The Most Powerful Prayer You Could Pray (Ephesians 3:14-21)

Have you ever felt like praying is pointless — like you are talking to a wall instead of a person? Pastor Josh Smith admitted there have been times in his own life when it felt that way. The purpose of your life, he said, is to have a personal relationship with God, and the way you are meant to live out that relationship every day is through prayer. We know we should pray. Sometimes we want to pray. But at times it is hard to pray. What if your prayers did not have to feel pointless? What if they could actually be powerful?

This week Pastor Josh was reminded of a professor from his Bible college days, Dr. Mobley, who had been at the college for over 40 years. He gave good lectures, but what Pastor Josh enjoyed most was the way he prayed at the beginning of every class. It was not a performance for the class, and there was no pretense. It felt like listening to someone having a conversation with a person who was in the room with him: a personal prayer, directly to God. Pastor Josh wants you to know you can experience that in your life too. God can bring power to your prayer life.

As we continue our Grace for You series, our verse-by-verse walk through Ephesians, we come to Paul's prayer in the second half of Ephesians 3. What makes it powerful is not just the words Paul uses — and there is a lot of talk about power — but the circumstances. Paul writes this from prison. And instead of asking the church to pray for him, which he could have done, he is on his knees praying for them. Pastor Josh shared four ways you can pray this powerful prayer in your own life.

1. Pray with humility and confidence

Paul begins:

"For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name" (Ephesians 3:14-15).

Just a few verses earlier he reminded us that in Christ "we may approach God with freedom and confidence" (Ephesians 3:12). Those two postures belong together.

If you have placed your faith in Jesus, you are not merely forgiven — you are adopted. You are a child of God who can come to the King of Kings boldly, without shame. Yet Paul also kneels. He comes humbly, surrendering his will. Christianity is unique in letting us hold both at once: we come as beloved children, and we come on our knees. Jesus modeled this on the eve of His death on the cross, praying in the Garden of Gethsemane: "Not my will, but yours be done."

Pastor Josh's oldest daughter asks him for ice cream pretty regularly. As his child, she can come to him confidently and ask. But as her father, he reserves the right to say yes, to say wait until after dinner, or to say no. A mature follower of Christ trusts the Father not only when He says yes, but also when He says wait and when He says no — believing His plan is better than ours.

So come to God confidently with what you want and what you need, and come humbly: "God, here's what I want, God, here's what I need, but Your will be done in my life." We love it when the Lord says yes. But what happens when He puts you in the waiting room? What happens when He tells you no about the job, or about the person you wanted to marry? That is when you pray, "Lord, not my will be done, Your will be done. I'm going to trust You. I don't understand it all."

2. Pray to be strengthened by the Spirit

"I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith" (Ephesians 3:16-17a).

These were already believers. So why pray for Christ to dwell in them? Because there is always more — a deeper, richer experience of the Christ who already lives in us. The same Spirit who helped you take your first step of faith is the Spirit who strengthens every step after. You never outgrow your need for Him. One of the most powerful prayers you can pray is simply: "Holy Spirit, strengthen my spirit."

Three truths about being strengthened by the Spirit:

• You walk closer to Christ. He is not just near you; if you believe, He is with you and within you, and He will never leave you or forsake you. You become aware of His persistent presence.

• The Spirit empowers godly character. Godliness is not the fruit of trying harder; it is "the fruit of the Spirit" — "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control" (Galatians 5:22-23). Own your sin, repent of it, and be honest about it, but never make it your main focus. For every look at your sin, take seven looks at your Savior.

• The Spirit empowers bold witness. "After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly" (Acts 4:31). The Spirit strengthens you not only for your sake but for the sake of others. That is what happened in the early church: they went out and boldly shared the gospel with the people around them.

3. Pray for the power to know God's love

"And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:17b-19).

It takes God's power just to grasp God's love. Pastor Josh said this is not an exaggeration: "I think that this is the most powerful prayer that you could ever pray for yourself or somebody else" — to say, "God, help me to grasp Your love at a deeper level." This part of the prayer shows three life-changing truths about God's love:

• The size of God's love. Paul prays that we would grasp how wide and long and high and deep it is. Your sin may be the size of the Grand Canyon, but His love is greater and larger than the entire universe. He loves you not because of your performance, but because of who He is.

• God's love is knowable and unknowable. You can know this love personally, not just know about it, because God demonstrated it on the cross: "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). And if you have never known God's love personally, Pastor Josh said, today you can know it. You might not even feel it right now, but if you place your faith in Him, you will receive His love, and it will change your life. And yet this is a love "that surpasses knowledge." You can grow in it every single day of your life and still never exhaust it.

• The result of knowing God's love. You experience the fullness of God, and you learn to love Him and others back. "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). You are not the source of love — you are the stream. When your love for God or others runs cold, do not just try harder; go back to the source.

4. Praise the God who is more than able

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen" (Ephesians 3:20-21).

The prayer ends in praise. Once you are strengthened by His Spirit and once you experience His love, praise is the natural overflow. Our God is not weak. He can do more in a moment than you could do in a decade. Whatever stands before you — your marriage, an addiction, crippling anxiety and worry — no problem is more powerful than Almighty God. He can meet you and change you, and if He wants to, He can even change the situation. And if He is all-powerful, doesn't He deserve our praise? We stand up and clap when someone makes a great play at a game or hits the note at a concert. If we can praise sinful, broken people, can't we praise Almighty God, who is perfect and powerful and more than able? And here is the heart of it: the powerful God specializes in saving powerless people. "At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly" (Romans 5:6). On the cross He restrained His power to rescue us. What held Him there was not merely the nails; it was His love.

A takeaway to carry with you

Maybe your prayers have felt pointless lately. Start here this week: come to God humbly and confidently, and ask the Spirit to strengthen you. Then pray for yourself, "God, help me to grasp Your love at a deeper level," and for the people you love, "Lord, help them to know how much You love them." And end the way Paul ended, in praise to the God who is more than able.

Reflection: Where do you need God to meet you with His power — and are you praying with both confidence and surrender?

If you are anywhere in Livermore or the wider Tri-Valley and looking for a church family to grow with, we would love to meet you at Arroyo Church. Come as you are.

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