When people are struggling what is it that we pray for? We pray for the struggle to be removed, we pray for their rescue and for their return to great prosperity. Is that not the case? Consider the marriage, which is in trouble, we pray for the item causing the struggle to be lifted, whether that is financial trouble or an addiction or a cantankerous spirit. We pray for redemption. Or Consider the illness plaguing another, even ourselves, we pray for the disease, the infection or the virus to be taken from us. When difficult people are in our lives we pray for them to be removed from our sphere of interaction. And rightly so, for we all know what happens when you pray for patience in the midst of dealing with difficult people. They come around more often and we get to interact with them more, all while wondering why God isn’t giving us what we asked for – yet not recognizing that he is giving us precisely what we asked for, the opportunity to exercise patience and grow in it.
Is it wrong to pray such prayers? Is it wrong to request relief from the discomforts of life, the difficult people and the broken relationships? It would be easy after all these weeks to say, one should never pray these kinds of prayers, but our text this morning would testify to the contrary. There is a place to pray for relief.
Paul begs his fellow believers in Rome to pray for him, to join with him in calling out to God for relief. He says, “I urge you brothers…to join me in my struggle…that I may be rescued.” He is using forceful language here, it is as if he is saying, “If Christ is really God, If you have tasted him, if you have experienced him, If he is your king and his will is central to your life, then pray for me and my ministry. Pray that the obstacles and the struggles will be removed and lifted. Pray that I may be saved.
Paul invites them into a life of wrestling in prayer, a life of sharing in the struggle of prayer. Join me in what is on my mind, my heart, and my burden. Wrestle with me. Those words, join me in my struggle are all one word in the Greek. It is the word used in Col. 4:12 “Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured.”
Isn’t it true that some prayers are wrestling matches? Some prayers feel like great matches with God trying to understand his purposes and plans in our lives, why hardship or pain is upon our loved ones and us. Some prayers feel like we are going at it with Mr. T or Hulk Hogan. Are there any wrestlers here? I wrestled in High School. I was pitiful, never won a match, but after high school, I remember ending up in a wrestling match as part of an IV student conference, where I the little 150# guy was put up against a 230# guy for the students to watch. Amazingly enough all those wrestling moves I learned came back to me and the two of us spent 15 minutes in total gridlock, neither one able to move the other, every muscle straining, sweat spilling and the feeling running through both of our minds, “I can’t loose, but this has to end.”
That is what Paul is talking about here, praying with such fervent appeal, such struggle that everything we have is being used up and we need reinforcements, we need partners and we need relief from the trial and tribulation. Join me, Paul pleads. Join me. So what is it that you need rescue from, what is it that is eating up your energy, your time, your prayer life? Will you plead with others to join you in those prayers; will you invite others into your wrestling match with God? The goal isn’t to win, or twist God around, but to come to terms with his will for you. That may mean that some of your prayers, some of your struggles will not be answered, and others will.
Paul prayed two requests: 1) to be rescued from the unbelievers in Judea and 2) that his service in Jerusalem would be acceptable. The first one, we know didn’t happen. His struggle was answered but only in an ultimate sense as he stood trial ultimately in Rome and according to church tradition died a martyr there begin beheaded by Nero. He wrestled and so did many wrestle for him to be released, they struggled with God to understand his plans and purposes and yet their prayer wasn’t answered as they expected, but they prayed it nevertheless.
The second prayer was a struggle that his service in Jerusalem be acceptable. Paul was carrying the Macedonian offering to the poor of Jerusalem. Imagine the scene if you will, Jews, a proud race, God’s elect people needing to be helped by Gentiles and Greeks. Would they accept this gift of hospitality and family love? Would they be able to see God’s provision in the midst of their xenophobia? We might be able to understand Paul’s apprehension about his ministry but we can probably get a good idea of why he was wrestling if we take ourselves back to the 1860’s.
Imagine if you will the plight of the average southern white family in 1870. They weren’t landed, they had fought a brutal war where 18% of the males age 18-43 died, Every family lost at least one loved one in the war, many lost 2 or more and those who did return, a lot of them were maimed. Now imagine a Northern black church in Chicago hearing about their struggling brothers and sisters in Mississippi and choosing to take a collection to send to their white brothers in Christ in the south. Now imagine that you are the white man from the North sent to deliver this offering of mercy. Do you get the picture? Do you understand why Paul is struggling in prayer? This was a huge task and one that could very easily fail for lack of God’s intervention. He struggled; he wanted to be rescued from those who could derail the process. And praise God, this prayer was answered.
So as we struggle through our prayers and call out for rescue from our trials, what can we pray for which God is pleased to answer in addition to our normal requests for mercy and deliverance? For that let’s turn to Ephesians 3:14-21. Let me read it to you:
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. 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, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
Here Paul gives us a great lesson in how to pray for those who struggle, or what to pray for anyone we desire freedom for. There are two prayers here. The first one is for a strengthening with power and second one is for the power to grasp the love of Christ. Aren’t these two requests really at the root of our struggles with God in prayer, aren’t we really uneasy with our apparent powerlessness and don’t we question the love of God in the midst of the foreboding danger?
If you agree with me in these two premises, then what follows will be an encouragement to you. Paul begins his prayer by hearkening backwards in the letter, for this reason – for what reason? To find out we need to return to the first 2 chapters of the letter. Because God has made one body, reconciling Jew and Gentile to the Father in Christ, Paul is able to pray for others in their struggles and difficulties, even in their life in general.
His prayer is founded on God’s indescribable wealth, his unimaginable riches. And based on God’s bounty and gigantic storehouse of all good things, he prays for strengthening. But not just any kind of strengthening, a strengthening with power, but not any kind of power, a strengthening with power through his Spirit. Paul isn’t asking for worldly power, or for that matter worldly relief, he is asking for spiritual power to persevere and he wants this power to be evident not in the external life but in the inner being. He wants God to strengthen those in need with an internal fortitude, which makes applesauce out of rotten apples.
Paul wants the inner man to be renewed in the midst of the outward decay, which is going on. That would be like in our initial passage, when the situation is bad and trouble is around the corner, or the possibility of it, Pray for God’s strengthening in your inner life and the life of those around you. In fact that is exactly how Paul says it in 2Cor. 4:16-18
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
He asks this so that Christ may take us permanent residence in our lives. But you say, Christ already resides there. True enough, true enough. But imagine with me again, an old house in need of repair, the walls are covered with gaudy floral wallpaper, the countertops are chipped and worn, the carpet is stained, the roof has leaks. But you buy the house and move in. Sure you reside there, but is it your dwelling? In one sense it is, in another sense it isn’t, for the demeanor and décor is that of the previous residents. Now fast forward 25 years, you have redecorated, the landscaping is distinctly yours; the colors and flooring have been updated. Now it is truly your home, not to mention the fact that the mortgage is paid off as well.
So it is in this passage. Paul is praying for an indwelling, for a transforming in the inner being so that the struggles of life aren’t our struggles any longer, for we are looking to God and blind to the assaults around us and we are in love with the God who loves us. He is praying for the power to be at work in us so that we are formed into Christ, inhabited by Christ, and that will take some real power, just like the renovation in our fictitious house took some real power to bring about. Send the Spirit Paul says. Do the renovation, he cries.
But his second prayer is equally as powerful, He prays that as we are renovated and our foundation and footing is established, as our roots are set interiorly, we will hold onto the Love of Christ. He wants us to know that which surpasses knowing. That is an oxymoron, if I may say so, but Paul is praying that our knowledge surpasses mere knowledge. He wants his people to know and experience the Love of God fully and completely, from length and breadth to depth and height.
For truly these two things are the prayers that the one who struggles truly needs – a reorienting and reordering of the house so that our eyes are fixed on Jesus, and a growing, experiential knowledge of the love of God in Christ for his people. For as these grow, the struggle will fade away and not seem so large. For truly we serve a God who is Eph. 3:20-21 able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
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