How to Pray for This Church - Part 2

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Recently I read an article, I think it was in Newsweek, that there is a growing popularity of a certain kind of publishing in this country – it's called graphic books. Now, when you first hear that expression, you may think it means graphic violence, or other things that are done to excess. But, in reality, what it means are books that are, or amount to, picture books – they are like the old comic books were, but more extensive, and that's growing in popularity. The article went on to say that in that field, as they portray these characters who are these heroes with incredible strengths, that the trend today is to portray all of those heroes with some gaping fault, some glaring fault in their character – well, that's really an accurate portrayal of human history, isn't it? Human history is filled with true stories, as well as legends, of men who were incredibly strong but who were, at the same time, gripped by some great spiritual or character weakness. When you think of human history, who's the strongest person who ever lived? Of course, historically, that has to be Samson, whom God gave super-human strength – but tragically, Samson, as strong as he was, had his Delilah, and to this day, when you think of Samson, you not only think of his great strength, but you think of his incredible weakness. If you think of legend and fiction, whether it's the comic books of today or whether it's back when I was growing up – Superman with his kryptonite – you see that there is always this sort of flaw.

This problem of a tragic flaw has a label; it's called, in our culture, an Achilles heel. That's an interesting expression – it's an expression that comes from the central character in western literature's most famous poem, Homer's Iliad; perhaps you read it when you were in school. Now, the death of Achilles is not mentioned in Homer's Iliad but appears in later Greek poetry and drama, and according to the myth, Achilles' mother, in an effort to make him immortal and invulnerable, dipped the infant Achilles into the River Styx, and wherever the waters touched him, he became invulnerable. But, as the legend goes, his mother had to dip him into the river with something, and so she did so by holding his heel to dip him into the River Styx, so he was absolutely invulnerable everywhere except the place where her thumb and her forefinger met on his heel. As you know, eventually Achilles dies, and in the myth, he's killed by a poison arrow that struck him in his one vulnerable spot, in his heel – that's where the expression Achilles heel comes from. So, an Achilles heel, then, has come to mean a fatal weakness in someone who otherwise has incredible strength – in the myth, it's a physical flaw, but we most often use it metaphorically, to speak of some flaw of the soul that leads to the person's ruin. Both legend and history are full of stories of people who were relatively strong in other areas, but who had some Achilles heel.

Why are such stories so popular, you ever ask yourself that – why do we like stories like that; why is that common today? It's because stories of someone who has a fatal flaw resonate in the human heart – most of us have some sense of the weakness of our souls, and becoming a Christian doesn't end that reality. Conversion puts us on the path toward spiritual strength, but it is only the beginning – growing is essential. Conversion is to the spiritual life what birth is to the physical life, and then you must grow; you have to grow into a physically strong person, and that is not an overnight process; it requires years of growth, and it requires specific activities. If you've been to a gym lately, then you know that there are specific exercises for almost every muscle in the human body: Do this, and it will strengthen this particular muscle, or this particular muscle group.

This morning, we're going to talk about one of the most important exercises for overcoming the weaknesses of your soul, your Achilles heel, if you will, or Achilles heels. And that exercise that is so essential for us is prayer – not just generic prayers, not just the everyday sort of prayers that we pray, but a specific kind of prayer, a prayer that Paul prays for the Ephesians. We began last week to study what I think may be Paul's greatest recorded prayer, and it's found in Ephesians 3, beginning in verse 14. Paul writes:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever, Amen.

This prayer is absolutely crucial and central to this letter to the church in Ephesus – it is, if you will, the hinge on which the letter swings. The first three chapters are primarily doctrinal; in fact, they are exclusively doctrinal. There isn't a single imperative – not one command in the first three chapters, except for one that tells them to remember. On the other hand, the last three chapters, chapters 4, 5, and 6, are filled with moral imperatives; they are filled with commands that you and I are to carry out – in between the doctrine and the practice is this prayer. Because it is the way, the contents of Paul's prayer, and what he prays for the Ephesians, and what we must pray for ourselves as well – this is how we translate doctrine into practice; this is how what we know becomes a part of how we live. It's absolutely crucial that we understand it, because it not only gives us a glimpse of Paul's prayers, it becomes a model for our own. In this prayer, we discover the foundational principles of effective prayer for ourselves and for the church.

Last week, we learned the first three of those foundational principles of effective prayer for the church – let me just briefly remind you of them. Foundational principle number one: Pray according to, or in response to, revelation; pray according to revelation. Paul begins his prayer "for this reason," and we talked about all that informed that expression, all the doctrine that he had taught, prompted Paul to pray – it was the revelation of God that drove Paul to his knees, and so it should be with us. The second foundational principle is: Pray with humility – he says, "for this reason I bow my knees;" that's a picture of a subject bowing before a sovereign king, coming in humility. God is not our "homeboy," God is not our genie in a bottle and all we have to do is rub the bottle and He jumps out to do whatever we want – we come on our knees before the God of the universe, our Maker, the one who sustains our lives. As Daniel told Belshazzar, he said this is the God who holds your life breath in His hands – and that's how we come; we come in humility before our King. Principle number three: Pray according to God's character – if you're going to come to God, you come to Him understanding who He is, and Paul understood who He was. And in this introduction to his prayer, he highlights, he either directly states or implies some of those characteristics or attributes of God that prompted him to prayer, that drove him to prayer, that were the foundation on which his prayers were built – let me briefly mention those to you. Here, he mentions the greatness of God – "I bow my knees." The love of God – I bow "before the Father." The power of God – he calls God the one "from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name." The goodness and generosity of God – he says in verse 16 that God "would grant you," that God would give you; he assumed that God was generous by nature. And the glory of God – "according to the riches of His glory," I want Him to answer this request. Paul prayed understanding who God was, and these qualities in God, these attributes of God were the foundation from which his prayers rose up, and if you and I are going to learn to pray, we have to understand God like this; we have to see Him like Paul saw Him. The reason we don't pray is because we have no grasp on who our God really is – if we really understood who He was, you couldn't keep us from prayer.

Today, we come to the fourth principle of effective prayer, and it's this – pray for spiritual growth. Pray for spiritual growth. This covers, really, from verse 16 all the way down through verse 19 – this is the heart of this passage, because here, we meet Paul's specific prayer request. Now, just to set you some context, particularly for those of you who may be visiting with us this morning, if you go back in Ephesians – and we looked at this in great detail – but if you go back to Ephesians 2, beginning in the middle of the chapter, running from chapter 2, verse 11, all the way until this prayer begins – so, running through chapter 3 verse 13, Paul is laying out the truth about the church, this new thing that God has done, God's great eternal secret called the church. And the church, Paul tells us, is to be the stage on which God displays Himself – not only to human beings, but even to angelic beings. God uses the church – that's us, not the building – God uses the church as the stage on which to present His glory; to display His glory. Now, when I read that, as when we went through it together, you have to ask yourself the question, how can that happen; how can we be a stage for the glory of God? We are, after all, weak and sinful inherently – we are so prone to selfishness and pride and infighting – how can such a noble goal be achieved through us? The answer is found in the petitions of Paul's prayer.

Now, before we study each one of them individually, which we're going to do today, and in the weeks ahead, let me make three general observations. Let me make three general observations about these requests – and, if you grasp these observations, they're really life-changing, they're mind altering, they are paradigm-shifting observations. Number one: The priority of Paul's prayers was always spiritual. The priority of Paul's prayers was always spiritual. It's not a problem to pray for the needs of this life – you should do that; in fact, we are commanded to do that. You remember the fourth petition in the Lord's Prayer says "give us this day" what? "Our daily bread" – Lord, give us the needs of this life, meet the needs we have here and now; and there are countless biblical examples of people doing just that. So, that's perfectly fine to do; we ought to do that – but, by far, the greatest number of biblical prayers are about spiritual issues and spiritual needs. In fact, if you go back to the Lord's Prayer, you remember when we studied it together, and it's now being reviewed on the radio – but, when we studied the Lord's Prayer, there are six petitions; those six petitions are like outline points of things we ought to pray for. Of those six, one of them is given to the needs of this life, and the other five are all about spiritual matters. When Paul prayed, he understood that, and he prayed for the same kinds of priorities – spiritual priorities. All three of his requests for the Ephesians are for their spiritual progress, their spiritual advancement. If you had to categorize your prayers – if you had to sort of rank, in percentages, the content of your prayers, what percentage of your praying is given to your material earthly needs, things here and now that are going to go away, and what percentage of your prayers is given to spiritual issues – your own, and the spiritual issues around you? Our Lord taught us the ratio ought to be something like one to five.

Now, there's a second general observation I would make here – not only was the priority of Paul's prayers always spiritual, but secondly, the focus of Paul's prayer was not for a change in his circumstances. The focus of Paul's prayer was not his circumstances. Paul is deeply concerned for this church – he loved these people, he founded this church, after all, and he desperately wanted to be with them to teach them, to help them. But where's Paul? He's in prison in Rome; he can't get to them. But notice, in Paul's prayer here – for that matter, in his entire letter – there is not one single hint that Paul is spending his time in Rome praying for a change in his circumstances. He's not praying that he would be released from prison – he's not saying, you know, God, it's so hard here, and it's, you know, it's so uncomfortable, and this situation is so hard; please take this away. In fact, let me show you what he does want the Ephesians to pray for him – turn over to Ephesians 6; here's what he wants to be prayed for him. Verse 18.

With all prayer and petition, pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints (and here's what I want you to pray, notice verse 19), pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.

Paul doesn't say, you know, pray for me – things are hard here, life is hard in prison, I didn't deserve this, I've served God faithfully, I don't understand why this has come into my life. The Ephesians, by the way, were apparently facing some of their own problems. You go back to the section just before what I just read in chapter 6 – he tells them in verse 10, you've got to be strong, you've got to stand firm, you've got to put on the armor of God because you are wrestling. You're locked in a life and death battle, not with flesh and blood, but you're locked in a life and death battle with demonic forces; we'll talk more about that when we get to this passage. But Paul, then, in light of their circumstances, is not praying that the Ephesians would be removed from those troubles and those struggles and that life and death wrestling match. Now, there's a great lesson for us here, folks, because this is how we pray – we always tend to pray for our circumstances. We ought, instead, to spend far more time asking God to sanctify us through those circumstances, than for our circumstances to be removed. I love the way Lloyd-Jones puts it; he says, "Christianity is never concerned primarily with the solving of our difficulties and problems. The Christian way of dealing with all life's problems is not, in the first place, to do anything about them, but to deal with our own spiritual state. In the last analysis, it is not the temptations that meet us in the streets that determine our conduct – it is the heart of the man who faces them." So, we must understand that prayer is not primarily to be about our circumstances, and we see that in Paul's prayer here.

The third general observation I want you to see, in these three requests, is that prayer is essential to your spiritual growth. Prayer is essential to your spiritual growth. Paul founded this church, as I mentioned, in Ephesus – he spent almost three years living among them, teaching them night and day, publicly, and from house to house, Acts 20 tells us – and now, he's writing to them, some ten years after founding the church; some six years after he left them, he's writing back to them this inspired letter. But in addition to all of that, he sees his prayer for them as absolutely essential for their spiritual growth, because here he prays – he sees an inseparable link between their spiritual growth and his praying. Do you see that little word "that" at the beginning of verse 16? In Greek, it's a subordinating conjunction, the subordinating conjunction hina. And hina is best translated "in order that" – so Paul says, I pray in order that these spiritual requests might become a reality in your life. You see the link Paul saw? He said, listen, all I've taught you, all I've poured out in my teaching to you, all I'm writing you – those things are all important, but I'm praying that these things might become a reality in your life; I'm praying in order that these things might become true. Now, that's a huge paradigm-shifting understanding. You cannot grow spiritually without the Bible – understand that. You cannot grow spiritually without the Bible. Peter says, desire the sincere milk of the word that you may what? Grow by it. It can't happen without the Bible. But Paul's prayer here means that you can have the word, you can sit under good teaching – in fact, if you're like the church in Ephesus, you can even be taught the word of God by an apostle – and still not grow spiritually. As I've told you often, the Bible is not a magic book; you can't just run your eyes over the words and be changed, you can't just sit there in the pew and hear it taught and expect to leave changed. Having a knowledge – listen very carefully to this – having a knowledge of the Bible doesn't make you any spiritually stronger than having a knowledge of that exercise equipment stored in your closet makes you physically stronger. I'm speaking hypothetically, of course; I'm sure that isn't true, but you get the point. Knowing how this Christian life works is no different than knowing how that exercise equipment works – it's not going to change you. Paul understood and taught that God uses the scripture; He uses our study of the scripture, our meditation on the scripture, our application of the scripture, along with our prayers, together, to produce spiritual growth – you can't neglect any of the God-ordained tools.

You know, some Christians feel like they struggle year after year; they feel like they see very little spiritual progress. If that is true in your life, if you can say that's true of me, then I can guarantee you that if you aren't growing there are only a handful of possible reasons – this isn't complicated. One reason is that perhaps you're not a Christian at all – maybe you prayed a prayer back when you were five, and since then you've lived your own life your own way and have frankly lived very much as if God didn't exist. Well, if you're not a Christian, you don't have the power to change; there is no capacity in you to change. So, the fact that you are so flatlined may be an indication that you are flatlined. Or, you may be a Christian, but you may be living in unrepentant sin – now, that can't happen very long because what has God promised will happen to those children of His who live in a pattern of unrepentant sin? He will deal with them as human parents are supposed to deal with their human children – He will discipline them. So, God will deal with the Christian who lives in a pattern of unrepentant sin – He told the Corinthians that, as a result of the unrepentant sin, some of them were weak and sick and some have even died; God brings trouble into the life. But sometimes, if you can live for year after year after year in unrepentant sin and not feel the hand of God's discipline, it's probably because you're not His child – God doesn't spank other people's children. It may be that you are neglecting your intake of scripture; you're neglecting one of those tools God has given us for spiritual growth, the intake of scripture – you must have the scripture to grow; you must be learning it, you must be studying it, you must be meditating on it, you must be applying it to your life, you must be seeking to obey it. Or you may be neglecting prayer – prayer is essential to your spiritual growth. That's what we see in Paul's prayer here for this church he loved so much.

So, those are some general observations about these requests – but I want us to look at the specific request. As I mentioned a moment ago, the little Greek conjunction hina, which means "in order that," occurs three times in this prayer – and that little word marks off Paul's three main requests and helps us sort of outline it and work our way through the passage. What follows hina, in each case, speaks of the contents of Paul's prayer, so let me mark it out for you – you may want to just lightly underline the right words in your Bible, so you know what the three requests are. Paul says, I pray for three things. Number one: Verse 16, hina, in order that, "He would grant you … to be strengthened … in the inner man" – that's request number one; so, the little word "that" at the beginning of verse 16. The second hina is in the middle of verse 17 – "that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ" – that's prayer request number two. The third hina is in the middle of verse 19 – "that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God" – those are the three requests. The rest of the passage, the rest of what's around them, sort of help explain and underscore those three basic requests.

Now, this morning, in the time we have left, I want us to begin to examine the first request – and you heard that right, begin to examine; there's no way we can exhaust this in the time we have left this morning. It's a request for spiritual strength – notice verse 16 again; here's the first request, that you may be strengthened, or the way he puts it here in verse 16, "that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man." Now, this immediately highlights that the nature of our spiritual struggles is not external – our real problem is not our circumstances; our real problems are inside. Jesus addressed this issue with His disciples – you remember, in Matthew 15, He talks about the whole hand-washing thing. And He says, listen, what goes into you isn't what defiles you – the food you eat without washing your hands isn't going to defile you; you eat it, it goes into your stomach, it's eliminated – that isn't what messes you up. What messes you up is what comes from your heart, Jesus said, because out of the heart comes all of these sins. So, the real problem you have isn't the external, the things coming at you from the outside – the real problem you have is your heart. Now, as Christians, that is still true; our problems are not external. Jesus lived – listen to this carefully – Jesus lived in the same kind of sinful world we do, but without sin – so, our problems are not outside, our problems are inside. Our problem as Christians is with what the Bible calls our flesh.

So, Paul's concern is not with the circumstances – not with the external. His concern, notice verse 16, is for what he calls the inner man. The inner man. Now, what is this inner man? First of all, let me make sure you are clear on what it does not mean, because there is a teaching that's popular, even here in Dallas, that could be very confusing. This does not mean that you are a spiritual schizophrenic, that you are one body indwelt by two different people, the old man, and the new man, and the old you and the new you are fighting it out inside to see who wins; that's not the picture the Bible portrays. What the Bible tells us is that in regeneration – and we studied this at length, back a year or so ago on Sunday night – in regeneration, the real you was re-created. The scripture uses these graphic images of bringing death to life, of re-creation, to describe what happens at the moment of conversion – you become a new person in Jesus Christ at the moment of salvation; not two people, one person. But – and here's the catch – that one person that you are, that new person in Christ that you have become, is incarcerated still in what the Bible calls your flesh. Your flesh is simply that part of you that remains unredeemed; its beachhead is your body, which will someday, according to Romans 8 – when Jesus comes back – our bodies will be redeemed; until then, we are a new person incarcerated in the flesh. So, the inner man here does not mean one of those two people that are inside of you battling it out; that's not a biblical concept at all. So, what does it mean? Well, let's let the Bible define its terms, and it does so in two other passages where it's used. The first one is Romans 7:22 – you don't need to turn there, just listen to what Paul says. He says, "I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man" – so, whatever the inner man is, it's the part of the Christian that resonates with, that loves God and His law. I think 2 Corinthians 4 makes it a lot clearer – in 2 Corinthians 4:16, Paul writes this: "Though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day." So, when Paul uses this term inner man, it is the opposite of the outer man – it's the opposite of the part of us that's decaying day by day; in other words, the inner man is the real you, it is the immaterial part of the Christian – it is your soul. You see, your body's just a tent, or as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, it's a "house" you live in. It's a real part of you – we're not meant to be separated from our bodies, and that's what he develops there in 2 Corinthians 5 – nevertheless, it isn't you; when your body dies, you will continue to live. So, Paul is talking, when he talks about the inner man, he's talking about you – the real you – that lives inside that body; your soul, your eternal, immaterial part that has been redeemed.

So then, notice what Paul prays for the real you – that He, that is, God, "would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man." Now, that verse is absolutely packed with profound truth, and I want us to just unpack it together – let's start with the heart of it; that is, his request. For that immaterial part of you – the real you, your soul – he says, God, I want You to strengthen him with power. Now, first of all, notice that there are two different words, English words, for strength or power here, and there are also two different Greek words – the Greek word that's translated in our English translations "power" has to do with the power to act; it's ability, the power to act. The second Greek word, and the one that's translated as "be strengthened," is a very unusual word – it occurs only four times in the New Testament. It's used often in the Old Testament of growing strong, and outside the scripture it's used by only one writer, and he uses it in a most interesting way. He uses it to mean – this is Philo – he uses it to mean to become strong by exercise. So, let's put all of that together – Paul is praying that our souls would grow strong, or become strong, by exercise; this emphasizes the human responsibility in growth; there are things we must do, each of us must do. In fact, here in Ephesians 4, Paul says, in verse 22, you've got to "lay aside the old self," verse 24, you've got to "put on the new self," and then he goes into a series of commands; do this, don't do this, do this, don't do that. There are things we have to do to grow strong; we have to exercise.

Probably the classic passage, though, is 1 Timothy 4:7, where Paul tells his young son in the faith, I want you to "discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness." The word "discipline" is the Greek word we get our word "gymnasium" from; it's the word used for where people who were training for the athletic games there in Corinth would train. It speaks of extreme physical rigorous discipline, like the Olympic athletes have had to do to make it to the Olympics. Paul is saying to Timothy, I want you to discipline your soul, discipline yourself for spiritual strength in the same way that those Olympic athletes discipline their bodies for physical strength and endurance. That's our responsibility, but – and here's a key issue – every time this Greek verb for strengthen occurs in the New Testament, every time, it is always passive, in the passive voice; theologians call that the divine passive. In other words, we're not the ones doing it – God is the one doing it. "Be strengthened" means somebody else is strengthening us, and that's God. We must exercise our spiritual muscles in order to grow, but in the end, only God can make us grow – God is the only one who can give us strength. In fact, notice in verse 16 again, "that He would grant you" – literally, that He would give you, as a gift, strength. So, remember this, folks – our efforts don't make us strong; it is still a work of God's grace. We expend the effort, but God produces the change. So, let's put the heart of this prayer together then – let me put it to you like this: We must pray for ourselves, and for other Christians, that as they exercise their spiritual muscles, God, as a gift of His grace, would cause their true inner selves to grow strong with the ability or capacity to act – that's what Paul is saying.

Now, we're about to get to chapter 4. Chapters 4-6 are filled with practical commands – if you've ever read the second half of Ephesians, you know that it feels like an impossible task. So, before Paul unloads all of these commands, he prays that God would cause us to grow strong in the capacity to act, the capacity to live out what we have come to know. This is what Augustine prayed in his Confessions – I love this – and this is what his nemesis hated. Augustine wrote "Give me the grace, O Lord, to do as You command. Give me grace to do as You command, and then command me to do whatever You will. O holy God, when Your commands are obeyed, it is from You that we receive the power to obey them." Paul says this very thing over in chapter 6, verse 10 – he says, "be strong." In your own strength? No – in the Lord, and in the strength of His might; this is how it always works. This morning, I read for you Isaiah 40 and that passage I love; you know, that ending passage – I remember the first time I really came to understand that; you know, we shall renew our strength. I was in first year Hebrew class, and I was translating that passage, and it literally says – and it startled me, because it literally says, we will exchange our strength. In other words, we get His strength in exchange for our weakness when we wait on Him, that's what Paul is saying. We need to be strengthened with God's strength, with His power. You see, Paul goes out of his way here in Ephesians 3 to show us that none of these spiritual goals will be met without divine intervention – you cannot produce this strength in yourself, you can't, by an act of your will, become strong. Instead, we have to acknowledge our own inability and cry out to God – we have to pray for God to do these things in us.

Christianity is not moralism – it's not about picking yourself up by your own bootstraps and becoming a better person. Both in salvation and in sanctification, we do have responsibilities. In salvation, we have to repent, we have to believe; in sanctification, we have to exercise our spiritual muscles – we've got to read the Bible, we've got to study the Bible, we've got to meditate on it, apply its truth, we have to pray, we have to seek to obey it. But in both salvation and sanctification, we are only able to act because God has acted. Philippians 2, you remember, says "work out your [own] salvation with fear and trembling;" that's your responsibility. Why? For – because – it is God who is at work in you, both to give you the will to do it and to give you the power to do it. So, we have to work hard, we have to study, we have to seek to obey – but, if we have any hope of spiritual growth, we must pray; we must cry out to God with Paul, O God, grant us to be "strengthened with power … in the inner man." God isn't going to do for you what you can do for yourself; and that is, read and study the Bible and pray – but you can't do what only God can do, and that is change who you are.

This week, I read an article that was a bit frightening, about the microscopic world all around us – it is a very dangerous place. Germs of various kinds, bacteria and viruses, literally swarm all over our world – they cover our skin, they are inside us by the billions. In fact, this will make some of you a little unsettled, but scientists estimate that right now, on the surface of your body and inside your body, there are ten times more bacteria than there are human cells – that's a scary thought. By the way, we're discovering that many of those are there for our good; that God uses them for benefit in our bodies. Some of them, however, are pathogens, and those pathogens – all it takes is the first sign of physical weakness. A cut, a puncture of the skin, a lapse of sleep, a lack of nutrition, and those tiny creatures seize the moment – so how do you fight them? Well, there are several paths you can take – one of them is to wait until you actually get sick and then attack them with drugs of specific kinds; another act that sometimes happens in certain cases is the doctor has to perform surgery to take out the part of the body that's become infected. Or, and this is not a very popular tack today, but you can step back and take a more comprehensive approach, and you can do everything that is reasonable to strengthen your body, to strengthen your immunity, to build up your physical stamina through the right amount of sleep and through exercise and eating healthy and taking vitamins – it's this third approach that Paul encourages us to take with our spiritual health; to work hard for our general spiritual health, to do what we are responsible to do, but then to pray that God would do what we cannot do, and that is, to build us up with spiritual strength. There's much more in this first request, but that's for next week – let's pray together.

Father, as we read this, we thank You for the wisdom of Your great mind revealed through Your apostle to us. Father, our thinking is all wrong – correct our thinking, even with this prayer that the apostle prayed. Father, help us to see that it's not about our circumstances – it's about us, it's about the need for the new person that we are in Christ to grow strong and be strengthened. Father, help us to do what we're responsible to do, but then, give us that spirit of dependence that acknowledges that we can't make ourselves strong, that only You can do that – and help us to cry out in dependence and prayer, even as Paul did for the Ephesians. May we do that for ourselves, and for our families, and for this church – may we be strong, O God, in the inner man; may we have the capacity to act on what we know, to live in obedience. We pray it in Jesus' name and for His sake. Amen.