In his book, Everyone’s Normal Until You Get to Know Them, John Ortberg tells the story about a man who wanders into a small and cluttered antique shop. As he walked up and down the aisles browsing, he saw the usual furniture, lamps, vases and oil paintings common to every antique store.
Then he turned the corner and his eye was caught by a cat that was drinking milk out of a saucer. Looking closely, he was astounded to discover that it was no ordinary dish that the cat was lapping milk from - it was a beautiful Ming dynasty dish, a very rare one, worth a huge sum of money. "The owner must not know how much that dish is worth," the man thought to himself. "Why else would he be using it to feed his cat?"
Excited at the prospect of being able to purchase the dish for a bargain price, he approached the antique store owner and said, "That cat you have is the most beautiful cat I’ve ever seen! Would you consider selling him to me?" "Oh, no," the owner said. "That cat is special to me in more ways than one. Not only is he a great companion, but he keeps the mouse population under control around here." "I understand that, but I really, really like that cat!" countered the man. "Tell you what. I’ll give you $200 for the cat.”
The owner rubbed his chin as he considered the offer. "Well, okay. If you like him that much, I guess I’ll sell him to you for $200." "Thanks!" said the man, and they shook hands on the deal. "You know, I’ll also need something to hold his food. How about throwing in his dish there for an extra ten dollars?" "No, no, I couldn’t do that," replied the store owner. "That’s a very rare Ming dynasty dish, worth thousands of dollars. Not only that, it’s been very lucky for me. Since I’ve been using it as a food dish, I’ve sold fifteen cats!"
Unfortunately, that story is a pretty good picture of how many Christians view prayer. They view prayer as a way to negotiate with God in order to get something that they want at a great bargain. But like that rare and valuable dish, prayer is far too valuable to God for Him to allow us to use it as a means to our own ends.
We certainly saw that in last week’s message where Paul instructed his readers about the four “all’s” of prayer:
• Pray on all occasions
• With all kinds of prayers
• Being watchful with all perseverance
• Praying for all the saints
In that passage we discovered that prayer is primarily something that is to be focused on the deep spiritual needs of others. But after giving his readers that focus, Paul does ask them to pray for him, too. Let’s read his request out loud together:
Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.
Ephesians 6:19-20 (NIV)
In just a moment, I’d like to ask all of you to pray that very same prayer for me this morning. When I first considered asking you to do that, my first thought was that it would be very self-centered for me to request that you pray for me. But as I read through Paul’s letters, I discovered that he wasn’t at all shy about asking his readers to pray for him. Here are just a few of the places where he does that.
I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me.
Romans 15:30 (NIV)
Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.
Colossians 4:2-5 (NIV)
Brothers, pray for us.
1 Thessalonians 5:25 (NIV)
Finally, brothers, pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honored, just as it was with you.
2 Thessalonians 3:1 (NIV)
So, following Paul’s lead, I’m going to ask you to pray for me this morning the very same thing that Paul asked hid readers to pray for in our passage from Ephesians. So let’s pause for a few moments so you can do that.
[Allow time for people to pray]
I don’t know about you, but between the message and our time together in our “Connections” class, God really convicted me about the need to have much more depth in my own prayer life, especially as I pray for others. And in order for me to learn how to do that better, the best place to start is by praying in a way that is consistent with the prayers that we find in Scripture.
Before I go any further this morning, let me just add a word of encouragement and challenge for some of you. If you’re not staying for the “Connections” class each Sunday, then you’re missing out on an invaluable opportunity to interact with other members of this body and to get some help in putting into practice the principles that we share with you during the worship service. For instance, if you missed last week, you missed an opportunity to see how Jonah’s prayer in the belly of the fish came directly out of God’s Word. And that was really helpful for all of us in understanding the value in praying God’s Word back to Him and thinking about how we can do that in our lives.
There is no way that in 30 minutes, you’re going to be able to absorb everything that Dana or I share with you in our message and then be able to go apply that in your lives. God has placed every one of His children into a body of local believers for the purpose of encouraging and being encouraged as we struggle to live a life that is pleasing to God. Even another 45 minutes in the “Connections” class isn’t going to do that fully, but it sure gives us a good head start. Here’s the bottom line. If you’re truly committed to becoming a fully-devoted follower of Jesus, you’ll take advantage of every opportunity that you have to get into His Word and then to put that into practice. And God didn’t create any of us to do that on our own. All of us need to share our journey of faith with our brothers and sisters in Christ every chance we get.
There is a sense in which that is exactly what Pau is doing here in Ephesians as he asks his readers to pray for him. Even though he is in prison and separated physically by many miles, Paul is giving his readers the chance to partner with him in his ministry as they pray for him. By asking them to pray for Him, Paul is acknowledging that he can’t do what God has called him to do own his own. He obviously needs God, but he also needs his readers to take ownership in his ministry as well.
As we look at Paul’s request for prayer, there is a lot that we can learn about…
HOW TO PRAY FOR OTHERS
There are obviously a lot of things that we could learn about praying for others from this passage, but I’m going to focus on just three principles this morning.
1. Pray for God’s perspective
This is one of those cases where we can perhaps learn as much by what Paul does not ask his readers to pray for as by what he does ask them to pray for.
Let’s take a moment to consider Paul’s circumstances. We get a couple of clues from this letter itself. At the beginning of chapter 3, Paul described himself as a prisoner of Christ Jesus and here in verse 20, he writes that he is “in chains”. From the accounts in the Book of Acts, we know that Paul, after appealing to Caesar, had been delivered to the captain of the Praetorian Guard in Rome, to await trial before the Emperor. He had been allowed to arrange a private lodging for himself; but night and day in that private lodging there was a soldier to guard him. And the common practice in that situation was that the prisoner would be bound to his guard by a short length of chain in order to prevent escape.
So, given those circumstances, what would we expect Paul’s prayer request to be? Let’s think about it like this. Suppose that Paul lived in our day and he heard that a local church was having a prayer meeting and that church had asked Paul to write them a letter to communicate his prayer requests. If you were part of that prayer meeting, what would you expect Paul to ask you to pray for?
If we’re really honest, given the kind of prayer requests that we generally share with each other, I think we would all expect Paul to ask us to pray for his release from prison. Or at a minimum, that we would pray for his comfort, or maybe to heal the sores on his wrists from the shackles. And there certainly would not have been anything inherently wrong had Paul asked for those kinds of prayers, just as there is nothing wrong with us asking for people to pray for our physical needs.
There are obviously examples in the Bible of prayers for physical needs and even instructions to pray for those who are sick, for instance. But when I look at the prayers of Paul and those instances where he asked others to pray for him, I am struck by the fact that Paul never focuses on his circumstances or his physical needs.
Paul recognizes that there is a much bigger picture involved here. He seemed to have this unique ability to look at his circumstances and see them from God’s perspective. That’s why he writes that he is an ambassador in chains on behalf of the gospel. In Paul’s day, the same word translated chains here was also used to describe the gold adornment worn around the necks and wrists of the wealthy and powerful. On many occasions an ambassador would wear such chains in order to show the power and riches of the government he represented. So for Paul, his chains represented the power and riches of the one for whom he was an ambassador, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The nature of Paul’s prayers is deeply rooted in his understanding of how his life fit into God’s overall plan of taking the gospel, the good news, to the world around him.
But Paul is not the only one who is an ambassador of the gospel. Every follower of Jesus is actually an ambassador of Jesus. Paul makes that quite clear in his second letter to the church at Corinth:
We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us…
2 Corinthians 5:20 (NIV)
Notice the use of the word “we”. Paul was writing here of all the believers in the church at Corinth. If you’re a follower of Jesus Christ, then you are his ambassador in taking His gospel to the world.
God had a plan for Paul that included arrest, beatings, shipwreck and imprisonment. Paul certainly didn’t enjoy any of that any more than any of us would. But instead of praying for God to deliver him from those circumstances, he chose to consider how God was using all those difficulties in his life to further his role as an ambassador of the gospel.
We need to develop that same kind of understanding in our own lives if we are going to be effective ambassadors for Jesus. And because it is not in our human nature to do that, we need to pray and we need other to pray on our behalf that we would have God’s perspective regarding the circumstances of our lives.
That’s essentially what Paul was praying for his readers in this prayer from chapter 1 that we keep coming back to over and over in our journey through Ephesians.
I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.
Ephesians 1:17 (NIV)
When Paul had the opportunity to pray for the Christians at Ephesus, the first thing he prays is that they would know God better. And in large part that prayer reflects Paul’s desire for them to see their lives from God’s perspective.
2. Pray for God’s purposes
Perhaps the most striking characteristic of Paul’s request for prayer is that he is much more concerned about making sure that he is carrying out God’s purpose than he is about his own needs and desires. His main concern is that he would fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.
This is the seventh time in his letter Paul has described the gospel as a “mystery”. And as we’ve learned previously, he uses that term in a much different sense than we use it today. As it is used by Paul, the term “mystery” always refers to the plan of God that was only partially revealed in the Old Testament, but which has now been fully revealed through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
Earlier in his letter, Paul left no doubt that God’s purpose for his life was to proclaim this mystery of the gospel:
Although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things.
Ephesians 3:8, 9 (NIV)
By God’s grace, Paul had been given the responsibility of taking the mystery of the gospel and making its meaning and operation plain to everyone that God entrusted to him.
So when at the end of his letter, he asks his readers to pray that he might fearlessly make know the mystery of the gospel, he is in essence asking them to pray that he will carry out God’s purposes in his life.
Unfortunately, I’m far too much like the guy in the antique shop when it comes to my prayer life. I’m far too focused on what’s in it for me, so I tend to pray about my needs and desires rather than praying that God’s purposes would be accomplished in my life. I long to get to the place where Paul was where he wanted his brothers and sisters in Christ to pray for his usefulness to God rather than for his comfort.
The great thing about praying like Paul prayed is that the Bible promises God will answer those kinds of prayers:
This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us - whatever we ask - we know that we have what we asked of him.
1 John 5:14, 15 (NIV)
God never promised to answer my prayers that are focused on me, but he did promise to answer the prayers that are directed toward his purposes and will.
So we shouldn’t be surprised that God did indeed answer the prayers of Paul’s readers. In his later letters, Paul shares “the rest of the story”.
All the saints send you greetings, especially those who belong to Caesar’s household.
Philippians 4:22 (NIV)
We know from this passage that a number of those who belonged to Caesar’s household had become Christ-followers. And I think it would be fair to infer that much of that had happened as a result of God answering the prayers of the Ephesians. Can’t you just imagine what it must have been like being a Roman soldier chained to Paul for your entire shift? I have no doubt that Paul was constantly talking about Jesus and the mystery of the gospel since he literally had a captive audience. The Romans thought they had Paul in captivity, but in reality God actually was holding them captive so they would be exposed to the gospel. And eventually some of those guards committed their lives to Jesus and they went home and shared the gospel with others. Ultimately even a significant number of those in high places in the Roman government became Christians.
And then listen to these words of Paul from the last letter he wrote during his second imprisonment in Rome shortly before he was executed by the Roman government:
But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was delivered from the lion’s mouth.
2 Timothy 4:17 (NIV)
Paul is testifying to the faithfulness of God in carrying out His purposes in Paul’s life. In fact, even though he hadn’t prayed for it, Paul was in fact released from the first imprisonment and God gave him two more years to travel and proclaim the gospel.
Amazing things happen when we pray for God’s purposes to be fulfilled in our lives and in the lives of others.
3. Pray for God’s power
Even though we have ample Biblical evidence that Paul was a very effective communicator, he still asks his readers to pray that he would be given exactly the right words to speak every time that he opened his mouth to proclaim the gospel. And even though we have no evidence that Paul ever lacked boldness in his ministry, Paul twice in two verses asks for prayer that he would proclaim the gospel fearlessly. In asking for that kind of prayer, Paul is making it quite evident that he recognizes that his ministry is totally and completely dependent on God’s power at work in his life. His own eloquence and his own boldness are inadequate to be effective in declaring the mystery of the gospel.
Paul certainly expressed that thought in another of his letters that were written during this same imprisonment.
I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.
Philippians 4:11-13 (NIV)
What Paul was saying is that it didn’t matter what he could supply when it came to his ministry. What really mattered is what God could supply.
One of the things that this points out is just how much that Dana and I and the others in our church who are responsible for teaching the Word of God need your prayers. Depending on God’s power does not in any way lessen our need to be diligent in studying God’s Word in order to proclaim it, but the fact is that the effectiveness of our teaching and preaching is totally dependent upon God. So like Paul I do ask that you pray for us. Pray that God would provide exactly the right words and that we would proclaim the gospel with boldness.
But this is not just a prayer for pastors and teachers. God gives every one on of us opportunities to take the gospel message into the world. So every one of us need to have God’s power at work in our lives so that we will use the right words and we will proclaim the gospel boldly. After we finish our journey through Ephesians next week, we’re going to spend four weeks looking at how we as a body are to permeate our culture with the gospel. But all that we will discuss during that time is completely dependent upon the power of God.
How do your pray for others? How do you pray for your spouse, your children, your co-workers, your neighbors, your friends and for members of this body? Are your prayers limited to the physical and the superficial? Or are you praying for them to know God better so that they can look at the circumstances of life from God’s perspective? Are you praying that in their lives they might accomplish God’s purposes? Are you praying that God might give them the power that they need to proclaim His gospel boldly with just the right words?
I’d like to close once again this morning with the words of E.M. Bounds, this time from his book The Power of Prayer. Although Bounds is addressing the need to prayer for pastors, and I certainly need and covet your prayers, what I really want you to focus on is what he has to say about the power of corporate prayer in general:
That the true apostolic preacher must have the prayers of others – good people to give his ministry its full quota of success, Paul is a preeminent example. He asks, he covets, he pleads in an impassionate way for the help of all God’s saints, He knew that in the spiritual realm as elsewhere, in union there is strength; that the consecration and aggregation of faith, desire, and prayer increased the volume of spiritual force until it became overwhelming and irresistible in its power. Units of prayer combined, like drops of water, make an ocean that defies resistance.
Will you join me as one of those drops of water? Will you pray together with the rest of this body so that we can become that ocean that defies resistance?
