Paul teaches us about prayer by his prayers.
In Ephesians 6:18, he says, “With all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.”
You notice he uses the expression “with all prayer [or with all kinds of prayer] and supplication in the Spirit.”
It is the Holy Spirit in oneness with your born again, regenerated spirit.
It suggests in 1 Thessalonians 5:17, “Pray without ceasing.”
That your life becomes a continual intercession.
It is not by words, the Spirit in you is doing what Paul mentions in Romans 8:26:
Likewise, the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
I have noticed at times when I have been in desperation, and I could think of no reason for the desperation, that afterward I discovered it was the Spirit in me making intercession, the silent agony of the Spirit reaching out after someone. It was my spirit blending with the Holy Spirit in supplication for some person who was in need at that hour.
In evangelistic work, the day before you give the invitation to the unsaved, you may often be overwhelmed with a feeling that is indescribable. I used to preach in a shelter, and most of the people were not saved.
You cry out in agony for relief. It is your spirit and the Holy Spirit in intercession for that unsaved congregation that you would meet the next day when you preached in the service.
After a while, you learn what these desperation periods mean.
But I wish to call your attention especially to Paul’s prayers for the church:
Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers. (Ephesians 1:15–16)
And here is a remarkable intercession for you and me:
That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. (Ephesians 1:17–18)
Notice carefully now. He is praying that we may have a spirit of wisdom and revelation.
I don’t know whether you have noticed it or not, but wisdom and knowledge are different.
Wisdom is the ability to use knowledge.
Wisdom doesn’t come from the reasoning faculties; it comes from the Holy Spirit through our spirit. It is God’s wisdom, which is given to the new creation.
He is praying now that our spirits may have wisdom to grasp the riches of the work that God wrought in Christ Jesus for us. It is revelation knowledge that was given to Paul.
Now we are to have wisdom to understand our share of redemption’s unveiling in that knowledge.
He says, in effect, “Having the eyes of our imagination illumined, that we may know the hope of His calling and the riches of the glory of the Father’s inheritance in the saints,” that is, in you and me.
If our hearts could grasp this, it would transform us.
If we could only realize what an inheritance the Father has in us, how priceless we are to Him.
We have our property insured in case of fire or theft.
We have our bodies insured in case of accident.
I wonder if the Father has His inheritance in us insured.
I wonder if He is as jealous over us as we are over our jewelry and our precious property.
I am sure He is. It was through redemption that he bought us and made us His own children.
Someday, we will make a discovery of how He has insured us. Notice farther in the prayer. He wants us to know “the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe” (Ephesians 1:19).
He said, it is “according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead” (verses 19–20). My heart has been slow to grasp this.
When I knew in reality that the same ability that was wrought in the dead body of Christ was at work within me, in my spirit, in my soul, in my body, then I knew that I was fortified.
I couldn’t fail because I had become the instrument through which the Mighty One was working.
Then Romans 8:11 cleared it up: But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.
The same power that was wrought in Christ is in you and me.
That resurrection ability is in our bodies.
That means healing and strength and vitality for our present necessities in our daily walk.
But notice another thing, he said:
And set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. (Ephesians 1:20–21)
In Ephesians 2:6, he says, “And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” and we are sitting now far above all rule and authority.
That was Paul’s prayer for us, or rather, it was the Spirit’s prayer through Paul.
And now the Spirit goes farther and says, “He put all things in subjection under our feet.”
We are the earthly part of the body of Christ.
The Executive is in the heavens.
The office force is here on the earth; we are a part of that.
We must know that the ability God wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead is ours.
Here is another tremendous fact that we have almost utterly forgotten:
And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church. (Ephesians 1:22)
We must not forget that Satan is defeated; that we were with Christ in that great substitution of which we became a part; that we conquered the adversary with Him; when He arose from the dead, we were raised together with Him; and when He was enthroned at the right hand of the Father, we were enthroned with Him.
He is praying that we may know this, that we may enter into the fullness of it.
That prayer must be answered.
I am asking now that this prayer should be answered for each one of you who read this message.
He has given Jesus “to be the head over all things to the church.”
Then the “over all things” includes everything that can touch your life and mine. They are all subject to the Head—Christ; and they are subject to us—the body of Christ.
For in that next verse, he says, “Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all” (verse 23).
The body is the fullness of Him. The body is the completeness of Him, and the ability of the body should dominate all things around it.
Our feeble intellects can’t grasp this, but our spirits can rejoice in it.
For our spirits are filled with His fullness, the fullness of His love, the fullness of His grace, the fullness of His wisdom, the fullness of His ability to bless and help men.
His next prayer is in Ephesians 3:14–15: “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.”
Now notice the prayer: “That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man” (verse 16).
Strengthened with God’s ability.
It doesn’t seem to me that we can ever be weak or failures again.
I don’t know what all that means, nor do I know the limits of it, but I do know that it makes us more than conquerors in the midst of every perplexing condition.
It puts our heel upon the neck of our enemies, whether they be spiritual enemies or material; it makes us masters.
It strips us of our weakness and inability and clothes us with the ability from on high.
He says, “That Christ may dwell in your hearts [in my heart and in yours] by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love” (verse 17).
That is the Jesus kind of love—agape, it is a divine love that never fails.
We are not only to be influenced by it, but we are to be rooted and grounded in it; established in love.
And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. (1 John 4:16)
I think a better rendering is this: “We have come to believe in the love that God has in our circumstances.”
I have come to believe that love, this Jesus-kind-of-love, is better than reason, better than force, better than the philosophy of man, better than anything that man can devise.
Man’s knowledge can’t equal it.
I have come to believe that love’s way is the best way, and that the way of love is the way to walk in God’s best.
When I know that God is love, then the way of God for me is best.
If I believe in love, I believe in the Author of love.
I believe that His love way is best for me, is best for you.
It is the end of strife for ourselves, the end of bitterness and hatred and jealousy.
It is the beginning of Christ dominating our lives in our earth walk. To be rooted and grounded in love is the choicest experience that can ever come to the human heart.
And then we “may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ” (Ephesians 3:18–19).
We will come to know the love of Christ personally, so we will say, as Paul did, He “loved me, and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
His redemption will be a personal thing.
He did it for me.
It will be as though no other person lived; that I was the one for whom He died.
But you know the next sentence says, “And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God” (Ephesians 3:19).
That was his prayer for me.
That was his prayer for you.
That prayer can’t go unanswered.
You remember how he groaned in Colossians 1:28, “that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.”
That was the Holy Spirit’s passion in Paul.
God help me to have the same passion.
That eliminates selfishness utterly, doesn’t it?
That is a new self, a self-born of God, a self that has no dream but God’s dream, no ambition but His ambition.
But hear the closing of that prayer: “Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20).
You see, we swing out of the orbit of physical sense knowledge, out of the limitations of physical sense reason, into the realm of the supernatural.
We are living now in the realm of grace, the realm of God.
He says that it is “above all that we can ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us” (verse 20).
We have been slow to grasp this, but this is a picture of His grace.
This is an illustration of the Father’s dream for us.
This illustrates the prayer life of Paul.
It is better than any rules or regulations that man can make in regard to a prayer life.
When you and I realize this prayer was for us, we become enthusiastic that it be answered in us.
That is allowing Him free access to work His own will and His own pleasure in and through us for His glory.