Pray This Daily for Your Family
00:00:00.000 | There's a prayer that you can pray for your family every single day and Pastor John explained
00:00:10.120 | it in a sermon titled "God Demonstrates His Love Toward Us" which John Piper preached
00:00:15.400 | exactly 15 years ago this December.
00:00:19.320 | There he explained an important connection between Romans 5-5 and Ephesians chapter 3
00:00:24.560 | verses 14-19 and a podcast listener named Kevin from Ontario, Canada who is currently
00:00:30.680 | going through the Roman sermons wanted to share this little gem of a sermon clip with
00:00:34.960 | us.
00:00:35.960 | Here's what Pastor John said in that message.
00:00:38.640 | Ephesians 3, 14-19.
00:00:41.900 | This is the most wonderful prayer in the Apostle Paul's writings.
00:00:46.920 | It may be the third most wonderful prayer in all the Bible.
00:00:51.240 | If you give to John 17, the greatest, and then give to the Lord's Prayer, the second
00:00:56.120 | greatest, I think this one comes next.
00:00:59.400 | Someday I'm going to preach 15 or 30 messages on this prayer because it is so multi-layered,
00:01:08.800 | the meaning is so profound.
00:01:11.080 | So let me read it with you.
00:01:13.400 | Ephesians 3, 14-19.
00:01:15.720 | Here's a prayer that you should pray for yourself and others.
00:01:19.440 | For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, Paul says, from whom every family
00:01:24.640 | in heaven and on earth is named, and here comes the content of the prayer.
00:01:28.520 | That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with
00:01:33.240 | power through his Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through
00:01:39.840 | faith and you being rooted and grounded in love, mark that word, in love, may be able
00:01:47.120 | to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
00:01:52.800 | and to know the love, mark it again, the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge and be
00:01:58.360 | filled with all the fullness of God.
00:02:02.200 | Let's read it backwards and show you how it relates to Romans 5.
00:02:07.920 | What's the goal of the prayer?
00:02:09.840 | To be filled with all the fullness of God.
00:02:13.680 | Are you there?
00:02:14.680 | Anybody got that one in your back pocket?
00:02:17.840 | We done with this?
00:02:20.000 | We know that, on to something else?
00:02:22.600 | Anybody?
00:02:24.000 | I want that because the Apostle Paul prayed that I should have it.
00:02:29.240 | And I think being filled with all the fullness of God is the same as having the love of God
00:02:36.600 | poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us.
00:02:40.240 | Why do I think that?
00:02:41.240 | Because if you read backwards now and ask, "Okay, how does this come about?"
00:02:44.840 | The answer is, it comes about through knowing the incomprehensible love of Christ whose
00:02:53.660 | height and depth and length and breadth is beyond knowledge so that you might be filled.
00:02:58.200 | You see the connection there between knowing the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge
00:03:02.200 | and being filled with all the fullness of God?
00:03:04.960 | One is a means to the other.
00:03:06.820 | So in knowing the love of Christ which is beyond knowledge and incomprehensible and
00:03:11.940 | yet the heart knows it with its own kind of knowing, we become filled up with all the
00:03:16.740 | fullness of God.
00:03:17.740 | So then the question becomes, "And how do we experience the love of Christ like that?
00:03:21.900 | How do we know the unknowable love of Christ?"
00:03:25.180 | And you go backwards and it says, "Well, in order to do that, you have to be rooted and
00:03:31.300 | grounded in love so that you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the
00:03:36.060 | height and depth and have the love of Christ and then be filled with all the fullness of
00:03:39.540 | God."
00:03:40.540 | So it's love to love.
00:03:41.900 | You see that?
00:03:43.380 | We must be rooted in love, founded on love so that we have the power to recognize unknowable
00:03:50.840 | love and thus be filled with all the fullness of God.
00:03:54.660 | This is worth 15 sermons.
00:03:58.820 | I have spent more time in this prayer than any prayer in all the Bible because no prayer
00:04:05.100 | in all the Bible kindles longings in me like this prayer kindles longings in me.
00:04:12.580 | Doesn't it do that for you?
00:04:14.060 | Don't you want to know what this is talking about?
00:04:17.540 | I hardly know what it's talking about.
00:04:20.240 | It's all about experience.
00:04:21.700 | It's all about the fullness of the love of God.
00:04:24.100 | It's all about knowing the unknowable love of Christ.
00:04:26.700 | It's all about roots going down into love before you know the love of Christ so that
00:04:30.420 | you can know the love of Christ.
00:04:32.080 | This is mystery all.
00:04:34.340 | And yet Paul puts it in a book, in words, so that we read it, so that we'll pray it,
00:04:39.500 | so that we'll experience and maybe in the miraculous experience of it, know what it
00:04:43.460 | means.
00:04:44.460 | "Oh, long for this.
00:04:47.300 | Pray this for your children.
00:04:49.620 | Pray this for your spouses."
00:04:51.380 | Do you wonder, "How do I pray for my family?"
00:04:53.380 | Pray this prayer every day.
00:04:56.220 | Pray it for your soul.
00:04:57.700 | Pray it for this church.
00:04:58.700 | Pray it for me.
00:05:01.800 | If you want to know what it's like to have the love of God poured out into your hearts
00:05:06.220 | by the Holy Spirit who's given to you, meditate on these verses.
00:05:12.180 | You want to know objective reality mediated by the Holy Spirit exploding in your heart
00:05:17.380 | with self-authenticating experience of the love of God.
00:05:20.980 | If you want that, there are two obvious things you do.
00:05:24.740 | One is you meditate upon the objective reality laid out in the Bible called the gospel of
00:05:29.620 | Christ crucified.
00:05:30.620 | And the other is you pray, pray, pray, pray, pray.
00:05:35.540 | Do it to me.
00:05:36.540 | Do it to me.
00:05:37.540 | Do it to me.
00:05:38.540 | Direct my heart.
00:05:39.540 | Direct my heart.
00:05:40.540 | Let the love of God be upon me.
00:05:43.020 | Fill my heart with all the fullness of God, which is the love of Christ beyond knowledge,
00:05:48.380 | rooted in love, wrought by the Holy Spirit, Christ dwelling in my heart.
00:05:52.500 | Do those things to me, even if I can't understand what I'm saying, so that I might recognize
00:05:57.620 | it in the doing.
00:05:58.620 | I wonder if you have any problems with Jesus loves me, this I know.
00:06:04.020 | Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
00:06:11.620 | That's true.
00:06:12.620 | It's not enough.
00:06:14.900 | Needs another verse.
00:06:16.580 | I made it up.
00:06:21.820 | Jesus loves me, there's no doubt, for the Spirit pours it out.
00:06:29.460 | Little ones to Him belong.
00:06:31.640 | We are weak, but He is strong.
00:06:35.380 | Amen.
00:06:36.540 | Kevin from Ontario, Canada.
00:06:38.220 | Thank you for sending us this clip.
00:06:40.420 | If you have a clip from a John Piper sermon that you like to play over and over, and it's
00:06:44.580 | one you want to share with us on this podcast, please email us at askpastorjohn@zaringod.org
00:06:50.220 | and put the word clip in the subject line.
00:06:52.820 | Give us the sermon title and roughly when and where the clip appears in the audio recording.
00:06:57.180 | Thank you to everyone who's sending in clips.
00:06:59.060 | We've got some really great ones coming in.
00:07:00.740 | Well, we have an email from a father who just had a son, and he wants some counsel and advice
00:07:06.900 | on how he can parent well, and we'll hear Pastor John address that tomorrow.
00:07:11.100 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:07:12.100 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
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