Power Through Intercessory Prayer (Ephesians 3:14-21)
One of the greatest privileges that Christians have is the power of intercessory prayer. No one else is able to do that. The only ones that can go before the Father on behalf of other Christians and the unsaved are those who are members of the Father's household.
This is Paul's second prayer for the church. The first was a prayer for knowledge. This is a prayer for love.
Paul knew the power and privilege of intercessory prayer and took full advantage of his privilege. The urgency with which he intercedes for the church is identified as we observe in the first place:
I. The Approach
"For this reason I kneel before the Father"
The way that Paul approached prayer for the saints reveals the deep concern he had for them and the fact that he wanted absolutely the best for them in their Christian walk.
We too ought to look forward to the very best for our fellow believers and particularly our fellow worshippers at City View Christian Fellowship.
When this is true, it will be demonstrated by the way we pray for each other. If we follow Paul's example, we will notice firstly that our prayers will be:
1. Clarified by Purpose.
"For this reason…"
The purpose which clarified his request to the Father was precise. He knew what was needed by the body, and he knew where and how that could be obtained. When we pray for each other, it is important that we know each others needs. It is important that we recognize our deficiencies, and earnestly come before the Father beseeching Him to come to our aid. Intercessory prayer is pointed and specific. We so often pray, "Dear Lord, please help our congregation." Help us to do what? Or we would pray. "God, please help our country. Or "God bless so and so." The word "bless" means to put something there which was not here before. If we really have a concern for them, we will pray for a specific rather than a general blessing. "Father, so and so is afraid. Would you please give them a spirit of confidence?" "So and so has a serious financial crisis. Will you please open up the windows of heaven and bless them with financial resources?" Etc, Etc.
We must pray with purpose. Also, we see that intercessory prayer is:
2. Characterized By It's Posture
"I kneel before…"
. How serious we are about our prayer may be demonstrated by the position we take up while praying. Serious, heartfelt intercessory prayer may bring one to ones knees. This was an unusual position for prayer in the New Testament. The usual posture in prayer was to stand. See Mark 11:25. But here Paul uses a beautiful phrase. "I kneel before the Father…" The direct translation from the Greek is, "I bend my knee before the Father.." An act of humble petition.
Think about our own posture for prayer for a moment. There are several positions we may take up when we pray. It may be quietly seated with our Bible on our laps, reflecting upon His word to us and quietly communicating with God. It may be standing before Him in reverence with head bowed. It may be with arms extended and head raised towards His majesty in praise and worship. But there are those times when out of desperation because of a circumstance or situation, that we feel compelled to fall to our knees in an earnest prayer of intercession. I believe this was Paul's heart in this prayer for the body.
There is one more thing that identifies real intercessory prayer. It is:
3. Communicated to a Person
"..before the Father.."
This was no idle chatter to some supernatural but unidentified deity somewhere out there is space. That is not intercession. Intercession is a prayer of faith on behalf of someone in need offered to one whom we know out of experience has the power to deliver.
Notice the difference here to Paul's earlier prayer. In chapter one he addressed the prayer first to God, because he is pointing to the power and the character of the creator of the universe. Here he is addressing the compassionate nature of a personal heavenly Father. One with whom there is a sense of intimacy. The word "pater" speaks of a family relationship. When you think of God you think of the maker and sustainer of all things. Of a covenant God. A judge. An unapproachable sovereign deity. But when you think of Father, you immediately think of intimacy and relationship.
So Paul gives us a model of how we can approach the Father through intercessory prayer. With purpose, posturing ourselves with an attitude of earnest petition in the presence of the person of our heavenly Father.
This was his approach, and it will help us to understand a little better in the second place,
II. The Agenda
This begins in vs. 16. "I pray that…"
This is an enlargement on the purpose for his prayer. As we examine this, we must ask some of these questions. What are the most pressing issues in our lives? What are the things for which we pray? When you really get down to business with God, what are the things which rise to the surface as you petition Him to meet your needs?

The things that Paul prays for are those things which make everything else significant. Remember? "Seek first the kingdom of God…"? This is what he has in mind. Kingdom living which will enable us to meet every situation in life with victory. Not conquerors, but more than conquerors.
In Paul's first prayer, Ephesians 1:15-23. Paul prays that we might come to know God's power. In this second prayer, Paul prays that we might establish that power and use it in our lives.
We not only need to know God's power, we need to use it. It is possible to know a great deal about automobiles --- to know how all of the mechanical parts interact, to know about the electrical system, to know about the transmission, engine, suspension, and the like --- and never use the automobile to go anywhere. On the other hand, it is entirely possible to know almost nothing about how an automobile is engineered, and to use it every day to travel thousands of miles. We must use what we know, or what we know does no good. The same is true spiritually.
It is possible to know a great deal about the truths of God contained in the Bible, and yet never live by those truths. So the focus of this second prayer is on how to know and live by the power of God.
This is the agenda of Paul's prayer. As we look a little closer, we notice that there are really four petitions to it. (3:14-19)
The Agenda involves firstly,
1. The Father's Endowment.
"I pray that according to His glorious riches…"
Paul was not going to limit God here. Sometimes we do that. We ask according to our understanding of greatness and ability and power. Paul asks not according to our ability to receive, but according to God's ability to give. In other words, Paul does not want us to experience something of God, but to experience the limitless supply of God Himself.

A man once came to a king and asked for something which the king gladly gave out of his abundant supply. So much so that the man cried out, "your majesty, this is too much for me."
The king smiled, and said, "it may be too much for you to take, but it is not too much for me to give."
Look at vs. 20. There is more in God's endowment fund than we could ever use, and this is the prayer of Paul for all the saints. That we would be beneficiaries of God's riches to the degree of His ability to give.
Paul's prayer involves the Father's endowment. It also includes:
2. The Spirit's Enduement
This speaks of that with which we are endued by our Father.
"that He may strengthen you with power by his Spirit in your inner being"
To endue means to supply with some quality of power. This quality of power is the Spirit which Jesus told the church that the Father had promised. This is part of that mystery spoken about in vs. 6. "sharers together in the promise"
All of us need that special power. How difficult it is to live for Christ in this world. How difficult it is to stand up for what is righteous. How difficult to live a life of simplicity in the midst of so much materialism. Yet all of this is possible through that supernatural power available to us through the fullness of the Spirit.
Most of the time we overestimate our own ability and underestimate our need for the Spirits power.
We buy the lie of the Duracell Bunny. We will never run out of power, we say. But in the same way that that Duracell Bunny will run out of power in the real world, so will we if we continue to try and do things in our own strength.
God had more in mind for us than that. He did not intend for us to come each week to charge our batteries. He had in mind for us to be continuously plugged into the power source of His Spirit.
We don't have to spend our days wishing we had more power. It is already ours. We must simply believe it and apply it.
See 2 Peter 1:3.
The power is there. We are plugged directly into the source through Jesus Christ. This is the idea that Paul has in Ephesians 5, and we will talk more about that when we come to that chapter.
So, Paul's prayer deals with the principal of the Father's endowment, The Spirit's enduement, and in the third place he speaks of :
3. Christ's Enthronement.
Vs. 17.
Here Paul prays for our fellowship with Christ. God wants us more than merely saved. This prayer is that Christ may dwell in your hearts. In other words, Christ desires to settle down and be at home in our hearts. In fact the word translated dwell is a compound form of two Greek words, "kata" (down) and "oikos" (house). Christ wants to settle down in our house. He wants to dwell in our hearts through faith. The word dwell here actually implies more than guest. It implies ownership of that home, or ruler of that domain. You've heard the expression, "Christ must not simply be resident, that he must be president". I'm not sure about that. When one is resident in a home, one has access to every single place. But there are many places in my home that the President would not be welcome, and nor would he want to be. Christ wants more than that. He wants our home to become His home. Every nook and cranny.
Robert Munger wrote a booklet entitled "My Heart Christ's Home"
He pictures the Christian life as a house. Jesus enters the house and goes from room to room where He is surprised to find many things with which He is uncomfortable. He goes into the library of the mind and begins to clean up the trash found there. He replaces it with His Word. He enters the dining room of the appetite and finds many sinful desires listed on a worldly menu. He replaces things like materialism, envy, pride, and lust with humility, love, meekness, and the like. He enters the living room of fellowship and there finds worldly companions and activities. In the workshop, only toys are being made. In the closet, many hidden sins are kept. Christ could only feel comfortable after He had cleaned every room. Only then could He settle down and be at home.
In order for Christ to dwell in our hearts, our hearts must dwell on Him. Our faith must cause us to be faithful to Him.
I heard of a young man named Ray Hoo, who had just graduated from Iowa State University. He returned to his native Jamaica where he tried to find a job. His brother arranged for him to have an interview with the chairman of the Jamaican banana industry. Things went well during the interview and the chairman decided to make an opening for Hoo, even though there wasn't one. Then the chairman asked Hoo how he would like to spend his spare time. Ray said that he liked reading and sports, particularly soccer and basketball, and added, "I also spend a lot of time in Christian activities because I hope to someday give my life to Christian missions." Upon hearing that, the chairman decided that he could not spend money to train a new man only to have him leave for the mission field. He said, "Young man, your ambitions are noble; but we want men who will give their lives to bananas" ( Leroy Lawson, "Galatians/Ephesians" (Cincinnati, OH: Standard Publishing, 1987), p. 194
Whatever you give your life to is what your heart dwells on. Is your goal to give your life to bananas? All around you, people dedicate themselves to bananas, or oil, or ecology, or whatever you do. Life is too short to give your life to bananas. We must give it to Christ.
The Father's Endowment, the Spirit's Enduement, Christ Enthronement, and finally,
4. The Believers Establishment.
Paul prays that you, 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. Here Paul prays that we might comprehend and know the love of Christ.
The word for love here is "agape". This is God's love. We are to be rooted and grounded in love. God desires that our roots run deep. He desires that our foundation be strong. Paul mixes metaphors here, but out of necessity. It is important to know about God. To have a good "theology" To have a strong foundation. This is the grounding. But the rooting implies life. The psalmist said that in our relationship with Christ through His Spirit we become like living trees. We are rooted in Him and we bear fruit and we give shade and protection and we receive life. We are planted in love. And from that perspective we can comprehend and know the love of Christ.
Measuring the immeasurable. When he prays that we might comprehend this love, he is praying that we might understand it by experience. He prays that this comprehension might bring us to a place of understanding by experiencing the breath and length and height and depth of this love. The only way we can begin to understand this is to experience it for ourselves.
The breadth of God's love is immense. It reaches to all men, nations, sins, needs, cares, situations. The length of God's love is eternal. It existed before time, it is never ending, it is unconditional, and it is boundless. The depth of God's love is unfathomable. It caused God to stoop as low as a man is. He reached down to us. The height of God's love is infinite. In His love we ascend with Christ in victory, joy, truth, character, and love.
Measuring God's love is impossible. We are attempting to measure the immeasurable.
Paul also prays that we know the unknowable. He prays for us to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge. Once we have encountered this love, we will be forever amazed by it. It is literally indescribable. One is reminded of the words of that saint of old who penned the following lines on the walls of his cell regarding the love of God:
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
Paul concludes at the end of vs. 19 - 21 by stating that the sum of all this is the absolute fullness of the living God. That we might contain the uncontainable.
This is the privilege of the believer. We have been created to be containers of God. He desires to pour His life into us and fill us to the full.
This is the mystery of the gospel. This is the mystery of Christ. Christ dwells in human beings. Christ dwells in us. And the greatest need for the Christian is to be filled with Christ. We are to be filled with His nature and character. We are to be filled with the fruit of the Spirit. We are to be filled with Jesus.
Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen (3:20-21)
vs 20-21 is a glorious doxology of praise to the only One who can accomplish these things.
Here he describes God as able. His ability works according to the power that works within us. The power within us is Christ. But look at how God's ability is described. He is described as . . .
Able
Able to "do"
Able to do "beyond" that we "ask"
Able to do beyond that we "think"
Able to do beyond "all" that we ask or think
Able to do "abundantly" beyond all that we ask or think
Able to do "exceeding" abundantly beyond all that we ask or think
But the extent to which we experience that fullness is determined by the measure to which we surrender our lives to Him.
Long ago in India, a beggar was at the end of the roadside begging rice. When he had got enough for a meal he went to the city gates to cook himself a meal. While busy, he heard a caravan coming, and quickly ran towards it crying "Alms, Alms." Seeing it was a prince he began to cry even louder.
The prince stopped the caravan and called to the beggar. "What have you to give me in exchange for alms?" The beggar looked at his bag full of rice, reached his hand into it and took out three grains which he handed to the prince. The prince took the grains, then he took the beggars hand and placed the grains into his sweaty, bony palm. He closed the beggars fingers around them and went on into the city. The beggar went away sad, but as he opened his hand, there in his palm were not the three grains of rice, but three brilliant, flawless diamonds. "Oh what a fool I have been". Cried the beggar. "If only I had given my all, I would have been abundantly blessed"
That's it! We are limited by the measure of our surrender and commitment to the Kingdom. Paul would exhort us today to let it all go and never want of anything again!