Strengthened By The Spirit And Christ's Power | Devotional

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” —EPHESIANS 3:16-17

Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians is a response to the truths he has been teaching, and the application of those truths into their lives. Yesterday we talked about how coming before God in humility and acknowledging His supremacy are key aspects of effective praying.

In the next verse, Paul speaks about the glorious riches of Christ strengthening us with power through His Spirit, and this gives us a great deal of confidence in coming before God. As Christians, we live under the umbrella of what Paul calls ‘the unsearchable riches of Christ’. We can search them out, but we’ll never reach the borders. There always remains an abundance of riches yet to be explored and experienced in God.  

The more we explore the truths of God, the more we realize our need for divine strength. We cannot separate divine enterprise from divine enabling. That’s why some of us get discouraged and give up. We think it’s unrealistic, impractical, difficult, impossible, and it’s good to think that way, because unless we realize that for every divine demand, we need divine dynamic, every divine enterprise, divine energy, and every divine strategy, divine strength, Christianity will merely become a religious set of rules we try our best to implement.

Paul’s request is that we are strengthened through Christ’s power in our inner being, so that our outer activity derives from our inner being. In his own experiences, Paul coped with all kinds of persecutions where his outer being was locked up, put in chains, beaten, shipwrecked, stoned, deprived of food, water, shelter, but he says in 2 Corinthians 4:16, “We do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.”

Being renewed and strengthened in our inner being is Paul’s prayer for us. This comes to us by the power of Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith. It is not an impersonal power, but is the very life of Christ, Himself, living in us. When we think of the Spirit of Christ, we need to think in terms of Jesus of Nazareth who walked this earth, was kind and compassionate, and acted in such a way that we know the Spirit indwelling us is living the life of Jesus in us. It isn’t ethereal in nature. It is a real life that walks dusty roads and is interactive with people. Christ is unchanging and, as Christians, the same Jesus who lived in Paul lives in us. It is in His strength from our inner being we are sustained.

Dear Lord, thank You for your indwelling life that is my source of strength.

In times of hardship, am I drawing upon and experiencing the power of Christ in me?