I Do Not Cease Praying For You

(God’s Magnificent Work Through Christ)

Eph 1:15-23

This is the third sermon on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Last Sunday I jumped to the 6^th chapter to cover the Armor of God and I hope you could meditate on it and practice whatever you learned. We move on to the second part of Chapter 1, starting from verse 15. Let me remind you the theme of this book: God’s blessing us in Christ and choosing us so that we might live HOLY and blameless lives before God. That explains my subtitle “God’s magnificent work through Christ.” This is an exciting letter which Paul wrote from the prison. It is a dynamic letter, full of hope and the power that transforms lives.

If you remember, I said the letter opens with doxology and prayer. In verses 3-14, Paul presents important theological, doctrinal concepts. Let me remind you of some of them: Spiritual Blessings (3), The Father’s Initiative (4- 6), Redemption through Christ (7-10), Sealed with the Holy Spirit (11-14) .

Now in verse 15, “For this reason…” The phrase looks back upon the passage just finished. And for that reason he continues to pray for the “saints” of the Ephesians and other churches around it. So we move on to a wonderful passage where Paul will teach us about prayer.

These days the secular world is interested in the power of prayer. The last issue of the cover of Time magazine was about faith and prayer, not necessarily the Christian faith, but generally all religions. The article is an interesting one. They try to explain the effect of prayer in our brain. They have difficulty to see anything outside of our “brain.” Of course, they try to explain everything from a scientific worldview, and of course God and the Holy Spirit cannot be measured. But scientists say “that people who believe that their lives have meaning live longer than people who don’t.” (Time Feb 23^rd, page 70). In other words, prayer and faith are essential for humanity. This is a good conclusion, but my question is to whom and how should we pray?

I read another article by the Christian writer Philip Yancey . In this economic tsunami the editor of a magazine calls Philip and asks, “You wrote a book on prayer, right?”, “Tell me, how should a person be praying during a crisis like this?” (Christianity Today Jan 2009)

Paul is thankful for two things: “because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.”

Firstly, Paul is thankful about the faith of the Ephesians in the Lord Jesus. Paul was imprisoned in Rome when he heard about their faith. He heard how they turned from their pagan gods to Jesus. In those days believing in Christ was costly. People lost their jobs, they lost their positions; they were persecuted. We read in Acts how some magicians from Ephesus took firm action. “And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver” (Acts 19:19). That was equivalent to half a million dollars. Paul is rejoicing and thankful about the faith of the believers in Ephesus.

As a pastor, my heart rejoices and fills with gratitude every time I hear that someone from the churches where I served is growing in his/her faith in Christ.

The second reason for Paul to be thankful is the Love the Ephesians have towards the saints.

We will continue in English.