Ephesians 3:4-21
The apostle Paul prays for his churches a lot in his letters, particularly Ephesians, and quite often its followed by a burst of utter praise to the Lord (called a doxology), so powerful is the Holy Spirit upon his writing! No less so now than then.
This is the form of today’s reading from Ephesians 3.
The prayer may be familiar to you as I love it, I have used it to finish a number of sermons because it’s so very powerful, it’s pure Scripture, and perfect for church congregations like us.
Over the past little while, I’ve been learning that God is very much bigger than I imagine him to be. I found myself saying to him “you are big! You are big!” As I had no other thing to say that described what I felt.
Now at this heart of this prayer for the church is that we would know the ‘bigness’ of God; “the breadth and length and height and depth” (v.18b) of God, and through Jesus living in our hearts, we may come into the very fullness of this big, big, God. The total volume.
It’s truly transformational prayer, and the key is in v.16 I think: “I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit.” That’s worth truly pondering.
There are people today who think God isn’t big enough for modern needs. That God is good for some things but not others. That he belongs in some places but not others.
The God whom many of us believe in and rely on is too small. But we need to understand that this god is not the real God. He’s not the God of the bible and he is not the God of the Christian faith.
The God of the Bible is a God who created the world out of nothing, who chose the people Israel and worked miraculously through their history. The God of the Bible is one who has ultimate power and dominion over the whole of creation.
The God of the Bible is one who raises the dead, who defeats death and sin on the cross. The God of the Bible is one who works miracles in the lives of many, and whose teaching and example has had the power to shape the history of humanity.
That’s the God of the Bible and that’s a very big God!
But the god that many believe in is a weak and distant deity: many have an idea of a god who is perhaps vaguely interested in our lives, but with no skin in the game, and many church goers don’t really expect that god to make a difference in their lives.
If we pray to that god, our prayers can become self-deluding wishful fantasies. With that god, we can come to church and very safely expect nothing to happen.
Whereas the true living God always speaks to us always comforts us and always comes to us through Word, sacrament and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
Now if our understanding of God is too small, or we don’t really expect him to make a difference in our lives, then we are less able to draw on our faith when we experience change and chaos in our lives and in the world.
And in this moment in history, we really need to draw deep on the wells of faith and weld ourselves firmly on the God who is in control of all things. Because there is so much change and chaos, suddenly, in the world.
That’s on top of all the stresses and strains of everyday life found in our relationships, health, and finances.
The world is a truly beautiful place and life is to be cherished. But sometimes we feel very, very vulnerable and sometimes we feel crushed under the weight of it all.
If our God is too small, we will end up being consumed by emptiness and hopelessness and will just be swept along on an unhappy current and victims of the misfortunes of change and chance.
And it’s into this situation Paul’s powerful words come from v.16. “I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit.”
This prayer of Paul to his readers is based firmly on the reality that our God is not small, is not distant, is not powerless but mighty and intimately involved and all- powerful.
And that the God whom we worship longs to not only engage with us but to empower us to face the changes and chances of this world.
God wants to transform us from within so that we may know his power at work in our lives.
Paul doesn’t pray that we might do the right things or that we might believe the right things or that we might behave in a certain way.
Paul prays that we may let go of ourselves and allow ourselves to be filled with the experience of the love and grace of God; that we may let go of ourselves and be filled with his presence. This is the power of his Spirit.
What does being strengthened in our inner being with power from his Spirit look like? Paul prays to the big true God that if we are feeling empty, then God will fill us with joy. If we are feeling weak, then God will give us strength.
If we are feeling all at sea, then God will be the rock to which we can cling.
To put it another way, our faith is expressed in laying claim to an inner spiritual power that can transform how we live. We do this through prayer, just as Paul is doing for the Ephesians.
So, what is that inner spiritual power? Is it positive thinking? No. Is it some untapped human strength that we need to discover? No.
The inner spiritual power is God’s Holy Spirit dwelling within us effortlessly.
When we give our lives over to Jesus, God sends his Holy Spirit to live in us and so God becomes the power at work in us. And when we take up our cross and die to ourselves we allow space for the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to live in us.
This is the fullness of God that Paul is praying for.
That’s why, in Galatians 2:20, Paul writes this: “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”
The thing we are dying to when we take up our cross is the vanity of striving to do it all ourselves, as though God would be impressed! That’s blasphemy.
But we stop trying to be strong enough, stop trying not to cry, and die to self and allow God to be strong in us and for us.
And what happens when we start to live in the power of the Holy Spirit and not ourselves? Well, we start to get a glimpse of the size of God.
Firstly we can dream dreams and seem them come to fruition. If we live in the power of God’s Spirit, these dreams are not vain fantasies, but active pathways of God’s will being done on earth as in heaven. My being a priest is such a dream.
Secondly, we can develop the power to carry the most enormous burdens in life. Many of us face circumstances and situations and we think, “I don’t have the strength to get through this”. We don’t need to; God has promised to be that strength for us.
And thirdly, if we allow God to be the power at work within us, we will be able to achieve far more than we ever dreamt possible. Because our God is a God of miracles, and he loves working miracles in our lives.
This is how God strengthens us in our inner being with the unearthly divine power of the Holy Spirit, who melts rocks like wax, and we are filled with the fullness of God.
And when we are filled with the very fullness of God, we come to a vantage point that enables to see the size of our God, and it takes our breath away! Let me pray ...