Praying Like Paul

Occasionally someone will say to me, "I don't know how to pray for so-and-so." The Scriptures give us many prayers to pray for one another, and among them is Paul's prayer for the Ephesians found in Ephesians Chapter 4 - in italics below. 

We can pray this for ourselves, that we might know the fullness of God, and we can certainly pray it for one another. Are we praying it for our family? Our coworkers (in context)? The families in our churches? 

Who can you pray this prayer for today? Right now?

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

Floating Downstream

More than 40 years ago, in 1974, Archbishop Fulton Sheen made the following observations:

“First of all, we are at the end of Christendom. Now not Christianity, not the Church. Remember what I am saying.”

“Christendom is economic, political, social life as inspired by Christian principles. That is ending — we’ve seen it die. Look at the symptoms: the breakup of the family, divorce, abortion, immorality, general dishonesty.”

“The press that we read, the television that we see, is in no instance inspired by Christian principles. As a matter of fact, there is, on the part of many of us, the tendency to go down to meet the world — not to lift the world up. We are afraid of being unpopular — so we go with the mob.”

“Today the current is against us. And today the mood of the world is, ‘Go with the world, go with the spirit.’ Listen, dead bodies float downstream. Only live bodies resist the current. And so the good Lord is testing us.”

“And he is testing Western Christians with worldliness, and how many of us are falling?”

Well, we can only wonder what the good Archbishop would say today.