In Ephesians 3:14–21, Paul prays for believers to be strengthened with might through God’s Spirit in the inner man. His prayer speaks directly to the places within us that can become weary, depleted, and in need of spiritual strength.

In this episode, we explore what it means to be strengthened from within and to allow Christ to dwell in our hearts through faith. Paul prays that we would be rooted and grounded in love and able to comprehend the width, length, depth, and height of the love of Christ.

This prayer reveals that God desires to strengthen us internally, expand our understanding of His love, and bring us into a greater experience of His fullness. Our circumstances may not immediately change, but something powerful can happen within us when we are strengthened by His Spirit.

Paul closes his prayer by pointing us toward a God who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to His power that works in us. This episode invites us to recognize that power and cultivate a greater awareness of God’s presence at work within our lives.

The content shared on Living the Selah Life is for spiritual encouragement, personal reflection, and informational purposes only.

It is not intended to diagnose, treat or replace medical, psychological or professional advice of any kind.

Please consult a licensed healthcare provider or qualified professional for any physical, mental or emotional health concerns.

The views expressed are those of the host, Kimberly Lockanor, and are based on personal experience and Biblical insight, not clinical training.

Welcome back to Living the Selah Life, a podcast that invites you to slow down, to breathe and to reconnect with the presence of God.

I am your host, Kim, and this space is for anyone longing to become more familiar with his presence.

Whether you're just discovering what it means to pause with God or you've been walking this path for a while, I'm so glad you're here.

Each episode is an intentional pause, a moment to reflect, realign and remember that God meets us when we create space for Him.

So take a breath.

You are right on time.

Let's live the Selah life together.

Hello, hello and welcome back to Living the Selah Life.

Today we are in part three of our series on the prayers of the Apostle Paul.

In episode 42, we looked at Paul's prayer for spiritual vision, asking God to open the eyes of our hearts and so we could see the hope of our calling, the riches of our inheritance, and the exceeding greatness of his power.

Today we are moving from the eyes to the inner being.

In Ephesians 3:14 21, Paul prays what I believe is one of the most powerful prayers in Scripture.

He is writing to the church at Ephesus and he gets on his knees and asks God to do something that goes far beyond circumstance or comfort.

He prays that believers would be strengthened with might in their inner man, that Christ would dwell fully in their hearts, that they would be rooted and grounded in love and and that they will be filled with all the fullness of God.

This is the prayer we are sitting with today.

If you have ever felt spiritually depleted, if you've ever felt like you are going through the motions of your faith but feeling empty on the inside, this episode is for you.

Let's look at what it means to be rooted, strengthened, and filled.

Let's talk about the position of prayer.

Paul begins this prayer in Ephesians 3:14 by saying, for this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In the Jewish culture of Paul's day, the standard position for prayer was standing with hands raised.

Bowing the knees was reserved for moments of deep reverence, intense emotion, or desperate Pleading, it was the position of someone who was overwhelmed by the greatness of what they were approaching and the magnitude of what they were asking.

So Paul is not just casually tossing around a request.

He is bowing before the Father, fully aware of the infinite resources of heaven.

And he is asking God to pour those resources into the inner lives of the people he loves.

This is a deep, earnest, kneeling cry from a man who understood that the people he was praying for needed something that only God could provide.

And there is something else worth noticing.

Paul is writing this prayer from prison.

He is in chains.

He cannot go to the Ephesians in person.

He cannot lay hands on them or be there to encourage them face to face.

But he knows that his prayers can reach them even when his body cannot.

He also knows that the God he is bowing before is not limited by prison walls or distance.

Prayer is the most powerful thing Paul can do for the people he loves, and he does it on his knees.

The first thing that Paul asks is that God would grant them, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might through his spirit.

In the inner man.

We spend a great deal of time and energy trying to strengthen our outer man, our bodies, our careers, our reputations.

We go to the gym, can take courses at college.

We build our resumes.

And none of those things are wrong by any means.

But Paul knows that the real battles of life are won or lost on the inside.

Your inner man is the real you.

It is your spirit, your will, your deepest convictions.

It is a part of you that either stands firm or gives way when life happens.

When your inner man is weak, every minor inconvenience feels like a major crisis.

Every disappointment threatens to undo you.

But when your inner man is strengthened by the Holy Spirit, you can face real difficulty with an unexplainable peace.

You are able to endure seasons of waiting without losing hope.

And you can walk through grief without losing your faith.

It is not a matter of trying harder or being more disciplined.

It is a supernatural impartation that comes when you cultivate a daily awareness of his presence, when you spend time in the Word, when you worship, when you pray, or my goodness, when you simply sit in his presence.

The Holy Spirit is doing a work in your inner man that cannot always be seen or felt immediately, but it is very real.

He is building something in you that will hold when everything around you shakes.

Paul then prays that Christ may dwell in their hearts through faith.

The word, translated dwell here is the Greek word.

Katio Ko.

Katio Kothat's k A T O I K E O and it means to settle down and feel completely at home.

Not a temporary visit.

It's not like a guest who stays for the weekend and moves on.

Paul is praying that as we cultivate an awareness of his presence, that Christ would be the permanent, fully settled residence of our hearts.

Think about what it means for someone to truly feel at home in your house.

They know where everything is.

They're able to move from room to room freely.

They're not standing awkwardly in the hallway waiting to be invited in.

They're relaxed, at ease and.

And present.

And that is the kind of indwelling that Paul is praying for.

He wants Christ to have full access to every room of our hearts.

Not just the living room where we put on our best face, but the rooms we keep locked, the rooms we can be ashamed of, and the rooms that we have not cleaned out in years.

When Christ truly dwells in your heart, his peace becomes your peace.

His perspective becomes your perspective.

His love for others begins to flow through you naturally.

It is the fruit of a heart that is cultivated, an abiding awareness of his presence.

Paul then prays that we will be rooted and grounded in love.

Notice the two images he uses.

Rooted like a tree drawing nourishment from soil, and grounded like a building resting on a foundation, a solid foundation.

Both images speak of something that is stable, secure and able to hold up.

What is the soil and what is this foundation?

It is none other than the love of Christ.

When you are rooted in his love, the storms of life cannot uproot you.

When you are grounded in his love, the opinions of the world are unable to shake you.

You do not need the approval of others.

When you are secure in the love of God.

Paul wants us to comprehend the width, the length, the depth, and the height of this love.

He is reaching in all four directions, the north, the south, the east, the west, trying to give us a sense of how boundless this love actually is.

It stretches wider than your worst failure.

It reaches longer than your longest season of waiting.

And it goes much deeper than your deepest wounds.

It soars higher than your highest hope.

And this love is not a love that is earned and it cannot be lost.

It is the bedrock of your identity and the anchor of your soul.

The climax of Paul's prayer is breathtaking.

He asks that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.

And this is an amazing request.

How can a finite human contain the infinite fullness of the Creator?

How can a clay vessel hold the ocean?

Paul is not suggesting that we become God.

He is praying that there would be no area of our lives, no room in our hearts, no corner of our minds, no aspect of our character where God's presence is absent or unwelcome.

It is the opposite of living a compartmentalized life where God only gets Sunday mornings and the occasional crisis prayer.

To be filled with his fullness is to cultivate an awareness of his presence so completely that his character, his peace and his love saturate everything that you do.

And then Paul closes with a declaration of praise that tells us that this is not an impossible dream.

He says that God is able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we can ask or think according to the power that works in us.

The power is already in us.

The Holy Spirit is already at work.

He is able to do far more than we can imagine.

And he does it through the power that is already at work within us.

Let's move on to this week's pause prompts.

And remember that pause prompts allow us to take inventory of where we are so that we will know where we are going.

Never, ever meant for condemnation, but only to assess where we are.

Let's go.

Pause Prompt number one how is your inner man doing today?

When was the last time you intentionally invested in your inner life?

What are you currently rooted in?

And are you drawing your sense of worth and security from the love of Christ?

Are there rooms in your heart that you have kept locked from Christ?

And what would it look like to invite him in those spaces today?

What would it look like for you to be filled with the fullness of God?

Are there areas of your life where you have not yet cultivated an awareness of his presence?

I am going to continue to drive home this awareness of his presence because he's always there.

It's our awareness of that presence that often fades.

Foreign let's move on to this week's Scripture Spotlight.

In our main teaching today, we have been sitting with Paul's prayer in Ephesians chapter 3, verses 14, 21, where he asked God to strengthen believers in their inner man, to let Christ dwell fully in their hearts.

For our Scripture Spotlight, I want to take us to a passage that picks up the same thread but from a different angle.

And this is Colossians, chapter 2, verses 6 through 7.

New King James as you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith as you have been taught, abounding in it.

With thanksgiving, Paul wrote both letters, Ephesians and Colossians and in both of them he comes back to the same image of being rooted.

In Ephesians 3, he prays that we will be rooted and grounded in love.

Here in Colossians chapter two, he tells us how that rootedness is maintained by walking in him the same way we received him, by faith.

The word rooted here is a perfect passive participle in the Greek, which means it describes something that has already happened and whose effects continue.

You were rooted in Christ the moment you received Him.

This is done.

But the building up, the growing, the deepening and the strengthening that is ongoing, it happens as we walk with Him.

It happens as we stay in the Word, stay in prayer, stay in community, and stay in the practice of cultivating his presence.

Paul is not describing a faith that floats free from instruction or accountability.

He is describing a faith that is established, set firmly in place because it has been taught, received and built on.

The inner strength Paul prays for in Ephesians 3 does not come from emotional experiences alone.

It comes from a faith that has been grounded in truth over time, abounding in it with thanksgiving.

This is the mark of a life that is truly rooted, not just surviving or holding on, but abounding, overflowing and doing it with thanksgiving.

Which means the overflow is not coming from our own resources.

It is coming from God, the one that we're rooted in.

When you are genuinely rooted in Christ, gratitude naturally comes out of a life that knows where its strength comes comes from.

Let's move on to this week's Selah moment and prayer.

This is our opportunity to open our inner man to the strengthening power and the fullness of God.

So position yourself to receive.

Begin by sitting comfortably and taking several deep breaths.

Breaths with each exhale, release the exhaustion and the effort.

With each inhale, try to cultivate an awareness of his presence.

Right now, picture yourself bowing your heart before the Father, just as Paul bowed his knees.

You are coming as a child who needs what only a father can give.

Ask the Holy Spirit to strengthen your inner man right now.

Where you feel weak, invite his might.

Where you feel empty, invite his fullness.

Say, lord, I cannot do this in my own strength.

I need you to strengthen what is on the inside of me.

Picture your life as a tree.

See your roots reaching deep down into the root rich, nourishing soil of Christ's love.

And let that love hold you.

Let it be the foundation that keeps you stable.

When the winds of life blow, declare to yourself, I am loved by God.

I am rooted in his love.

And nothing can can Separate me from his love.

Invite Christ to dwell fully in your heart.

If there are rooms you have kept locked, gently open those doors and invite his presence in.

He is coming to heal you, to fill you, to make his home in those spaces.

Let us pray.

Father, in the name of Jesus, we bow our hearts before you today, recognizing the vast riches of your glory.

We confess that we often spend excess energy trying to fix our outer circumstances while sometimes not neglecting our inner lives.

We try to manage our emotions, control our environments and maintain an image, all while our inner man grows weaker and emptier.

Today we ask for a supernatural impartation of your strength, Holy Spirit Strength.

Strengthen us with might in our inner man.

Help us to cultivate a constant, abiding awareness of your presence so that Christ may truly feel at home in every room of our hearts.

Root us and ground us in this love.

When the storms come, let that love be the anchor that keeps us secure when the world tries to tell us who we are, let your love be the final word.

Lord, we ask for the impossible.

We ask to be filled with all the fullness of God.

Impossible for us, not impossible for you.

Leave no empty spaces within us.

Let your character, your peace and your power saturate every part of who we are so that our lives become a reflection of your glory and remind us that you are able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we ask or think you are not limited by our smallness.

Work in us according to the riches of your glory.

It is in Jesus name that we pray, and it is so.

Let's lean into our Selah moment.

Thank you for listening to Living the Selah Life.

If this moment stirred something in your spirit, share it with someone who needs to be reminded to pause.

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Or email me your testimony or Selah Moment you would like to hear on the podcast at Living the Selah Life at Proton Me.

That's Living the Selah Life at Proton Me.

May you go from this place rested not just in body but in spirit, carrying the awareness that his presence is always near.

May you be rooted not in the shifting voices of this world, but in the unshakable word of God, the Logos that ground you, and the rhema that guides you.

For man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

And may you keep rising into the life he designed for you, into purpose, into peace, into the fullness of his calling.

May your life become a living Selah.

An intentional pause that reveals his presence.

It is in Jesus name and it is so Selah.