In his letter to the church of Ephesus, while imprisoned, Paul wrote a beautiful prayer. God's love and encouragement for the Ephesians just gushes from Paul's heart through his pen. May our prayer for each other and those on the outside that do not yet know Jesus as their Savior be with the same love and zeal as Paul's! May God hear our prayer and be with us as we seek to help people know, love, and follow Jesus!
By combining two modern versions of God's Word (NIV and Message paraphrase), we join to pray:
Lord God, because of Your unending love for us, evidenced by the gift of Your Son, Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior, we kneel before You, Father. You are our magnificent Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name and who parcels out all heaven and earth. We pray that out of Your glorious riches You will strengthen us and those that do not yet know who You are, by Your Spirit - not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength with power through Your Spirit in our inner being, so that Christ may dwell in all of our hearts through faith as those that open the door and invite You in will experience.
We pray that, as Your followers, with both feet planted firmly on love, 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, such extravagent dimensions that are incomprehendable, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that we may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of You, O God.
Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
May we all 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.
God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.
Glory to God in the church!
Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus!
Glory down all the generations!
Glory through all millennia! Oh, yes!
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