Posts Tagged ‘prayer’

The following post is a letter I wrote to a friend a couple of years ago. This is actually a re-post, but I am currently reading Genesis in my devotional time and wanted to share these insights with some who may not have read them when I initially posted them…

Dear Allan,

I’ve been meditating much this week on Genesis 32 and Jacob’s wrestling with God. This is a fascinating passage with so much that I don’t understand in it. Two days in a row last week I sat with V after our devotional times and discussed this story at length. I won’t try to reproduce the whole conversation, or the development of my thinking on the passage, but let me share some of my conclusions since they relate very closely to this subject of waiting on God that we have been corresponding about.

Here is a brief recap of my study thus far of this prayer for the Ephesian believers:

Like some people who like to read the last chapter to see if the book is going to be good, I started near the end of the request-portion of Paul’s prayer to see where he was heading. The end result of Paul’s prayer, should God in his grace grant it (and he will because he inspired it!) is that we are “filled with all the fullness of God.” This phrase points to the completion of God’s work in us as he forms in us his very image and we become like him in all his moral perfection and beauty. Wow!

But how will he get us there? Paul prays first that we will experience the love of Jesus for us as the Holy Spirit reveals to us in our inner being that we are loved by him. This experience of Jesus’ love has a rooting and grounding effect in our lives. But here is where things start to really rev up!

This is the third day of looking at Paul’s prayer for the Ephesian believers…