As a church, we are seeking to grow in prayerfulness in the year ahead.  As we move into another calendar year of ministry, we are asking the Lord to do 6 things in us as His people.  This is our prayer…Wake Us.  Humble Us.  Change Us.  Anchor Us.  Unite Us.  Send Us.

You can read the post on Wake Us here, Humble Us here and Change Us here.  The next prayer we are laying before the Lord is…Anchor Us

Ephesians 4:11-16:  ¹¹ So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, ¹² to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up ¹³ until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.  ¹⁴ Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. ¹⁵ Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. ¹⁶ From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

As we pray and ask the Lord to change us.  He is in the process of maturing us in our faith.  Of anchoring our lives so that we will not be tossed back and forth by the circumstances of life nor by false teaching that would pull us away from the Gospel or pull us away from seeing the Word as our authority or as sufficient to teach us all we need for faith and life.

Another illustration or picture that we see in Scripture of the Christian’s life is that of being rooted in Jesus.  It is the same idea as an anchor to a boat.  That our faith in Christ would not be this superficial thing, but our faith roots would go down deep into Christ and be strong enough as to not be ripped out by trial or test.  That those deep roots would lead to flourishing in our lives even in the midst of suffering or difficulty.

Just looking at a few of Paul’s prayers recorded in the New Testament, you read…

In Colossians 1:10, he’s praying that we might grow in the knowledge of God.

And then in Ephesians 1:17, Paul keeps asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you and I may know Him better.

To be anchored or rooted means we will know our God better.  That we will not just know about God, but we might know Him personally.  And the more we know Him, the more our lives will not toss back and forth.  As our knowledge of God increases, so might our love for and worship of God increase.  We can’t love someone we don’t know, so this is why Paul is praying that we might know God better.

Paul prays in Ephesians 3:17-19 this…I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

To know this love that surpasses knowledge, he says.  So it is a both/and.  It is not either/or.  We are to both grow in the knowledge of God, and experience and try and grasp His love that is wider, and longer, and higher, and deeper, than we can even understand fully.

May the Lord anchor us and may we be rooted in who our God is alone.  Growing in our knowledge of Him, and at the same time, increasing in our love for Him.