2026 Retreat : “A Prayer for the Church”

It and this year we are still holding on to the same team and

our hope is to go deeper in how we live out one another

together. That's why this past days we've

been walking through Ephesians, especially chapter 1 to chapter

3 just to prepare our hearts. This weekend we will reminded

that God chose us, forgave us and made us his own.

How we were spiritually dead under God's judgement.

And then you come to those two words in chapter 2 verse four.

They change everything which is but God.

If those words were not there, there will be no salvation, no

church, no hope for any of us in this room.

God in His mercy stepped in and made us alive in Christ.

And how the church, ordinary people saved by grace, is where

God displays His wisdom to the whole spiritual world.

So as we sit here with all of that, something should be

stirring our hearts. A deeper sense of how great God

is and how much, how much we need Him.

Because what God has done for us in Christ is so amazing, so

undeserved, so much bigger than anything we could do on our own,

that that the only right respawn is to come before him on our

knees. And that is exactly where Powell

is. He's on his knees because he

knows that without God moving, nothing is going to change.

So let's pause here with a question.

When was the last time you were in that place, truly desperate

in prayer? Not the prayer you rushed

through before a meal, but the canwell.

You knew with complete clarity that everything depended on God

and nothing on you. Has prayer ever felt that urgent

for you, for your family, for this church?

And that is the prayer Paul is about to pray here, a prayer

that shows us what we should be asking God to do, not just in

our own lives, but for us as a church.

So the title of our first session is A prayer for the

church, a prayer for the church. So please turn your Bible to

Ephesians chapter 3, verses 14 to 21, ever since chapter 3,

Ephesians 3:14–21

verses 14 to 21, and let me read the whole passage for us, verse

14. For this reason I bow my niece

before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on

earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory He

may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in

your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through

faith. That you, being rooted and

grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all

the Saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,

and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that

you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we

ask or think according to the power at work within us, to him

be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all

generations, forever and ever, Amen.

This is God's word. So church president sisters,

here's now look at verses 14. It says for this reason, I bow

my niece before the Father. So the normal posture in Jewish

prayer was standing, Kneeling was reserved for moments of deep

humility, even crisis. So when Powell kneels here, he's

coming in desperation. He's looking at the church and

realizing this is beyond human ability.

And notice where he turns, He comes to the Father.

It says in verse 14, We learn in the previous chapter, this is

the Father who has adopted us, who has brought us into his

family. And as Paul says in the next

verse, this is the Father from whom every family in heaven and

on earth is named. So Paul is praying to the one

who is the source of church itself, the one who brought

these people together and the one who has the authority and

the power to shape them. Which is why Paul knows that the

life of the church doesn't ultimately depend on how well we

planned, but on whether God himself is at work among among

us by his Spirit. And that is why this is what

drives everything. In this passage, Paul builds

this his prayer around 3 specific requests.

Each one begins with the word death, and through them he is

asking God to work in specific ways in the lives of these

believers. And as we walk together through

them together through the 1st, I want us to keep one question in

front of us. What does this mean for us right

now, right here for us as a church?

So here the first thing he prays.

First, strengthen in the inner being, verses 16 to 17 a Now

look at again at verse 16 as Paul begins this prayer, he

prays that according to the riches of his glory, he may

grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in

your inner being. So we can see church.

The way he prays already teaches us something.

He asked God to grant this. In other words, this is not

something we can produce. It has to be given by God.

And this already achieved for us here as a church, because when

we think about church life, especially with a team like one

another, it's very natural for our instinct to think about

action. Like we start thinking about

what needs to change, what needs to improve, what we should be

doing more intentionally. Those things matters.

But Paul starts somewhere else here.

He starts with prayer because he knows that what happens in our

lives together will only go as far as what God is doing inside

us. Then he adds this phrase

according to the riches of his glory.

This is easy to pass over, but it tells us how God works.

Paul doesn't say God gives out of his riches, as if he were

giving small portions from a large supply.

He says God gives according to his riches, meaning his giving

reflects the fullness of who he is.

And what are those riches? They are the riches of his

glory, His power, His grace, His goodness, everything that makes

God who he is. And then Paul becomes more

specific here. He says this strengthening comes

with power through his Spirit and in your inner being.

So that word power is important here.

Paul is not talking about a general kind of strength, like

trying harder or becoming more disciplined.

This is the same power he has already spoken about earlier in

this letter, the power that raised Christ from the dead.

And now he's saying that this power is at work in believers.

So our lives then are not sustained by self effort, but by

God himself actively working within us.

And notice how it happens. It is true.

His Spirit, which means the strengthening is not something

external. It is not just changing what we

do on the outside. The Spirit of God is actively

working within us, renewing our hearts, reshaping our desires,

reordering what we love, and giving us the ability to respond

in ways we could not do on our own.

And as you see, that leads to where this world happens in your

inner being. This is the centre of you are

not just your actions, but what produce those actions.

Your thoughts, your desires, your instincts, your reactions.

In other words, Paul is praying for something deeper than

behaviour change. He's praying for transformation

at the level of the heart. Because if you are honest, this

is often where we struggle the most, right?

Outwardly, things can look fine. We show up, we serve, we stay

connected. We often think the problem is

that we don't try hard enough. We tell ourselves, I just need

to be more patient, I just need to respond better next time.

I need to try harder. But the deeper problem is that,

left to ourselves, we don't naturally love what God calls us

to love. Our hearts are easily shaped by

comfort, by pride, by self protection.

So those moments are revealing. They expose what is really going

on inside us and remind us that this goes deeper than behaviour

and how much we need God to work with him.

And this is exactly where Paul is praying.

He's focusing on what's going on in our hearts, where our real

response are formed. And this is important because

the challenge of living out one another is rarely about not

knowing what to do. We already know what we are

called to do, to love, to forgive, to be patient, to bear

with one another. But the difficulty is that our

hearts don't always move in that direction.

So Powell prays for strength there.

And this is where it leads, Paul says, so that Christ might dwell

in your heart through faith. Now, Christ is already present

in the lives of believers. Paul knows that.

But here he is praying for something more, for how deeply

Christ is at work. Hopefully he takes hold of our

hearts. And when we see the word dwell

carries the, carries the sense of settling in, like making a

home. So think about the difference.

There's a difference between staying somewhere and truly

settling in. Like right now while we're

staying here at through Constanto Resort, we're just

passing through, right? We use the room, we adjust a few

things maybe, but we don't really change anything.

I don't know if you changed anything in your room already,

but over time, we know we are leaving soon on on this Sunday.

So we don't shape the place around us, but imagine if

someone actually owned one of those filler up the hill.

When the owner comes in, they don't leave things as they are.

They begin to change things and over time the whole place starts

to reflect them. Their presence reshape the

space. But in this picture, we are not

the owner. Christ Holy Spirit is the owner.

That's the difference Paul is pointing to, which means this is

not about us fixing our hearts so Christ can come in.

Paul is praying that Christ himself, by his Spirit, will

take hold of our hearts and begin to change what is already

there. So this is not about trying

harder. This is Christ making his home

in US, and when he is at work, he begins to reshape our hearts.

And this happens, Paul says, through faith.

That means an ongoing trust in Christ, a continual turning

toward him, especially in those moments where loving one another

feels difficulty or costly. Faith is what keeps bringing us

back to him instead of pulling away or closing off.

And this is where it connects so directly to our lives together,

because one another is usually leave out in fairly ordinary

moment, a comment that lands the wrong way, a conversation that

feel tense, a moment where you feel overlooked.

In all of those moments, what comes out of us is shaped by

what is happening within us. So if Christ is at home in our

hearts, shaping us from within, it begins to show, not all at

once, but over time, in the way we respond, in the way we

remained, in the way we move toward one another instead of

away. So it's worth asking honestly,

what is happening in our hearts toward one another?

Are we becoming more open, more patient, more shaped by Christ?

Or are there places where we have started to close off?

And Paul's prayer brings us here first, before we think about

what needs to change around us. We are invited to ask God work

within us, to strengthen us in our inner being so that Christ

will truly dwell in us. So perhaps the most honest

prayer we can bring to God is not.

Lord, help me to do more, but the prayer of something like

Lord work in me, strengthen me where I'm weak, shave my heart

in ways I cannot do myself, make my life a place where Christ is

truly at home. So first Paul prays that we will

be strengthening in our being. Then he continues with a second

prayer, rooted and grounded in love.

Verses 17 B to 19 A Paul continued his prayer and now he

shows us where that inner being, inner strengthening is leading.

He says that you being rooted and grounded in love.

So he uses 2 pictures here, one from nature, one from

construction. Like a tree with a deep roots

and a building with a solid foundations.

But both point to the same idea, something that holds steady when

pressure comes. So the question is, what

actually holds us steady? Paul says it is love.

And here he's not first talking about our love for God or for

one another. He's talking about Christ's love

for us. And this matters because it

shows us where the Christian life begins.

It doesn't begin with what we produce.

It begins with what we receive. We don't start by trying to

become more loving people, we start by being rooted in the

love that has already been given to us in Christ.

And we all know how much we need that.

Because relationship, even in the church are not always easy,

right? There are misunderstandings,

different expectations, moment when someone disappoint you or

when you feel over the look. And in those moments you begin

maybe to pull back, maybe not outwardly, but inwardly.

You become more guarded, your heart more careful, less open.

So what keeps that from becoming your pattern?

PowerPoints us here. When your life is rooted in

Chrysler, there's a stability that begins to form, not because

everything around you is steady, but because your center is no

longer controlled. By what is happening around you

then, Powell continues, that you may have strength to comprehend

with all the Saints what is the breadth, length, height and

depth. And again he says we need

strength. I hope that should catch our

attention. We usually think we need

strength to endure suffering difficulty.

But here, Powell says we need strength to understand

something, and that tells us something important about us.

It means that left to ourselves, we are not even able to take in

what God has already given. We are not naturally able to

grasp the love of Christ the way we should.

So even here we are dependent on God.

We need His help not only to live the Christian life, but

even to understand it. And that brings us to a humbling

place because it means we don't just come to God for strength

when life is hard. We come to Him because without

Him we remain shallow in our in understanding.

We hear the truth, but it doesn't go deep.

We say the words, but they don't shape us.

Why? Because what he's talking about

is beyond what we naturally take in.

And what are we meant to grasp? It says here the love of Christ.

So Paul assumes something here, that we can be around this truth

for years and still not really taking it in.

We can say Christ loves me and it stays at the level of words.

So Paul stretches language here, breadth, length, height, depth,

not to define it, but to help us see what we have not reached,

the age of it. Wherever you are in your

understanding of Christ's love, there's more.

This is a love, God's love, that reaches in every direction, wide

enough to embrace all kinds of people, long enough to endure

through years of weakness, high enough to lift us into a new

life, and deep enough to meet us in our lowest places.

And Paul says this is something we are meant to grasp together

with all the Saints. That part is easy to miss, but

it matters more than we think. That means this doesn't grow in

isolation. You don't come to understand

Christ love fully on your own. There are parts of it you only

see in shared life. We begin to see it in patience

Endurance. In quiet forgiveness, in the

choice to stay when it would be easier to step back.

And sometimes we see it more clearly, when we are the ones in

need. And yet we are still deceived.

We are still loved. And in those moment we are

experiencing more than kindness or good character.

We are being drawn into the reality of Christ's love, and

it's there in that shared life that our understanding begins to

deepen. It moves from something you

agree with to something you actually live in.

And then Paul says, and to know the love of Christ, that

surpasses knowledge. At first that sounds confusing.

How do you know something that goes beyond knowledge?

But this is something we recognize.

There's a difference between knowing something is true and

living as if it is true. You can know that Christ loves

you and still live as if you need to prove yourself.

You can know that Christ loves you and still be easily shaken

by how others treat you. That's the gap Paul is

addressing here, and he's praying that this love would

become settled in us, not because we are fully understood

is because we will never will, but because it has begun to

shape how we live. So maybe the question for us is

not simply are we loving one another well, but something

underneath that? Are we living as people who are

rooted in Christ love? Are we letting that love sink

in? Or are we moving on too quickly?

Are we allowing that love to shape how we see others, how we

respond, how we remained? Because as we keep coming back

to Christ's love, trusting it and living in it, something

begins to change. And after time, the life of the

church begins to reflect not just our effort, but the work

Christ is doing in us as his people shapes the way we

actually treat one another. So church, first, Paul prays

that we will be strengthened in our inner being.

Second, that we will be rooted and grounded in God's love.

And then he comes to his final prayer, filled with all the

fullness of God. Verse 19, B.

So after praying for strength, after praying that we will grasp

the love of Christ, he leads us here.

Verse 19 it says that you may be filled with all the fullness of

God. If you are honest, it can feel

unclear. What does that actually mean?

How can people like us be filled with the fullness of God?

But Paul is not being careless with his words here.

There is where his whole prayer has been moving.

The strengthening of our inner being leads to Christ dwellings

in US, the Christ dwelling. Christ dwelling in US leads to

being rooted in God's love, and being rooted in his love leads

to this, that our lives are are increasingly, increasingly

filled with God himself. So when Paul speaks about

fullness, he's talking about God's life shaping our lives,

his characters, his presence, his ways becoming more and more

evident in US. And this only makes sense when

we remember where that fullness is found.

In Colossians 2, Paul says that all the fullness of God dwells

in Christ, and in him we are being filled.

So what Paul is describing here, it's not that we become God, but

being united to Christ and sharing in what is already true

in him. And here's one way to see it.

We often live as if we are running on empty and we need to

find something to fill ourselves up again.

So we try to manage, we try to push through, we give to give

what we can't. But Paul is showing us different

reality here. If you are in Christ, you are

not drawing from your own limited supply, but you are

being filled from His fullness. And it means your life is no

longer sourced from yourself. And over time you start to

notice something changing in your heart.

The way we response starts to change, not at once, but

gradually. There's patience that was not

there before, a willingness to stay when it would have been

easier to withdraw, A capacity to love that you know did not

come from you. And you realize this is not just

me trying harder. This is not just us trying

harder. The Lord is at work in me.

And this is where it becomes very, very personal because many

of us know what it feels like to run out.

You've been there. Your energy is gone, your

patient is thinned. Someone needs something from you

and inside you already know you don't have much left to give.

And in those moments, we tend to go in one of two directions.

We either force ourselves to keep going.

You don't have or we quietly start to withdraw.

But Powell is leading us somewhere better than both of

those. He's leading us back to Christ.

He's praying that our lives would not run on what we can

produce, but on what God supplies, that his life becoming

the source from which we live. So when you reach that point,

instead of just pushing through or pulling away, you learn to

turn to Him. You bring your emptiness

honestly before Him. You stop pretending you have

enough. You ask Him to do in you what

you know you cannot do on your own.

And as that become more real in your life, in our life together,

even in small way, you began to realise you are not carrying

this by yourself anymore. Now look at verses 20 to 21 as

Paul finishes this prayer, he doesn't move straight into

instructions. He doesn't say now go and do

this, but he leaves our eyes first.

It says in verse 20. Now to him who is able to do far

more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power

at work within us. It's like Paul is saying, before

you walk away from this, remember who you are talking to

because everything he has just prayed.

Strength in the inner being, grasping the love of Christ,

being filled with the fullness of God.

It can feel too much. You might hear it and think this

sounds good, but that can really happen in a life like us, life

like mine, in the church like ours.

But Paul speaks directly to this hesitation.

He points us to God as the one who is able to do more than we

ask, even more than we can imagine, beyond what we would

even think to pray for. Which means these prayers are

not unrealistic. They rest on who God is and on

what he's already doing. And then Paul turns this into

praise. To him be the glory in the

church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations,

forever and ever. Amen.

So notice where that glory is sin in the church and in Christ

Jesus. Not in perfect people, but in

people who are being changed, A community, local church where

grace is practice, where love grows, when lives are slowly

shaped by Christ, that is where God's glory becomes feasible.

And Paul says this will continue throughout all generation,

forever and ever. So this goes beyond one moment,

one season 1 retreat. This is the ongoing life of the

church across time as God continues to work in his people,

to work in us. So as we come to the end of this

passage, we are left with both an invitation and a confidence.

The invitation is to pray the whale the way Paul prays, to ask

God to strengthen us, not to strengthen us, to root us deeply

in Christ's love, to fill our lives with his fullness.

And the confidence comes from who God is.

He is able, He is already at work, and he will continue to do

more than we expect in ways we may not always see immediately,

but are real and lasting. So as we go from here, may we

carry a simple prayer from this Lord, do this work in us, in our

hearts, in our relationships, in our lives together in our church

so that in the ordinary ways we live with one another.

Your glory will be sin. And together as a church we can

say Amen, Amen. Praise be to God.

So church, let's take some time now to personally respond to

God's word. You can stay where you are or

find a place here that helps you focus and pray more freely.

What we have just heard is a prayer for the church, and it

reminds us of something we often forget.

We are weaker than we think. We struggle to obey God, and we

also struggle to understand His love.

So let's pray personally now. We have a bunch of time

different like we have in the Sunday celebration.

We have some time to begin with the humble confession.

Acknowledge your need and you can bring before Him the areas

where you feel weak, distracted, or spiritually dry.

Then you also can pray along the movement of this passage, not

only for yourself but for the church.

You may ask God to strengthen us in our inner being.

Pray that as a church, God will work deeply in US, shaping our

hearts so that our faith is not easily shaken, as that we as a

church will be rooted and grounded His love.

Pray that together we will grow and understand the love of

Christ more clearly. And this is something we don't

grow into alone, but together with all the Saints, with this

church. You may want to write this down

as your own prayer to God in your booklet so you can make it

personal, honest, and specific as you bring your heart before

him. So let's take a moment, few

moment in personal prayer and reflections.