Specific, Selfless, and Spiritual

I was sitting here reflecting on the sermon preached today here at Lakeshore Baptist. Pastor Don preached on Ephesians 3:14-21 focusing on prayer. Prayer is something that I say I do, and I do, but often times do not pray as I ought. Pastor Don brought up many great points from this texts that I hope I can incorporate into my own personal prayer time.

3 Types of Prayer
I. Specific Prayer

• Paul is praying for strength and knowledge of God for the believers in Ephesus.
• Our prayers are often very vague
• We can go in with a plan as we pray. We can make a list of the things that we are going to pray for and specifics so we don't get distracted as we pray.

II. Selfless Prayer

• Paul was in prison but he was praying for others. Here he is not praying or asking for prayers of himself for comfort, relief, or release from prison he is focused on others.

III. Spiritual Prayer

• Paul is praying for spiritual issues in the life of others.
• We don't see here him praying for the sickness of so and so. If sickness and health are all that we pray for we are showing God where I priorities are. And if the physical is our only priority we are flirting with idolatry - we are worried about the tangible things more than the everlasting things of someone's spiritual well being. This is not to say, though, not to pray for those things. Praying for health and healing are good things and we have a miracle working God who can heal those things. But we just must make sure we know I priorities.

Other notes on Prayer
A. Paul is praying from Prison - Paul is not waiting until his circumstances are better, he sees the need to pray for the church and he's doing it while he is locked in chains in a Roman prison. We shouldn't wait until our circumstances are good to pray for others, we ought to pray for others if we are sick, homeless, or otherwise in distress.

B. Paul's prayer is a prayer of Passion - he bowed on his knees. It was as if we was begging God on his knees for the spiritual issues of the church in Ephesus.

C. Paul Prays to the Father - God is the Father of all families (of believers).

D. Paul is praying for power - Vs 16 - Paul is asking for strength for the inner being of the church. The stronger you are => the healthier you are => The more ready you are to fight of sin, temptation, depression, etc.
This strength comes from 2 places - through the Spirit and according to the riches of his glory.