Scripture: Ephesians 1:15-23
Years ago, the late pastor Tim Keller wrote a book on prayer. And in it, he talked candidly about his own personal struggles to be more faithful in prayer. Like most of us, with a few exceptions, prayer did not come easily to Keller. It’s not that he wasn’t praying, but… he knew he wasn’t making prayer the priority that it should have been… at least until relatively late in his ministry.
But his prayer life took a drastic change for the better around the time that he got cancer… the first time he got cancer—some twenty years ago.
That cancer went into remission. And then it came back with a vengeance a few years ago and eventually claimed his life. But the experience I’m about to describe took place after his first diagnosis.
He said his wife, Kathy, told him at the time that they needed to pray together every evening… to make prayer their top priority. And she said the following to him:
Imagine you were diagnosed with such a lethal condition that the doctor told you that you would die within hours unless you took a particular medicine—a pill every night before going to sleep. Imagine that you were told that you could never miss it or you would die. Would you forget? Would you not get around to it some nights? No—it would be so crucial that you wouldn’t forget, you would never miss. Well, if we don’t pray together to God, we’re not going to make it because of all we are facing. I’m certainly not. We have to pray, we can’t let it just slip our minds. 1
Prayer, Kathy Keller said, is like life-saving medicine.
I have quoted that passage a few times over the years. I like it… And I relate to it… but…
Consider this: When I was ten years old, I developed a bad cough shortly after getting over chicken pox. That cough turned into pneumonia. So my pediatrician prescribed two or three drugs. And this was, like, six months before I learned how to swallow pills. Remember those days before you knew how to swallow pills? All of your medicine had to be in liquid form. Yuck! So Mom would give me these disgusting syrups—the worst-tasting stuff—multiple times a day. They were awful, and I didn’t want to take them. “But I have to! They may save my life!”
Is prayer like that?
Because this morning, I need us to notice something: Look at verses 15 and 16: “Ever since I first heard of your strong faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for God’s people everywhere, I have not stopped thanking God for you. I pray for you constantly.” And of course we see similar words of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving throughout Paul’s other letters. My point is, for Paul, prayer hardly seems like some bitter medicine that he has to choke down because it’s “good for him”; if anything, prayer seems like a hot fudge sundae! Something he enjoys… something he can’t resist because he loves it so much!
So I want to know how prayer can become like that! I want tolearn more about what makes Paul’s prayer life tick. Don’t you? We’re going to examine it in three points: Number One: the Power of Prayer. Number Two: Petitions for Perseverance. And Number Three: the Priority of Praise.
But first, point number one… let’s talk about the power of prayer…
The first thing to notice is verse 15: Paul writes, “Ever since I first heard of your strong faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for God’s people everywhere…” Paul is writing, in other words, to people who are already Christians, and who are already bearing the fruit of the Spirit. Therefore, when he says he’s heard of their “faith,” he doesn’t mean this: “I’ve heard that at some point in your past, you received Christ as your Savior and Lord—you walked down an aisle, you got baptized, you got confirmed, you prayed a sinner’s prayer. Now you’re saved… because you have faith.”
No, he’s talking about authentic believers, who are born again, who possess the Holy Spirit, who are actively following Jesus right now, and are in the process of being sanctified—made holy. When he talks about their faith, he means the James-chapter-2 kind of faith: the faith that produces plenty of good works, without which, scripture warns, no one can be saved. He’s talking about the kind of faith that Jesus himself refers to in John 13:35: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples,” Jesus says, “if you have love for one another.”
Paul says he’s “heard” of their faith. He doesn’t merely know it from past personal experience with the Ephesians—he means that their faith has become well known. People are noticing it. People are talking about it.
Many of you know from history class about Emperor Constantine. In the fourth century this most powerful man in the world converted to Christianity… and therefore ended the Roman Empire’s official policy of persecuting Christians. It wasn’t long, in fact, before Christianity became the “official religion” of the Roman Empire.
And from that point forward, all the Roman emperors were at least nominally Christian…
Except for one… a man named Julian—he’s known today as “Julian the Apostate.” He committed “apostasy,” meaning he abandoned his Christian faith. And Julian wanted desperately to bring the Roman people back to the old pagan religion—to worshiping the pantheon of Roman gods like Jupiter and Apollo and the rest. But he tells these pagan priests, “If we’re going to pull this off, we’re going to have to do something about the widows and orphans. Because these pesky Christians not only take care of their own orphans and widows—which we don’t even do—they also take care of our orphans and widows.” Which means that these early Christians got the message of James 1:27: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”
Even a pagan emperor like Julian understood that these Christians were an incredible blessing to his world… like no one had ever seen before!
And if Julian’s religion was going to catch on, it would have to imitate Christianity in how it treats orphans and widows!
These Ephesian Christians have that kind of faith: they have a growing, vibrant kind of faith that makes a tangible difference in the world… of which other people are taking notice… Paul has taken notice of it! It’s a faith that stands out!
But… here’s the crazy thing… as faithful and loving as these Ephesians already were, Paul clearly doesn’t believe that they possess everything they need to succeed in both life and ministry. Why do I say that? Because listen to what Paul prays for them in verses 17 to 19. Paul prays that God will
… give you spiritual wisdom and insight so that you might grow in your knowledge of God. I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called—his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance. I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him…
I want us to appreciate that the things for which Paul is praying for these believers at Ephesus are perfectly wonderful things that of course our loving heavenly Father longs to give them. Right? These aren’t just nice things to have—optional extra features of being a Christian. They are essential! And Paul is praying that God will give them these things!
Why?
Why is Paul bothering to pray that God would give them gifts that Paul knows his Father already wants to give them?
For one reason only: because Paul believes that apart from his prayers these Ephesian Christians may not receive these gifts at all… that they might miss out on this good stuff… unless Paul prays for them!
And that thought, brothers and sisters, ought to convict us when it comes to our own prayer lives. It convicts me!
What are we possibly missing out on right now… as a church, as families, as individuals… because we’re not asking God to give us these things? I can’t succeed as a pastor apart from the prayers of God’s people here at Toccoa First. And maybe y’all can’t succeed in your lives as Christians apart from my prayers for you and the prayers of faithful members of this church! It’s almost frightening to contemplate how dependent on prayer we ought to be. Because suddenly you and I have great responsibility as Christians to pray for one another. And if we don’t do it, if we don’t pray, maybe we will fail… Maybe God is waiting for us to pray more faithfully before he will give us what we need!
To be clear, if I were God, I wouldn’t do things that way… I wouldn’t want to depend on people like me before God will pour out these kinds of blessings… I wouldn’t want God’s fickle, easily distracted, and sinful children, who make up his church, to have to pray before God accomplishes so many good things in the world; nevertheless, it seems clear from scripture that that’s how God works. We don’t have to understand why; only that he does; and so we trust him.
A few weeks ago, I went to a GMC conference in Gainesville… about a new program that the GMC invites churches to consider implementing. Anyway… It was the Saturday morning of Georgia Tech’s glorious victory over FSU in Ireland. The conference was scheduled to end at kickoff time… And I’m looking at my watch, like, “Let’s speed this along, guys!” Especially when the conference speakers were spending an inordinate amount of time telling this room full of pastors, “Now the most important part of the process of implementing this program is prayer.”
And I promise, I was thinking, “Yes, yes, yes… We know that… We’re pastors… get on with it.”
And then I read scripture like today’s scripture and think, “That’s your problem, Brent! When it comes to prayer, you approach too many events, too many challenges, too many obstacles in your life, too many committee meetings, too many worship services, too many Bible studies, too many occasions of breakfast, lunch, and dinner… too many normal events in your everyday life with that same attitude: “Yes, yes, yes,” you think. “Prayer is the most important thing I can do. I know, I know… Now let’s get prayer over with so we can get on with it… no matter what the “it” happens to be…
As if the “it” that we will soon be “getting on with” is more important than praying about “it.” I’m telling you, biblically speaking, it’s not!
Let me give you just one other scripture that demonstrates the power and importance of prayer. Philippians 1:19. The apostle is in prison, he doesn’t know whether he’ll live or die. He recognizes the fact that he may be executed soon—by beheading. That’s the kind of death that we know from history that Paul will later die. But he doesn’t know for sure what’s going to happen—at least at first. But listen to what he says in Philippians 1:19: “For I know that as you pray for me and the Spirit of Jesus Christ helps me, this will lead to my deliverance.”
As you pray for me… Paul’s deliverance from death, he says, depends not only on “the Spirit of Jesus Christ,” but also on the prayers of these Philippians. To some extent, Paul believes, his very life is in their hands. So it’s as if he were saying, “Pray as if my life depends on it… because to some extent it does.” Prayer is a life or death matter for Paul in Philippians chapter 1.
That’s Point Number One… the power of prayer.
Point Number Two… Petitions for Perseverance…
Recall that in last week’s sermon on Ephesians, we talked briefly about the great trouble that Christians in the church at Ephesus were facing. The recipients of Paul’s letter were genuinely suffering because of their faith.
In this context, therefore, what might we expect Paul to pray for on behalf of the Ephesians?
Tim Keller explores this question, again from his book on prayer:
It is remarkable that in all of his writings Paul’s prayers for his friends contain no appeals for changes in their circumstances. It is certain that they lived in the midst of many dangers and hardships. They faced persecution, death from disease, oppression by powerful forces, and separation from loved ones. Their existence was far less secure than ours is today. Yet in these prayers you see not one petition for a better emperor, for protection from marauding armies, or even for bread for the next meal. Paul does not pray for the goods we would usually have near the top of our lists of requests.
The prayer lists of nearly every church in America have one overarching theme: “Heal these people physically. Protect them physically. Keep them safe physically. Keep them alive in this world.” And there’s nothing, nothing, nothing wrong with those kinds of prayers—in and of themselves. Jesus teaches us to pray for our daily bread—and “daily bread” here symbolizes whatever our physical necessities are. By all means!
And if anyone should be praying an intercessory prayer like that on behalf of other people he loves, it’s Paul. Yet what is he praying for? He’s praying mostly that they would gain a more intimate knowledge of God that comes from being in a personal relationship with him through Jesus Christ. This is from N.T. Wright’s translation:
I pray that the God of King Jesus our Lord, the father of glory, would give you, in your spirit, the gift of being wise, of seeing things people can’t normally see, because you are coming to know him and to have the eyes of your inmost self opened to God’s light. Then you will know exactly what the hope is that goes with God’s call; you will know the wealth of the glory of his inheritance in his holy people; and you will know the outstanding greatness of his power towards us who are loyal to him in faith, according to the working of his strength and power. 2
What should be clear, therefore, is Paul’s main prayer for them is not physical needs, but spiritual: that they know God better. That they know his Son Jesus better. That they treasure Christ more and more. That they better appreciate the power that is available to them through Christ!
Let’s face it: our prayers are often all about asking God to deliver us from our circumstances, whereas Paul’s prayers are about having the faith necessary to handle any circumstance.
That’s Point Number Two… petitions for perseverance…
Point Number Three… priority of praise…
I said at the top of the sermon that for Paul, it doesn’t seem like prayer comes very hard for him, that it’s not like disgusting medicine we have to choke down, that it’s like a hot fudge sundae—or whatever your dessert of choice happens to be. And when we hear his words in verses 15 and 16, how can we think otherwise? “Ever since I first heard of your strong faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for God’s people everywhere, I have not stopped thanking God for you. I pray for you constantly.”
It’s almost like he can’t help himself. He hears what God is doing in their lives, and he can’t help but thank God and praise God for it. And his thankfulness naturally leads him to pray for these people even more! And he just can’t even stop doing it! It’s as if he’s gloriously stuck in this joyful cycle of praise and prayer…
I would love to get “stuck” like that! How about you?
But notice Paul’s prayer begins with praise… Before he “gets on” with the business of petitioning God to do things for him, he praises God.
And in doing so, he’s following the model of prayer that Jesus himself gave us. Because the very first thing that Jesus teaches us to ask for is that God’s name would be hallowed. “Hallowed be thy name” certainly doesn’t sound like a petition, but it is. In so many words we are asking that God would do something to hallow his name. That is, God would do something to make God himself look great in the eyes of people… in the eyes of all Creation, including even the angels in heaven!In fact, God’s glory is the ultimate theme of the Lord’s Prayer—which again, is meant to serve as a model to guide our own prayers.
Paul knows that when he spends time thanking God for answering his prayers for his brothers and sisters at Ephesus, that makes God look glorious. And the Bible says again and again that that’s why we’re here on earth… that’s why we exist.
Our prayers—my prayers—tend to focus on me, me, me… and maybe a little bit of you… But Jesus’ prayers, and Paul’s prayers, focus on God, God, God… Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
God’s glory is the theme.
It’s college football season, obviously, and at this time of year, social media frequently reminds me of one of the happiest moments of my life. A video, in fact, of one of the happiest moments of my life.An event known as the “Miracle on Techwood Drive.” At least a few of you know what I’m talking about. Google it. It’s glorious. Georgia Tech was tied with an undefeated, Top-Ten Florida State team that hadn’t lost a conference game in three years. Six seconds left in the game. Score is tied at 16. FSU is lined up to kick the game winning field goal with the nation’s number one kicker. We block the kick and run it back 80 yards for a touchdown. Game over. We win. Glorious!
And my son Townshend and I were in the upper deck of the stadium watching this unfold. We were holding on to one another as our defender was running the ball back. “Is this really happening?”
I’m not exaggerating when I say, without apology, that this was among a handful of the most intensely happy moments of my life! It sometimes brings tears to my eyes! Townshend and I joined thousands of others on the field. It was an unbelievable experience. No… even better, it was… a glorious experience. And it was nearly the best thing ever!
And listen: I know most of y’all don’t care about the Yellow Jackets. After all, you haven’t entirely sanctified yet. One day you will be.
But it doesn’t matter. You’ve got your own version of the “Miracle on Techwood Drive”… That’s fine. But you know what I’m saying.
And notice: I’m “only” talking here about earthly glory. And I’m telling you that even earthly glory is about the greatest thing we can experience as human beings… yet at it’s best, it’s the tiniest foretaste of God’s glory!
Can you imagine how great God’s glory is? I hope you’ve all experienced it enough to know how great it is.
Paul has experienced it…
Inasmuch as Paul’s own prayer life is far more like a hot fudge sundae than a some bitter, foul-tasting medicinal syrup that we have to choke down because it’s “good for us,” it’s only because his life—and his prayers—are focused on one overarching purpose: to glorify God.
Gracious God, change us so that our lives and our prayers may be like that, too. Amen.