Father in heaven we come. We come boldly because of the
Holy Spirit who lives inside us, because of what our Lord and
Savior Jesus has accomplished, we come.
Lifting our prayers to you for the preached word that it would
indeed go out and plant itself in deep, good soil.
I simply pray, as Paul prayed for the church at Ephesus, that
you, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may
give us the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge
of Him. You are the only one who can do
that. We pray that you would for your
glory and our good in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen. This morning I'm going to be
reading from Ephesians chapter 115 through 18.
Last Sunday I focused on verses 15 and 16.
This morning I'm going to focus on 17 in the first part of verse
18. Then after Easter, we'll be
right back here at verse 18 picking up this petition that
Paul is making for the church at Ephesus.
As Paul has just written, carried along by the Holy
Spirit, inspired by the Holy Spirit, one of the greatest
sentences ever penned about the glory of God, the grace of God,
his sovereignty. He now moves towards a prayer I
preached last week and how this prayer was centered on
Thanksgiving. In fact, it was said or Paul
says, I pray without ceasing, giving thanks to God for your
faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the Saints.
And now he moves forward with his first petition.
And this petition is so important.
So listen now as I read what Paul said about his prayer,
verse 15, chapter 1. For this reason, because I've
heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all
the Saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering
you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of
revelation in the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your
hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which
He has called you, what are the riches of His glorious
inheritance in the Saints. This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God. Please be seated.
Paul moves from a prayer of Thanksgiving for the faith in
the Lord Jesus that he's heard about at the church in Ephesus
and the love that they have for all the Saints.
You need to know that Paul knew this church really well in his
second missionary journey. This is recorded in the book of
Acts, chapter 18. He was used by God to plant the
church. He spent years at this church.
And so as he moves from this petition or from this praise to
petition, what he is praying is very significant.
The way I want to approach the text this morning is to look at
the prayer, this petition that Paul made, a prayer that would
grow their knowledge of him. Paul could have prayed for
anything. Secondly, I want to look at how
can we expect God to answer this prayer?
And then we'll have time for some practical application
that's really important for all of us.
But here's the way I'd like to begin.
If you were to list what you consider to be the pressing
needs in the church today, what would you say?
Not just for our church, but the church in general?
Tomorrow night our session will be we meet twice a month and I
can ask each elder, what do you think the pressing needs are in
our church? And there would be a lot of
agreement. And then there would be some
some thoughts about other things that maybe we're not thinking as
much about. If I did the same thing in this
church right now, just ask you to write down what do you think
are the most pressing needs? That would be a massive list,
and whatever you sense to be the most pressing need, it's likely
what you've been praying for. When we see the prayers in the
Bible, they're there to help us pray first.
They show us how important prayer is.
They also inform the way we should be praying.
And they act as a wonderful guide to help us evaluate the
way we're praying individually or in our small groups or as a
family. Richard Phillips, one of many
commentaries that is deeply blessing my soul during this
study, says this at the beginning.
And speaking about this verse, he says if we were to make a
list of the pressing needs of the church today, it would not
take much thought to add quite a few added items.
We live in a godless, unbelieving culture, so we have
a great need for evangelism and apologetics.
Furthermore, there is gross ignorance within the church, so
we need sound Bible preaching and teaching.
Because of the mounting worldliness evident in the
church, we need more holiness. Furthermore, as Pagan ideals
impact the government and culture, we need to get involved
in civic life. Such things require money, so we
need financial resources. All of these needs are real and
all would have been needed in Paul's day much as our own.
And we could add to the list the need to talk about sexual
purity, addiction, marriage, parenting, how to grieve.
All of it And all of it is important.
But, Phillips continues, when Paul relates his primary desire
for the church at Ephesus, he sees the Christians greatest
need. He turns to none of these.
He prays that our God and Father would send the Spirit of wisdom
and of revelation for the knowledge of Him, or, as the New
International Version puts it, so that you may know Him better.
When we are Speaking of the knowledge of God, it is not just
facts about God, though they matter.
What we said in our profession of faith are facts about God,
true things about God. But just having details and
facts about God is not the goal. It's that we wouldn't know him.
In fact, when Paul uses that prayer, enlightening the eyes of
our heart because of the Western world we live, and we tend to
think that the heart means the emotions.
That's not what it means in the narrow ascent.
It actually means the intellect, but it's used in a broader sense
where it's the whole person. It's our mind and our heart.
They're not being pitted against one another.
Continuing to speak of this reality, Phillips quotes DA
Carson, the scholar says when he studied the prayers of Paul in
the New Testament, he singles out that the knowledge of God is
the most urgent need in the church.
Again, not just facts about God, but God's people truly knowing
God. Speaking of all the other things
that I've listed, the things that I listed just a minute ago,
clearly all of these things are important.
I would not want anything I've said to be taken as a
disparagement of evangelism, worship, diminishing the
importance of purity and integrity, carelessness about
discipline, Bible study. But there is a sense in which
these urgent needs are merely symptomatic of a far more
serious lack. The one thing we most urgently
need in Western Christendom is a deeper knowledge of God.
We need to know God better. We think rather little of what
He is like. What do you expect of us, what
He seeks in us? We are not captured by His
Holiness and His love. His thoughts and words capture
too little of our imagination, too little of our discourse, too
few of our priorities. The great need of the Church
today, therefore, is of the Church in the apostles.
Time is the knowledge of God. We need to know Him.
I want to be very simple here because it's easy to make it
complex. When we speak about knowledge of
God, we're simply saying who He is as He's revealed Himself to
be what He is, like His attributes.
Again, many that we use in our profession of faith and what He
does, who he is, what he is like, what he does, what he's
done in the past, what he's doing right now, what he
promises to do in the future. But it's not just about him.
Through his word, he's also revealing who we are, what we
are like before salvation and after, and what he has called us
to do. In 1994, I entered seminary,
Covenant Theological Seminary in Saint Louis.
I was warned before I went by many, many people that seminary
can be a very dry time. So pray that it wouldn't be dry.
We'll pray that for you. I thought it was interesting
that for many people that was the first comment they had.
I went to seminary, three years in marriage, no children,
excited to start a new life together, this new journey.
We didn't know anybody when I went to the campus, began to set
foot on the campus. Taking one class that summer,
Long Term Greek, I learned that Bob Costas, the NBC
sportscaster, lived just around the corner from the seminary.
I was intrigued by that because he actually hosted one of my
favorite shows. It was called Later and it
really was on Later. It aired at 12:30 Central Time,
but I watched it often and the reason I loved it because it was
different than all the other talk shows.
There was no monologue, there was no music.
It was a one-on-one interview with one person for 30 minutes
and sometimes they would extend into more than one interview.
I loved it. I loved the way he asked
questions and I love listening to the responses.
Learning that he was near the campus, I had this desire to one
day meet him. I didn't feel bold enough to
just simply walk over and knock on his door.
That probably wouldn't have been able to happen anyway, but I did
have a chance. Third week, I was in Saint
Louis. Two students from my youth group
in Oklahoma City who graduated came to Saint Louis to see us.
We went to a TGI Friday's on a Friday night and they're sitting
as close to me as this beautiful bouquet of flowers was.
Bob Costas and three other people were from his family.
They were right there. Now, I'm not one of those people
that just gets up and walks over and embarrasses myself and maybe
the person. I just can't do it.
And I know some of you can. I've seen you do it.
It doesn't embarrass you. It embarrasses me for you, but
it doesn't embarrass you. So I just sat there paralyzed
and the two young men with me were like, should we say
something? Like I said, I don't think so.
Just it's just a moment to remember he's right there and
I'm praying for him. Who knows what might happen?
And then I watched the waitress bring one massive slice of
carrot cake. She put it on their table and he
took one bite, got up with his family and they left.
I looked back at that table. It had not yet been cleaned.
And I said to the guys with me, do you want to be able to say
you've shared dessert with Bob Costas?
And so I reached over and I grabbed the piece of carrot cake
and yes, just went in. Didn't cut off his bite marker
or anything, just went right in. It's a funny story.
It's a true story. I later learned in an interview
where he was being interviewed that he does that at every meal.
At dinner, he orders dessert, takes one bite and has
self-control. Wasn't long after that, that I
was thinking about what those people had warned me about,
about seminary being dry. And I pray God, do not let my
encounter with you be like my encounter with Bob Costas.
I can say I know many things about him.
I can even say without any context that we've shared
dessert. But the truth is, I only know
facts. I do not know the man.
We've never had a conversation. God, do not let seminary be like
that for me. And God, do not let our church
be a church like that. What Paul is praying for his
beloved brothers and sisters in Christ at Ephesus is so
important to him because he knows them.
He knows what God has done because he's heard that they
actually have faith in the Lord Jesus and they have love for one
another. And he is praising God for that
without ceasing. But as it comes time to petition
the Lord for this church, he praised his first petition.
The most important thing for that church, for this church,
for the church, that God, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of
revelation and the knowledge of Him.
Again, knowledge doesn't mean just facts.
It means that we know Him and we know that we are known by Him.
We know Him, who He is, because it's who He's revealed Himself
to be in His Word. We know what He is like, His
attributes, because they have been revealed to us in His Word.
We know what He has done in the past, what He's doing right now,
and what He promises to do in the future because it's been
revealed to us in His Word and about ourselves.
We know who we are because He's revealed to us who we are apart
from Him, and when we're saved by His Grace, who we are in Him.
We know what we are like before we're in Christ and now after.
And we know what He is called us to do by His grace and for His
glory. Our knowledge of Him, our
knowing Him this side of heaven will always have vast room for
growth, and that should excite us.
God answered my prayer Seminary for me.
Those three years in Saint Louis were so rich, so beautiful, so
intimate with the Lord. You know why?
Because the professors who taught me were in love with
Jesus. The radiance of Christ shine
from them. They didn't think of knowledge
of God just as facts, but you could see that they knew Him in
the way in which they prayed. But I left seminary knowing that
He knows me and knowing that there is so much more about Him
knowing me that I don't understand, and so much more
about him because he's incomprehensible.
And that's exciting. So here's the question I want to
move into. How could we as Christians,
hearing Paul pray this prayer for a church he planted and
spend time, How could we expect God to answer this prayer?
And you're going to need a Bible for the next portion of the
sermon. And I want you to open your
Bible to the book of Acts chapter 18 or grab the Blue Pew
Bible in front of you. Now, I want to encourage you, if
you don't have a Bible, and that might be true of you, take that
one today or go downstairs and buy one in our bookstore.
If you're a believer, I would encourage you to bring the Bible
to church. Write in it, make notes.
It's the sword of the Spirit. Here's why I want to go to the
book of Acts. How we can expect God to answer
Paul's prayer is in the normative and ordinary way.
God would do it. And I'm going to read a large
amount of Scripture. I promise you, as the Spirit
guides, if you will lean in, it will not be boring.
You're going to hear about a man who was persecuting the church,
whose life was erupted by Christ himself, who is now going.
He is on his second missionary journey when he plants the
Church of Ephesus, and he's on his third missionary journey
when he spends more time there. So let's begin in the book of
Acts, chapter 18, and I want you to go to verse 19.
Now, the author of the book of Acts is not Paul.
It's Luke who wrote the gospel. Luke, he's continuing that
gospel and how the church began in the New Testament times after
the Lord ascended. So verse 19 of chapter 18 and
they now the they is Paul and because of the verse before it,
it's Priscilla and Aquila who are with Paul and they came to
Ephesus and he lift left them there.
That's Priscilla and Aquila. But he himself went into the
synagogue and reasoned with the Jews.
Now here's what I want you to listen for.
Listen for how many times the Holy Spirit through carrying
Luke along reveals the importance of the word of God
central to the message, anchoring the message.
It's everywhere. And then look for how the Holy
Spirit uses people to proclaim the message.
When they came to Ephesus and he left them there, but He himself
went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews.
When they asked him to stay for a longer period, He declined.
But on taking leave of them, he said, I will return to you if
God wills. What that means is He did not
know, but he's trusting the Holy Spirit to lead.
I will return to you if God wills and He sets sail from
Ephesus. Now watch what happens.
This small church is planted. Verse 24 Now a Jew named
Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus.
Now they're going to describe him.
He was an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures.
What that means is he knows the word of God.
Verse 25 He'd been instructed in the way of the Lord, and being
fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things
concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John.
He began to speak boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla
and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him
the way of God more accurately. This is amazing.
Paulus knew something of the Word of God.
We're told that he was eloquent. We're told that he was competent
in the Scriptures. We're even told in verse 25 that
being fervent in the Spirit, He spoke and taught accurately, but
it wasn't perfect. And you're not going to teach
perfect either, and neither am I.
But as we grow by God's grace, He brings people into our life
who show us more accurately what the Bible is all about.
Verse 26, you see the grace of God.
Priscilla and Aquila heard him. Then they took him aside and
explained to him the way of God more accurately.
This was all new to these people.
Now go to verse 19 or chapter 19, verse one.
And it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul
passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus.
There he found some disciples and he said to them, did you
receive the Holy Spirit when you believe?
Now listen to the response and they said, no, we've not even
heard that there is a Holy Spirit.
Isn't that amazing? They didn't even know about the
Holy Spirit. Verse 3 and he said into what
Then were you baptized? They said into John's baptism.
Now I know this whole section is a whole nother sermon, but
listen to what happens. Paul said John baptized with the
baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one
who was to come after him, that is Jesus.
On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord
Jesus, and when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy
Spirit came on them and they began speaking in tongues and
prophesying. There were about 12 men in all.
Now, that part is not what we should expect to be normative
today. It's not what's ordinary.
But how the Word of God is being proclaimed and how it's being
proclaimed through God's people is this is how we could expect
God to answer Paul's petition for the church at Ephesus.
Go with me to verse 8. And Paul entered the synagogue,
and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading
them about the Kingdom of God. But when some became stubborn
and continued an unbelief, speaking evil of the way before
the congregation, he withdrew from them and took the disciples
with him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannis.
This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia
heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks, and God was
doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul.
Two years Paul is teaching, reasoning, preaching,
proclaiming in the synagogues, and we'll hear later even in
houses. There's probably a footnote in
your Bible that says in some manuscripts it is added from the
5th hour to the 10th, that is from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM.
That means daily, from 11 to 4-5 hours a day for two years, Paul
in a public space, preaching, teaching, proclaiming,
reasoning. That means there's discussion
taking place, dialogue in the Word of God, and the Spirit of
God is anchoring it all. If the Spirit of wisdom and of
revelation doesn't work, nothing will.
But it does, and as the Word is proclaimed, it's proclaimed
because it's central. It is to be preached, taught
reason. It's preached by His servants.
It's talked about amongst those who are hearing it.
They're growing, they're availing themselves of this
teaching. And what do we see?
The Word transforms. The Word of God truly transforms
people. If you continue to reading in
chapter 19, you would see it the word also those stirs up
conflict as people are being transformed.
Others hate what is happening, but the Word of God prevails.
Here's what I mean. Look with me at verse 19.
This tells the story that there are those who are practicing
magic who are being transformed by the preached word Says in
verse 19, a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought
their books together and burned them in the sight of all, and
they counted the value of them and found it came to 50,000
pieces of silver. Verse 20 underline this one.
So the word of the Lord continue to increase and prevail
mightily. Paul is preaching the Word and
the Spirit is with his preaching, and the Spirit is
revealing the wisdom of God, the knowledge of God, God himself.
A riot takes place in the next chapter.
And now I want us to go to one more place.
Chapter 20, verse 17. I'm going to read another swath.
And as I read, I want you to think of the elders of our
church. And I want you to mark this
passage as a way to pray for the elders of our church, for the
pastors of our church, those that God has ordained to help
lead this particular flock because it's powerful.
Remember, Paul's praising God without ceasing for the faith
that he has heard about in the Ephesians, in the Saints.
He's praising God for the fact that they love all, they love
one another. But he's also petitioning God
the Father of glory, that he will send a spirit of
revelation. And this is how we can imagine
God answering it. Paul's about 35 miles from
Ephesus. He's in a place called Maletus
verse 17 Now from elitist he sent to Ephesus, and he called
the elders of the church to come to him.
And when they came to him, he said to them, You yourselves
know how I lived among you the whole time, from the first day
that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and
with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots
of Jews. How I did not shrink from
declaring to you anything that was profitable in teaching you
in public and from house to house, testifying both to Jews
and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in the
Lord Jesus Christ. He's preaching the Word.
He had nothing else to offer. Verse 22.
And now, behold, I'm going to Jerusalem, constrained by the
Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that
the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment
and affliction await me. Did you hear that?
All I know is that the Holy Spirit has testified to me that
in every city imprisonment and affliction await me, and I'm
going. I'm going because I'm
constrained by the Spirit. I'm the one who was killing
Christians. Christ revealed Himself to me.
He's the way, the truth, and the life.
There is no other message. I'm going and I'm going to give
them the Word of God. Verse 24 but I do not account my
life of any value nor as precious to myself.
If only I may finish my course in the ministry that I received
from the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of
God. And now, behold, I know that
none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the
Kingdom, will see my face again. They were very sad about that.
Verse 26. Therefore I tell you, therefore
I testified to you this day, that I am innocent of the blood
of all. For I did not shrink from
declaring to you the whole counsel of God.
Day after day, in public and in houses, five hours a day, from
11:00 to 4:00, He proclaimed the whole council of God.
Verse 28. To the elders.
Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock
in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for
the Church of God, which has obtained He obtained with His
own blood. I know that after my departure
fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock, and
from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted
things to draw away the disciples after them.
Because He knows this, His first petition is give them a spirit
of wisdom and revelation of knowledge of Him, not just facts
about him, but this church needs to know Him.
Verse 31 Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years
I did not cease night or day to admonish everyone with tears.
And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which
is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among
all those who are sanctified. Last week.
Verse 36 And when he had said these things, he knelt down and
prayed with them all. You see the importance of prayer
in the Bible, the importance of prayer in Paul's life.
And there was much weeping on the part of all.
They embraced Paul and kissed him, being sorrowful most of all
because of the word he had spoken, that they would not see
his face again. And they accompanied him to the
ship. Paul's prayer is that God would
give them the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the
knowledge of him, that they would have the eyes of their
hearts enlightened. He prays this because this is
their most urgent need and it is our most urgent need.
We can expect God to answer this prayer in his normative,
ordinary ways, That is through the word of God being preached,
taught, proclaimed. We reason about it.
God continues to do that. That's His way.
I want to give you a few practical things, and I want you
to please lean in because you need these.
Because there's not a person in here, the one who's walked with
Jesus the longest, to the one who's probably coming to faith
in Jesus today. There is not a person in here
this side of heaven who can ever say there's nothing more I can
learn about God, about the one who knows me.
So here's some simple, practical guides #1 you need a Bible.
If you do not have one, take the blue one home.
It's our gift. If that embarrasses you, go to
the bookstore, even today and buy one.
Ask someone to help you pick one out.
But just owning a Bible doesn't mean you're using it correctly.
You need to be in the Word of God, studying the Word of God,
not just to be smarter about God, but to know Him and to know
the One who knows you. You need to continually sit
under preaching and the teaching of God's Word.
We need lots of it. Third, you need people in your
life. All of us need someone who's a
little further down the road than we are, and probably not
just an author, probably a person that you can talk to that
can help you understand things that you're reading from the
word of God. And you and I, all of us needing
somebody who's a little further ahead of us, need to have in
mind that we need to be becoming those people for others so that
those who are newer in faith can look to us and we can walk them
through the journey of knowing more about the One who knows us.
Many of you are in small group Bible studies already.
I want to ask you, and only takes one of you to do this, to
do an audit of your group. How often are you talking about
this kind of knowledge of God? Is your time spent more on other
things, or is it spent on this? Because this is what matters
most. Those other things matter too.
Don't misunderstand. But this matters most and
informs all of those other things.
So often our prayers don't highlight what matters most.
Our conversations, our discourse doesn't highlight what matters
most. That's why the Bible shows us
how important prayer is. It informs the way we should
pray and helps us evaluate our prayers.
Just a couple more things I want to talk about.
Sources are the source and seasons.
The source of this revelation is always the same.
It is the Holy Spirit and it is the Word of God.
I want you to think about this. When Paul is praying for these
people to have this enlightenment, the spirit of
wisdom and of revelation, the knowledge of him, they don't
hear that letter and then run to a bookstore.
There aren't any, and most of them can't read.
There aren't Christian books that have been written and are
in great surplus. They don't have podcasts to go
and listen to. We have all those things, and
those things are a gift, but what they have is the Word of
God and the Spirit. The source is the same, but
seasons in our life change. I've talked to so many young
moms over the years who will talk about the way in which they
did their quiet time or studied for Bible study before they had
children, and then all of a sudden, the schedule and the
chaos. Where does that time go,
sisters? The source is the same, the same
Holy Spirit, the same Word of God.
But you cannot expect in different seasons for it to be
exactly the same as it was before.
And so you have to talk to others.
My wife pours into young moms by telling them practice the
presence of God. Listen to scripture in your car.
Put up verses on your mirror and windows.
Listen to the Word of God as you're doing dishes or cooking
dinner. Those are not things women
should do alone. I don't mean that, but we have
to change, not the source. The source is always the same,
but in seasons. Some of you might be looking for
work right now. You have more time.
Treat that time as a gift. And along with the persistent
prayer and look looking for work.
Give time to the Word of God in the Spirit.
Some of you might be in a health crisis and that's making it very
difficult for you to even concentrate or maybe even see.
But for others of you, this health crisis may be an
opportunity to have more time to be in the Word and Spirit.
My point is, seasons change, but the source never does.
Just a couple more. The Spirit of God is the one who
inspired the Word that carried Paul along.
The same Spirit is the one who illuminated the Word of God,
even this day, for us to believe the truth.
If you're a believer in Christ, it's because He illuminated the
Word in your heart. Same Spirit.
Our part is we ingest it. But here is a warning.
We live in a world where so much is available to us that it
literally is like a cruise ship full of buffets.
You and I can go from one book to another book, from one Bible
study to another Bible study. Ingesting, ingesting, ingesting.
And you might actually be ingesting too much, meaning that
you're not giving time to digest what you're ingesting.
The goal isn't to read the most. The goal is to soak in and
meditate the Word of God that you are reading.
We need to read, we need to think, we need to wrestle.
But there's a difference. CS Lewis and Mere Christianity
talked about the difference between paint and stain.
Paint merely covers the surface, and I fear for many from one
book to the next book to the next book.
It's just a coat of paint going on as opposed to stain that's
soaking in and truly transforming who we are.
You may be actually reading too much, You might not be.
But don't let volume replace meditation.
You need to be thinking deeply on the sentences and paragraphs
that you see in His Word, not just racing through a Bible
reading program. Those can be very helpful too.
But the goal wasn't to finish. The goal is to saturate.
Lastly, this is a great question.
Every time you open the Bible, every time you walk into the
sanctuary, every time you sit down as a family to do
devotions, every time you talk to a friend about the Lord,
every time you read a Christian book, ask this question, Why am
I doing this? And the answer should always be
the same, that He would give me a spirit of revelation in the
knowledge of Him. That in doing this exercise, I'm
not just trying to become more intelligent, wiser than others,
even impressive to others. I am doing this because it's
helping me get to know who He is, who's revealed Himself to be
what He is like His attributes, what He does pass the present
and the future. And in doing so, it radically
transforms who I am, who He says I am, what He's called me to do.
Lord Jesus, thank you for Paul's prayer, seemingly so simple, yet
for Him. God, it was everything.
He knew that the wolves would come from outside and from
within. He knew that if you didn't give
that spirit of revelation and the knowledge of Him, nothing
would work. Your Word shows us how you do
it. And Father, it's sexually not
complicated to see, but because of the enemy who wants to knock
the Word of God out of our lives, it's hard to live.
Lord, would you use your word? Would you use practical steps
that you revealed to us through Scripture to help us know You
better, to help us delight and growing in our knowledge of You,
to help us move beyond just taking a nibble at the table and
to feasting with you and our union now and forever?
We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.
Please stand.