Title: Pray Like Paul
Scripture: Ephesians 3:14-21
Speaker: Mike Rattin
Well, this is God's word for us this morning. Ephesians chapter three, verse 14. 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.
Excuse me. 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. And 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. Let's bond prayer.
Father, I pray that your spirit would give us eyes to see Jesus this morning. Ears to hear from your holy word. Grant repentance and change us and may our hearts long for you above all other longings.
In this we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Let me ask you this morning, does your prayer life seem at times just a bit off? More like a struggle, a battle than joyful.
Maybe your prayer life has become a little more than what I will call prayer flares. Like a flare gun safely tucked in the boat for emergencies. The kind of desperation prayer when a storm blows up and your boat is taking on water.
Help God save me in my distress. Prayers of desperation are not wrong or bad. We can't read the Psalms without seeing David shooting up prayer flares.
He's in desperation. He's calling on God to save him. Or maybe your prayer life is more mundane.
A two or three second prayer for food at the meal. And you begin to notice that you just repeated what you said the last meal. And the meal before that.
Or a prayer meeting where there is this kind of elephant in the room. Where divisions and addictions and other huge and real needs are simply avoided. Important eternal needs are never mentioned.
Instead we go for the safe kind of prayer. I think of it like an emergency room doctor in the ER with a heart attack. A patient in defib looking at his watch and saying, Well, it's time for my lunch break.
When there's a patient lying there in critical condition. I'm sure the doctor needs a break. But not now.
Not when there is this life and death emergency in front of him. I think too often we settle for what we would call sincere, mundane, or the temporal, earthly needs over the eternal needs. Prayer for healing of a friend or dealing with a broken bone.
Now don't get me wrong. And don't throw anything at me yet. I do believe those needs are significant.
And I join you in prayer for such concerns. But we most often pray for the immediate, temporal. And dare I say the safer things.
The outward physical things. And I confess from my experience it is much easier to pray safe. Pray general and safe prayers.
So before I do get excommunicated, I know there are many here who are committed to prayer. Personally, sincerely, I commend you. I commend this fellowship for the prayer list in the bulletin each week.
But the prayer of Paul in our text is so unlike any I remember praying in the church. Even as the discipline for prayer, the call to pray without ceasing remains. It's difficult to maintain this consistency.
I understand it. But I grew up in the church and prayer meeting was every week. And I don't remember us praying like this.
I remember reading this prayer of Paul and coming under conviction that my praying seemed so safe. A little prayer flair here and there. So missing the mark of the greater eternal needs of the church and my own great need.
In our text, Paul is in prison, isn't he? Yet he doesn't pray for his freedom. Because there's something more pressing of eternal significance for the believers at Ephesus and for us. Paul is alone yet is praying for this body of God.
For believers to know the Holy Spirit's power in the inner man. I find it hard for me to believe the church in Ephesus had no physical needs, no illnesses, no persecution, no financial needs. I certainly don't believe Paul is enjoying his time in prison.
Yet Paul's prayers for a spirit wrought power in the inner being. Have you prayed for that? For anyone lately? There's no prayer for outward growth, no nickels, noses, or numbers. No blessings on the programs.
Just spirit wrought power in the inner being of the saints along with the expectations that flow from that. Paul has already prayed for, in this very short letter, once in this fellowship of believers would know Christ with all wisdom to be Christ learners and knowers. Growing and knowing the Savior intimately.
A Christ-centered kind of knowing. But here Paul's prayer is for every believer to be strengthened with power by His Spirit in the inner man. To know such power that we would be filled with the fullness of God in Christ.
You see that? Fullness of God. Wow. The fullness of God.
That we want His Spirit to so empower us that we are filled with the fullness of God. What does that even look like? I want it. We should all long for it.
For whatever this is, for the church to truly, I think, flourish, we must know the power of the Spirit. Now, I grew up in a very fundamentalist type church and we prayed for revival. That the Spirit would come and give us revival.
I've heard others that pray for the Spirit to give them, you know, different fruits of the Spirit. Paul is saying here, you need to pray for the power of the Spirit so you would know the fullness of God ultimately. What does that look like? Well, we want to just take four points here.
Reason for Paul's prayer. Point of Paul's prayer. The expectations of Paul's prayer and the exaltations that follow his prayer.
Number one is reason for Paul's prayer. Verse 14, For this reason I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven and earth is named. There is a flow here, a continuation.
Paul is not writing verses. He's writing the church a letter that flows like a river of thought. It is divided into two kind of focuses.
Chapters one through three, the ground and the foundation. Chapter four through six, the application. All beginning in chapter one with one plan of God to make us saints or holy before God through our union with Christ.
In Ephesians 1 verse 10 says it this way, plan that he speaks of one plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth. Now Tom is going to be preaching on chapter one in the coming weeks. If I may pause here, I should just want to say how thankful I am for Tom and instructing and leading us through this wonderful book in the men's Wednesday morning Bible study.
We got to wander over this treasure already. But there's a wider and more immediate context in the beginning of chapter three, verse number one. We find these exact same words for this reason.
And it would seem that Paul begins to pray, but pauses to fill in some vital information that they need before he falls on his knees for this reason. And what is that vital information? That information in short is how God's Spirit had chosen both Paul and God's holy apostles and prophets to reveal a mystery. Well, what is that mystery? It is that through the Gospel, Jew and Gentile would now be one body together in Christ.
That both Jew and Gentile are now going to be in union with Christ, are saved and become one family of God. Now, what we see going on in this world, we know that's a miracle. If you follow Paul's river of thought, Paul taught in chapter 2, verse 1, that there is but one pathway to Christ.
That Jew and Gentile, some near, some far, both who began life dead in trespasses and sin, both sons of disobedience, both children of wrath like the rest of mankind. And whether you are one like our Elder Tom who came to Christ a bit later, or myself who came to Christ as a child we both ultimately have the same testimony. All come into this world as sinners, both children of wrath.
Again, it's kind of like the Ayatollah Khomeini if he came to Christ and Benjamin Netanyahu both came to Christ and they could sit here and sing the same praises together. Would that be amazing? Well, that's what God is doing here. And Paul says in verse 4 after he declares us dead in sin in chapter 2, verse 4, he says, but God being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us.
Even when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, made us alive, by grace you have been saved. We have nothing in ourselves to boast. We are loved.
We are called. We are graced. We are saved, redeemed, forgiven by the gift of faith in Christ Jesus.
Well, why and how? Because of God being rich in mercy. Isn't that who he says? Because of the great love with which He loved us. He graced us.
He gave us what we don't deserve and He doesn't give us what we do deserve. We who are dead in our trespasses are made alive together with Christ. By grace you are saved.
And then he goes on to say, for by grace you are saved through faith that not of your own doing it is the gift of God, not a result of worse, lest anyone should boast. So this mystery Paul reveals is that Jew and Gentile are united together in one body, one temple, one building. In chapter 2 verse 13 it says, but now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off are brought near by the blood of Christ and He Himself, that is Jesus, is our peace.
He breaks down the wall of division. He creates in Himself one new man in the place of two, so making peace. He reconciles us both to God in one body through the cross.
Verse 16 and verse 18 he says, and now through Him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. There's this incredible unity that takes place because of the cross. Verse 19, we're fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on one foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone.
And then verse 21, before the for this reason he says, that we grow into this holy temple in the Lord, you and I, now the temple, the dwelling place of God. Verse 21, in Him you also are being built together into this dwelling place for God by the Spirit. This is the church of Christ.
What an amazing picture, amazing fulfillment. This glorious union through Christ's death and resurrection. Those near and far are now one body in Christ, in Christ, in union with Christ.
One dwelling place for God. One temple. One access to the same Father.
And then back to Ephesians 3, verse 10, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to the rulers and authorities in heavenly places. There's no power like God's power to bring people from various backgrounds and places and situations and traditions together in Christ. Wow.
Grand expectations for a king to spread the news well beyond Gilmonton and well beyond New Hampshire. But Paul is humbled, both by this revelation and his part in revealing this ministry, and God out of two making one new man, one new body, one new temple. He falls on his knees for the second time in this letter.
He is humbled at such awesome calling. And he has really one prayer request. And then expectations that flow from that.
And that leads us to the point of Paul's prayer, verse 16, that according to the riches of His glory, He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being. What we need? What do I need? What do you need? Power. This will never happen on your own.
There's no program. There's no celebrity pastor can give you the power that you need. The Spirit of God must do that.
Note according to the riches of His glory. It's not out of, but in light of and according to His immense riches of His glory and how rich and glorious Christ, think all glory is His. If I have $1,000 and I give you a penny, I am fulfilling the out of command.
But if I give you according to my $1,000, then your gain is so much more. Isn't that amazing? Of the riches of His glory and power. Secondly, it's in your inner being.
Again, this isn't outward strength or power. Paul's only concern with his own outward circumstances is that they are not discouraged. They're not tripped up that he's in prison.
He mentions it, but bypasses his outward circumstances and targets the heart. That is the mind, the will, the seat of our emotions. The outward strength is good, right? But inward strength is what he's praying for.
This week I visited my orthopedic doctor. I seem to have more doctors and more doctors as I get older. And this one has helped me to walk without pain that arthritis and meniscus tears in my knees have caused.
They want to give me shots until my knees are so bad, the only option is a knee replacement. I guess Scott would know what I'm talking about. Other people do.
In other words, what he said to me was, your outward man is wasting away, man. You are just getting old. Second Corinthians 4, 16 says, so we do not lose heart, though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.
For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. Paul's target is our inner self, the heart. My outer self is going fast.
It's important, but it's not as important as my inner heart, my inner self. And it has been my experience and observation that we spend most of our time praying for our outer self stuff, those needs. And we too often neglect the inner self.
When I was doing this, a person that comes to my mind all the time when I think of this is Johnny Erickson Tana. You all know her, right? I only think what a heavyweight this lady is. And I say that with all due respect.
Her outward self is so very weak as a quadriplegic person for over 50 years. But is she ever spiritually strong? I love to see her kind of gasp for some air and then out of her mouth comes this beautiful, glorious praise to God. She sings.
Oh, she is strong. Insight. Oh, that He, God would grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man.
So what this power is, is it's granted by the Spirit and only those born again have the Spirit. So this power is only for those who have the Spirit of God. Again, this is an outward strength, no bunker buster bombs that can penetrate a mountain and blow stuff up at hundreds of feet below the surface.
Now that's power, but Paul is speaking of a superior power, a knowing of Christ's power that in his first prayer he says is simply immeasurable, life transformable. And in fact, he equates it with the raising of Christ from the dead. Now, no bunker buster bomb compares.
It's like a firecracker compared to raising a dead man and giving him life. And Christ did for me. When I believed and I trusted Him as my Savior, He took me from darkness and brought me into the light of Christ.
I so need that power in my inner being, in my heart. Any prayer requests out there? Any requests to prayer that I be strengthened with power through Christ's spirit in the inner being? Is that when somebody says, what's your prayer request? Pray that I be strengthened with power in my spirit, in my inner being, through the Holy Spirit of God. I guess I'd never heard anybody asked for that.
Well, why do we need that prayer? And I believe we can see three results or outcomes. The first is faith so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And that sounds a little confusing at first.
Some believe it could be accurate to see this as a way of saying the previous verse all over again and only in a different way. And being strengthened with power through the spirit is the same as Christ dwelling in your hearts through faith. Now, we know it is written to believers, people of faith.
And so it is a continuing, ongoing faith. It's not a new thing. I guess I see this as trusting Christ more and more.
That continues after conversion. It's not praying a prayer, getting saved, one and done. But it's a faith that begins as a mustard seed back there and just grows and grows and grows.
It's a faith that I need more today. You know, I've been a pastor a long time. I need faith.
I need more. Lord, give me more. More power.
More understanding. I think of it more as a Christ-centered life. A cross-centered, Christ-centered.
Eyes always focused on Christ, thereby growing in faith. This word dwelling is Christ ever at home, someone said. Christ ever growing more and more at home in your heart.
It is every day trusting in the Lord with all your heart, always acknowledging Him. Christ always directing our paths. It is not a platitude, but a real growing faith.
Not centered on me and on my faith or faith stake, but the Person of our faith, Jesus Christ. It is Jesus becoming your treasure every day. Your highest pleasure every day.
I think this is so transformational. Paul evaluated churches on the basis of their seeable faith and hope and love, didn't he? It's an evidence of the Spirit of Christ growing, deepening, and transforming the heart. And Paul would commend the churches as he does in Ephesians 1.15. He said, for this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and love toward the saints.
Paul sees and hears of their faith and then he prays for more. That seems to be his habit. When he comes to churches, he says to Thessalonians, we'll read in just a second, I see your faith.
It's awesome. Hallelujah. I pray that you grow more in faith.
Isn't that amazing? Do you know what I need as an old duffer? More faith. Do you pray to that end? That the Spirit of God would so empower me that my faith, there would be this Christ-centeredness, trust in my heart. Galatians says it this way, I have been crucified with Christ.
It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. In the life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. So are you trusting? Is He the center? Is He at home in your heart and growing? This is a need that again never ends.
A need that is never arrived at or fully satisfied in this world. I'm convinced that the strongest of saints are those who both see their need and humbly pursue the Spirit's power to make this even more true. I think maybe we fail to access this prayer of Paul because we think we've arrived.
And we compare ourselves with somebody else that's dangerous all the time. It was John Calvin who said, believers have never advanced so far as not to need further growth. The highest perfection of the godly in this life is an earnest desire to make progress for more.
So let's go. Let's grow, right? The second reason Paul says we need the power of the Spirit is so that we will always be reaching and grasping the fullness of the love of Christ. This too is more than any person can accomplish in their own power and strength.
It isn't like, oh yeah, Jesus died for me on the cross. No, Jesus did die on the cross for your soul. Eternal soul.
Here he says it this way, verse 18, we 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. No one and done here. It's amazing to think that you need the Holy Spirit to grant you the power in your inner being to grasp the wonder of His love for you.
But you do, and I do. You are loved by the God of the universe. You are loved by the very Son of God.
I guess we should say what this is This love is never opposed to the truth of God's Word. Truth and love are inseparable in Scripture. This world has so watered down, redefined love as to make it unrecognizable to Scripture.
In this world, love is at best a means of kind of self-fulfillment, a man-centered, flesh-pleasure, me-centered way. It's a temple to worship me. My temple.
It's a life of autonomy from Christ. When the true love of Christ is finding Christ to be the One and great pleasure and treasure. What is this love of Christ for us? Paul speaks of its vastness.
It's God-centeredness. It's Christ-focused. Again, some have divided breadth and length and height and depth.
And I don't know, I think that's impossible for me. But I know that when you reach the heights of it, Christ is higher still. His love is higher still.
If you plumb the depths of it, His love is deeper still. When you reach and measure the breadth and length of Christ's love for you, you run out of measure. I know it was the steadfast love of God that David is always, if you read the Psalms, he's always talking about.
But I have trusted in your steadfast love. Or Psalm 25, 7, Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions, and according to your steadfast love, remember me. I know that when God told Moses His name, Yahweh, Yahweh, He defined it this way, a God merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
That's who He is. Do you know that? Do you know that in here? In here? Is that growing? Is He at home dwelling? I do find amazing Paulist praying for us to comprehend that which is, in the end, incomprehensible in this world. A fountain that never runs dry.
A love that has no equal or measure. Certainly no end. It is the mature saint who hasn't arrived, but is always reaching, always grasping more and more of God's love in Christ.
We can see it in the Father sending His own Son to die. We can see it in the humble Son of God, our Savior Christ and King who gave His life a ransom for many. It's now being in union with Christ.
It's the Father in love. The Father predestined us for adoption. We are now children of the Father because He sent His Son in love to you and me.
It's unbreakable height nor depth nor anything else according to Romans chapter 8. Anything else in creation will be able to separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. That in itself is so foreign to this world's kind of love. The love of this world is fragile and breakable.
I mean, God's love is eternal, forever, unbreakable. We know that the Spirit of God fills us with the Father's love in Romans 5 at our salvation. And it is now the Spirit of God who must empower us to know the fullness of His love for us.
And that is every day growing and learning. This is how a Jew and Gentile can become the same body, both stones and bricks in one temple. The need to grow in knowing Christ's love is a never-ending pursuit.
That is why we find Paul at times commending again the faith and love in a church and then praying for more. He says this in 1 Thessalonians 1, we give thanks to God always for you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before God and Father your work of faith, your labor of love, your steadfastness of hope. And Paul's going, yes! By chapter 3, he's praying and saying these words, as we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see your face, you face to face, and supply what is lacking in your faith.
So what is it, Paul? Lacking or do they have an abundance? Or both? You can be a person of faith and need more faith. He goes on and prays, now may the God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all as we do for you so that he, that is God, may establish your hearts, your hearts blameless and holiness before our God. See, I think the more you know the love of God, the more obedient you'll be to Christ.
I don't think obedience comes as, you know, like putting on your boots by pulling your boots on by, you know, by the straps. It's not, it's not a physical huff and puff. It's knowing Christ's love for you.
It will be this very church at Ephesus that looks from every way from the pews to be a great church. They had so much going for themselves, doctrinally battling sin. But in the book of Revelation, it is this church at Ephesus that gets this warning.
He says, I have this against you that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.
We must be ever growing through the power of the Spirit and understanding and owning Christ's love. The reality is you can have a church with a million dollar organ and edifice to unlike any other programs in galore. But if you are not growing in love, you're not the church of Jesus Christ that He wants you to be.
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss to bear the dreadful curse for my soul. Or one of my favorite hymns in all of the hymns that have come is could we with ink the ocean fill. And were the skies of parchment made, were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man ascribed by trade to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole though stretched from sky to sky. Oh, the love of God. How rich and pure.
How marvelous. Do you see that love of God for you? Do you pray God's Spirit to empower you to see it? To grasp His love? So are you reaching and growing and knowing Christ's love? There is no end to this discovery. No end of seeing.
No elder is there. No pastor is there. I need your prayer that I would grow and that I would know the Spirit's power to grow in faith and love.
So do you. Which leads us to the fullness of God. Verse 18, that you may be filled with the fullness of God.
I've scratched my head on this a long time, and let me suggest this definition. The fullness of God is the Spirit's power growing you in faith and ever growing you in the knowing of His love. That's the fullness of God.
God is love, right? Can there be a greater longing, a higher calling, than to be filled with the fullness of God? The matured is not having altogether maturity is a life that is always increasing, always growing. You are loved by Christ. Now, in Christ, made holy by Christ.
Be who you are in Christ and know that love more and more daily. This is like to be like Jesus. My little children, Paul says, for whom I am again in anguish until Christ be formed in you.
And so much is at stake. And in 1 John 4, we read, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves God has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
In this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent His own Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation, the substitute for our sin. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another.
No one has ever seen God if we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us. I think that is the fullness of Christ. God's love in us.
When we understand God's love for us, when God's love is in us, when we are manifesting that love in love for others, it's the fullness of God in us. Paul's prayer for the church at Philippi was this. In Philippians 1 verse 8, For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affections of Christ Jesus.
It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless in a day of Christ. Loving Christ more and more is vital to your faith walk, to your walk with Christ, your growth in Christ. He prayed this, and may the Lord, this is for the Thessalonian church, so this is not just a church, it's not just one church, it's all the churches, and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all as we do for you.
We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as it is right, because your faith is growing abundantly and your love for every one of you and for another is increasing. Oh, that God would increase our love for one another. First, that we would so understand God's love for us that it would turn into God's love for others.
So is this fullness of God, this faith in Christ, this love for Christ increasing in you? You can get a PhD in religion according to 1 Corinthians 13 and be nothing more than a clanging cymbal, just empty noise. A church can have, again, a million dollar organ the greatest edifice, plenty of programs, and it has not love of God according to Scripture. It's meaningless.
So how do we grow in such love? How do we know such fullness of God? We first pray for the power of the Spirit to enable us like Paul prayed. Prayed it for each other. Prayed it for me.
We would see and experience His love daily. And then to reach for it in His Word. Ask others to pray for you that God's Spirit would grant you such power to know His love.
Some of us are known by our cranky pants than as being godly, loving fathers and mothers and husbands and wives. Every once in a while, I am there. Sad to say.
Let's finally keep running to God's Word, to the truth, to seek to know God's love and view the many facets of His immeasurable love for you and me. One illustration that may help happened to be on a visit. My son, somewhere back there, is a missionary in Uganda.
And my son Joshua took me to meet a friend in Kampala, Uganda for lunch. And his name is Robert Nwanjiri. My grandson tried to help me say that right.
I don't say it right, but that's the best I can do. My tongue doesn't twist around. But Robert is from the Mochigu tribe.
And I had known of him but had never met him until that day. And when we met, I went to shake his hand, but he came up to me and he gave me this great big bear hug. Which would have been okay, but he held on to me.
And he held on to me. And it seemed like forever. And though maybe it was a minute or more, I don't know.
I admit I was uncomfortable until he stopped and he looked at me and he said, he said, that is a Mochigu hug. We hold on until we feel your heartbeat. And I'm like, wow.
Some of us, I run so fast, we don't have time to hold on to Christ and just enjoy who He is. See Him in His Word. Experience Him when we come together through each other's love of Christ.
Through the power of the Spirit of God, we need to hold on to Christ till we feel His heartbeat. Keep holding on, keep praying to see and feel and experience more and more of His love. And His love would be a launch pad for your love for others.
So does anyone have a prayer request this morning? Would you pray for me? Would you pray for my wife, Sue? That according to the riches of His glory, the Father will grant us to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner being so that we will grow in faith and know God's incomprehensible love and so know the fullness of God. Oh, I need your prayer. We need your prayer.
Maybe you could look at those next to you in your row. That's uncomfortable, isn't it? Would you pray for them now? Today? This week? Maybe move this from not being on your prayer list to the top of your prayer list. For your spouse, for your children, for your pastor, for your elders, for the church.
Paul doesn't close there. He closes with a doxology. This is number four, the exaltation.
Fourth point, quickly, the doxology of praise and expectation of God's Spirit at work within us. If your first response is, man, this is all just wishful thinking. If you listen, you will hear this praise to God, this expectation that God will do what He promises to do, that this will flow out of Paul's heart in praise and glory to God.
Here's what he says. I close. Now to Him that is to our Father, 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. Amen. Let's pray.
O Holy and so loving Father, You have loved us in sending Your Son to die on Calvary's cross for our sin. And in a glorious display of power, raised Him from the dead, all glory and praise to You. You raised us from darkness to Your glorious light.
You've taken away our sin and granted us Your righteousness. What love is this! Grant us eyes to see and hearts to understand and see and feel and wonder and hold on to such love for sinners made holy by our blessed King. Grant us the power of Your Spirit that we will see and know such amazing love through Christ for Your children.
And may our love for Your children grow as well. We pray this according to Your amazing power at work within us. To Your everlasting praise.
Amen.