CHURCH PLANT FOUNDATIONS: PRAYING GOD'S WILL (PART II)

As we move towards planting a new church on Sunday nights for Wahroonga and the neighbouring communities, we do so mindful that we are dependant on God for all that is ahead of us.  Given that, what should we be praying?

Our next series of blogs are designed to lay at the foundation of this new church a wholehearted commitment to pray and to pray according to God's will.  The next 6 blogs will unpack Ephesians 3.14-21 and outline 6 aspects of being a church that prays God's will.

14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 

15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 

16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you 

with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 

17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. 

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 

18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, 

to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 

19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—

that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. 

20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, 

according to his power that is at work within us, 

21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus 

throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

2 - Praying God's will means prayer that knows God is generous

Very closely connected to the realisation that God is our loving Father is the reminder that God is generous.

V16 – I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you…

The translation we have here doesn’t quite capture what Paul wrote.

The idea is not as that God gives from his riches – as though he’s got a big stash and he gives us some of it.  The idea is that he gives according to his riches. In the same way that God is gloriously rich, he will gloriously give.

As we embark on this church plant we are asking God to grow this church spiritually and numerically. And we ask that he will give according to his extravagant generosity already demonstrated in the Lord Jesus Christ.