THE GREATEST OF ALL DESIRES

Ephesians 3:14-21 Updated American Standard Version (UASV)

¹⁴For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, ¹⁶that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner man, ¹⁷so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

²⁰Now 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, ²¹to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

Prayer for Spiritual Strength

The kernel of this prayer is in the clause that Christ may make His home in the believer’s heart through faith. The previous petitions lead up to this. Note the Apostle’s attitude with bended knee; his plea with God that He is the Father from whom all family love emanates; his measure of the wealth of God’s glorious perfection; the necessary preliminary to Christ’s indwelling the penetration of our inmost being with the strength of the Holy Spirit. And then note the outcome: The indwelling Christ means that we shall be rooted and grounded in love. When this is the case we shall understand His love; and when we experience and know Christ’s love, we shall be as wholly filled in our little measure as God is in His great measure.

A dying veteran in Napoleon’s army, when the surgeon was probing for the fatal bullet, said, “A little deeper, and you will find the Emperor.” Faith opens the door to the Spirit; the Spirit reveals Christ; Christ fills the heart; the heart begins to understand love; and love is the medium through which we become infilled with God, for God is love. It is staggering to ask all this; but the God who works in us with such power can do more than we ask, more than we think: abundantly more, exceeding abundantly more. The goal of every Christian is to gain the mind of Christ by becoming biblically minded.