Beyond Imagination

Welcome to this edition of PowerPoint with Jack Graham a little later in the program will tell you how you can get Dr. Graham's book Angel first hears his message beyond imagination file message from God's word and these is the third chapter, what we see here in Ephesians chapter 3 is a prayer. One of the greatest players of the Bible delivered offered by what I consider to be the greatest Christian who ever lived.

The apostle Paul man who was transformed by the grace and power of Jesus Christ. This prayer is a prayer for the church. All of us together.

It is also a prayer for you, for you to personalize and this prayer. The theme of the prayer.

The thrust of this prayer is that all of us and each of us will experience more and more of Christ that you would experience more of his love more of his power, and more of his greatness and goodness and glory and blessings in your life. There is so much more that God has for you. Don't settle for where you are in your Christian life. Don't get stuck somewhere in the past but I want you to see in God's word today as you pray as we prayed together, that God will energize us with with more power, more strength, more love and more faith that we would embrace all that God has that we would experience more than we could possibly imagine. Beyond our imagination. So let's look at the prayer beginning in verse 14. Ephesians 3. For this reason I bow my knees before the father, for whom every family in heaven and on earth is made that according to the riches of his glory.

He may grant to 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 same.

What is the breadth and length and height and that and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled. Here it is with all the fullness of God knowing 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, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. And everybody said amen what a prayer. Paul said, for this reason I bow the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ.

There many positions and really any position that we may pray traditional Jews in the Old Testament, and even today.

Pray while standing is certainly appropriate to stand in his presence to praise him and standing and to pray and ask him as we stand before is also appropriate to pray, lifting up our hands to the Lord.

The Bible says that we ought always to pray, lifting up holy hands unto the Lord, we lift up hands. It is a side of embracing all that God would decide to give it as a sign of adulation and adoration under God praise unto the land of God and when we embrace the greatness of God, the love of God.

There are times when we just want to hold up firearms in our hands to him that he would hold us near that we would hold him dear to us.

There times when we pray when we praise it is time for a girl fist pump and when we see the victory that is ours in Christ. The greatness of our God sometimes just want to pump up for and say thank you Lord for what you've done for my victory in the Lord Jesus while you can pray upside down there times you can.

We prayed, of course – but before the Lord there times that I pray that you prayed that we just stretched out just laid out on the floor put our nose in the carpet and cried out to God in desperation, sometimes in brokenness before but of all the postures in the positions of prayer.

Perhaps the most prominent one that Paul mentions here when he says I bow my knees the Lord Jesus Christ. When we get on our knees. We had our knees to invite and invoke his presence and power in our lives is a sign of course of our humility before the that we honor him that we hunger for him, that we surrender our lives to him as his service to give ourselves unconditionally to him. This is the way Paul says he is praying at this moment.

I let it remind you that Paul is imprisoned. He's not in the pulpit. He certainly not in a palace he is in prison facing the end of his life. He ultimately died a martyr's death while he is in chains in jail.

He still full of God and therefore he is free PS3. His spirit is free, and when you read this prayer that we shared already today. It is filled with passion. It is filled with emotion.

Paul is excited, I can just see him there in the cell in the change. Walking up and down pacing up and down praising God praising the Lord and then hitting his knee got hit your needs regularly. How long is it been since you hit your needs in humility before the Lord.

Mark Batterson is written a powerful book on prayer called the circle maker. I would advise you to read it in the book he makes this statement. The physical posture of kneeling, coupled with a humble heart is the most powerful position on earth you were never stronger than when you are on your knees before God, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States. Once that in the midst of the terrible Civil War. He said I'm often driven to my knees before God in desperation.

Where else can I go how long is it been since you hit your knees to say, Lord, I humble myself before you, that I may honor you.

This was the posture prayer when Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane surrendering his will to will to the will of the father, sweating drops of blood in anticipation of the cross, he knelt in prayer. There among the olive tree. They said not my will but your will be done.

So Paul prays he says. For this reason I bow my knee for what rings back out just a bit because the book of Ephesians 1 of my personal favorites in all the Bible is is a blessing book