Our Strength in Christ

Paul is writing from Roman imprisonment. Yet he doesn't pray for the prison doors to open. He prays for the believers' hearts to be strengthened! Why? Because he knows that the Christian life requires a power greater than anything we possess in on our own.

Yet sometimes, we slip back into thinking of the Christian life as a list of things we must do. Pray more. Read our Bibles more. Be more loving. Be more patient. Share our faith more. And while these are all good things, we soon discover that knowing what we ought to do doesn't give us the power to do it.

This is where the gospel continues to matter for us. The gospel isn’t merely the entry point for the Christian life. It's the sustaining message for living the Christian life. It’s the promise that God will finish what He started in us.

In the apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he prayed that believers would be strengthened by God’s power in Christ Jesus.