The Secret Place // My Prayer For You // Pastor Josh Evans

Amen.

Amen. Thank you, Holly, for that, and I appreciate all of the good music here today, and that is what we're praying for. The message of that song, we are praying for whatever need you have. We've been calling upon God, and we've been putting up on the screen at the end of the service, God, I want you to do fill in the blank, and I pray that you are praying the way that Jesus has commanded us to pray, and I hope that you are boldly coming before the throne of grace before Him. So, good music today, and if you have your Bible, go to Ephesians chapter number 3.

Ephesians chapter number 3, and we began a series three weeks ago entitled The Secret Place. The Secret Place, and it is a series all about prayer, and I'm telling you, if you were honest with yourself, you know, it's one thing to come to church, and that's a part of our spiritual life, and that's an important part of your spiritual life. I think church should be an important part of your faith journey, and you should be here, and the scripture talks about that, but I think it's easy for us to kind of look at the scoreboard of our Christian faith and say, okay, I attend church, I learn verses, I don't do this, I do that, I don't do this, I do that, and we do a lot of these things and we forget where all of the power comes from, and it's from Him, and He asks every single one of us to pray and invite His power and His kingdom to come down into our situations.

And all of us want what comes with that. We want the fruit of praying for those things, but so often we aren't willing to get on our knees before God consistently and boldly and persistently before Him and ask Him to work in our situation. And if you struggle in your prayer life, you're not alone. We've learned this, that even the disciples, the people who walked with Jesus, the people who saw miracles that Jesus performed, even them, they saw Jesus praying and they were thinking, okay, the way we pray is not like that. And so they came to Jesus after they saw Him praying one time, and they're saying, Jesus, can you teach us to pray?

And Jesus tells them, hey, you need to pray like this, and He gives them some instruction on prayer. So if you're in here and you say, man, I am struggling with my prayer life and I lay on my bed and I try to pray, and next thing you know, I drift off and I've dozed off in prayer and I can't even remember what I said. And you're struggling in your prayer life for the consistent time. You just don't have a time where you pray.

Let me tell you this, you are not alone. In fact, the disciples, like I said, they struggled with it, but collectively, I think all of us in here struggle from time to time with prayer. What should we pray for? How should we pray? And today I want to look at this thought is how should we pray for other people? How should we pray for other other people? If you're like me, the extent of my prayer time, a lot of times when I pray for somebody else, it's usually for their healing.

They just had surgery, so pray for them as they recover. And then it might be something, hey, bless them. It might be protect them. It might be to pray that they will have a good day.

I don't know. And a lot of times that's about the extent of how we pray. We pray for our children. And when we pray for our children, a lot of times we pray that they would be kind.

We pray that they would get good grades. We pray for all of these things. And I'm just curious, if that is the extent of our prayer time for other people, and how should we pray for other people? Somebody asked you to pray for them. Have you ever said, oh, sure, I'll pray for that and forgot all about it. How many of you have done that from time to time? Raise your hand, okay? Don't make me feel too guilty up here. Some of you really.

And next week we're talking about lying. But we all struggle. I say a lot of times, hey, I'll pray for you, or been praying for you. Those are kind of cliche. You come to church.

That's what you hear all the time. And I'm just curious, are we consistently praying for people, and how should we pray for people? In Ephesians chapter three, this passage is about as rich as any few verses when it comes to prayer. The apostle Paul is writing this. This is in a letter to the church at Ephesus. He is writing this letter directly to a church, a church that was experiencing difficulty, a church that was experiencing trials and persecution because of some of the idolatry that was happening there in the city of Ephesus.

And so he's writing directly to them. And in the first few chapters of this book, he actually writes about their identity. And he writes about the gospel at work in their life. And he wants them to understand who they are in Jesus. What has the gospel done in their life?

And he writes about all of those things. And then in chapter three, he actually kind of gets real personal with them, gets real transparent. He kind of peels back the curtain of how he feels about the church at Ephesus and the people there. And he begins to tell them when he goes before God, these are the things that he is praying for the church. And you would think because of everything Ephesus was experiencing, you would think it would be protect them.

They're in a dangerous spot. And all of these things, those would be probably the first things I would pray for if I was praying for some people that were experiencing some things like the church at Ephesus was experiencing. And we find what the Apostle Paul prays for. And I want you to think about this today as we look at this prayer for this church. I want you to think about who do you pray for the most?

Only you know that. Is it a spouse? Is it your children? Is it your parents? Is it your friend? Who do you pray for the most?

Is it your neighbor? I don't know, but who do you pray for the most? And I want to challenge us from the Apostle Paul's prayer to pray for them, to pray for others the way that the Apostle Paul prayed for the church at Ephesus.

This is my prayer for you. I'm going to start praying this regularly for our church, for the people that make up our church, because I think it could make a world of difference. He says this in Ephesians chapter 3 verse 14.

Because of all of these things that he's talked about in the first three chapters, he's talked about the gospel at work and then how the gospel changes a person's life, who Jesus is and what he does for them. And because they're experiencing all these problems in the city of Ephesus, he says in verse 14, for this cause, because of all of this, I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let me say this, that posture is important when addressing our Lord and Savior.

I don't think we take that seriously enough. Posture is important. It doesn't mean you have to always be kneeling to pray, but here the Apostle Paul, he says that I kneeled, I bowed my knees before the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, signifying reverence. It signifies humility. He is recognizing that this is the Father and I am your child. You are authority and full of deity and I am just your servant. And then he goes on, he says, verse 15, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. In other words, he's saying, father by which all of us are from, that he would grant you the Ephesians according to the riches of his glory.

And he goes on and he mentioned several things. I'm going to give you five things that you should pray for, that straight from the Apostle Paul, he gives us a perfect outline here today. Five ways that you should pray for people, or five things that you should pray for people. When you pray for your spouse, this is what you should pray for. When you pray for your kids, this is what you should pray for. When you pray for this church, this is what I want you to pray for. Because this is going to make the difference.

This is going to make the difference. And so the first thing that he prays for is found in verse 16 and it's this, that they would experience inner strength by the Spirit of God. That they would experience inner strength by the Spirit of God. Look at verse 16, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man. Strengthened with might by the Spirit of the inner man. Paul is saying this to the church, he says, you know how I pray for you? I pray that every single one of you would experience inner strength by his Spirit. Inner strength.

I want you to know, church, this is what I want to pray for you every single day. That you would experience inner strength. Listen, we talk, you know, the gospel is the reason why any of us are here today.

The gospel, what Jesus did for us on the cross of Christ is this. It's simply an inside out transformation. Now we are really good at trying to fix the outside, right? We're really good at trying to make ourselves look really good on the outside.

Don't believe me, just jump on social media from time to time. Aren't we, aren't church people the greatest at trying to make everything look perfect on the outside? We kind of take like 15 photos before we get the right one to take because we don't want to post anything that makes us look like, you know, things are tough. Think about it this way, family photos. How many of you have done family photos and it's kind of like, you know, isn't that kind of the worst when your kids are little, you're trying to kind of get them in and the photographer's there and you're yelling at them, you know, I mean, I'm threatening my kids with their very life in front of the photographer. Like, I'm thinking my photographer is probably thinking, wow, you're a pastor, you know, who you will not live to see another day.

Now smile for that camera, right? And, and that's how it is, right? And, and then it's like, it's like the worst thing in the world. And, and you go through tons of these photos and you're yelling and you're frustrated and you're mad.

Your kids didn't want to wear what you wanted them to wear. And it's hot and you're sweaty and you're tired and you're yelling. And then you smile really good. And then you post that picture and you say, great day of family photos. Let's just be real.

It's the worst day of your life. Okay. And, and here's the thing. We're good at fixing the exterior.

We're good at trying to look good. In fact, we come to church services and we hear a sermon on something and we immediately leave here and say, okay, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to stop doing this.

I'm going to stop doing that. And we're really good at fixing all of the exterior so that everyone around us thinks we are this super spiritual person. And here's what the apostle Paul says. He says, listen, above that I'm praying that you would have strength in the inner man. He didn't pray that their exterior would be fixed. He prays that they would be strengthened on the inside.

And here's why. Because when our inner man is strengthened and our inner man is walking with the spirit of God, everything on the outside will take care of itself. You see too many of us, we're trying to work our faith journey from the outside in and the way that we should be working is from the inside out.

From the inside out. We should be working on our inner man. And listen, all of us have an inner man and he prays that it would have strength. This Greek word for strength is used many different times in the Old Testament. In fact, it's used a lot of different times in David's life.

One time in 1 Samuel chapter 30, David and his camp was being attacked by the Amalekites and they come and they set things on fire and they do all of this stuff and kill people and all of this stuff. And David afterwards, when he comes back to the camp and he sees everything that they have done, he's weeping and he's praying to God. And it says that he actually couldn't find even the strength to weep again.

That's the same word, the same idea that we have that Paul is praying for them. David's saying, I don't even have the strength to go on because of all this terrible stuff that's happening. I don't even have the strength today to pray. I don't even have the strength to weep.

Have you ever been there before where life just continues to hit you and every time you turn around, life is just getting worse and worse and worse and worse. And you're thinking, man, I'm done with this. I don't even have the strength to pray anymore.

I don't even have the strength to go on anymore. And then in 1 Samuel chapter 30, he goes on a little bit further after he says, man, I'm struggling to even find the strength and the power to even weep and pray today. And then at the end of 1 Samuel 30, we find that David uses the same word to say, but I found all the strength that I need in him. Let me say this, some of us, we need to realize how weak and powerless we truly are before we can realize how strong and powerful he truly is in our life. We got to come to the father understanding that we are absolutely nothing without him. We are absolutely nothing in front of a holy righteous father.

And sometimes we got to realize how weak we are to realize how strong we can be with him working in our life. I was thinking about this the other day. My son, he loves to, he loves to sometimes, he has this bed. I don't know what the proper terminology is, but it's one of those raised up beds. So there's a little hangout area underneath his bed.

So it's really high. So he has this ladder that goes up. He invites me to go up there and play video games sometimes, but I think I'll break the bed if I climb this ladder.

So it's this thing that's raised up. And a lot of times, for whatever reason, he likes to take the mattress off and put it on the floor in his room. And he likes to sleep down there. He gets sick and tired. It's exhausting climbing that ladder apparently. And so he likes for us to take the thing, but the mattress is like heavy.

It's like a lie. He can't do it by himself. And so he'll ask me and Abby sometimes and to go in there and hey, can you get my mattress down? And we're like, well, you're going to help.

And so he's like, I'll help, I'll help, you know. And so we get underneath there and, you know, you get under there and you push this heavy mattress off and we'll take it down there. Sometimes he'll take it when we have friends over, they'll sleep in the living room and they'll take his mattress in there. And when we're taking that mattress down through the hallway or we're putting it down on the bed, he'll always come up to me afterwards and be like, Dad, that was heavy.

I helped. And I'm thinking, here's the thing. I don't think he lifted one bit of that mattress. But he thinks, he thinks he did. He's like, man, I helped. I mean, he's walking away with that. He's like flexing in the mirror and stuff thinking I got it. Right. And he thinks he's done something.

I don't have the courage to tell him, you're weak. You didn't do anything. We did all of the work for you. When I think about that, that's kind of how it is in the Christian faith. Let me say this, that that we are absolutely nothing. We are weak apart from him. We can't tackle life by ourselves. We can't tackle the trials and tribulations of life by ourselves. We need the power and the strength of God to be at work in our life. You need the strength. You need the power of God in your life.

And Paul's saying this. He's saying, this is how I pray for you. I pray that your inner man would experience strength. That your inner man would be so strong that when life cuts you, you praise to the father. That when life gets difficult, you lift your voice and praise to him.

That you move on and you persevere through the hardest times of life because your inner man is strong. The scripture says when we are weak, we can be at his strongest, not because of you, but because of who's at work inside of you. That's what we need to be praying for people. When you pray for people, are you praying that their inner man would be strengthened? Number two, we need to pray that they experience intimacy with God.

That they experience intimacy with God. This is the second thing Paul prayed for when he prayed for the church. Verse 17, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. That word dwell, if you mark in your Bible, I encourage you to mark that word.

It's so important. It carries on the idea of home. If you look in the Old Testament, this is so good. I'm not going to go too deep into it, but it's so important for you to understand exactly what this word implies in your life. Paul is praying for them that Jesus would dwell in your hearts. That he would make home in your heart. In the Old Testament, King Solomon, when he built the temple, God's presence and his glory would come down and it would meet with them in the form of a cloud.

You remember that. That he would send a cloud down and that cloud would signify the presence and glory of God that would meet with them there in the temple. That's the same idea of what he's telling us that we can have here today. He was praying for the presence and glory there in the Old Testament that it would come down in the form of a cloud.

And now Paul is saying this. He's saying that we should have God's presence make home in our heart. Aren't you thankful we don't have to be in a temple to have the presence of God with us?

Aren't you thankful we don't need a cloud to come down to signify the presence and glory of God in your life? No, literally, we have the presence of God with us right here, right now. He is with us.

You can't outrun the presence of God. He is with us. And what Paul is praying for is he's praying that Jesus may dwell in your hearts. That he would make his home in your heart. You know, in that movie, The Wizard of Oz, remember the phrase, there's no place like home? Now, if I was experiencing a dream like she was with people, those munchkins singing and things like that, I'd be thinking there's no place like home as well. But she said there's no place like home. And that phrase has kind of stuck, you know, with us for many years.

And so now it's like we say that from time to time, right? You get home and you think there's no place like home. Home's the best, right? Home is, I mean, I love being at home. We love being out. We love being busy. And do you ever go through a real busy season where you don't spend any time at home? And then when you get just an evening at home with nothing to do, it's like the best thing ever. You're like, what are we doing tonight?

Nothing. We're just hanging out at home. It's going to be awesome. Right?

And it's just amazing. Even last week, I went to Myrtle Beach to play golf with some guys from the church, Pastor Bailey and some guys. And we were down in Myrtle Beach and I had an absolute blast for a couple of days. But I was ready to get home because there's nothing like home. And if you think about home, you think about the comfort that home brings, right? You think about how relaxed you are in your house.

You're the most relaxed there than anywhere else you ever are. Because you're at home, there's a sense of security that home brings. There's a sense of relationship that comes with being at home. Home is about the people that you spend it with.

It's about the people that are around you. I love being around the people in my house. Yes, they can drive me crazy, the kids.

Yes, the kids can drive me crazy. But I love being around the kids and my wife. I love just their time at home.

Why? Because it's that relationship, that closeness at home. Here's the truth about home.

It's where the people that know you the very best love you the most. That's what home is. That's what home is. Listen, my kids, you want to know, really? I'm scared every time I drop them off in kids' church. I'm like, listen, don't tell anything Dad did this week.

I'm asking them not to do prayer requests down there anymore because I never know they're going to be like, my dad, he's a mess, right? Listen, my kids, they know me the best, my wife knows me the best, but they love me the most. You see, that's what home is and it's no different in your life, it's no different in my life.

There's no place like home. And what the apostle Paul was praying for the church, he's saying this, I want Jesus to dwell in your hearts, that closeness, that intimacy that you have with your family, that closeness that cannot even be described. That's the way that he wanted and prayed for the relationship that the Ephesians had with their father.

That's what I want for you. That's how I want to pray for you. I want you to experience a closeness, I want you to experience an intimacy with God that cannot be matched with any other relationship that you have with anybody else. That's the oneness in what he's praying for. The third thing he prays for is this, to experience a deeper understanding of God's love for them. He prays that their inner man would be strengthened, he prays that they would have this intimate relationship with God, and then he prays that they would experience a deeper understanding of God's love for them. At the end of verse 17, that ye being rooted and grounded in love, and then get this, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ. Paul says that he wants the Ephesians to experience a deeper understanding of God's love for them.

He uses these words, he uses the first one, breadth, that's width. He's talking about the width of God's love, and if you're wondering about God's love for you here today, let me say this, that it is wide enough to cover every single sin you have ever committed in your life. If you're here today and you don't know Jesus as your Savior, and you've never experienced the love of God, and you say, Pastor, you don't understand some of the things that I have done in my life, I don't.

I don't. But let me tell you this, whatever they are, as bad as they are, God's love is wider, and it can reach and cover every one of those sins that you have ever committed in your life, and it can cover every sin that you ever will commit. That's the love of God that he has for us. That's the love that we can experience, and Paul says, listen, he's like, I pray that you can understand the width of his love, but then he talks about the length of his love.

He talks about the length, he says, not only the width, but he says, I want you to understand the length of your love. Listen, every race, every nation, every tribe, every sinner, every single person on this planet is equally loved by our Father. Every single, he died for the sins of every single person in here. The person that you dislike the most, God died for them as much as he died for you. That's what we got to understand, and he says, listen, it's wide enough to cover every one of our sins, but it's also lasting.

It has a length that never ever ends. I want you to understand, when you think about the love of God, my prayer for you is that you wake up each and every day recognizing that there is nothing that you can do to make God love you any more than he already does. That takes a lot of pressure off. For some of you who grew up in church like me, you feel like, man, if I don't do every single thing perfectly, if I don't dot every I and I don't cross every T and I don't do every single thing on the little board in Sunday school, you know, we have those things and those things are good and they serve a place, but I used to feel like, man, I could do all of those things and then I'm going to be loved, then I'm going to be accepted. Let me tell you this, there is nothing I can do. There's not a good thing you can do today to make him love you more than he does right now. His love for you is fixed, but listen, if that doesn't get you, this will. There's nothing that I can do to make him love me any less than he does right now.

You leave here and you screw up your life and you make a terrible mistake of your life. God still loves you. God still loves you. And what Paul is saying, or he's saying this to the church, he's saying, listen, I'm praying that you have a deep understanding of the love of God for you. Then he goes on and says the depth of his love.

He wants them to understand the depth. His love is deep. It illustrates sacrificial love. His love is so deep for us that he left heaven to take on the role of a servant. He left a perfect heaven to take on the role of a servant and to die the death that you and I deserved.

That's the love that he has for us. He sacrificed. He gave his entire life so that you could actually have life. He gave his life for you. He gave it all up so that you could be purchased with the blood of Jesus Christ, the height of his love. Aren't you thankful that his love is high enough to lift us up and to raise us up into heavenly places, that his love is so high that, listen, he can resurrect the most dead person on this planet, the person so dead in their sin, the person that hates God. He has the power through the gospel and the death and resurrection of Jesus to resurrect that person and to give them new life in Jesus Christ. Then he in verse 19 says this about his love.

Let me read verse 18 again. He says, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, length, depth, and height. The apostle Paul, he never loses words. He always, with his words, he always has something to say. He's always like, hey, repent, change this, whatever. He's never had a shortage of words. And here in verse 19, he says this, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge. It passeth knowledge.

He kind of concludes it with this, saying, listen, let me just be real. The love of God is so deep. It's so wide. It's so high.

It's so long that I can't even comprehend it. That's the love that Jesus has for you. That's the gospel.

And he's praying that the Ephesians would get a glimpse of his love. Let me say this. If you're complacent in here about your faith and you just don't feel like God's moving in your life, that church has become just a chore. It's just a thing you do on Sunday, the thing you were made to do as a kid. So you're just doing it today. And you show up here every week and you just leave and nothing happens and you don't ever feel the presence of God.

Let me say this. You need to come back to the day that Jesus saved your life. And when you come back to that moment and that place and you realize that you were a sinner and that there was nothing you can do to save your life and you were lost and dying and going to a place called hell. And when you realize that in the midst of your sin, God loved you just the way you are. He didn't have to fix up your life in order for him to love you.

He loved you just the way that you are. And when you go back to that moment where you realize then it clicked and you trusted in the love that he has in the gospel, the free gift of salvation that he gave to you. When you go back to there, listen, it will change your life. If you feel dead in here, you don't feel the presence of God in here, then here in a moment, we're going to have an altar call and I encourage you, come down front. I want you to go back to that moment. I want you to rehearse that moment because listen, when you go back to that moment and you realize how much he loves you and how much he sacrificed for you and how he gave his life for you, then there's no way we can't leave here changed.

That'll change your life. Paul is saying, I just want you to experience the gospel. I want you to wake up every day and recognize his love for the fourth thing he prayed for in verse 19, the experience, the feeling of the spirit of God and to know the love of Christ that passeth knowledge that he might be filled with all the fullness of God. You say, what's the fullness of God is the totality of who God is. It is his full being, his full character, everything about him. Paul is saying this, I want the fullness of God to be reflected in your life. I want the fullness of God to be reflected in your life. I want his character to be your character. I want his behavior to be your behavior. I want his response to be your response.

I want his actions to be your actions. And then number five, experience the power of God beyond what they can imagine. Paul Paul's praying and as he's concluding this, he says in verse 20, now unto him that is able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us. You know, Paul writes in Philippians that I may know him in the power of his resurrection.

Listen, if you think about the power of God in your life, you could go to anything. You could go to creation and that would pretty much solve how powerful he really is. His word spoke the world into existence, pretty powerful.

But Paul uses a different measure to measure the power of God. He uses the resurrection. God's power, it doesn't just have the power to create, it has the power to resurrect. It has the power not only to resurrect Jesus, it has the power to resurrect your dead life today. You came in today and you don't know Jesus and you are dead in your sin right now.

The scripture says you are dead in your sin and the only way for you to experience life is for you to trust in the free gift of salvation that Jesus freely offers all of us. He has the power of God. He's the creator and sustainer of all things.

God tells the sun when to shine and he is in command of the breath that you breathe right now. He changed your life and your future and I want you to know he is more powerful than you could ever imagine. He's more powerful than what I could ever even think of. The most powerful thing in the whole world, he is more powerful than that.

Isn't that wild? And what Paul is saying is, he's saying, I pray for you Ephesians, I pray that you would experience inner strength by a spirit. That you would experience intimacy with God. That's a closeness with him. That you would experience a deep understanding of his love for you. That you would experience the filling of the spirit.

That the spirit of God, the fullness of God would be reflected in your life and that you would experience the power of God at work in your life. So think about this, I asked you at the beginning of this, who do you pray for the most? Is it your spouse? Is it your kids? Is it a family member? Maybe it's your grandkids? Maybe it's a friend? Maybe it's your pastor?

Maybe it's your teacher? Who do you pray for the most? And I bet something might happen if we started praying this over the people in our life. What would happen for your kids if you started praying that they would experience the closeness with God? That your kids would experience the fullness of God?

That your grandkids would understand the love, how deep, how wide, how high, how long? What if you started praying that your grandkids would experience the love of God in your life? What if your friend that you pray for often for all these different things, what if you started praying that they would have the inner strength to overcome the obstacles and the temptation in their life? You see, our prayers are so shallow sometimes compared to the prayers in scripture.

And I don't want you to feel guilty from that, I'm guilty just as much as you are. But why don't we come to the Father on our knees and pray the way that Paul prayed for the church at Ephesus? That's my prayer for you, that's my prayer for my children, that's my prayer for my spouse, that's my prayer for you.

That you could experience this inner strength within you, that you can understand the love of God and have a deep understanding of the gospel, that you would have the fullness of God reflected in your life and that you would experience the power of God that you've never experienced before. Would you do this? Would you stand?

Nobody's looking around. Listen, this is an invitation time, this is a response time. Here's what I would love for you to do.

You don't have to, I don't want you to do this for me. But we have an altar down front and here's what I'd love to do. We've been doing this the last several weeks where we call people forward to make decisions and to pray.

And let me say this, that if you're in here today and you've never experienced the love of Jesus, that you've never trusted in Jesus as your savior, that would be the most important thing, the most important decision that you make is that. I'm going to be down front here in a moment. I would love for you to come down front and just say, hey pastor, that's me.

I walked in dead and I just want newness of life. We're going to give you an opportunity here in a moment to come and do that. But the rest of you, if you're in here today, who do you pray for the most? Why don't you come down front and let's fill this author and let's pray for our kids that they would experience inner strength. Let's pray for our grandkids that they would experience the love of Jesus in their life, that they would understand the gospel. Let's pray for our spouse.

Let's pray that they would reflect the fullness of God in their life. I'm going to pray in a moment, but I'm just going to be silent. I just want you to pray.

You can pray where you are or you can pray down front. I just want you to pray these things over your loved ones, the people you pray for so often. I just want you to pray for the fullness of God in their life, the fullness of God.

I just want you to pray. Father, as we continue in prayer, there's so many people praying right where they're seated, people praying up front. We're praying for loved ones. We're praying for our spouses. We're praying for our children. We're praying for our grandkids.

We're praying for our friends, our loved ones. Father, so many needs are on our heart and God for every single person that's praying, I want whatever name that they are praying for today. I pray Lord, by the power of you and according to your riches and glory, I pray that they'd experience the strength of the inner man. God, that their inner man would be so strengthened that they would have victory over the temptations and trials of life. God, that they would experience an intimacy and a closeness with you, a dwelling place that they can have with you just like we feel when we're with our loved ones. God, we want them to have this relationship with you that is each and every day.

God, that they would experience the filling, the fullness of God would be reflected in their life. And God, I pray that they'd understand your love for us. Lord, there's not a person in this room deserving of your love. There's not a person in this room that walked in here deserving or who has earned your love. God, it's there for us.

It's there for everybody, every race, every tribe, every tongue, every nation. The worst of sinner, Father, is love just as much as any of us. I pray God for our loved ones, for my children, that they'd experience your love for them. And God that the power of God, the power that can do more than what we could ever dream of, that power, that it would be at work in every person in this room. God, I want your power to come down and here on this earth and touch our church, to touch our people. God, that we would experience your power like never ever before. We love you for it's in your name we pray. Amen.