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.

There are some things that we, like the Apostle Paul in our verse for today, should pray for ourselves and for any others God places on our hearts.

First of all, we should pray that God would give us something from out of His glorious riches. What are God’s glorious riches? They are the inexhaustible abundance of His grace and mercy for us. God is rich in mercy and grace. He has everything we need to live the lives He wants us to live. He has everything we need to meet all our needs (Philippians 4:19).

Specifically, we should pray that He will strengthen us with power through His Spirit in our inner beings. What does this mean? It means that our inner beings, our hearts or souls, lack something. Our souls lack the power and ability to do something and need to be strengthened. They need to be given the power and ability to act in faith and life well.

Apart from God’s Spirit working on the inside of us, we are unable to hold fast what God wants us to believe. Instead, we will believe whatever we want, or worse, we will believe what Satan wants us to believe (1 Timothy 4:1). We need to be strengthened by the power of the Holy Spirit to have true faith in the truth.

And what is the truth that will set us free? It is the gospel of Jesus Christ. When it is presented to us, we need the faith necessary to believe it. We need this faith so that Christ will dwell in our hearts, so that we will be true Christians.

We need to be strengthened in our inner beings so that our faith in Christ will come into being and grow. We need, in other words, to pray Paul’s prayer for ourselves and those we care about on a regular basis. Humble prayers like these will always be answered by our Heavenly Father who loves to give good gifts to His children from His glorious riches.

By John Huisman, friend of Bible League International