A Prayer for Spiritual Strength: Ephesians 3:14-21

Ephesians 3:14-21 is a prayer—a prayer that Paul prayed for Christians in the city of Ephesus. In his prayer, Paul asks God to give them spiritual strength.

Spiritual strength. That sounds good doesn't it? But what does it really mean? A lot of us might not know exactly what spiritual strength is, but I think we all have an idea of what it means to feel spiritually weak.

Several things happened the past few days that left me feeling spiritually depleted and weak. A dear couple in our church lost their 6-week old baby daughter. Another couple who has already faced significant trials learned that the husbands' 23-year old brother had died in a construction accident. I also received a letter from young woman who is not part of our church but who detailed the sad story of harsh physical abuse she had suffered at the hands of her father. My heart was heavy for these people.

The question I kept asking was, "How do I pray for these people? What do they need most?" How do you pray for people who are discouraged and overwhelmed by circumstance? What do you ask God to do? And what if you are the person in the sad story? How do you pray for yourself?

Maybe that's you. You might not be facing extreme tragedy, but maybe you experience low-grade, persistent discouragement. You want to make progress in your faith but you feel stuck. You look at your life and all you can see is what you're not doing or doing wrong. You struggle against sin, but feel pinned to the floor. You try to read your Bible and pray but God feels distant.

Or maybe you're someone who is doing okay—there's no big problem, no discouragement—but you don't feel like you have clear direction when it comes to your faith. You're a Christian...but what now? You're not sure what it means to make progress. How should you pray? What should you ask God to do?

There's a lot we can learn from the prayer Paul prays in Ephesians 3. His prayer is divinely inspired. In these verses God himself is teaching us how to pray for others, how to pray for ourselves. He's teaching us what we need most...

Listen to my full sermon "Prayer for Spiritual Strength" here.