Praying for Strength
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father… that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith…
(Ephesians 3:14-17)
Have you ever witnessed a miracle? God has blessed me with this opportunity more than once. I am always astounded at the ways that God hears and responds to our prayers. Perhaps a better question is, have you ever needed a miracle? That’s a tough one.
All of us have faced incredible difficulties at one point or another. We’ve lost jobs, faced illness, loss, and financial stress. We’ve also worried about our children, our families, and others that we love. Sometimes the hardest part of life is just getting through it.
Although we didn’t get a chance to talk about the quote above in our current series on Ephesians, I wanted to share it with you anyway. In chapter 3, Paul offers a powerful prayer for you and I. What amazes me about Paul’s words is the fact that he is not asking that God deliver us from hardship. He isn’t praying that God would take away our difficult circumstances. His prayer is that we would find strength in God during those times. He’ll go on in the prayer (verses 18-21) asking that we might not only have strength, but understand the depth of God’s love for us.
This is a more powerful prayer than I think we realize. Paul was no stranger to hardship. He had been beaten, abused, left for dead. He had experienced shipwrecks, blindness, imprisonment, and all sorts of hardships along the way. Paul understood that our faith and trust in God is built through our lowest moments, not our best. When we understand that God is with us when all seems lost, we come to know that there is no circumstance in our life where God is not present. This is how we gain trust. When we know God is there on our darkest days, we have a strength that is unfailing. This changes everything. It means that our bad days aren’t really as bad as they seem.
More than this, it means that the weight of what you are facing today isn’t on your shoulders, but His.
I don’t know what you might be facing today, but I encourage you to make Paul’s prayer your own. Pray, and ask God to grant you strength where you need it, and to know the presence of Christ in your hearts. Like Jesus on the stormy seas, we have nothing to fear when He is by our side!
In His Peace,
Pastor Patrick