The letter to the Ephesians
Ephesians 3v14-21 Confidence in Christ
I know a few of you were here last week. Well can anyone remember what we were the points from what we read last week?
- The mystery Paul knew – Paul had been given an understanding of the message of Jesus Christ, that he’d died for everyone regardless of their background - just as we saw with my three friends – God loves all people so Jesus died on the cross for everyone.
- The ministry that grew – that God is using the Church to make known this ministry that Paul was talking about.
So this morning we’ve got just a few minutes to read this prayer that Paul prayed. Normally when we go through a prayer such as this we focus on the verbs that are used:
That we “may be strengthen by his Spirit; Christ may dwell; rooted and established in love; to grasp and to know”
Verbs we’ll see the fruit of on the surface and yet theres something more to it
I think there is more to it than just looking at those verbs and being told that we need to make sure that they’re evident in our lives. And I think the key phrase is in v16 when Paul talks about the inner being, or in some of the older translations, the inner man.
Paul prays that we may have “Power through his Spirit in your inner being” That’s where everything else in the prayer is to have effect and ties together.
Paul draws a distinction in Corinthians when he talks about both the inner and outer man. What is inward is the key to everything that we do that is outward. Its in our hearts that we need to be changed when we become a Christian – some of us may be really good at playing the game of religious Christianity, yet Paul prays at a deeper level, that we may be strengthened with power by his spirit deep within us.
How amazing and encouraging it is that we can have the Holy Spirit living within us. It can and must affect all our lives when we realise he’s within us. As I was preparing for this, it hit me that I don’t think I’ve got anywhere near enough of a full enough understanding of this one, as if I did I’d be living my life really differently.
“So that Christ may dwell in our hearts” - We talked about this earlier in the childrens talk with the three friends and how each of them needs to have Jesus within them. If we have had our lives changed by the Holy Spirit then we can have Jesus dwell on the inside.
It is in our hearts that the words and our actions are formed – if we’re going with our sinful nature, then that will lead to actions in one way, but we don’t have to be bound to that, Jesus can live in our hearts. If our hearts are rooted in Jesus Christ, then our hearts will be rooted in love and that’s got to affect the way that we live our lives.
Andrew Lower
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