Prayer Ladder

THE PRAYER LADDER

Ephesians 3:14-21

Online Sermon: http://www.mckeesfamily.com/?page_id=3567

14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. 20 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, 21 to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

What an honor it is to be able to communicate with one’s Creator. God is indivisibly present everywhere and is always willing to listen, even when our thoughts are confusing and cannot string together a single coherent sentence! While most of us have great faith when it comes to God listening to our prayers, we do not always have faith that He will grant us our requests … for good reason! Since our wisdom is foolishness in God’s sight (1 Corinthians 3:19), granting many of our requests would mean that God would no longer be the good Father because He would be constantly giving us “stones” (Luke 11:11) or punishment for living a life focused on satisfying the sinful desires of our hearts (James 1:14). While we know that the key to getting a YES in prayer is to ask in accordance with His will (John 14:13), how does one know God’s will and how does one approach a holy God and make these requests with humility and respect? In today’s sermon, we are going to examine the components of Paul’s prayer to the Ephesians so that we might learn how and what we should pray for!

THE PRAYER LADDER

Before I begin the sermon, I want to tell you a quick story. I remember when my son David was first diagnosed with autism. He was about two years old when we came to realize that he was no longer progressing in his speech. While he started out building his vocabulary at the same pace as the other children of his age, once he turned two years of age it was like a switch went off in his mind and he was no longer able to learn new words. We soon found ourselves driving to the Stan Cassidy hospital. As my wife and I sat in the waiting room I could not help but wonder with all their education and expertise what fancy educational techniques were we about to see? They came into the room and presented David with a table to sit that had some building blocks on it. They then asked him to place one block upon another. I could not help but feel disappointed for even I know how to play with blocks! So, I politely asked these highly educated people: how does playing blocks help our son? What they told me I will never forget. They said we first placed one block on the other and then asked David to do the same for a very good reason for if he can do this simple task then he can learn to do more complex ones!

How does one learn how to pay? Is it not by imitating the prayers of other Christians? For example, a person growing up in a strong “King James” home might have their prayer might sound like this: “we beseech thee, almighty God, that in the plentitude of thy great mercies thou wilt vouchsafe to us the mercies of thy dear Son who hast sacrificed himself on our behalf that we might walk with thee in righteousness;” whereas a person who just got saved on a university campus might pray “Jesus, we just want to thank you for being there.” While there is nothing wrong with either of these prayers, one must be careful in imitating the prayers of others. One does not want to approach a holy God with either too fancy or too simplistic words that lack any depth or meaning. So how does one learn how to pray the right way? Because a great number of things in the Christian life are caught as much as they’re taught, we are going to review the structure and content of Paul’s prayer to the Ephesians, one rung of his “prayer ladder” at a time with the hope of catching his fervency of one who prayed from the heart!