Father, thank you for gathering us together. We could have been anywhere else in the world, but you gave us the great privilege of meeting together with our brothers and sisters to encourage and empower us through your word today.

Lord, we have a group of teens at a retreat, put a spark of new life and zeal in their minds and souls. I pray for the team we have in Thailand, give them courage and endurance to continue through the tough terrain.

I pray for those among us who are hurting, and in pain–tend to their hearts, minds, and bodies. Lord, those who are so beaten by this world, give them relief. That feeling of being backed into a corner, remove it from them. Give them your salvation. Finally, I ask you to give me the words that express the endless love you have for your people. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

We started six weeks ago with the question: Who am I? The existential question that frames our human experience. I’m sure all of us have asked this question at some point in our lives. Over those six weeks we explored how the Bible answers that question for us, about who we are—a child of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

Today, we’re going to conclude our exploration of our identities and move to a framework that ensures you’ll never wrestle with that question again, no matter how hard your circumstances shake your identity.

Let’s go to Ephesians 3, verse 14. 

¹⁴ For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every familyin heaven and on earth is named, ¹⁶ that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸ may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

²⁰ 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, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:14-21 ESV)

This is a powerful prayer. To understand this prayer we have to go back to verse 13.

¹³ So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. (Ephesians 3:13 ESV)

The context by which Paul writes this letter and actually prays this prayer is in the midst of suffering.

• He is imprisoned at Rome, awaiting his trial for treason. If you know Paul, you know that he was not treasonous.
• He was false accused, imprisoned, then beat, then on the short end of a government cover-up, then shipwrecked, and now he’s in jail.

He says, “do not lose heart over what I am suffering for you.” The Apostle Paul should have quit, but instead he continues forward ministering the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So how does he carry forward when the people who are around him feel like quitting? That’s what he is saying right? YOU don’t lose heart. Not that he lost heart.

He carries forward because a psychological term called “grit.” Grit is defined as the positive, non-cognitive trait based on an individual ability to achieve a goal. In fact, there is a formula for grit that we should all know because then you can measure the amount of grit you have.

Perseverance multiplied by effort; plus Passion multiplied by effort

Psychologists who study grit say people coming from similar socio-economic backgrounds have varying levels of success based on how much grit he or she has. In essence, you can only achieve as much as you have grit to achieve.

Some examples of grit:

• That Navy Seal, dragging his body across a muddy field with barbed wire around him and in angry defiance, he grits his teeth and wills his body through that sludge and crawls out.
• Or maybe, you think about Rudy, that Irish son of a coal-miner, who at 5’6” and 165 pounds wanted to play football for the University of Notre Dame. He applied to Notre Dame three times, but was rejected because of his poor grades. He takes a job as a stadium groundskeeper and applies again, and finally gets in. He rides the bench the whole season until finally, he takes the field for one play.
• Or maybe the term grit calls to mind a single mom or dad, who works three jobs and 100 hours a week to put clothes on their kids, and food on the table.

Let’s face it, the Apostle Paul is in jail and he planted churches in most of the known world in the first century and he had problems. Grit is the reason the Apostle Paul didn’t call it quits when he ended up in jail for pursuing his ministry goal. In fact, this prayer he wrote is a prayer asking God for grit based on our identity in Jesus Christ.

That’s my big idea today:

Pray bigger!

You and I will never have a life here on earth that’s problem-free, stress-free, or pain-free. Its just not happening. If you want the same grit the Apostle Paul had, to get through whatever you are facing now, to live into your identity as a child of God, we need to pray bigger!

Praying bigger means that we ask God to do more and be bigger in our lives. Look at verses 14 and 15: For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named…

Paul understood his identity in God, he calls God, the “Father.” He understood that he was adopted as a child of God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He also knew who he was created to be–that his purpose in life was to be a minister of that good news.

Paul’s grit doesn’t fail because when everybody else wants to give up, he bends at the knee to pray. He prays to his father, who is also our father. Paul is saying that God is literally the biggest thing, the greatest thing and the source of all things that is why he is coming to him by prayer.

The sad part is that we don’t take advantage of praying the way Paul does to draw down on the strength of God to give us perseverance, passion, and effort.

For some reason:

• it’s easier to believe that God can raise Jesus from the grave, than it is for him to restore our health.
• It’s easier for us to believe that our sins can be paid for, than it is for him to get us out of our debt.
• It’s easier for us to believe that God is with us, than it is for him to heal our hurts from broken relationships, miscarriages, failures, losses.  

It’s not enough to just pray, “help me God, I need the winning numbers for the latest mega-millions. That 40 million dollar prize will solve all my problems.” I know that’s what you’re thinking. Come on now, we all know that money isn’t going to solve all your problems. We need to pray bigger!

So how do we pray bigger? Paul gives us three ways to pray bigger in this passage and you’ll see why Paul’s grit didn’t fail when everybody else’s did. You’ll understand why he successfully planted churches despite everything going against him. More importantly, you’ll understand why your identity should never be questioned regardless of what happens to you.

First Way to Pray Bigger: Pray to be strengthened by the Holy Spirit

Remember the formula for grit? It’s perseverance multiplied by effort plus passion multiplied by effort. Effort is in there twice. If we want more grit, we need to ask God for strength. We need strength to persevere and strength to put in the effort.

Look at what Paul says in verse 16: 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 (vv 16-17a)

Let me dig a little deeper with you on this. Paul is specifically talking about  spiritual strength. Spiritual strength gives us hope when there is no reason to hope. This is a strength that fuels us by allowing us to persevere when we should call it quits.

Flip to the old testament for an example of this type of power. Zechariah 4:6-7.

⁶ Then he said to me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. ⁷ Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you shall become a plain. And he shall bring forward the top stone amid shouts of ‘Grace, grace to it!’”

Zerubbabel was the government leader of Jerusalem, and had the responsibility of rebuilding the temple. The work stalled, and Zerubbabel’s grit ran out, he couldn’t accomplish the goal.

God tells Zerubbabel, it will not be by your cleverness, your ability, or your ability to rally others that the temple will be rebuilt. He says it’s by the power of his Spirit that the temple will be rebuilt.

But that’s not all God is saying about Holy Spirit strength, in verse 7, he continues to say that this spiritual power is so great that what once looked like obstacles resembling mountains will actually become molehills and there will also be a cheering section. Don’t you want a cheering section on your side?

Are there people in this room right now who need the spiritual strength of the Holy Spirit to continue on in the face of your obstacles? Don’t give up. Pray bigger! Pray that you can be strengthened by the Holy Spirit in your inner being. Have that cheering section in your corner!

That’s the type of big prayer we need to be praying—God strengthen us with your Holy Spirit!

Second way we Pray Bigger: Pray for understanding to comprehend his love (vv. 17b-19)

Look at the second half of verse 17 with me:

that you being rooted and grounded in love ¹⁸ may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Paul is telling us to be rooted and grounded in that same love of God that saves us from our sins. Check this out. You and I, when we were most wretched and at our worst, God in his great love for us poured out His one and only son, Jesus Christ to bring us into the fold of his family by dying for us on the cross and then being resurrected on the third day.

It’s this love of Jesus that saves us from our sins that we need to be rooted and grounded in. Jesus didn’t die for you because you were perfect. Jesus died for you and me because of our imperfections. Nothing stopped Jesus from pursuing us – not our addictions, not our fornication, not our lying, not our depression, or anger or debt. He’s pursuing us now.

There’s not a single person I know that was saved when he or she was at their best. It was in our wretchedness that Jesus saved. Come on people, I was saved while cutting school to hang out with my gang banger buddies. This is how relentless Jesus is in pursuing us in love!

Do you think I deserved to be saved and to be loved by God? Absolutely not. Regardless of what I deserved, God took that upon his son, Jesus, and laid him out to be an offering to justify us and bring us into his family. To be an heir with him through grace. We are one family of God. Receive that. Believe that. That is our identity.

We need to pray to understand the breadth and length and height and depth of Jesus’ love for us. Only when we understand that love that we can be filled with the fullness of God.

Praying bigger means asking God to help us understand His love so we can be filled with the same passion he had when he pursued us by dying on the cross.

It’s an unstoppable passion. Isn’t that the second part of the grit formula? Passion? Let us be filled with the passion of God that surpasses knowledge and found in Jesus Christ, in whom we are rooted and grounded in. This is why the Apostle Paul didn’t quit his ministry, he had the same love of Jesus for the people he was sent to serve.

Imagine what our lives would be if that same passion manifested in us because we prayed bigger by asking understanding his love. How would We pray for ourselves? How would we pray for other people? How would we pursue our goals and what kind of zeal would we have to chase what God puts on our heart?

That leads us to the third way we pray bigger:

Pray for God to get great glory

Let’s look at verse 20.

²⁰ 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 ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen.

Verse 20 says God is able to do “far more” than we know to ask. Circle that phrase in your Bibles, people, and remember this: God is able to do far more; so let’s ask bigger in our prayers. No matter what we ask or seek in our prayers know that it can be bigger. It can be bigger because God is able to do far more than our imaginations can fathom.

If that’s the type of breakthrough you need right now in your life, You need to  pray and ask God to do more than you know to ask.

Paul continues in verse 21 by saying that it’s this type of big prayer that will enable us to experience God’s glory.

Paul, prior to his salvation, was a murderer who specifically targeted God’s people. Yet God used this murderer to plant churches across the world. He then imprisoned Paul, so his letters would influence not only the churches of his time but of ours as well, twenty centuries later.

We should pray for God to get great glory, so that our present situation and our current achievements bring God glory. You are loved and saved, so that you can boast of more than a comfortable life, a nice family photo and modest upward career mobility.

We have been saved for the glory of God—so he can display to the world that when we were alcoholics, suicidal, lonely, depressed, angry, indebted, broken, and pathologically lying to ourselves and others—he loved us and has set us aside for something more than our own glory. It was his glory.

• We didn’t die on the cross, Jesus did.
• We didn’t go to hell, Jesus did.
• But Jesus rose again, and that is our victory, that is God’s glory. He came back to life.
• Death couldn’t hold him.

That is our identity in Jesus when we believe. That is the great glory we get to witness in our lives. When we respond to Jesus, he works powerfully in our lives. 

When we pray God’s glory to be present in our lives, there is no reason we would run out of grit to accomplish what he places on our hearts to do. It’s why Jesus prayed at Gethsemane he said “not my will but your will.” Praying bigger reminds us that God is fully able to accomplish his purposes for his glory for us and that he will do it.

We need to pray bigger by asking for his great glory to be displayed in our lives. We’re not here just to be here. We’re here because God’s great glory courses through us and that’s how big we should be praying.

In your bulletins you’ve all received a card that says “Pray Bigger.” I want to encourage all of you to pray bigger by asking God to be glorified through you in four areas: personal, family, church, and community revival. Revival is happening, and we need to be praying bigger by asking God to get great glory in this revival movement.

Conclusion

If grit was the reason Paul didn’t quit pursuing his goal, then he obtained that grit through praying big. In fact, it’s kind of interesting that his prayer doesn’t ask for God to get him out. Rather it’s for

• the strength of the Holy Spirit;
• understanding of God’s love;
• and to witness God’s great glory.

It’s the Holy Spirit, God’s love, and God’s glory that gave Paul the perseverance multiplied by effort plus passion multiplied by effort to continue boldly, knowing his identity despite how life was shaking him.

If you’re here today, and your life feels like hell and you need some grit to get through this season of life or even just this day, then rest assured, your identity is a child of a rich God, and you can expect him to do far more than we can ask or think. So go beyond safe prayers of provision and pray dangerously big prayers of faith.

God will give you his Spirit to strengthen you, to give you perseverance. He will fill you with the passion of his love. He will do more than you will ever know for his glory.

If you’ve never experienced the life-changing power and love of God or need grit that is gifted to us by God we’re going to pray bigger right now. Everyone in this room who wants to pray bigger let’s pray this together:

Father in heaven we come to you. We confess we are sinners in need of you mercy and grace. We ask you come into our lives. Strengthen us with your Holy Spirit. Help us understand the love you have for us in the midst of our sins afflictions and suffering. Teach us to grasp the height depth and breadth by which you are moving in us. Jesus come and fan the fire of love in our hearts and minds because you died on that cross to save us and to free us to live a life pointing to the glory of God.