Prayer: Access to the Presence of Glory

Ephesians 3 and Paul’s Prayer for Inner Strength

If you all want to turn to Ephesians chapter 3 with me this morning, that's where we will begin. Ephesians chapter 3. And let's take a look at starting in verse 14.

It says,.

For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints, which is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth all knowledge, excuse me, passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now unto Him that is able to exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end.

Amen. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this wonderful day. We thank you once again for bringing us together, giving us the unique opportunity to fellowship as a local body, as a church family. We thank you so much for all of the wonderful brothers and sisters that are joining us today, visiting us, and we just ask that you bless these services.

We ask that you honor it, that you bless it, and that your Spirit is among us. We ask all these things in your name. Amen. So the Apostle Paul, shortly after giving us that very emphatic statement that we looked at last week, that we have boldness, that we have access to God, and that we have these things with confidence, it's just right a few verses before where we started this morning where we see Paul talking about that boldness that we talked so much about last week.

Right after talking about that, he then turns his eyes to the Father and he shows us what that boldness looks like. He tells us that we have access to it. He tells us that we have access to the throne and that we have boldness in that access.

But then he shows us what it looks like in practice as well. So last week, we honed in on this boldness. We honed in on the fact that we have right to boldness before the throne of grace because of the price that was paid by Jesus Himself.

Because of His finished work, we have boldness and access to God. Well, this week, I want us to hone in a little bit on the basis for that boldness. A little bit more. Again, we alluded to it last week, but I want to look at it just a little bit more this week.

Now, from verses 14 -21, the passage that we just read, we're given a prayer of Paul. So this is Paul praying. He says, I bow my knees before the Father. It's a prayer of Paul. He gives it to us in written form, and it's to the Father.

And it's in the manner that Christ had given us by example as well during His life on earth. We talked a little bit about the model prayer last week, about the fact that Jesus, through parables and just living His life, shows us what it's like to have this access to God and the boldness that we should have because of it.

Now, when we talk about boldness in prayer, directly before the throne of the Father, we can look just like we can here at the apostles as examples of how this looks, how it looks in faithful practice.

That's what Paul is showing us here. Now, I want you guys to consider for just a second before we get too far into it. I want you all to consider the things that Paul is asking the Father in this single prayer.

He asks that the Father, according to His own glory, will grant His people strength with power, strength with power through the Spirit in the inner man. So the inner man, that's a reference to our soul, to our conscience, to that which is in communion, in fellowship with the Holy Spirit when He indwells believers.

And as we walk in the new man, He wants us to have strength with power through the Spirit in the inner man. That's verse 16. And He asks this so that Christ may find His abode in the hearts of His people by faith.

That's verse 17. And that as this happens, we may be able to grasp or to literally take possession of. When it says to comprehend, it means to take possession of the love, the multidimensional reality of His love.

And to then intimately know the love of Christ, which transcends all reason of man. That's verses 17 and 18. And He asks all this, and this is really amazing in verse 19, that we may be filled with the fullness, the Greek term pleroma, of God.

That Greek term is amazing. It's talking about the incomprehensible abundance of God. He wants us to be filled with that. And then He puts a period on the prayer by glorifying God and reminding us that the Father is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or can even understand in verse 20.

Now I want you guys to look at that with me one more time. I want to take note of this particular phrase that we have in verse 20. Look at it one more time. Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.

Exceeding abundantly above all. You know, Brother Myron sometimes talks about Philippians 4 .4 being the most redundant verse in the Bible. Rejoice in all things, and again I say rejoice. And this one is pretty close.

Paul is emphasizing something. He's using, not only is he using the full vocabulary here to emphasize this idea, but he uses the same word twice in one particular point. When he says exceeding, and then a second again he says above all.

Or exceeding and above. It's the same Greek term. He's emphasizing something here. Another way that you could read this verse is by saying now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or understand.

So we have boldness, and we can expect that the Father can deliver. But the point Paul is making here is that He can deliver far beyond any way that you could ever think about it yourself, any way that you could expect or predict.

He'll deliver, but He'll deliver above everything. This is a bold prayer. This is a very bold prayer of Paul. This is Paul asking for heaven and earth to quite literally meet so that God's people are granted this supernatural knowledge.

This supernatural knowledge. And they can have that while still living in corruptible bodies that sin. Think about that for a second. That is a lot to ask. That is a bold prayer from Paul. We're still living in these corruptible bodies.

We're still living in these earthen vessels, and yet Paul asks for all of this to be delivered to all of us.

And why?

It's so that we may receive strength in power in the Holy Spirit, that Christ may live in our hearts by our continual faith in Him, that we may comprehend the dimensions of Christ's love, that we may intimately know, on the most intimate level, know His love that transcends even the reason of man.

Anything that we could ever concoct in our own minds, it transcends all of it, and that we might be filled with the fullness of God. That is some amazing things right there. Now, I want you guys to understand from this one example, this is one of many, one of many bold prayers that we have recorded throughout the New Testament, and of course, the New Testament is so replete with beautiful, bold prayers by the prophets, by the saints of old, of course by David, by Solomon, so many examples.

We have a lot of them, but in this one example, I want you guys to understand a couple of things. Number one, as we mentioned a couple of times already, this is, in fact, a bold prayer. This is what the boldness looks like that Paul just finished telling us we had in the verses right before.

He bows his knees before the Father. This is a bold prayer. This is Paul being an example for us in living out the kind of boldness that Jesus wanted His disciples to have and that Paul knew that he had the rights to.

He's living that out. But secondly, and this is where we're going to hone in a little bit more today, is you notice that Paul's boldness here was grounded in scriptural truths, in scripture, and in the promises of God.

His boldness was grounded in something. It wasn't just a stream of emotions that were kind of coming out of nowhere and then these words spilled out. There was a basis to this bold prayer, and there is something to that that we're about to take a closer look at.

Confidence in Prayer and a Clear Conscience

Look at 1 John with me for a second. Turn to 1 John. We're going to start in chapter 3 and look at just a couple of excerpts from a very short epistle that really packs a punch. It has a lot in it, and a lot that is applicable to this idea of having a Father that listens, that hears, and that we can go before in confidence.

Look at 1 John. We're starting in chapter 3, and let's start in verse 18 here.

It says,.

My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. In other words, let's live out the things we say. Let's practice what we preach. Let's let the Scriptures be our foundation to teach us how to live, and yes, proclaim it, but live it out as well in truth.

And hereby we know that we are of the truth and shall assure our hearts before Him. John's use of hearts here, he's talking about our conscience. He wants our conscience to be pure, to be right with the Lord, to be right with the Holy Spirit, interlocked with what the Lord would want us to have and to be living out.

He says because of this we have assurance of the truth, and it shall assure our hearts before Him. Look at verse 20. For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and He knoweth all things.

Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then we have confidence toward God. Now there's a whole lot in those verses there, and I'm giving it to you mainly for context, but just a quick note, Paul is saying your conscience is there.

It's there for good reason. It'll fail you sometimes. It'll condemn you. But remember that God knows more than your conscience does. Keep that in mind. He wants us to remember that. But then in verse 21, He does let us know if our conscience is clear, if our hearts are clean, then we have confidence toward God.

And in what context? Look at verse 22. It's prayer. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. Pay close attention to some of the things John is saying here, because he's telling us how this works and how this boldness can be true, how we can approach the Creator of the universe in boldness rather than in fear and in trepidation, having reservations, things like that, a lot of things we talked about last week.

Whatsoever ye ask, ye receive of Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. And then John kind of summarizes this a little bit for us, just to make it easy.

And in verse 23, he gives us a specific example. He says, and this is His commandment. Remember when Jesus was talking to His disciples and talking to the Pharisees and talking to the crowds, and often He talked about loving the Lord your God and then loving your neighbor.

All of the law and the prophets are in this. I'm paraphrasing terribly, but you all remember what I'm talking about there. Jesus summarizes the entire Old Testament in those two statements. And John is kind of doing the same thing here.

All the things there, as you move throughout the New Testament, you read Romans and you read Ephesians and you see these things that Paul is saying, do these. You are a believer, and because you are a believer, do these things.

Forgive one another, be tenderhearted. There are a lot of examples that you could use where you have all these imperatives where He's saying, live like this because you can. You have the capacity for it.

He's not giving us suggestions. He's saying, go do it because you can. John here is summarizing a lot of these. And he says, and this is His commandment, that we should believe on the name of the Son, Jesus Christ.

And this is in the present active. It's a continual faith and belief that He is who He says He is and that we can rely on Him for everything. And, love one another. There's the summary. Love one another, as He gave His commandment.

In other words, love for the brethren. You can summarize everything that God tells us, everything that He asks of us, commands of us to do, and you can summarize it in the simple manifestation of your love for the brethren.

When you love your brothers and sisters in Christ, you are showing the world that there's something different about you. There's something different within you because it's a love that transcends human love.

It's a love that comes from God. And so when we obey this particular commandment and we love one another, we have a clear conscience. We have confidence. And then verse 24,. And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in Him.

So as we do this, as we love the brethren, as we are obeying the things that Jesus tells us to do and the apostles tell us to do later, we are dwelling in the Lord.

What is that?

That's us walking in the new man, this new creation that Paul tells us we have. And He in Him. So Jesus is abiding in us as well. And hereby we know that He abideth in us by the Spirit which He hath given us.

So John is declaring here that no one can have confidence in prayer unless their conscience is clear. A clear conscience comes from obedience to the Lord and the things that He asks of His disciples. We can feel...

Now keep in mind, one of John's prereqs before going into some of this was reminding us that the Father is wiser than the conscience. He can see deeper into the heart of His people. But John still wants us to have a clear conscience too.

He wants us to feel good, right, and understand that we have that boldness for a good reason. And so he tells us a clear conscience comes from obedience to the Lord, things that are pleasing in His sight, obeying Him and the things that He asks of His disciples.

If you believe, John tells us, in other words, have faith that you can rely on the Lord. That He is sufficient for your life. That He will be there throughout all of the trials and tribulations that we'll experience.

If you have that belief in the Lord Jesus, and then keep the things that He tells you to do, such as loving the brethren. Show your brothers and sisters around you that you love them and the other imperatives that we get throughout the New Testament through the apostles and so forth.

You then have confidence or assurance before God that He's going to hear you, that He's going to hear your prayers and that you'll receive what you ask in God's due time. And of course, that's something that we have to remember often, is that answered prayer doesn't always look exactly like we would want it to look in the sense of, you pray this prayer, and then you receive what you just asked for with a bow on it moments later.

There are times, and we're given a strange example in the Old Testament of Daniel, and we alluded to this at the very end of last week, praying fervently for the Lord to send an interpreter for this vision that he just received and that was troubling to him.

And the Lord answered his prayer. He heard the prayer immediately. But it took 21 days for this interpreter to show up. And of course, it was one of the Lord's angels from heaven. And he goes on to tell Daniel that you are loved, you haven't been ignored, you were heard.

But I was fighting the demons in Persia and had some things I had to attend to. They slowed me down, but now I'm here. And so we have to remember that when we have that clear conscience, when we are praying, and we're going to look at another passage in just a second that breaks this down for us, the things that can give us that confidence, that boldness, when we pray to God, he will answer it, but it's in his due time.

And that's something that we have to remember. Now, if you go forward just a couple of chapters, look at chapter 5 of 1 John. You're going to see that John is about to give us a summary of this whole epistle, and he rehashes this idea that we're talking about, this confidence in prayer.

He rehashes it a little bit, but with some interesting additions tacked onto it. So 1 John 5, look at verse 13.

John says,.

These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that you have eternal life, and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God. Now, this is an interesting verse in and of itself.

Again, he's summarizing his epistle here, and he's telling us all these things so that we may know with confidence that these things are true. In verse 14, he says,. And this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us.

And if we know that he hears us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him. This is a very amazing passage here. In verse 13, John gives again the reason why he wrote the epistle, that we may know the reality of our eternal life in Christ.

He gives us proofs, certainties of this reality, and that that builds up our continued belief in Christ's name as we live our lives. In verse 14, John then gives us the basis for our confidence. That Greek word there, parousia, you could translate that boldness, which again is kind of what we're talking about.

You could translate confidence to boldness there. And that is, where does this confidence, where does this boldness come from? It is access to God into his presence through the means of prayer. We have access to God.

We have access into the presence of glory right now in these corruptible bodies as we speak through the means of prayer. And that's what John wants us to keep in mind. The Greek term, when he says confidence, it's really, really strong.

It means that we have free, fearless, and cheerful courage to go forth boldly before the throne of grace. He tells us that when we pray in his will, and that's a key phrase there, in his will, he will hear us.

He heareth, this little Greek term, akuo, it means that he will be present when we are asking, when we are bringing our petitions forth. It means he will be present. It means that he is going to consider what's being said.

It means he's going to understand what's being said, and that he will then dispatch the right answer to the prayer. All of that is carried in this little Greek term when he says that he hears us. It's in the positive sense.

It's not just this lofty judge on the bench, and you are walking up and hoping that he will be gracious and merciful, and it's kind of the negative connotation. He hears what you have to say, but you're hoping for a good response.

This is in the positive. This is saying he, as your father, will hear you, he'll understand what you're saying, and he will dispatch the right answer. We ask, and he hears is what John is saying. And it's the same dynamic as that of a little child when he's on the knee of his father looking up with the big eyes making these requests.

It's that kind of dynamic, but it is without limits. It's a really, really amazing position that we're in. And then in verse 15, John further demonstrates this confidence, this boldness by showing us the result of the boldness, of the confidence that we can have.

He says, and if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we will have the requests which we have asked from him. So there is great power here. There is great power here. But we have to remember that that power is a derivative of God's will.

The power comes from somewhere. It's not just because of the fact that we are saying the things that we want to say. It's not just because we have some sort of feeling, this is what I want to be asking for right now, and I'm going to go for it, and therefore there's power in it.

The power is a derivative of God's will. And that is one of the things that John is pointing out, especially in verse 4, which is why he emphasizes that a little bit. In other words, the prayer, when we pray things according to the will of God, it is flowing from his will.

And, of course, it begs the question, how do we know that we are praying in his will? How can we assure that we are praying according to his will? And the answer is twofold. Number one, having the Spirit within us.

When a person calls upon the name of the Lord, is regenerated by the Spirit, has the Spirit living within him. That is the first key, obviously. But secondly, is abiding in God's Word, abiding in the Word of God as we live our lives from that point forward, from the point of salvation on.

We have lives to live. We are still living in linear space and time. We've got to do something with that time. How can you obey something if you don't know what the commands are, if you will, if you don't know what the things you're meant to obey or supposed to obey are?

Abiding in Christ’s Word and Praying According to His Will

Look at John, the Gospel of John now, chapter 15. This is the same writer as these epistles, but it's Jesus talking. In the Gospel of John, chapter 15, one of the ways that we can have this great power, and rest assured that we have it, is by having the Spirit within us and by abiding in His Word.

Look at verse 7. John 15, verse 7.

Jesus says,.

If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Go figure, it's in the context of prayer. Abiding in God's Word is linked, perfectly correlated, with fulfilling what John is talking about in his epistle when he says, when you ask according to His will.

How do you know what His will is? Well, we know that He has... One aspect of His will is the future that He knows that we don't yet know. That's what you may refer to as the secret will of God that you step into moment by moment.

And you see what He has for us. The doors that open, the doors that close. But there's a second component of it that we can know and that we should know. And that is His revealed will as it has been laid out for us in His Word.

And that is why Jesus is telling us to abide in Him, His words abide in us, and then ask. You see that there's a sequence there. It starts with His Word first. Abide in Me, My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.

Now skip down to verse 16 and look at Jesus reaffirming this same idea with a little bit more to it. He says, you have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you and ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain, and that whatsoever ye ask of the Father in My name, He may give it to you.

Now there is a whole lot going on in that single verse. And it's interesting because it begins with Jesus giving us the truth that He's the one that chose us. We didn't choose Him. But right alongside this affirmation of the sovereignty of God in the lives of His people, you also have Him talking about the fact that we should bring forth good fruit as we live out our lives.

Remember, we have lives to live. Jesus knew that. And that's why in His grace throughout the New Testament, He gives us things to keep in mind and specific things to go do. He didn't leave us to just figure it out as we live, as we move on.

He gave us everything that we need for living in a way that is pleasing to His sight. And so He talks about that a little bit here, that ye may go forth and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain.

And then He ends by saying that whatsoever ye ask of the Father in My name, He may give it to you. Spurgeon once said that there is great efficacy in the divine office of intercession. What he meant by that is that when Jesus ascended and became our intercessor, our mediator in heaven, there is efficacy there.

It's not just an office in name only. Jesus is working, and it's an effective work. Meaning that as we abide in His Word, as we pray according to His will, John just told us, Jesus is there, He's our intercessor, and He is taking part in that relationship between us and the Father as our intercessor.

Prayers of the believer are heard by the Father. They're heard, and there's no reason to doubt it because we have a perfect intercessor actively working on our behalf. Now, not everyone's prayers are heard.

We know that people around the world, whether they are a genuine believer in Christ as the Son of God or not, are praying and asking all sorts of things. But not everyone's prayers are heard. However, believers who pray according to God's will are always heard.

And so there is a terrific positive side to all of this in that through salvation and then through the sanctification process and the Spirit living in our lives, we pray and we're heard. We don't have to have reservations like we talked about last week.

We don't have to worry about bothering the Father. He's there, and we can enter boldly. To pray in Christ's name, because notice Jesus at the end of verse 16 there mentioned that whatever we ask of the Father in His name, every word is important, every aspect of these things that first Paul, then John, and now Jesus are saying are incredibly important because to pray in Christ's name is the equivalent of praying in His will, which is what John was telling us in the epistle, to pray according to His will.

It's not a magic word formula that we put together. When we say, in your name, it's not like saying that is this magic thing that then guarantees us whatever vain thing we may ask for. It's not what Jesus is talking about.

He's saying that you pray consistent with My word, with My character, with My name, with everything that I am and everything that I do. When you pray in My name, meaning the things you are praying are consistent with My word, the Father hears you.

The Father hears you, and we can be bold because of that reality. This is where boldness comes from. It comes from His finished work. It's not boldness that's derived in and of ourselves. It's boldness that has been paid for.

It's boldness that had a price, but the price has been paid. His finished work, our continual communion with Him and with the Father, these are results of that finished work. There is great efficacy in all this, as Spurgeon said, so we need to remember that.

We need to remember that His will is synonymous with praying in His name, and we can pray in His name in confidence when it's according to His will by abiding in His word. As I said last week, too many Christians have this undue fear of bothering the Father.

We need to be careful with our prayers. Maybe we need to make sure that it's something worth praying, and that sort of thing. Of course, it is sad that that may be the case for some, but we should never feel such a thing.

For one, because like I said a second ago, Christ purchased the boldness with His blood. When we come before the Father, there are times when we may do so with really small requests, and those requests might not even have a lot of zeal in them.

In other words, again, we're being careful. We have reservations. We don't want to feel like we're bothering Him or anything like that. And so we step up to this prayer for these small little requests, and they don't have any zeal.

They don't have any passion. They don't have any intensity in them. Or in some cases, maybe we do have the zeal to finally take a petition before the Lord, maybe something big, something that we really want and need His help with.

We take that petition before the throne of grace. But then we may fail to actually believe that it could happen. We might fail to have faith that, yes, I'm asking for something big, but God is a gracious Father.

He's a loving Father, and He may actually want to answer this prayer the way that we are asking. And so there's little faith all of the sudden. We leave the prayer without belief. And when you do that, there's no boldness.

So now everything is just kind of cattywampus. There are very important things missing here, and we can't fall for that. I want to quote Spurgeon for a second. Last week when Asha and I were talking about this topic, she reminded me of one of her favorite sermons that Spurgeon ever preached, and it's in a book that we have at home.

And so she brought it to me and said, you should read this.

It's amazing.

She's read it more than once. And it's a sermon called Restraining Prayer. And in that sermon, Spurgeon said this.

He says,.

O for men that can lay hold upon the golden knocker of heaven's gate, and make it ring and ring again, as if they meant it to be heard. Cold prayers court a denial. God hears by fire, and the God that answers by fire let Him be God.

But there must be prayer in Elijah's heart first. There must be fire in Elijah's heart first, before the fire will come down and answer to the prayer. Our fervency goeth up to heaven, and then God's grace, which gave the fervency in the first place, cometh down and giveth the answer.

What he's saying is that before the miraculous scene of Elijah, before all of the abominations that he was standing before, all of the pagans, all of those mocking his God, before that fire came down and consumed the wet wood, there had to be fire in the heart of Elijah first.

He had to have faith and belief that this great thing he was about to ask was going to happen. There has to be fire in the heart before the fire comes down from heaven. In the Gospel of Matthew, there's a really strange scene where Jesus curses a fig tree for not bearing fruit.

And it withered immediately. It withered instantly. And the disciples who just saw that happen later came to Jesus and they said, how did the fig tree wither all at once? They're saying, where does such power come from?

We've never seen anything like this. It died from the roots up in a second. And the Greek word literally means instantly. And Jesus then answers that by giving them a lesson on prayer. Right after having performed this very interesting miracle.

And he answers them by telling them that it's belief. That it is faith. When you ask the Father that He will deliver. That is where power like this comes from. Don't doubt that the Father hears you and sends His power down into space and time to answer our prayers.

Now we often leave our prayers in unbelief like I alluded to earlier. Not expecting for God to hear us or to deliver us. And then when the answer does come, sometimes we may act surprised as if, again, our God wasn't this benevolent Father that He is.

So we may enter the prayer in unbelief. We may leave the prayer with a lack of faith that will actually happen. And then it still happens. And then we act surprised that it happened. And these are the types of things that Jesus and John and Paul are saying, don't do that.

Don't do that. Have confidence. Have boldness. It was purchased. Have boldness. Of course, Spurgeon certainly was talking about that very thing. We can't act like the stiff-necked Hebrews that were in the wilderness.

When they were standing before the promised land, on numerous occasions they turned their back to the promised land, looked back into the wilderness, and thought long and hard about maybe going back that direction would be the best thing.

When the promises that God gave them laid before their very eyes. Now, think about that for a second as a type. You think about all of the promises that God gives us. We don't want to be like the stiff-necked Hebrews with our backs to the promise and looking back into the wilderness.

We don't want to make these regressive moves back into the wilderness after standing on the doorstep of all of the promises of God. Every single time we pray to the Father in boldness, we are taking claim to those promises that the Father has given us, that we recognize that His presence is there, that He does live within our hearts through His Holy Spirit, and that we have more to come.

Every single prayer to the Father in faith and belief and boldness is like staking off a little bit more of the promised land, taking a little bit more of His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. It's our recognition that we know He is with us and that He will never forsake us.

Every single time we pray in faith according to His will after having abided in His Word. Doubt in Him will not ever serve our prayers very well. We can't have doubt in Him. We have to believe that God is trustworthy.

He is. It's a matter of believing that He actually is. Look at James 1. We'll end here. Go to James 1. And James wants us to see the difference between praying to our Father in faith versus those that are just going about kind of hoping for the best.

They may be saying certain things, they may be thinking there is some kind of magic or power in a particular word formula, and that that will lead to the things that they want. James wants us to see, no, this is what it needs to look like.