Paul's prayer for us

It has been another one of those weeks: sick children, interruptions, countless chores and errands. So much to do and time just seemed to slip by. By last night, I felt like I had hit a wall of discouragement and defeat. I needed to be working on a lecture I would be giving, but instead all I seemed to be doing was folding endless baskets of laundry, cleaning up the kitchen, taking children to the doctor, attending track meets, picking up and cleaning up and washing up... One of our children who is away at college got really sick and I added that to my list of worries and concerns--I felt helpless as he is far away at school and yet I felt heartsick that he was far away at school and sick and discouraged! You think that your hardest and most exhausting times as a parent will be when they are young, but when they grow up and are gone off, it is a whole different kind of mental exhaustion (that is much more challenging--it's worry without any control).

Yesterday I had assumed I would finally have a free day to spend in God's Word and work on this lecture, and instead, my youngest was at home sick. Now, I know this is not his fault and he did not do it intentionally to ruin his selfish mama's scheduled day, but there you have it! I spent the day going over all the make up work with him and wondering how on earth his class could possibly get his much done in one day. We laughed that he couldn't wait to get back to school and have a break from all this school work with his slavedriver mom! God certainly gave me clear confirmation (if I ever needed it) that He did not call me to homeschool!

When I fell into bed after dealing with an assortment of problems ranging from frustrating to ridiculous, I figured I'd get up really early and start to work on Bible study. Well, in the middle of the night, our youngest stood by the side of the bed and said he had a terrible ear ache. Bless his heart, it turned out he had a severe ear infection. So, after another night of very little sleep, I awoke exhausted and discouraged and overwhelmed with all I had to do.

I talked to the Lord and told Him all about it--shared my complaints and my frustrations and my disappointments. And when I was finally through moaning and fussing, our faithful Lord who never gives up on his most stubborn and slow-learning of children spoke to my heart: Pray the prayer! Okay, the prayer I'm referring to is the magnificent prayer in Ephesians 3:14-21. Ephesians 3 is the chapter we are studying in Bible study, and this prayer has blessed me as I've read it and contemplated it the past few days (hence the entry I wrote a few days ago on Eph. 3:20-21). What a prayer asking God for His power, His presence, His perception and His provision!

I've been reading it and praying it for my family and loved ones, but here's the thing, I'd been somehow missing it. Sure, I'd been praying for those things, but in the early morning darkness, it all became so real and alive to me. The words jumped off the page--they were for now, they were for us. It was if Paul sat in that dark prison just yesterday and was writing them just to us, right now, today. As I read the words in v.14 "For this reason I bow my knees before the Father" I got down on knees before the Lord, holding my Bible before Him. I prayed that He would "strengthen [us] with power through His Spirit in [our] inner being." (v.16) I asked the Lord to, right at that moment, enable us to be rooted and grounded in His love and that we would know and experience the overwhelming love of our Lord--the breadth (for God so loved the world), the length (that He gave His only Son), the depth (that whoever believes in Him should not perish), and height (but have eternal life) v.17-18. I asked the Lord to fill each member of my family--the sick ones, the discouraged ones, the preoccupied ones--with all the fullness of God. v.19

How often I seek the temporal over the eternal, the worldly over the spiritual. I want to pray for success and health and happiness for those I love. I'd been happy if God would answer this prayer with golf tournament wins for my son, with a perfect restoration to health of my children and my friends, with unblemished academic school success, with financial security, and while we're at it, world peace and happiness and joy! But praise the Lord He doesn't just seek to make me and the ones I love happy; He seeks to make us holy. He wants us to depend upon Him and to live with Him in an intimate moment by moment relationship. He reminds me that I don't need a genie-I need a Redeemer. I don't need a santa--I need a Saviour.

And so with Paul, we pray for inner strength. We pray that the Lord would not so much change our circumstances as change our souls. It's the inner strength and provision and presence of the Lord that will give us joy and peace in the midst of the stresses and strains of life. And isn't that the greatest miracle--when He changes us in the midst of our storms and gives us supernatural peace and power and joy?

So Lord, thank You for the problems of life that drive us to You. Thank You for never ever giving up on us. Thank You for Paul, chained in a prison for all those years and yet faithfully, joyfully, lovingly writing these words and these prayers for us. We pray them right now, in whatever prisons we are enduring right now, and ask You Lord, do it again! "Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be the glory... forever and ever. Amen."