“that…he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being…” (Ephesians 3:16, ESV)

In Ephesians 3:14-19, Paul prayed for Christians to rely on a Spirit-enabled power towards two goals. First, “to comprehend…and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge”; second, to “be filled with all the fullness of God.”

More than just head knowledge, Christians are to know and experience more and more the limitless love of Christ (its “breadth and length and height and depth,” v18). This is made possible because they are already “rooted and grounded in love.” They have experienced this love when God made them alive, raised them up, and seated them with Christ (2:5-6).

Spiritual maturity is to “be filled with all the fullness of God.” It reflects fully what it means to be “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (4:24). In other words, to be all that God made us to be.

What a prayer! What a wondrous insight into God’s work in every believer! And God can and delights to answer such prayer on the basis of the inexhaustible “riches of his glory” (v16), made possible through the Spirit and the indwelling Christ.

Project Serve provides a platform for the realization of such a prayer in the setting of a community (“with all the saints,” v18). Witness, in this issue, the amazing work of God in changing the lives and life directions of those who participated in Project Serve.