Lately, I have been impressed with the fact that prayer is arguably the most important need for the sustenance, vitality, and continuance of the church. A prayerless church is a powerless church. A prayerless congregation will trend toward becoming a loveless congregation. A prayless people will ultimately become a self-reliant people. Every true believer recognizes the need for prayer to hold a far more central and abiding place in his or her life. How then can we cultivate this means of grace toward divine blessing for the benefit of the church in our day and the advancement of the kingdom of God among His people? The answer is found, at least in part, in the words of the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 1:15-20.
Cultivating Divine Blessing Through Prayer
Having praised and worshiped God for the divine blessing that He freely gives His people in Christ (i.e., election, sanctification, adoption, justification, reconciliation, an inheritance, and the sealing of the Spirit) in Ephesians 1:3-14, the Apostle then turns to let the believers in the church in Ephesus of how he prays for them. He writes,
“For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.”
The flow from praise to prayer is instructive for us. Paul goes from praising God for “every spiritual blessing” with which He has blessed His people “in the heavenly places in Christ” to giving thanks to God for them. He then moves from thanking God for the grace He has already given them to praying for a greater realization of these spiritual blessings in their experience. What greater fruit of worship could there be than a heart that turns to the Lord in prayer for those blessings for which we have worshiped and praised him!
