We spent valuable time on Sunday listening to the Holy Spirit as we prayed for each other. Of course, when we pray for someone, we are ministering to them in prayer.
“To pray for someone is the kindest thing we can do for them” – Charles Spurgeon
In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he tells them that he’s praying for them – that’s encouraging enough! Then he spells out exactly how he’s praying for them – and what a prayer!
Reflect
As you read this, think of someone who you know is weighed down or ‘taxed’ by something – worry, stress, children, a difficult decision…
‘…I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.’ – Ephesians 3:14-19
There’s so much in this but
Why talk about the size of God’s love? Is Paul playing some sort of Top Trumps card game?!
I love looking around cathedrals where perhaps for 1,000 years saints, just like you or me, have prayed. Aren’t they huge! And what about Sheffield IKEA! Gracious me! People will travel thousands of miles to look at the Grand Canyon, and when we go to the seaside we can’t believe how vast the sea is.
Then there’s all those worship songs:
- ‘So high as the heaven are above the Earth…’‘Here is love, vast as the ocean…’How deep the Father’s love for us…” ‘Wide, wide as the ocean, high as the heavens above,…
Extra points if you can finish off that last one!
So God knows that we’re still impacted by big-ness – even as world-weary adults!
God, through Paul, wants us to get a sense of the scale of Christ’s love – visual image never leaves us.
Go Deeper
In The Message, the same passage reads:
‘My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.’
“A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer
So let’s pray for our friends, even from our own sofas, with a sense of how great God’s love is for them. And let’s be tuned in to hearing how God may want us to pray for them.
And let them know you prayed for them because, as Charlie Spurgeon says: it’s the kindest thing we can do for a friend.
