Day 12: Ask for Fellow Believers

Come Before Him in Worship: Praise God for His wondrous love! What a mystery that He says we are to know His love that is too great to understand! And not just to know about it, but to comprehend its boundless height and width and depth. We are empowered in this by His Spirit in us, strengthening us and rooting us more and more deeply in His love. Take a moment to ponder this miraculous gift and ask Him to let you feel the depth of His love for you today.

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith--that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:14-19

Devotion: Paul’s prayers for believers are sprinkled throughout his letters to the churches. He understood that prayer is what brings the Spirit of God down upon the Saints, as he asks for here.

He begins this amazing prayer by asking that the people would be strengthened with power through His Spirit. Paul’s language is reminiscent of Isaiah 40:29, “He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.” Verse 17 speaks of faith as the doorway through which Christ enters to dwell within us! But we must give Him room by understanding that our “self” hinders His entry. Our self-confidence, self-dependence, self-pleasing, self-control robs us of His increasing presence. The kind of faith that is needed to put down our “self,’ is one that is rooted and grounded in God’s powerful love for us! He wanted them (and us) to experience, or “know” this love (verse 18-19), not just have head-knowledge of it. This is the soil out of which our love for Him and others will grow. It is into this environment, that the fullness of God can come!

Let us, like Paul, commit to pray for our brothers and sisters in all ways, but especially that they would be filled with the fullness of God!

Respond in Prayer: Father, how can I grow in love for other believers today? Am I delighting in the fullness of Your presence so that I am overflowing with desire for others to also experience Your love more abundantly? Search me and know my thoughts, Lord! Rid me of selfishness and self-centeredness. Strengthen the hearts of my brothers and sisters in Christ, especially those who feel weary and overwhelmed.