Bowing on our knees is not a physical gesture most of us exercise very often. As we'll discover in today's message from our teacher, kneeling to pray is a Christian tradition that dates back to the first century.
It's a symbol of humility that represents our lowly position before God. Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll invites us to follow along in Ephesians chapter 3 where we find an eloquent prayer that begins in a horizontal posture of reverence followed by vertical expressions of praise. Chuck titled today's message, Paul on His Knees Again. It was the martyred missionary Jim Elliott who once wrote in his journal, the saint who advances on his knees never retreats.
Wise words. All of us have discovered that as we go through times of real discouragement, there's nothing like prayer to pull us out of that nose dive. Well, we're going to find Paul literally on his knees as we turn together to the third chapter of Ephesians. He is under house arrest and he has a Roman soldier chained to him during this time. Nevertheless, he's filled with the joy of the Lord. But in his heart, he is entertaining some deep concerns about his friends in Ephesus, those believers who were falling into discouragement over his being under arrest.
And so Paul decided to deal with that on his knees. He wanted none of that kind of discouragement on their part and so he prayed on their behalf that they would be filled with the love of Christ. They would be strengthened by his spirit rather than succumbing to discouragement. Well, we're going to read about that when we turn together to this third chapter of Ephesians. I want to begin our reading at verse 13 as you follow along. Therefore I ask you not to lose heart at my tribulations on your behalf, for they are your glory. For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power through his spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. You're listening to Insight for Living.
To search the Scriptures with Chuck Swendoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scriptures Studies by going to insightworld.org slash studies. And now the message titled, Paul on His Knees Again. Let's pray. We love you, Lord, and we're learning to live with you each day just a little better. Thank you for meeting us where we are and for understanding us in all our ways.
Depths and heights, mainly depths. Winds and losses and often losses. Encouraging and discouraging times and frequently discouraging. And for not writing us out of the book or for erasing us from your plan, but for stepping up again and again and catching us as we're running away. Thank you, Father, for bringing us back again and again. Thank you for the grace of our Lord Jesus, who though infinitely rich for our sakes became poor, that we through his poverty might become infinitely rich like he. Thank you for the excitement of where we're going and you've made that happen. Thank you for pulling us together from all different walks of life and all over the globe and putting us here on this Sunday morning. Thank you for what's carried us through from start to finish. Your amazing grace.
And because of that, we give and we pray in Jesus name and everybody said, Amen. Well, what do you do when you lose heart? That's the biblical words. Those are the biblical words for being discouraged, losing heart.
You've all been there, haven't we? The wind goes out of our sails. We have our morale dropped to a low, even though we were once really high and encouraged. Maybe somebody said something that was unfair or just downright ugly and you had been doing so well.
And then, wouldn't you know it, just a matter of a brief period of time and you begin to tunnel. You just want to give up. Discouragement does that to us. I found a great sense of humor helps when you're discouraged and I find it often among parents of young children. I mean, let's face it, parenting is a tough assignment and all the parents said, all right. Now, since it's so tough, some of you take it far too seriously and maybe this will help. I'm sure these things were written by a mother who had a very difficult set of situations in her home, but she didn't let it discourage her. She calls it things I've learned from my children.
A king-sized waterbed holds enough water to fill a 2,000 square foot home four inches deep. Here's another one. If you spray hairspray on dust bunnies and run over them with roller blades, they can ignite.
Isn't that good? If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough to rotate a 42-pound boy wearing Batman underwear and a Superman cape. It is strong enough, however, to spread paint on all four walls of a 20 by 20 foot room. You should not throw baseballs up when the ceiling fan is on. When using the ceiling fan as a bat, you have to throw the ball up a few times before you get a hit. A ceiling fan can hit a baseball a long way.
The next one she also learned from her children. The glass in windows, even double pane, doesn't stop a baseball hit by a ceiling fan. When you hear the toilet flush and the words, uh-oh, it's already too late. Break fluid mixed with Clorox makes smoke and lots of it. A six-year-old can start a fire with a flint even though a 36-year-old man says it can't be done except in the movies.
A magnifying glass can start a fire even on an overcast day. Certain Legos will pass through the entire digestive tract. Super glue is forever. I've learned this. No matter how much jello you put in a swimming pool, you still cannot walk on water. VCRs do not eject peanut butter and jelly sandwiches even though the TV commercials show that they do. Garbage bags do not make good parachutes. Marbles in the gas tank make lots of noise when you're driving.
I'm going to skip that one. The spin cycle on the washing machine does not make earthworms dizzy. It will, however, make cats dizzy.
Cats throw up twice their body weight when dizzy. Hey, let's face it, discouragement is not a laughing matter even though we're having a little fun with it. Boy, if you ever had your winds taken out of your sails, you know what I'm talking about. You can be soaring along, things are great, and all of a sudden you wonder if you're even the same person. Remember Elijah? That magnificent experience on Mount Carmel, and he drove the land free of the worshippers of Baal and Asherah, and within a matter of hours he's under a juniper tree asking that God take his life. Can you believe it's the same guy?
Only hours different between Mount Carmel and down near the southernmost region of the wilderness of Judea, down in Beersheba, he's saying, Lord take my life, it isn't worth it, I can't go on. Now you're not shocked if you're a person who understands depression. John R.W. Stott said the Christian's chief occupational hazards are depression and discouragement.
I think he's right. What do you do? How do you handle it?
Where do you go? Did you know that the words lose heart, the Greek word for losing heart is only found six times and five of them in Paul's letters? One here in Ephesians 3.13, one over in Galatians 6, one in 2 Thessalonians 3, two in 2 Corinthians 4, and then Jesus one time uses, or Luke uses it quoting Jesus, you ought to pray and not lose heart, so pray is the antidote. You know what's really tough is when your discouragement is brought on by something you caused in somebody else's life.
You track that? When you do something that causes another person to suffer for it, that's the situation here that we find in Ephesians 3. These people in Ephesus were Gentiles. Paul was under arrest because he had stood in defense of the Gentiles saying, if they come to Christ, they are on the same level as the Jew who's converted to Christ, and on that same level they're in the same family. Boom, he winds up under arrest waiting for trial before the Roman emperor of all things. The Jews were behind that.
Read it for yourself. Acts 21, 22, 23, 28, he's there because they wanted him killed. Now how would you feel if you were a Gentile living in Ephesus and you found out that Paul was under arrest because he had stood in your defense?
You'd feel badly. In verse 13, he asks them not to lose heart at his tribulation on their behalf. And so for this reason, verse 14, I bow my knee.
For this reason, I think it's because they're discouraged. And so he prays, follows the Lord's direction. I would that you'd pray and not lose heart. In fact, he says, I bow my knee. Do you know that's unusual for the Jew to bow the knee? If you ever visit Israel and you go to the Wailing Wall, you will not see Jews on their knees.
You'll see them standing, most of them with their hands outstretched. That's the way they prayed for centuries. Sometime they will sit to pray. They often, in first century times, the rabbi would sit to teach. He taught the Sermon on the Mount, sitting, Matthew 5-1. He taught the parable of the sower and the seed, sitting in a boat, Mark 4-1. He reclined at the table for the entire discourse, called the Upper Room Discourse, John 13-16.
He sat. Only in intense situations did they bow or fall prostrate before God. Jesus fell on his face in the garden to pray, Gethsemane. Paul kneels before the Lord in Acts 20, as he says goodbye to the Ephesian elders, verse 36. Daniel bows, kneels, I should say, he kneels before the Lord, Daniel 6-10. Three times a day in the intensity of his situation with the ruler. So in intense situations, he's bowing. So Paul, I think, literally got on his knees.
You know, just a little comment here before we go any further. Your posture in prayer is not nearly as important as the act itself. I often pray while I'm driving. I frequently pray just before a difficult encounter with an individual. Usually my prayers are shorter and to the point. Sometime I push my chair back from my desk and I kneel. I don't know what calls for that, except I feel this intense need, I guess the best word, to bring before the Lord some situation I can't handle. And this is his posture. I bow my knees before the Father.
Remember this little equation. You pray to God through Christ in the Spirit. This is a day of ultra-familiarity with the Trinity and I'd caution us against that. You don't pray to Jesus, you pray to God the Father. You pray through Christ and in his name and you pray in the Spirit. When the Lord taught them to pray, say, our Father who art in heaven. Pray to the Father through the Lord Jesus in the Spirit. So he's praying to the Father. Isn't it a wonderful title from whom I think a better rendering rather than every family is the whole family, meaning the family of Gentile and Jew.
That's been the whole point up until now in the letter, remember? I pray to the Father before whom or from whom the whole family in heaven and earth derives its name, that he would, and the prayer begins, the petition. I want to analyze discouragement and show you how remarkably Paul answers all four of them. When we are discouraged, four things happen.
I've analyzed this in my own life and I think I speak for you. Something happens physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Physically, and in each case we lose something. We lose energy physically.
Usually you're not very productive when you are discouraged. You lose inner motivation physically. Emotionally we lose reality. We lose touch with reality.
We don't feel like we're loved, cared for, even known by God if our discouragement is great enough. Mentally we lose our memory. We lose our memory. Things we once knew so well we don't call to mind.
We forget. We lose our memory. Spiritually we lose intimacy.
Physically, emotionally, mentally, physically. And therefore we lose heart. Which is the Bible's favorite word for the inner person. The core of our inner being. It's who we are. That's what will live on even when we die.
Some call it the personality. I simply call it the inner being. Interesting, in Paul's prayer all four are addressed.
In this order. We lose our physical strength. And so, not surprisingly, the very first thing he prays for, for his friends in Ephesus, is that he would grant, he as the father, would grant you to be strengthened with power. Through his spirit. Knowing that physically they were lacking, dunamis, dynamic, power, it's translated here. He prays that they will be granted, according to the riches of God's glory, to be strengthened.
The word means fortified, braced, invigorated. I pray that your spirit will be lifted up, your inner spirit will be reinvigorated. That it will be braced by the dunamis of God. By the way, it's a great prayer to pray for yourself when you're discouraged.
Or for your friend, or one of your kids, or one of your parents when they are. I pray that God would grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in the inner man. That Christ may dwell in your hearts. I thought Christ lived in my heart if I'm a Christian, he does. But it may not necessarily be completely at home there.
This word kata oike'o from two words that mean to dwell down, to be embedded. Ryrie renders this to be completely at home there. You can have Christ, but he is kept out of some rooms of your life, if you will. When he really is at home deeply in your life, kata, down deep, deep within your being, you are strengthened. I love the words of Anne Morrow Lindbergh in her Gift from the Sea book. I want first of all to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of I, a purity of intention, a central core to my life.
She's describing the inner man. I want a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can. I want in fact to borrow from the language of the saints to live in grace as much of the time as possible. By grace I mean inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which is translated into outward harmony.
I'm seeking perhaps what Socrates asked for in the prayer from the Phaedrus when he said, may the outward and inward be as one. That's what Paul prays for them. I pray that the peace that's available to you from the Father by the power of the Spirit through the indwelling Christ may become an outworking experience in your life. I'll tell you when that starts, your discouragement begins to fade. If you ever wonder when to pray for your pastor, pray for your pastor on Monday more than you pray for him on Sunday. Mondays are a lot harder than Sundays.
Sundays are invigorating and delightful and things we look forward to. But when Mondays come, sort of down the tube, you just feel after a big day, you easily get discouraged. Your mind plays tricks on you. Your adversary works against you. You can lose heart. He says that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, through faith.
Physically, we can lose energy, so we need strength. We pray for that. Emotionally, we can lose touch with reality.
Haven't you had that happen? Nobody cares. This is the end. Now, look at his prayer. That you being rooted and grounded in love. An emotional appeal to God from the Apostle Paul on behalf of the believers in Ephesus.
You're listening to Chuck Swindoll and Insight for Living. Today's message in Ephesians 3 is called Paul on His Knees Again. To learn more about this ministry, visit us online at insightworld.org.
Now, in order to fully understand what drove Paul to his knees, it's important to respect the time in which it was written and the cultural issues that Paul referenced. And to help you dig deeper on your own, I'll remind you that Chuck has written an in-depth commentary that includes this attention to historical detail. Unlike many commentaries that are somewhat technical and academic, Chuck's book includes additional features that make this resource very practical and even fun to read. It's called Swindoll's Living Insights Commentary on Galatians and Ephesians. You can purchase a hardbound copy at Insight for Living's website by going to insight.org slash store. Or by calling us if you're listening in the United States, dial 1-800-772-8888.
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Or go online to insight.org slash monthly companion. Tomorrow Chuck Swindoll continues his encouraging message about Paul's prayer for the Ephesians, right here on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Paul on his knees again, was copyrighted in 2000, 2001, and 2009. And the sound recording was copyrighted in 2009 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All sites are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.
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