(Ephesians 3:20-21) Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

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Eight weeks ago, we began looking into the Apostle Paul’s great prayers for the church. We have had a master of prayer – Paul himself – explain why he prayed for the church, what he prayed, and what he expected to result from his prayer. We’ve learned a lot, yet our in-depth study of these remarkable prayers will be a waste if it doesn’t inspire us to pray.

If we’ve learned anything, it is that God expects us to pray for the church, including California Road Missionary Church. I hope we’ve learned that praying for the church is crucial. So, after five months of sermons on prayer, and a two-month special focus on praying for the church, I have to ask: are we praying for the church? Have you prayed for California Road this week? Have you used what you’ve learned to pray for our church family and for Jesus’s larger church?

I’ve met people who believe in God but don’t believe in prayer. It is obvious they don’t believe in prayer: they don’t pray. They assume God is going to do what he is going to do, whether they pray or not. For them, prayer is at most a matter of adjusting our own attitudes and expectations.

But I don’t believe that and, more importantly, neither did the Apostle Paul. I agree with Henry Emerson Fosdick, who said: “Now if God has left some things contingent on man’s thinking and working, why may he not have left some things contingent on man’s praying? The testimony of the great souls is a clear affirmative to this: some things never without thinking; some things never without working; some things never without praying! Prayer is one of the three forms of man’s cooperation with God.”

I’ve met other people who pray, but only when they can’t think of anything else to do. For them, prayer is a parachute: they wouldn’t think of using it unless the plane was going down. The idea of cooperating with God in what he’s doing has never occurred to them.  But God has made room in his creation for us to be involved with him in ways that make a difference, and chief among those ways is prayer.

If we pray, some good things will happen that would not happen if we didn’t pray. Some bad things won’t happen that would have happened if we hadn’t prayed. St. Paul expected his prayers for the church to make a difference beyond changing his own attitude and raising his expectations. So do I? Do you?

The purpose of this series was not to stuff more information into our heads but to send us to our knees with some inspired prayers in our mouths. The church of Jesus – including Cal Road – is of enormous importance in God’s plans for the world and for our lives and we should be praying for it. If we do, some things will happen here that would not otherwise happen, and some things will not happen here that otherwise would.

For example: remember Paul’s prayer for the Colossian Church. He prayed that God would give them the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. They needed that knowledge to live a life worthy of the Lord and to please him in every way. We need that knowledge as much as, and for the same reasons, they did. Our worship committee and worship team are making decisions about what happens here on Sunday mornings; they need the knowledge of God’s will. The nominating committee is reaching out to potential leaders, and those potential leaders need the knowledge of God’s will. The ministry committee is considering new opportunities. We can help by asking God to give our church the knowledge of his will.

When we ask God for such knowledge, and he answers, there are four enormously valuable outcomes. The first is fruitfulness in the church’s work. Think of that. We are always working –children’s ministry, Manna ministry, lawn and maintenance, and on and on. To some degree, the fruitfulness of all that work will hinge on knowing God’s will. The difference between fruitful work and meaningless drudgery lies, in part, with our prayers.

The knowledge of God’s will not only make us fruitful; it makes us strong. Strong people, according to Paul, can endure. They can be patient. They can remain joyful. Weak people are not joyful people.

There are people at Cal Road who are going through trials. Some may be on the verge of giving up. They need strength to endure. Paul prayed for that. So should we.

Weak people won’t endure. Marriages will end. Church members will leave. Sunday School teachers will give up. Deacons will find something easier to do. If we don’t pray, we are not doing our part to help each other.

Watchman Nee put it this way: “Our prayers lay the track down on which God’s power can come. Like a mighty locomotive, his power is irresistible, but it cannot reach us without rails.”

In the prayer in Ephesians 1, Paul asked God to give the Ephesians a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. Have you and I prayed that prayer for Cal Road? Or Bethany Missionary Church, First Baptist, for the Nazarenes, and for our friends in other fellowships? What a difference it makes when the pastor gets up to preach if God has given the church a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. Being able to receive revelation, to gain wisdom concerning what God is like, what he can do, and what he wants, changes everything.

The prayer we have been looking at in Ephesians 3, the prayer for strength to know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ—how important that is in the midst of a general election. Do we know that “nothing can separate us from the love of Christ”? Whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris or Tim Matteson is elected president, nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. Grasping Christ’s love increases our courage, deepens our compassion, and causes us stand out against the darkness of our society the way stars stand out against the darkness of the night sky (Philippians 2:15).

In one sense, it’s not our prayers that make the difference; it’s the God to whom we pray who makes the difference. He is able to do things that we cannot imagine, things that have never even crossed our minds. His power is beyond comprehension. Our best-case scenarios, highest ambitions, and wildest dreams don’t come close to the reality of what God is capable of doing.

In Ephesians 3:20, Paul calls God (literally) “The one who is able.” Sometimes we talk about people that way: “She is a very able leader.” With God, we take that to another level.

“Able” translates a participle, the verbal form of the noun “power.” To be able is to have the power needed to accomplish something. The God to whom Paul has been praying has the power to accomplish everything he chooses to do. His power is limitless, his ability boundless.

The New Testament speaks of God as “the one who is able” in two other places: Romans 16 and Jude 24. In the Romans passage, God is able to establish you – that is, to make you strong; to keep you stable and secure. We are wobbly – both physically and spiritually – but God is able to make us stand firm.

In Jude 24, God is the one who is able to keep you from stumbling. I have seen Christians stumble and fall – into sin, and despair, and unbelief. We should pray to the God who is able to keep us from stumbling.

Jude goes on: “and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy.” How can that be? We are not without fault, but we are often without “joy,” certainly without “great joy.” Sometimes we are downright miserable. It seems impossible that we should stand before a perfect God without fault and with great joy. We can’t imagine it.

Precisely. Go back to our text: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine…” We don’t see any way for things to work out, but we see a hundred ways for them to go wrong – a thousand if we keep looking. We rack our brains, but we cannot think of a way through. We’re not asking for much. All we want is for things to be okay.

But God wants more than just okay. He is planning for perfect, planning for great joy. He is able (as Harold Hoener literally translated it) “to do beyond everything, very far in excess of that which we ask or think.”[1]

You want God to get you out of a tough spot. He’s planning on getting you into heaven. You want to avoid embarrassment. God is planning on bringing glory down on your head. You want your kid to be okay. He wants your kid to be amazing. And he is able to do all those things. He is “the One who is able.”

You say, “But how? How is he going to do these things?” I don’t know. But then, there are so many things I don’t know. And it is not just me. No one knew – neither human nor angel – how God would present us without fault and with great joy, nor could anyone imagine the instrument he would use to accomplish this: a Roman cross. No eye saw it, no ear heard it, no mind conceived it – except God’s. He is able to do what we are not even able to imagine!

His ability is very far in excess of anything we can ask or think. Listen to the words of St. Thomas Aquinas: “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” The first step is faith—but not in God’s great power. We begin by trusting his great love, revealed in the Christ of the cross.

Vance Havner put it this way: “…we miss so much because we live on the low level of the natural, the ordinary, the explainable. We leave no room for God to do the exceeding abundant thing above all that we can ask or think.”[2]

Look at verse 20 again: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine…” This extraordinary power is not merely potential energy – God could do this if he wanted to – it is kinetic energy. It is already at work within us, or “among us,” as the Greek could be translated. That power is currently at work in our church, among our people, and even in our inner persons. And prayer connects us to the power.

Karen and I were in Germany last year at this time. The places we stayed had plenty of electrical power at 230 volts, but our devices – computers, phone chargers, hair dryers – weren’t equipped with the right kind of connector to access that power. Christians who don’t pray are in a similar position. The power is there, but they are unable to access it. Prayer is the connector that plugs us into that power.  

Philip Yancy said: “Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn’t act the way we want God to, and why I don’t act the way God wants me to. Prayer is the precise point where those themes converge.”[3] It is not only the point where they converge; in countless lives, it has been the point where those themes unite to become a single story of beauty and power.

And glory. Look at verse 21: “to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Some scholars have argued that Paul could not possibly have written this because of the word order. They say that he never would have put the church before Christ Jesus. But this is to overlook the context. Paul has just written that God intends the church to be the showpiece of his unsearchable wisdom (Ephesians 3:10). He has put the church on display for the great spiritual powers to see. So, of course Paul desires God’s glory to be seen in the church.

Besides that, in Paul’s mind (though, perhaps, not in the minds of some scholars) the church is not – and can never be – divorced from Jesus. They are a package deal. People in our day often try to divide the church from Jesus. They say things like, “I believe in Jesus. I just don’t believe in the church. Organized religion is a sham.” Such a person’s experience of Jesus will always be profoundly limited for Jesus is united to his church and expresses himself through it. Yes, the church is unfinished and no one who loves the church (least of all, Jesus), is blind to its faults. Nevertheless, it is in the church that people experience Jesus’s love, and it is in the church that glory comes to God.

Even in times like this. More than ever, we must pray (Colossians 1:9-12) for the church to have the knowledge of God’s will. There is an opportunity in this moment for the church to serve God in the world and we mustn’t miss it. The world is ablaze, and our leaders are pouring gasoline on the fire. Israel is at war with its neighbors. Russia is at war with its neighbor. The U.S. is engaged in an ideological war with itself. But in these dark times, the church can shine to the glory of God. But we must keep asking God to give us the knowledge of his will.

We must also pray (Ephesians 1:17-19) for the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that we may grasp the glorious hope before us and the extraordinary value of the people nest to us – God’s chosen inheritance in the saints. And we must (Ephesians 3:14-21) pray for power – we’re going to need it – so God can fill us, his church, with all his fullness.

Will you pray? Will you pray earnestly, regularly, and confidently for God to give us the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding? Will you pray for our church to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will so that we can please him in every way? Will you pray for us to know the love of Christ at Cal Road church?

I am asking you to commit to praying for our church, Cal Road, at least once a week. Will you make that commitment? And will you use these great prayers – Philippians 1:9-11; Colossians 1:9-12; Ephesians 1:14-23; and Ephesians 3:14-21 – to inform your requests?

I close with the words of the great 19^th century preacher Charles Spurgeon. Using a church bell high in the belfry as a metaphor for prayer, he said this: “Prayer pulls the rope below and the great bell rings above in the ears of God. Some scarcely stir the bell, for they pray so languidly. Others give but an occasional pluck at the rope. But he who wins with heaven is the [one] who grasps the rope boldly and pulls continuously, with all his might.”

Let us win with heaven. Let’s pull together and let’s pull hard. Amen.

Blessing/Sending

Go in joy, people of God, for He can do immeasurably more than all we ask or even imagine, according to His power that is working in us. May He be glorified in His Church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever! Amen.

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[1] Harold Hoehner, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary, © 2002. Baker Books

[2] Vance Havner in the Vance Havner Quote Book. Christianity Today, Vol. 36, no. 14.

[3] Philip Yancey, Prayer (Zondervan, 2006)