There Is More

I love praying through the prayers of the Apostle Paul in the New Testament.

While my prayers can often focus on my needs, things I’m thinking about, and emotions I’m feeling (all good things to pray about!), I find that sitting down with one of Paul’s prayers in the New Testament re-calibrates my mind and heart with the purposes of God in my life in the middle of whatever it is I might happen to be feeling or processing in the moment.

One prayer that has always gripped my heart is Paul’s prayer for the early church in Ephesians 3:

Wow! What a profound prayer!

He prays that the Ephesians would have the power to comprehend a love that he then says surpasses knowledge — meaning it can’t even be comprehended! That is probably why he prays for supernatural power to understand it, rather than strength or wisdom (which he prays for elsewhere).

It’s a love that’s so mind-bending, incomprehensible, and past knowledge, that we need supernatural power even to begin to scratch the surface of it!

When was the last time you prayed for supernatural power to comprehend God’s incomprehensible love for you?

Then, he ties this idea with comprehending the incomprehensible love of God with being filled with the fullness of God.

Later in his letter to the Ephesians, he is going to echo this prayer for fullness:

The verb he uses “be filled” could be more literally translated: “you all continually be filled” — and it implies a daily, ongoing command to the whole of the church. You all continually be filled with the Spirit!

In other words, he prays for them to have supernatural power to understand God’s infinite love, then he prays for them to be filled with an infinite God, and then he commands them to a lifestyle of answering that prayer through the daily, ongoing pursuit of the infilling of Infinity Himself.

The crazy paradox of this is that Paul has just spent the first half of this letter explaining to the Ephesians who they are in Christ and the reality of the finished work of the cross — meaning they would presumably have understood at this point that they are already filled with the fullness of the Spirit.

Yet, Paul prays for more!

He prays for more not because they don’t already have the fullness of God’s love and His Spirit, but rather because God is infinite and thus they can step into a wild paradox of being completely full of God, and yet still be able to see, understand, and experience more of God than they are presently experiencing.

I would argue that Paul isn’t praying for an increase in access to God’s love and Spirit, but an increase in awareness and agreement with God’s love and Spirit.

In other words, we don’t actually get more of God or more of His love (we already have it all!), but we can grow in our knowledge of God and our awareness of God’s presence around us. (This is actually another major theme of Paul’s prayers — he often prays for his churches to grow in the knowledge of God.)

If I could put the truth of these passages simply it would be this: there is more. 

Even though we have already received the fullness of His love in Christ, there is still more to be understood.

Even though we have already experienced the fullness of the Holy Spirit at the moment of our baptism, there is still more awareness than we can grow in.

Even if we are sure that God loves us unconditionally, we can still grow in our comprehension of and confidence in that love.

Even if we have had wild encounters with the Holy Spirit, dreamed 1,000 prophetic dreams, seen historic moves of God all across the earth, and experienced the profound and personal presence of the Holy Spirit in a million ways as we pray, there is still more to see.

Praying the prayers of Paul has convinced me that for many of us, our prayer lives could be filled with:

Boredom.

Routine.

Dullness.

Hard heartedness.

Distraction.

An overall lack of prioritization.

But Paul’s prayers invite our prayer lives to be filled with:

Fascination.

Delight.

Joy.

Wonder.

Curiosity.

Which of those lists better describes your relationship with God at the moment?

I would argue that praying Ephesians 3 should provoke our hearts in the direction of fascination, curiosity, and wonder.

Fascination with a Love that we have not even scratched the surface of.

Curiosity with a God who is so infinite that we have only begun to know Him.

Wonder with the daily delight of being filled with the fullness of the infinite Spirit.

Just this morning as I was leaving my house, my family was delighted to look out our window and to see the first snowfall of the season here in Boston. To those from the Northeast, snow seems to be met with a little more skepticism and perhaps even as a foreboding warning of the dark winter months to come. But for our little family from sunny California and Hot-lanta, we quite candidly were wrapped up in the wonder of the moment to see snow floating delicately to the ground through the branches of our fresh pine Christmas tree.

The falling snow reminded me of the gift of wonder, particularly during the Advent season.

Of course, the greatest wonder of all is that God would choose to make Himself known in flesh, that God would choose to leave heaven to come to us on earth, and that He would invite us to the daily, wonderful fascination of knowing and loving Him.

Can I challenge us to be filled with fresh wonder again this Advent season?

I’d love to invite us to pray today:

• Begin by taking some deep breaths in and out. Perhaps as you breathe in pray “Come,” and as you breathe out pray “Holy Spirit.”

• Once you feel settled, I’d love to invite you to take stock of your heart. Do you find more fascination, delight, and wonder, or do you find more cynicism, boredom, and disillusionment with God?

• Then, turn your affection and attention to the Lord, and pray those words from Ephesians 3:18-19!

I love hearing from those of you who are coming alive and living more in love with Jesus. Always feel free to hit “reply” and let me know if there is any way that I can support you in prayer.