How much are You willing to Pray?

Reading Matthew 26:36-46, I was struck about the importance of prayer.  Not that I don’t think prayer is important, I do!  I believe it is the basis of my walk with the Lord.  However, ‘western’ Christians, myself included, do not put a high enough of importance on prayer.  I cannot remember the last time that I ever gave up sleep in order to spend time in prayer.  Can you? 

Jesus took his three closest disciples with him to Gethsemane to Pray.  Peter, James and John.  He told them to “Sit here while I go over there and pray.”  Jesus was praying very earnestly.  He, as the scriptures says, “began to be sorrowful and troubled.”  Jesus knew that his time was coming when he would be arrested, and eventually crucified.  He is God the Son, which makes him omniscient.  Yet, even though he knows what must take place, he is still human, and can still feel everything and anything we would feel.  Emotions, tiredness, and pain.  All of which he has experienced by this time, with the exception to pain.  But I’m sure he knew what that was going to feel like.

 

A Prayer for the Ephesians

This mornings sermon was great.  It was from Ephesians 3:14-21.

EPHESIANS 3:14-21 (New International Version)

A Prayer for the Ephesians

 14For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15from whom his whole family^[a] in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

 20Now 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, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

This is a great prayer of Paul’s.  Paul doesn’t just pray something little, but prays big.  He prays that the saints would “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,”  verse 18. 

If you would like to hear the sermon, or other Previous sermon;s on the book of Ephesians, please to the Valley Bible Church website under staying involved.