I keep asking...

By Trish Ryan

This is one of my favorite prayers...especially in moments when I'm not sure exactly how to pray. I adapted it from a book written by a pastor in the early 1900s (Oh HOW I wish I could remember which one!) who described how each day, he took Paul's prayers for the people of Ephesus and asked God for those same blessings: wisdom, revelation, knowledge, God's power...incredible, awesome things.

Whatever is going on in your life today, I invite you to give it a try:

"I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give me the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that I may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of my heart may be enlightened in order that I may know the hope to which he has called me, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.

I pray that out of his glorious riches God may strengthen me with power through his Spirit in my inner being, so that Christ may dwell in my heart through faith. And I pray that I, 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 I may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all I ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within me, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen."