Sunday Scripture

 

It's time for another Sunday Scripture post!   As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I worked on a Bible study of Ephesians for the month of January and now I've been using this study to write some Sunday Scripture posts for the remainder of the winter.  

The study I've been working on is the Ephesians Bible study from Good Morning Girls.  For the Scripture Sundays, I'll just select some of the verses I have worked on and share how I used the SOAP method of Bible study.  For today's lesson, we were to look at Ephesians 3:14-19.  Here we go:

S= "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ ...
"That He would grant you,  according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man;
"That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
"May be able to comprehend, with all saints, what is the breadth, and height, and depth, and length,
"And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God."  (Ephesians 3:14, 16-19)

O= Paul says: "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father."  For what cause?
* That the Father might strengthen the believers with might by His Spirit.
* That Christ would dwell in their hearts by faith.
* That they would be rooted and grounded in love.
* That they might be able to comprehend the extent of God's love. 
* That they might know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge.
* That they might be filled with all the fullness of God.

The introduction to the Reflection Question added more insight.  Courtney wrote:
"The Jews normally prayed standing, with their hands in the air but here, Paul is now kneeling in prayer.  This is a position of humility.  As Paul considers God's amazing eternal plan, he cannot help but fall to his knees and direct His prayers to the heavenly Father.  Down through the ages, the advancement of the Gospel has been unstoppable even when those in the church have been imprisoned like Paul.  Just as he prayed for the church at the start of his letter, he is praying that the church would be strengthened and would know the breadth, length, height and depth of God's love."

A= Kneeling to pray pictures humility.  I have frequently knelt to pray in the past, but can't comfortably do so now.  

What a wonderful prayer Paul prayed for the believers at Ephesus!  So meaningful!  I would like to think that someone was praying a prayer like this for me ... even occasionally.  Every day would be amazing.  I pray some of these verses daily for specific people, but this entire section is incredibly powerful.

P= "Lord, how I thank You for your powerful, transformative Word!  I praise You for this wonderful prayer of Paul's and how much it has to teach us about praying for our fellow believers.  I thank You for the rich truths in this passage and I pray that You will help me to appropriate them in my own life.  Help me, too, to faithfully pray such meaningful prayers for my fellow believers.  I thank and praise You in Jesus' name, Amen."

 And there is this week's Sunday Scripture.  Hope it was a blessing to you!