American Reformation Church Prayer Journal 75

ARC Prayer Meeting:

Back in the day, the band, Foreigner, sang a song called “I want to know what love is.” It captured the universal search of mankind desiring to experience the illusive notions of love. Does love exist? Is it real? Can one actually obtain it in this vain, fleeting life? Is there anybody out there who can show us?

I thought a great Christian video to this song was to show two nailed pierced hands, nailed pierced feet, a wounded side, a body lacerated, and a bleeding head with a crown of thorns. It would show the world Biblically the essence of love. In this case, love has a graphic element that would certainly destroy our sentimental, romantic view of love that comes from modern day novels. The world, however, would at least see there is no greater love that can be revealed or experienced in our poor-fallen world.

Based on the question of that song, the message was titled “What is love?” The message presented love as the highest ethic, the greatest motivation, the ultimate purpose, and who is the Person of love that can show us?  

For our purposes for tonight’s prayer meeting, is there a connection Biblically between God’s love and prayer? I’m pleased to announce, absolutely. In the epistle to the church at Ephesus we discover that divine connection. Paul set some of the letter apart to pray specifically for this early church.

Paul was deeply invested in this church. He started the church plant and later spent three years to see it grow. He faced incredible opposition that is recorded in Acts 19, but persevered. Through his labors of love at the church at Ephesus, it became a central hub for spreading the Gospel of the Kingdom throughout Asia Minor.

Paul prayed, “For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—  to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:14-19).

Based upon Paul’s comprehension of our Lord’s vast riches and great glory, he prays certain Kingdom realities for God’s people that he desires them to know. First, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man. Second, that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith. Third, he prayed God’s people would know the vastness of God’s love. He wanted us rooted and grounded in it. He prayed for us to come to know the width and length and depth and height of it. It is a love that passes all knowledge, so mere knowledge of it just scratches its surface. There also seems to be a connection to that revelation and being filled with the fullness of God.