What is the best thing that can happen for you? What is the prayer that you should pray for
your friends? Let’s look at the prayer
that Paul made for his fellow believers (and therefore his friends) at
Ephesians 3:14-19
14 For
this reason I bow my knees before the Father,
15 from whom every
family in heaven and on earth derives its name,
16 that He would
grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with
power through His Spirit in the inner man,
Notice it’s not that you strengthen yourself, it’s that you are strengthened through the Holy Spirit.
17 so that Christ
may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and
grounded in love,
To get a better understanding of what this means, you need to look at the original Greek.
The word faith is PISTIS. When used as a noun, it doesn’t just mean faith as in the act of believing. It refers to the body of what is believed. What it is talking about here is the Word of God that you have in your soul.
Dwell is the word KATOIKESAI, and it means to dwell, but it also means to be at home. It’s not just a matter of Him living inside you (which He does); it’s a matter of the Lord Jesus Christ being comfortable with the way you think!
As you learn more about the Word of God, your thinking lines up more and more with how Jesus Christ thinks. Do you have friends who think the way you do? Don’t you feel comfortable around them? That’s the principle of this word dwell. The more you learn from the Word of God about how Jesus Christ thinks, the more your thinking will be transformed to be like His.
Romans 12:2
2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
I want to look at more principles related to this prayer, but we’ll save it for tomorrow.