simplicity. Lovingly trusting.
Help_______to see that their problems are not due to a lack of love and kindness on Your part, but rather due to the evil that men have invited into the world, and to which those around them have yielded their hearts.
And open ______ eyes to see their own children for what they really are – for as they do, it will help _____ understand their own need for You as Father. Those little ones are just children in search of love and tenderness – someone they can trust with their own child heart and faith. Help______ to see, and to teach their children, that life is not about sex or sexuality or even gender, and neither is love. Help ______ to see that their own search for worldly love has left him/her feeling empty, and grant that _____ would know Your love in all its fullness:
Lord, grant, according to [in proportion to] the riches of Your glory, _______ to be strengthened with power through Your Spirit in their innermost being, and grant Christ to indwell [literally be comfortably at home in] _____ heart through faith. This I know will have the following results – so that, _______ being rooted and grounded in love,
may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,
that _______ may be filled up to ALL the fullness of God.
Strengthened with power – verb and noun form in Greek of the word dunamis – ability! Through His Spirit – God’s ability turned loose in us. Christ indwelling us – being at home in us – so comfortably at home that He could kick back with His feet on the coffee table and just know He belongs there.
When those two things happen, the result is we come to know the love of Christ in its fullest dimensions – a knowledge greater than any the world offers, and we experience the fullness of what it means to be God’s house.
