Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

Today, we look at Paul’s second prayer for the Ephesians. He says: 

  I pray that
    according to the riches of [God’s] glory, he may grant you
        to be rooted and grounded in love, and
        to be strong by his spirit in your inner being,
          so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
  I pray that you may have power to comprehend with all the saints
        the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ’s love,
        and to know his love that supasses knowledge,
          so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (Eph 3:16-19). 

Paul’s prayer is composed in two crescendos. If it were a modern worship song, each verse would start with mellow vocals over a quiet acoustic guitar. But it would soon escalate, with booming bass and pounding drums and vocals almost shouting.

The two high points of Paul’s crescendos? That Christ may dwell in our hearts, and that we may be filled with the fullness of God. 

Paul’s prayer reminds us that the God of creation, of nations, and of families, is looking for a home in our hearts. Christ wants to move in with us and share life with us. God wants to fill us with all his fullness.

If my life is a drop of water in a bucket, the whole ocean that is Christ wants to be at home in my little bucket. If my life is a sandbox, the seashores of all the oceans want to fill my sandbox full. If I am the most insignificant and wayward of humans, the whole person of God in Christ wants to build a palace in my life. 

Let’s pray. 

O Lord, our thoughts of you are far too small. We play in our little sandboxes with little buckets of water. But Paul opens to us the grand horizons of your love, giving us a view of the deeper, longer, broader sand on the seashore and water in the ocean. 

How can you, the eternal Christ, live in our time-bound, earth-bound hearts? How can we mortals be filled with the fullness of God? 

O Christ, this is our response: we invite you to enlarge the geometry of our hearts. Make them wider, longer, higher, deeper. Create in us a space for you. Grow us into people who can be filled with all your fullness.  

Take the narrow horizon of our lives, open it to the universe of your love.
Take the small drop of water in our lives, fill it with the ocean of Christ.
Take our weaknesses, transform them by the power of your spirit.
Take our shallow morality, root and ground it in love.
Take our self-centred lives, renovate them until they are a home for Christ. 

O God, take our empty lives and fill them to all the fullness of God. 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.