Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Pray to Be Filled With the Fullness of God (Prayer Summer 2014)

Cape May, New Jersey

Love and power do things. New Testament scholar Klyne Snodgrass writes that “To know Christ’s love is to be transformed by love and expanded into the fullness of God.” In other words there is an extraordinary power available to believers, a power that can and will accomplish far more than we ordinarily think or imagine. It comes by the Spirit. It accords with the riches of God's glory. John Piper says this "is the very fullness of God, as humanly unimaginable as that sounds."

So Paul kneels. And prays these words…

16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 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, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

This is why the early church exploded. People were filled with love, power, and the fullness of God. This is not about a program or formula. You don’t need money to do it. It's all about cultivating the relationship. As N.T. Wright says, this “means knowing God as the all-loving, all-powerful father; it means putting down roots into that love - or, changing the picture, having that love as the rock-solid foundation for every aspect of one's life." (NTW, Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters, 39-40)


Today, pray to know who you are in Christ, and all that is available to you.