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Pastor Mark Medley began with a question that feels both pastoral and practical: How do I pray for my people? As part of our In Christ series, he took us straight to Ephesians 1 and showed how Paul’s prayer there gives us a simple, sturdy frame for intercession. But before he opened the text, Mark invited a friend and now relative, Ben Smith, to share a testimony that brought the room to attention. Ben told the story of wandering far and being found by Jesus in 2023. He grew up around church and the language of faith, even tasted grace along the way, but admitted he didn’t know the Lord. After years of running—through heartbreak, personal failure, and a divorce—he reached the end of himself, and Christ met him there. What marked his story was not only mercy but the prayers and steady love of family and friends who wouldn’t give up. He described a moment when his father gave him a coat and, tucked in its pocket, a note: “Your mother and I are proud of you.” The words worked like grace, reminding him of a belonging he couldn’t earn. Ben’s call to us was clear: keep praying, keep lowering your loved ones to Jesus “through the roof” with your intercession and acts of love. That testimony set the table for everything that followed.

From there Mark opened Ephesians 1:15–23. Paul begins, “For this reason,” and Mark lingered on those words. You can’t understand how Paul prays until you see what comes before it. In the first fourteen verses, Paul lays out the breathtaking work God has already done for us in Christ. We have been chosen in love, redeemed by the blood of Jesus, included in the gospel, sealed with the Holy Spirit, and located in a story bigger than our efforts. The accent of those verses is all grace—what God has done, not what we do. That’s why prayer is not an attempt to move a reluctant God; it’s our invited response to the God who has already moved decisively in Christ. In this sense, prayer is an invitation into the heart and mission of God. We come to know Him, and then we join Him in what He’s doing.

That foundation explains Paul’s two refrains: “I never stop giving thanks for you,” and “I keep asking.” Thanksgiving is where Mark began. Before we ask anything else, we thank God for our people—for their presence, their gifts, and the grace already at work in them. Gratitude softens our tone and recalibrates our focus. It changes us from anxious fixers to trusting intercessors. And persistence, Mark said, is not pressure; it’s partnership. Paul’s perseverance simply echoes Jesus’ call to pray and not give up. Mark even played a brief story about the bowls of prayer in heaven being “tipped” by one more prayer, a way of reminding us that there’s a last prayer before breakthrough. If love compels us, we keep asking.

Mark then showed how Paul prays Trinitarian prayers and invited us to do the same. We come to the Father first; that means we pray from a position of relationship, as beloved sons and daughters. Jesus taught us to begin with “Father” because access is the atmosphere of prayer. We pray in the name of the Son; that means we pray from a position of authority, not striving. All authority in heaven and on earth belongs to Jesus, and in Him we are seated with Christ in the heavenly places. Parents, Mark noted, carry unique spiritual authority for their children—use it. Pray over your family from your God-given place. And we pray by the Spirit; that means we pray with help beyond our understanding. Romans 8 says the Spirit helps us in our weakness, interceding “with groanings too deep for words” according to the will of God. Sometimes the help feels like tears, sometimes like wordless ache, sometimes like praying in tongues. Mark reminded us that the gift of tongues can be a real aid in prayer, but it is not required for Spirit-led intercession. Whether we pray with our spirit or with our mind, English or otherwise, the point is that we are not alone when we pray. The entire Trinity is invested in helping us pray.

With that posture set, Mark walked us through Paul’s seven requests and turned them into a prayer map we can pick up any day for any person. First, pray for God to work at the level of the spirit. Our problems and longings often show up in the visible world, but root causes and deepest loyalties live in the unseen. So we ask for spiritual sight, the “spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him,” that the eyes of the heart would be enlightened. Wisdom is not mere information; it is God’s way cutting through the fog of self-reliance and the paths that “seem right” but lead to loss. Revelation is God removing the veil so that Christ becomes compelling again. When hearts see, habits follow.

Next, pray for hope. Paul asks that we would know “the hope to which He has called you,” because hope fuels endurance. Mark named a quiet thief of our age here: the algorithm. The more we click, the more it catechizes us, and the feed can begin to pastor our attention, shape our emotions, and drain hope. Mark spoke candidly about how pastors are often pastoring against the content their people consume all week. The answer isn’t shame—it’s a better diet. Curate your inputs. Lift your eyes to the living hope, Jesus Christ. When the Word becomes the loudest voice in the room, hope gets oxygen and panic loses its grip. And hope is tied to calling. Pray that your people hear God’s invitation—to rest, to learn from Jesus, to walk as sons and daughters. That call reframes pain and pries our fingers off false anchors.

Then pray for perspective about our inheritance. Paul wants us to know “the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints.” Eternal perspective is not escapism; it’s endurance fuel. When life narrows to mortgages, deadlines, and headlines, the promised future feels abstract. Intercession widens the horizon. We remember that following Jesus is worth it because the long run belongs to Him. And we don’t wait empty-handed. Pray for a present-tense encounter with “the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe,” the same power that raised Jesus from the dead and seated Him above every rule and rival. Mark suggested Isaiah 61 as a living prayer map for chains, grief, and fresh beginnings: good news to the poor, binding up the brokenhearted, freedom for captives, comfort for mourners, beauty instead of ashes, the year of the Lord’s favor. Where despair has settled, ask for divine interruptions. Where shame whispers, ask for the Spirit’s boldness to break the script.

All of this moves toward one great end: seeing Jesus as He is. Paul lands the prayer with Christ—risen, enthroned, and near. Mark said when people really see Him, everything else finds its place. Authority matters here. We approach the Father as sons and daughters, in the name above every name, with the Spirit helping our weakness. Even when words fail, God does not. Some will pray with groans; some will pray in tongues; all can pray with faith. And this isn’t just for pastors. Parents carry particular authority for their children—pray from that place. Friends bear one another’s burdens—share them. Churches can shepherd on their knees—pastoring continues in intercession. Praying “Father, in Jesus’ name, by the Spirit” shifts our posture from striving to authority, from guessing to partnering, from panic to trust.

We felt that shift as Mark prayed an elder’s blessing over the congregation, borrowing Paul’s language and asking God to do in us what He delights to do: give us wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him; open the eyes of our hearts; anchor us in living hope; make His call audible; fix our gaze on the inheritance kept for us; and work resurrection power among us in ways that heal, free, and reframe our lives. He prayed that the Word would be louder than the noise, that our diet would change, and that we would see Jesus clearly. Then he invited us to practice. We gathered in small clusters across the room, named people we love, and prayed the seven-point framework—thanking God before everything else, asking for spirit-level work, wisdom, revelation, hope, calling, inheritance, power, and a clear vision of Christ.

The frame is simple enough to use tonight at the kitchen table, on a commute, or in the few minutes before sleep. Start with thanksgiving. Keep asking. Pray to the Father as a son or daughter, in Jesus’ name, with the help of the Spirit. Ask for spiritual sight where your people are blind, wisdom where confusion rules, hope where cynicism has taken root, calling where aimlessness shouts, inheritance where short-term pressures dominate, and power where bondage lingers. Then lift their eyes to Jesus Himself. This is the heartbeat of In Christ: everything we need has already been secured in Him, and prayer is how we lay hold of His willingness, not overcome reluctance. Strategy, not striving. Partnership, not panic. Thanksgiving, not cynicism. And hope—real hope—anchored in the God who has already moved in Christ and still delights to move again. Mark’s closing encouragement felt like an echo of Paul’s persistence: one more prayer may tip the bowl.