American Reformation Church Prayer Journal 52
ARC Prayer Meeting:
As we begin this New Year, the American Reformation Church started a new series of teachings called the ARC Marks. Biblically, what are the commandments, mandates, commissions, and expectations the Lord has assigned to His church to say and do in the earth? These will help define the Biblical truths, principles, and its markings that strengthens the vision and mission of the church.
Our first mark is our godly desire to be a loving church. Sunday, we made the distinction between the love of the world and the love of God that was shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.
The Apostle Paul specifically prayed some powerful prayers in regard to the Love of God in the epistle to the Ephesian church. He stated:
For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
When one thinks of prayer and intercession for the saints, the church at large, and our loved ones, our priorities probably do no match Paul. With all that we negotiate through in this vain and fleeting life, in this passage, Paul does not mention healing, deliverance, protection, or provision like most would prayer today. He is humbling himself in prayer to seek and ask God for the main virtues of the Christian faith to come to the fore in the life of the church.
His main prayer targets was for Christians to know God as Father, which was foreign to many, including us today, who had abusive fathers or dads who abandoned us.
He prayed we would be strengthened in our inner man. Not based upon the limited resources of mankind upon this earth, but by the power of His Spirit that is in accordance with His riches in glory.
Though Christ is in us, the hope of glory, Paul still prays He will continue to dwell there through faith. Life may not always affirm that we are the Temple of the Holy Ghost. Sin, failures, disappointments, unforgiveness, bitterness of soul, depression, doubt, worry and fear can conspire to forget or doubt the indwelling presence of our God. Faith in God’s character and promises are the necessary reminders that He is still Jehovah Shammah, the Lord who is there.
And lastly, that we may know and be rooted and grounded in the love of God, to know its width, length, depth, and height. Matthew Henry commenting on the matchless, inexhaustible, and unfathomable love of God declared, “By the breadth of it we may understand the extent of it to all ages, nations, and ranks of men; by the length of it, its continuance from everlasting to everlasting; by the depth of it, its stooping to the lowest condition, with a design to relieve and save those who have sunk into the depths of sin and misery; by its height, its entitling and raising us up to the heavenly happiness and glory.”
