PRAYING FOR NEW BELIEVERS (PART 1)

Can I pray for you in any way?

Send any prayer requests to Gods4all@aol.com

In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being.

Ephesians 3:16

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Every day, people make the most important decision they will make in life. They will choose to believe in Jesus as Savior.

This entry into a new life as a Christian is equal parts exciting and scary. On one hand, you feel the thrill of gaining salvation and receiving the assurances of the scriptures that come along with it. On the other hand, you are still living in this world and immersed in all its trappings, abiding among people who don’t give Jesus of His Father God any consideration at all. While at home in the church, new Christian believers can begin to feel isolated as they step back into the world on the other side of their conversion into a new creation.

Because of this, we need to be in prayer daily for new Christians and in the next several messages, we will find the Apostle Paul giving us things that we can pray for. Today, we see it’s strength as Paul prays:

I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being. Ephesians 3:16

How can one describe the riches of God?

Good luck trying because they are immeasurable and this is what makes them so glorious. They are of unmatched and unrivaled magnificence.

One of the multitude of riches we find in our Father God, the One Paul prays to, is His power. He is omnipotent which means His power is infinite in its magnitude. Conversely, our strength is abject weakness in comparison and that’s okay. It’s perfectly alright to admit you lack the strength to get through life because that’s the truth and it’s where God wants us to see ourselves. In fact, Paul writes these words in the latter part of verse 9 as he shares what God had spoken to Him:

“...for My power is made perfect in weakness.”

Want to experience God’s perfect power, whether a new believer or not?

Confess your weakness for it’s there that you realize you are woefully insufficient and need the Lord’s all sufficient strength to help you through.

When Paul came to this realization, he went onto write these words, continuing in verse 9 through verse 10:

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

The way to the kind of strength we need to persevere through life as Christians comes when we admit our weaknesses in the face of any kind of attacks. For Paul, it was insults and hardships, persecutions and other difficulties. You can insert your own life challenges that serve to steal away your faith and hope. We simply need to identify the areas in life where we need strength and then pray for God’s abundant power to be extended to us as we deal with whatever is of burden.

Paul prayed for strength for the new Christians in Ephesus because he knew that as sure as Jesus wanted to grow them in His will and way, Satan was going to try and do the opposite. And lest you underestimate your enemy, here’s a news flash.

He’s stronger than you are. Much stronger.

Stand on your own against Satan minus the strength and power of God and you don’t have a fighting chance. This is truth, so much so that we will find Paul talk a lot more on this subject when we get to chapter 6 or this epistle and cover the full armor of God. The bottom line is that we have an enemy who wants to have us for his own as much as our Savior Jesus does.

Thankfully, Jesus has already won the victory. He has conquered our enemy and He will make us more than conquerors ourselves as well (Romans 8:37-39). Stay connected and grounded in Him, allow His Father to give you the strength to ward off the attacks of the enemy and deal with the afflictions that come with living, and you will find the kind of life you long for, a life filled with peace and comfort and hope.

This should be our prayer for new believers in Christ and it should also be our prayer for one another.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at how we should pray for others to have faith.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to Gods4all@aol.com