Below are excerpts from this sermon, preached on October 20, 2024.

I suspect – and know this is true of me – that most of us pray because we are aware of a need, of discomfort, or of danger—and that’s good. When we are unaware of such things, we don’t think to pray. That’s not good.

That we don’t think to pray when things are going well exposes a shallow understanding of prayer and probably a false belief: that God left us here to muddle through and keep ourselves intact in the process. When that becomes more than we can manage, then it’s time to pray.

But do you see what this reveals about our view of God? We think he’s like the butler in Wodehouse’s Jeeves novels – the smartest, most capable person around – who (for some reason) has nothing better to do than to get us out of scrapes and make us comfortable. But to think that is to misconstrue our purpose here and God’s, his role and ours.

The Apostle Paul doesn’t think of God as if he were “our Jeeves in heaven.” It’s not that he doesn’t want us to pray about our needs—he tells us to do just that: to present our requests to God (Philippians 4:6). But most of Paul’s prayers in the Bible don’t come out of a sense of discomfort or fear or even need. They come out of an eagerness to serve God in what he is doing. That’s different than an eagerness for God to serve us in what we’re doing.

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The principal request in this prayer is for God to give – Paul knows that God is a giver – the Ephesians strengthening power. He asks him to do this “out of his glorious riches” or, better, “according to his glorious riches.” Paul is not asking God to deplete his riches by giving some of them to the Ephesians. He is asking the Father – the infinitely wealthy, incomparably generous God – to give in a way that is consistent with his famous largesse.

But Paul is not asking the Father to give these Christians money. He’s asking him to give them power; to strengthen them. Did you realize that God wants to empower you? He wants you to be strong and capable. Your strength is vital to God’s purpose.

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Our culture talks a lot about empowering people: women, children, minorities, workers, gays, the transgendered, and, lately, even white men (although it’s usually white men who talk about empowering white men.) Our society has a thing about power: it worships it. Don’t worship power. If you worship power, you’ll be the kind of person who will try to use God. But if you worship God, you’ll be the kind of person who can be trusted with power and will use it wisely.

When our culture empowers a person or a group of people, it divides them from other people. That’s how cultural power works: it raises some up and forces others down. God’s power is not like that. It doesn’t divide. It unites. God’s power does not enable people to get their way. It enables them to walk with others in God’s way. God’s power does not provoke resentment; it generates love. Let this sink in: God wants to empower you. God, said C. S. Lewis, “seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye.”[1] He empowers us.

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I’ve met parents who do not empower their children, even when they are twenty or thirty years old. I could almost believe they preferred their children to remain weak so they could control them. God is not that kind of parent. He wants his children to become strong.

There is an important reason for that. Look at verses 16 and 17, where Paul answers the why question: “that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being …” Why? So, you can be independent? That’s not it. So you can be tough? Not exactly. No, he strengthens you with power (verse 17): “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.”

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…the principal request of this prayer: that God will give these Ephesians power to become strong so that Christ can dwell in their hearts through faith. The word the ESV translates as “dwell” is used of a person settling down somewhere. For example, it is used of Jesus moving to Capernaum and making his home there. When we pray this prayer for someone, we’re praying that God will do what is necessary in that person so that Christ can settle in and make himself at home in his or her heart – the command center.

Why do people need to be strengthened for that to happen? Because genuine conversion is like a spiritual earthquake. Christ is bigger than your heart. If he comes to dwell in you, you will need to be renovated. Walls will be knocked out, the structure reinforced.

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A moment ago, I used the word “conversion” in regard to this project. Many people think of conversion as an instantaneous thing: I wasn’t a Christian. I was converted. Now I am a Christian. But that’s not the way it works. A heavenly course change may take only a moment, but an earthly saint takes a lifetime.

Conversion is a process that begins even before Christ comes to live in us. It begins with the Spirit’s work to prepare our hearts and minds. Then, when we say “yes” to God, the Spirit begins changing us on the inside. That’s what is in mind verse 16, where Paul prays for the Ephesians to be “strengthened with power through his Spirit in [their] inner being” – the inside man. Conversion continues throughout a person’s life on earth (and at least until the resurrection). That is why believers in Jesus keep growing, changing, and – if you won’t misunderstand me – getting “bigger.”

The process itself can be uncomfortable. Knocking out our carefully constructed walls can be painful. Raising the ceiling can be scary. The tools God uses to do that are sharp and disruptive. (But no one ever said that being a Christian is for wimps.)

That’s why God’s inside man or woman needs to be strengthened with power. Paul asked God to give that power to the Ephesians and we should ask God to give that power to us. We’re going to need it!

[1] 1 C.S. Lewis, The World’s Last Night and Other Essays (New York: Harcourt, Harvest Books), pp 8-9