4 Ways Paul Prayed for You to Be Strengthened
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. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. —Ephesians 3:14–21
The Posture of Prayer
Kneeling shows that we are coming to a sovereign whom we depend on. It is also often associated with extreme passion and neediness. It reflects our desperation.
Further, in this passage, the “family” in both “heaven and on earth” (Eph. 3:15) is probably a reference not only to angels but also Christians in heaven who are organized for worship like earthly families. That our “Father” is the one who “named” them is Paul’s way of declaring that he not only created them but also exercises ultimate and absolute authority over them.
In this prayer, Paul is asking God to give his readers strength. That’s clear enough. But strength for what? In what way are we weak and in need of the sort of strength that only God can give? In the next verses it becomes immediately clear that our weakness is in our failure and inability to wholeheartedly believe in, feel, and rejoice in the love that God has for us in Jesus.
The Steadfast Love of the Lord
Sam Storms
The Steadfast Love of the Lord explores Scripture to find a clear picture of what God’s steadfast, unfailing love looks like and how, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, believers experience his affection.
Strengthened by the Spirit to Believe
Overall, Paul’s prayer for us to be “strengthened” is qualified in four ways.
First, it is “according to the riches of his glory.” Sometimes glory is God’s brightness, greatness, or renown, but it also connotes power (Col. 1:11; Rom. 6:4). Thus Paul here prays that God would give his people fortitude or strength and do this out of the infinite treasures of his majestic might. That’s important to remember because at various points along the way you might find yourself battling doubt as to whether God can pull it off. Can he genuinely enable me to feel and enjoy his love? Does he have sufficient resources to overcome and subdue my fearful, anxious heart? Yes!
The word translated “according to” (Eph. 3:16) points beyond the idea of source or origin to that of proportion—Paul asks for power not merely “out of” God’s riches but “according to” (or in proportion to) them. He asks for power on a scale commensurate with God’s riches.
Second, this power is given “through his Spirit.” The Spirit is always the one who does things for us on the inside, producing qualities and characteristics that we can’t produce on our own (see Rom. 15:13; 2 Tim. 1:7). Without the ever-present, effectual power of the Holy Spirit none of this would ever happen. He is the one who strengthens us. This, then, is the first answer to the problem I posed at the beginning of this chapter: if the Holy Spirit doesn’t operate in and on our hearts to provide us with the strength to overcome all our objections, fears, and hesitations about whether God really loves us, we will never walk in the freedom and peace that such love is designed to empower.
Third, this strengthening occurs in “in your inner being” (Eph. 3:16). This lets us know that the sort of strength we need can never be gained by lifting weights, faithfully going to CrossFit, or doing push-ups (see 2 Cor. 4:16). The inner being is the interior life, the core of our personality, and the center of our identity. It is the person we are on the inside. Heart, mind, will, spirit, soul, and affections are all encompassed by this phrase. That’s where the battle rages. That’s where the enemy wants to convince us that God is lying to us about his love. That’s why we are “weak” in the inner being and need to be made strong.
Does he have sufficient resources to overcome and subdue my fearful, anxious heart? Yes!
Fourth, the purpose or goal of this inner spiritual strengthening is that “Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (Eph. 3:17). The Christians in first-century Ephesus, just like you and me, were already sealed by the Spirit (Eph. 1:13), united with Christ in his resurrection and exaltation (Eph. 2:5–6), and incorporated into one body where the Spirit dwells (Eph. 2:22). Paul will even say in Colossians 1:27 that “the hope of glory” is “Christ in you.” So it can’t be that Christ didn’t already dwell in them or doesn’t now dwell in us. What we lack is the encouragement and incentive to draw on this truth—the ability or capacity to experience it in life-changing ways.
Paul is clearly praying to God for our felt experience of the person of Christ. He prays that we might be internally strengthened by the Spirit so that Christ might dwell in our hearts. But how can that be if we had already received Christ into our hearts when we were born again?
The only viable explanation is that Paul is referring to an experiential enlargement of what is already theologically true. He wants us to be strengthened by the Spirit so that Jesus might exert a progressively greater and more intense personal influence in our souls. The result of this expansion of the divine power and presence in our hearts is the ability to “comprehend” or grasp “what is the breadth and length and height and depth” (Eph. 3:18) of Christ’s love for us. Paul clearly wants his readers, and that includes all of us, to understand Christ’s love. But how is this possible if this love “surpasses knowledge” (Eph. 3:18)? How can you know what can’t be known? Clearly, this is not just an intellectual exercise. This is Paul’s way of saying that God intends for us to feel and experience and be emotionally moved by the passionate affection he has for us, his children.
When Paul says that we need strength to experience the indwelling presence and power of Christ, he says this comes through “faith” (Eph. 3:17). I think his point is that our weakness is in the area of faith: we simply don’t believe what we read in Zephaniah 3 or John 3:16 or any of those incredible descriptions in the Psalms of God’s steadfast love. We waver in our confidence. We worry that it might all turn out to be only a dream, perhaps a nightmare. Our faith must be strengthened and intensified. And only the Holy Spirit can make that happen!
This article is adapted from The Steadfast Love of the Lord: Experiencing the Life-Changing Power of God’s Unchanging Affection by Sam Storms.
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