COLOSSIANS 4:2 – “Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.”

THEME OF THE DAY: THE ULTIMATE PRAYERS TO PRAY.  How do we pray?  What do we pray for?  Are our prayers primarily directed to temporal and physical things we want God to alter or give? Do we find ourselves praying more for the spiritual and eternal?  Do our prayer lives model those we find in scripture?  Like the prayers of the Apostle Paul?  Or the Psalms, even of our Lord Jesus?

Today’s nugget is going to be different than the norm.  The application is to compare our prayer lives with that of the Apostle Paul from his two prayers he offered frequently for the believers in Ephesians.  A couple of points we need to mention before we dive into these prayers.

First, these are for believers.  Don’t miss that.  Few believers get this because they don’t pray for what Paul does to be the experiences of these believers, and believers for all the history of the church including us today.

Another point about these prayers is they define the greatest experience a Christian will know.   In the first prayer it is about knowing God the Father and what He provides for His children.  The second prayer is to experience the love of the Lord Jesus Christ in greater measure ultimately taking us to the soul-satisfying, heart-warming, and mind-renewing experience of the fullness of God.

With that information and direction, here are Paul’s prayers.  Evaluate ourselves not only in how and what we pray for, also that we might start hungering for these truths in our lives, and daily pray these prayers, not in a mechanical way, but in a life-altering way.

“For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all”2 (Ephesians 1:15-23).

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 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—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:14-19).

 PRAYER: Father, impress upon my heart the priorities in my life are to know You and experience Your Son’s love.

 REFLECTION:  No greater pleasure and pursuit in life exceeds that of knowing God and experiencing His Son’s love.