Day 2 | Ephesians 3:14–19
Lisa Sheffler, author
Some of us dive into a new year with optimism. “Out with the old, in with the new.” Some of us, depending on our personality and circumstances, are a bit more nervous about the future. We spend sleepless nights worrying about our jobs, our health or the health of loved ones, and the choices our family and friends are making. Situations in the world cause us anxiety. 2020 was pretty harrowing for a lot of us. What will 2021 bring?
Worry and anxiety find their root in fear. Fear of losing what we have, of not getting what we think we deserve. Fear that the coming weeks and months will bring more pain than prosperity. Fear can squeeze out faith and causes us to doubt the goodness, provision, and promises of our Father. Because it causes us to be so inwardly focused, a life dominated by fear cannot be effectively lived for God.
Even if you wouldn’t consider yourself a worry-wart, you probably have times when your mind is troubled by an anxiety. So, what can we do? The future is as uncertain as it is unknown, and we all know bad things still happen to good people. What can we use to combat fear?
Love. In particular, God’s love and the comfort, peace, assurance, and security it provides for all who trust in Christ. We need Jesus to chase away the fear of the future and envelop us in enduring, faithful, and all-satisfying love.
In Day One we looked at Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 1. Today we will turn to the prayer he records later in the book. In Ephesians 3 Paul asks God to root his children in the vastness of his love.
Read
Ephesians 3:16-19
16I pray that according to the wealth of his glory [the Father] may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner person, 17that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, so that, because you have been rooted and grounded in love, 18you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19and thus to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
Reflect
Notice the “so that’s” in this prayer. What results does Paul pray to see?
In between the prayer we read yesterday in Ephesians 1 and the prayer we just read in Ephesians 3, Paul has laid out for his readers several breathtaking truths that define the our relationship with God in Christ. He speaks to us as individuals and as the church. Individually, Paul tells us, God has raised people who were dead in their sins to life through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and now all believers can have access to God. Corporately, God has unified Jews and Gentiles into the body of Christ so that his wisdom in all its rich diversity can be lived out through the church.
Paul prays for strength and power from the Holy Spirit. Like the steel girders that hold a sky scraper together, we need force and fortitude to live out our salvation and give Christ his rightful place to dwell in our hearts. It is by the Spirit’s power that we also gain the strength to comprehend, alongside all our brothers and sisters in Christ, the vastness of his love.
We hear all the time that God loves us. We teach children to sing “Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so.” But do we believe it? Do we allow the love of Christ to banish insecurity, worry, anxiety and envy? Are we so immersed in his love that we know peace? Come what may in 2021, will we be able to stand firm knowing that our faithful Savior loves us? That he died for us, will never forsake us, and guarantees our eternal future will be spent in his divine presence?
If we are going to be filled with all the fullness of God, we need to. All the empty places within us that cry out for satisfaction and drive us to idols for relief can be filled by God, with God. Whether it’s nagging anxiety, throat clinching fear, frustrated discontent, depressed apathy or some other sin-sick state, each are consequences of the void we sense within us. Emptiness that our human efforts fail to fill because it is God that we truly long for.
But God’s fullness isn’t given only to satisfy ourselves. We need to pray that our glorious and merciful Father would allow us to grasp his love, power, strength and goodness so we can share them. We need to be full so we can overflow into the lives of others.
Of course, those who are starving and parched are too fixated on their own lack to be any good to another. Like the flight attendants say, we have to put the oxygen mask on ourselves first so we can help those around us. So will you pray to more deeply inhale the love of God as you start out the New Year so that you can extend yourself to those around you?
What difference would it make in how you thought, felt, and acted if you had a deeper understanding of God’s love?
What would it mean for you to be “filled with the fullness of God”?
Consider writing a prayer in your own words based on Ephesians 3:14–19 and praying it for yourself and others throughout the day.
Pray Ephesians 3:16–19 today for yourself and someone else.