I love Ephesians 3:14-21 and try to pray it every day. I love to go slowly through each verse imagining the person I am praying for. It is such a beautiful prayer. Each time I start I get secretly giddy about the line, “Every family in heaven.” This line fills me with such interesting images. I could cry merely with these four words.

Next, I love that we are praying for the beloved others to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in their inner being. This gift comes from the storehouse of His riches. What is power? For some it is physical beauty, for some it is wealth, for some it is status or physical strength or control. Instead, Paul reorients us to this power which is all about Christ dwelling in our hearts through faith. 

This is so amazing because I often think Christ dwells in my heart and then I am strengthened in my inner being, but Paul reverses this. It is the invitation of the Holy Spirit strengthened in our inner being that opens the place in our hearts for Christ to dwell.

I think of a prominent atheist on YouTube who presents his first logical defense against the existence of God. His reasoning is that he has not experienced God even though he has sought, prayed, and tried to know, hear, or experience God. His testimony confuses me. Perhaps it is persuasive to some but instead I feel great pity. 

God’s Spirit arrives and, in this arrival, comes power; a power that dwells in our inner being. I consider my inner being, the secret place no one sees but God and me. Though I believe the radiance of the inner being becomes apparent to others, I do believe the scrutiny of the inner being is revealed to God. I imagine my heart as a dwelling place. How comfortable is God dwelling in my heart?  I ask that God would dwell in my daughters’ hearts and for them to grasp God’s incomprehensible love.  If it is hard to comprehend, why does Paul recommend we try? How wide, deep, long, high is God’s love? I consider the heavens. Just the discipline to try and grasp how massive the heavens and galaxies are—it is humbling, it is mind-altering. I picture this gift to those I pray for, that in their attempts to grasp the vastness of God’s love they are blown away, they are humbled, they fall to their knees with gratitude and joy.  

Finally, I must mention another phrase that gets me every time, “God who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.” Doesn’t that thrill you beyond words? More than you can ask or imagine and not just more—immeasurably more. All I can do when I read and pray these words is to praise God and thank Him over and over again.

What a beautiful prayer to pray for those we love. Will you join me in praying this daily for a week?

^“For this reason I kneel before the Father,from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 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, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.