Have you ever been prayed for before? I’m not talking about those little “Umm…God bless so-and-so” type prayers. I’m talking about earnest, heart-felt, deep-from-within-the-soul prayer. If you have been prayed for like that then you know what a tremendous blessing it is. Very often God wants to show us things about ourselves, things that can be encouraging, convicting, teaching, sobering, enlightening, humbling, invigorating, mobilizing, etc., through the heart and soul of another’s Spirit-filled prayer for us. We need to heed these gracious messages from God and respond in thankfulness, attentiveness and obedience.
I’ve got a prayer for us this morning, a prayer for our whole church. It is not my own, though. It’s much greater than what I could pray. This is as sincere and heart-wrenching as prayer can get. It’s the prayer of the Apostle Paul – and it’s a perfect prayer for Eastside Baptist Church.
The Apostle prays, “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a 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, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe,” (Ephesians 1:17-19).
Isn’t that beautiful? What a prayer! Let me break it down for you. Paul really only prayed for one thing – namely, that God would help us to know himself better. That’s it. Seems pretty simple doesn’t it? That’s because it is, but certainly no less profound for its simplicity. His goal in praying that we would know God better is that “…the eyes of our hearts [would be] enlightened.” What that means is that knowing God helps us to see things better. What things? Everything!
Knowing God means that the veils of our darkened and sinful hearts are pulled back so that we can see clearly the way things really are. More specifically, Paul actually lists three things that we’ll be able to see and understand better: 1) “…the hope to which he has called us,” 2) “…the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,” and 3) “…the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe.”
Isn’t that an awesome prayer! Learn from it. Be ministered to by it. Know God better! Know the hope that you have in him, the riches that you have in him, and the power that you have in him.
