"I Pray That"

There are several places in Scripture where the writer says “I pray that”. Since, I have just read a modern writer’s encourage people to pray the Scripture, I wonder if these I-pray-that’s should be our starting points?

The first, I-pray-that, that occurs to me, Paul prays for the Holy Spirit to empower our human core. God sends his innate power, that created the world, that raised Jesus from the dead, through his Spirit into our hearts.

Why? So, we can walk on water? Or raise the dead? Not in this particular passage.

Paul prays for the Spirit to transform our inner core, so that Christ may dwell there.

The world is in rebellion toward God. It has an anti-God attitude. We need power to go contrary to the world, to choose to return to God. We need power to re-connect, and live our relationship with him.

So, we can likewise pray for the Spirit to work in our lives, and in the lives of others:

• To pursue our relationship with Father, Son, and Spirit.
• To grow in that relationship – in understanding, and increased connection. (Remember the parable of the grapevine.)
• To give allegiance to Jesus.

But wait! There’s more!

He prays for all God’s family to have power to understand the full extent of God’s love. We have accepted God’s love, and God’s version of life, by giving him our allegiance. We have established our lives in his love. Now, we need to grow in our understanding of it, by our experience of it.

This experience is o huge, that only a fraction of testimonies, and descriptions, of it would swamp the internet. It is seen spanning the miraculous to the mundane. From maternal self-sacrifice, to canine loyalty, otherworldly sunsets, plain old kindness, and miraculous healings. God’s love is present, and expressed, through all those things.

Paul says he prays for God’s power to manifest itself in people, so they could move into relationship with God, and to awaken to God’ ever present, personal, individual, and all powerful love, and its manifold expressions.