Ephesians Study 4: Paul’s Prayer

Introduction

Hello again to everyone who is joining me today. My name is Sarah Bradbury, and this is Garden to Glory: The Mystery of God.

You are listening to our fourth installment in our study of the book of Ephesians.

 In the first few lessons of this series, we learned about the many ways people distort the knowledge of God and refuse to honor Him as the creator of all good things. 

 Today, we will see the opposite example as we move on to a passage describing the Apostle Paul’s prayer requests for the believers in Ephesus.

 What does it look like for one of the chosen people of God to worship the creator instead of the creation? What does it look like to live a life of faith in the truth of Christ that is empowered by God’s Spirit of love?

Let’s see if we can find these answers today. We will start with our passage in Ephesians 1:15-23. It reads:

 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, asking God – the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ – to 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. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated Him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms. Now He is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else – not only in this world, but also in the world to come. 

God has put all things under the authority of Christ and has made Him head over all things for the benefit of the church. And the church is His body; it is made full and complete by Christ, who fills all things everywhere with Himself.

Understanding Prayer

As we begin looking at this section of prayer requests that Paul has been making, first we need to understand what prayer is and what it accomplishes.

Prayer is a very big and complicated subject to discuss in detail. Entire books have been written on the subject, and still there are aspects of prayer and answers to prayer that remain a mystery.

Perhaps someday we can more thoroughly explore the topic of prayer, but unfortunately, we do not have time for that today. For the purpose of this study, I will attempt to give a quick overview of prayer so we can understand how to follow the example Paul gives us. Also, hearing Paul’s requests for the lives of these believers in Ephesus will be an encouragement to us.

Prayer at its most basic definition is simply a conversation you have with God. This conversation can include a variety of topics. Examples in the Bible include giving thanks to God, asking Him for answers to the questions of life, and requesting  for God to accomplish something in your own life, the lives of others, or the world at large.

One thing that is immediately clear about prayer is that praying to God is an act of faith. Hebrews 11:6 says:

And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to Him must believe that God exists and that He rewards those who sincerely seek Him.

In order to pray, we must believe that God exists. We must believe that God hears us, cares for us, and has the power to work for us. If we did not believe these things, we wouldn’t believe that there was a reason to pray, and we simply wouldn’t do it.

As we try to examine what prayer is and what it should look like, we need to begin with the assumption that because the people of God are shown over and over in Scripture to be people who pray, prayer must have power to accomplish something.

The question is, “What exactly does prayer accomplish and how?” In seeking to answer this, let’s look at one of the most well-known passages about prayer, Mark 11:22-24. It says:

Then Jesus said to the disciples, “Have faith in God. I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart. I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours.

This is a passage that makes immense claims about the power of prayer, and these words were from Jesus Himself. Imagine being able to cast a mountain into the sea with just a request! However, it doesn’t take us too long to realize we have a bit of a problem trying to live these verses out. 

Thinking About Miracles

I don’t know about you, but I have never been able to move a mountain. In fact, of all the requests I have made to God in my life, not a single one that defied the laws of science has ever been answered.

I imagine that this could also be said of you. In fact, I’ve never known anyone personally who has had a truly miraculous answer to prayer.

I say this knowing that many people use the word “miracle” to describe things that God has done in their lives. However, in an effort to be clear and keep others from needlessly wrestling with doubt, I think it’s important to be careful how we use the word “miracle.”

As much as I believe God is active in everything that happens in the world, I see a big difference between the regular, providential functioning of God in the world and the miraculous operating of God in the world.

The providential functioning of God is Him working out His plans for all of time within the bounds of the natural, scientific laws He put into place. In contrast to this, the miraculous operating of God in the world is the clear breaking of those natural, scientific laws in order to show that the thing being done defies the natural order of things and can only have been done by the God who made those laws.

You may have heard people refer to babies as miracles; I know I have! To be sure, the intricate design of a human child – and the fact that it can grow and develop inside of us – is mysterious and amazing! It is a clear indication that God is at work in the world.

Like Psalm 139:13-14 says:

For You formed my inward parts;
    You knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are Your works;
    my soul knows it very well.

Yet as amazing as it is to see how God forms new lives, pregnancy and birth are part of His original design for the world. It is not a process that defies the normal order that God has put into place. Because of this, babies – while amazing works of God – are not, in fact, miracles. God is just so incredible that He made immensely beautiful and complex things to be an ordinary part of His creation.

Likewise, when someone talks about being healed from cancer, if the cancer was there one minute and gone the next without any human intervention aside from prayer, that would be a miracle. However, if that same person underwent chemo or some other treatment that killed their cancer – even if the odds of survival were really small – that healing is something to thank God for, but it doesn’t qualify as a miracle.

Under this definition of miracle, no one I know has been able to give a firsthand account of such a thing happening. Nonetheless, this passage of Jesus telling his disciples about mountain-moving faith still exists. So what are we to make of this?

Enough Faith?

Some would point to a similar passage in Matthew 17:20 to explain why requests for miracles do not happen. It says:

“You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.”

Unfortunately, many churches in the Pentecostal movement have used this passage to guilt, injure, and prod broken people into trying harder, believing illogically, giving money they don’t have, or claiming results they have not experienced in the hope that they might prove their faith and earn the experience of a true miracle.

Yet many Christians today, like myself, have decided that the odds of experiencing a miraculous answer to prayer right now is slim to none, though I personally came to that conclusion rather stubbornly. How, then, do I explain Jesus’ words here? How can they still be true?

Look at the Context

I’d like us to think through who Jesus is talking to in these passages and what time period He is saying this in. The passages in Mark and Matthew, like all the words we have from Jesus, were spoken during Jesus’ life on Earth. This was a time when Jesus Himself was performing miracles on a regular basis.

In John 9:4-5, we read more words Jesus spoke to these same disciples before He performed the miracle of healing a man born blind. Jesus said:

We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the One who sent us. The night is coming, and then no one can work. But while I am here in the world, I am the light of the world.

Jesus Himself indicated that there were miracles that could be done during His time on Earth that would not be able to be done later.

So, when we see Jesus tell His disciples that they can move mountains with enough faith, I believe we must keep in mind that the disciples were currently walking with the creator of the world inside of His creation.

These disciples were the same people Jesus empowered to heal diseases and cast out demons in Matthew 10:1. One of these same disciples walked on water in Matthew 14.

This was a unique time in God’s redemptive plan for the world. Just like miracles accompanied many of God’s special movements in certain Old Testament periods, it appears that while Jesus walked the Earth – and for a little while afterward – obvious, miraculous answers to prayer were normal.

I don’t believe this is happening today. While I may just lack the faith necessary to make miracles happen, surely if God is saving people by faith today, those people would have at least a mustard seed’s worth of faith. 

If they do indeed have the tiny amount of faith required to be God’s people, then they would – in fact – have the mustard seed-sized faith necessary to move mountains. If this is happening, then people empowered to perform miracles ought to be doing miracles in the name of Jesus today. I am unable to see evidence of that happening.

Does the lack of miracles happening today mean we no longer should have faith that God will answer our prayers?

The People Who Died Waiting

In Exodus 3:9-10, we read some of the words God spoke to Moses while sending him to rescue Israel from slavery in Egypt. It says:

Look! The cry of the people of Israel has reached me, and I have seen how harshly the Egyptians abuse them. Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. You must lead my people Israel out of Egypt.

The cries of the people of Israel reached God, and He answered those cries by sending Moses to set His people free. What a wonderful example of answered prayer! 

If you are familiar with this story of God’s rescue, you will no doubt be aware that this is one of those special times in history when God clearly performed many miracles for the sake of His people.

Yet one thing stands out to me when I look at this particular example of God answering prayer: the people of Israel were enslaved in Egypt for about 400 years!

This means that not only did the people who were liberated have to suffer a long time before experiencing God’s rescue, but also, many Israelites died waiting for the rescue that they never personally got to experience!

Yet God says in Exodus 3:7-8:

I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their cries of distress because of their harsh slave drivers. Yes, I am aware of their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt into their own fertile and spacious land.

It would appear that God’s rescue of His people in Egypt was an answer to the prayers not only of those who experienced the rescue, but also of those who died waiting.

In case you think this is a fluke or that I’m way off base, let’s look at what people call “The Hall of Faith” in Hebrews 11. This entire chapter is relevant to this topic, but for the sake of time, I will point us to a couple of sections.

In Hebrews 11:8-16, we read:

It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance. He went without knowing where he was going. And even when he reached the land God promised him, he lived there by faith – for he was like a foreigner, living in tents. 

And so did Isaac and Jacob, who inherited the same promise. Abraham was confidently looking forward to a city with eternal foundations, a city designed and built by God.

It was by faith that even Sarah was able to have a child, though she was barren and was too old. She believed that God would keep his promise. And so a whole nation came from this one man who was as good as dead – a nation with so many people that, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore, there is no way to count them.

All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it. They agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on earth. 

Obviously people who say such things are looking forward to a country they can call their own. If they had longed for the country they came from, they could have gone back. But they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

After giving numerous examples of other people of faith in the Old Testament who either received obvious good in their lives or immense trouble and sorrow, we read this in Hebrews 11:39-40:

All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised. For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us.

As we can see here, the Old Testament shows us a pattern of people exercising faith for their entire lives yet dying while waiting for that faith to be made sight. Despite this, their faith was not in vain. This last verse contends that they will still reach that perfection.

During the life of Jesus, many miracles were done. Jesus told his disciples that while He was in the world, He was the light of the world. However, in the 2,000 years since He left the world, it would appear that night has come again.

Nonetheless, we read in the last half of Psalm 30:5:

Weeping may last through the night,
    but joy comes with the morning.

We can still have confident faith in God’s promises to answer our prayers even while knowing that these answers may not come to us in this life.

If these Old Testament examples were not enough to prove that people of faith can wait their whole lives for the complete answers to their prayers, we can also look to Jesus, the Apostles, the early church, and many oppressed Christians throughout history. These examples help show us that this pattern of waiting in faith for the fullness of the promises of God is still the norm.

Also, interestingly enough, even though the Apostle Paul did have the privilege of performing miraculous works in the name of Jesus during his life, Paul’s prayer in Ephesians for the believers there does not list miraculous works as a request.

Believing You Have Received

Instead, we read these prayer requests from Paul in Ephesians 1:16-19a:

I have not stopped thanking God for you. I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to 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.

Paul asks for God to give them knowledge, wisdom, and hope: all things we cannot physically see. These are also things they must already have in order to be called believers in Jesus.

Despite the fact that Paul’s requests here are not for actions that miraculously break the laws of nature, he still illustrates the same kind of faith Jesus spoke of when He told the disciples they could cast mountains into the sea.

Just like the disciples would need to believe that their prayer would be answered in order for it to be answered, here Paul is asking God to do things in the lives of these believers that God has done and that He will do.

As we read in our previous studies on Ephesians chapter 1, verse 10 reads:

And this is the plan: at the right time He will bring everything together under the authority of Christ – everything in heaven and on earth.

But we read in verse 22 of Ephesians 1 that:

God has put all things under the authority of Christ and has made Him head over all things for the benefit of the church.

So, as we see in these verses, Jesus is right now in charge of all things, yet we look forward to the future when God will bring everything together under the authority of Jesus. It is a done deal, and we wait for it to be completed.

In the Christian world, we call this the “already and the not yet.”

Ephesians 1 shows us this same already/not yet principle in our individual lives as well. We read in Ephesians 1:11:

Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for He chose us in advance, and He makes everything work out according to His plan.

But in verse 14 of this same chapter, it reads:

The Spirit is God’s guarantee that He will give us the inheritance He promised and that He has purchased us to be His own people.

Paul believes in the plan of God for the fullness of time that will work for the good of those who believe. And as a direct result of Paul’s faith in God working out His plan, Paul asks God to work all the more. Also, Paul shows his faith in God’s working so thoroughly that his own actions work toward the ends that he believes God is accomplishing.

Joining God in the Work

Paul has been asking God to give these believers spiritual wisdom, insight, knowledge of God, and hope in the inheritance God has for them. And then, after making these requests for an unknown period of time, Paul decides to write to these believers about wisdom, insight, knowledge of God, and to have hope in the inheritance God has for them.

First Paul prayed, and then he acted. He made himself an instrument of God to accomplish the answers he had asked for.

We don’t just pray for mountains to be cast into the sea (at least not at this moment in time). What we do is pick up a shovel and start working toward the reality that God has promised for us in the future.

Psalm 127:1-2 says:

Unless the Lord builds a house,
    the work of the builders is wasted.
Unless the Lord protects a city,
    guarding it with sentries will do no good.

It is useless for you to work so hard
    from early morning until late at night,
anxiously working for food to eat;
    for God gives rest to His loved ones.

Unless we are going about the plans of God, our work is wasted. However, the natural implication here is that if the Lord does build the house, then the work of the builders is not wasted. And if the Lord protects a city, guarding it with sentries does do good.

We can rest knowing that God will accomplish His promises to us, but God still chooses to work through people. We as God’s chosen people are called to do the work that God has given us to do.

In Matthew 9:35-38, Jesus gives his disciples another command involving prayer. It says:

Jesus traveled through all the towns and villages of that area, teaching in the synagogues and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom. And He healed every kind of disease and illness. When He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. He said to His disciples, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask Him to send more workers into his fields.”

Immediately after this request, we have this verse in Matthew 10:1:

Jesus called His twelve disciples together and gave them authority to cast out evil spirits and to heal every kind of disease and illness. 

If Jesus had treated prayer the way many Christians do today, He would have instructed His disciples to simply ask God to heal and save the people. Instead, Jesus instructed His disciples to ask God to send workers out to the people. And then, after having the disciples make this request, Jesus empowered them to go and be the workers in that field.

Jesus shows us in His example and through His commissioning that we aren’t meant to just sit on the sidelines and cheer for God to win the day. We are to pray for God to work in the world, and then we are to act in faith by being the instruments of His work.

In James 2:14-17, we read:

What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone? Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, and you say, “Goodbye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well” – but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do?

So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.

True faith produces works. True faith believes wholeheartedly that God is working for the good of His people, and we join in that work, believing that God will accomplish it through us.

This is why we start with faith in God’s love for us. This faith leads us to pray for God to accomplish all of His loving plans for us, and this faith leads us to take part in that plan, knowing that God will make our work successful.

In Psalm 90:16-17, it says:

Let us, Your servants, see You work again;
    let our children see Your glory.

And may the Lord our God show us His approval
    and make our efforts successful.
    Yes, make our efforts successful!

Let’s read our passage in Ephesians 1:15-23 one more time.

Paul says:

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, asking God – the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ – to 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. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated Him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms. Now He is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else – not only in this world, but also in the world to come. 

God has put all things under the authority of Christ and has made Him head over all things for the benefit of the church. And the church is His body; it is made full and complete by Christ, who fills all things everywhere with Himself.

What examples can we see in Paul’s prayer that are worth imitating in our own lives as chosen people of God?

Points of Application

1. We should recognize the work of God and give thanks.

When Paul heard of the faith these believers had in Jesus and the Spirit-empowered love they had for God’s people, Paul recognized the unmistakable hand of God the creator in their lives. His response was consistent thanksgiving to God for them.

In direct opposition to the tendency of humanity to worship the creation instead of the creator, Paul does not commend the believers in Ephesus for being better than everyone else. Instead, he recognizes that their faith is part of God’s working in the world, and he can’t stop himself from overflowing in thanks to God for doing this.

We, too, should look for the hand of God in the events and people of the world and give God thanks for them. This is especially true for the lives of the chosen people of God, but Paul does not stop at simply giving thanks.

2. We should ask God to continue and expand His work.

Paul could have responded to the news of the faith and love of these early Christians by merely giving thanks to God and moving on to find new believers. But that wasn’t good enough for Paul.

Despite the fact that the Ephesian believers already know enough about Jesus to have faith, Paul asks that God would give them more wisdom and insight so that they will increase in their knowledge of God. He also asks that God would flood their hearts with light so they would understand the confident hope God has given His people.

In other words, Paul is asking for God to increase these believers’ knowledge of God and His plans. He asks for them to understand God’s great power to accomplish these things, which is really another way of asking God for faith in who He is and what He is doing.

Thus, Paul’s response to hearing about the faith these believers have is to thank God for it and then to ask for more of it. We, too, should ask God for more of what He has given us and to work more fully in this world.

3. We should set our hope and faith in God’s power to complete the work He has begun.

The very fact that Paul is praying to God and making requests for the people of God shows that Paul believes in God’s power to accomplish these things. Also, Paul desires for the believers in Ephesus to share this confident hope that God will work out His plan for them, and he asks God to give these believers the confidence in God’s power to work for them.

The grounds that Paul has for believing in God’s power is rooted firmly in the work God has already done in Jesus when He raised Him from the dead.

So, we continue to see the pattern that Paul lays out for us in Ephesians. God accomplishes the work in us through our faith in Him. This faith is a result of the knowledge of Jesus, and it leads to the Holy Spirit working in us to love God and love others.

And our final lesson from this prayer of Paul is:

4. We should join God in the work.

While Paul’s prayer shows His belief in God’s plan to work for His people and in His power to accomplish that work, the fact that Paul has decided to make requests to God at all shows that Paul believes praying to God accomplishes something. If that is true, then Paul himself is actually part of God working out His plan in the lives of these believers.

The added fact that Paul is writing to these believers in order to increase their knowledge and faith when this is the substance of his prayer shows us that Paul is acting in faith by being part of the working out of God’s answer to his prayer.

As we end our time together today, I will echo Paul’s requests for the believers in Ephesus for all of you who are listening or reading today:

I ask God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus, to give you all 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.

Join me next time as we seek to gain this knowledge, wisdom, and hope through the words God has given us in Scripture.

To help you meditate on the principles we have discussed today, I have made a short Spotify playlist that you can find here.