Praying for What We Need Most (Ephesians 1:15-18)

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

Acts 18 · chapter mention

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

Acts 18 · chapter mention

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.

Acts 18 · chapter mention

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.