I Pray That You Know

Before we really get into the heart of the message and get into the passage today, I wanted to share with you a story to kind of set up what we'll be talking about today.

This is a story from when I was younger.

So when I was younger, there was a phrase that my mom used to say that would oddly irritate me.

But it would irritate me in a strangely good way.

Let me give you an example of when this thing that she might say would come up.

So if there was like a new food or some kind of like Korean side dish or like a stew that I had never tried before, and you know, if it was my first time trying it, she'd be like, oh, taste this, and I'd taste it.

And sometimes, you know, right away it'd be like, oh, that's good.

You know, I love Korean food, right?

But every once in a while, especially if it was like a unique cuisine item, um, I'd taste it and I'd be like, ooh, I don't, I don't know if I like that.

That's that's too spicy or that's too bitter, or I don't know about that texture.

Or sometimes I wouldn't even know like what words to use.

I didn't have words to describe it because it was so unfamiliar to me.

And and when I would do that, she would just do this thing where she'd go, Dajing mullazagre, which means it's because you don't know yet.

It's because you don't know yet.

So she would say, you don't know how to appreciate this flavor.

Or you don't know yet how good this food actually is, because your palate is not yet developed or mature enough to know how good this food actually is.

No, ajing mullazagre.

It's because you don't know yet.

And when you're real young, you're like, cool, just don't make me try it again.

Um but you know, my mom also had this other gift.

She had this gift of eating something in a way that when you watch her eat, it makes you feel like you're missing out.

Like I think that if my mom was born 50 years later, like she might have been born in the wrong era, because if she was born like nowadays, she could have been a food influencer.

Right?

Okay, and so uh some of y'all know what a mukbang is, right?

Maybe you know it as a mukbang.

But a mukbang is uh it's actually a Korean word.

So it means muk is short for um muga, which means eat, and pangzong means broadcast.

So it's literally broadcasting someone eating.

So it's these videos that you know you might see on your social media that pop up or on YouTube.

It's these videos where you just watch a person eat.

And they're weirdly popular.

And it's it's kind of turned into this strange thing where like people are eating inordinate amounts of food, like way too much for one person.

And they wear these microphones and it's like ASMR with it, and like you get to hear every crunch and slurp, and like I know that sounds disgusting to a lot of people, but I'm telling you, these videos get millions of views.

So, all that to say, my mom has this gift of eating in a way that makes you feel like you're not eating it right.

Like she knows something that you don't know when she's eating that food.

And so maybe it's true.

It's just because I don't know yet.

I don't know like she knows.

You know, a synonym for the word irritate is to provoke.

And what irritation usually provokes is anger or impatience or frustration.

But on the flip side, irritation can actually provoke curiosity.

Uh irritation is actually a symptom of a deeper thing.

Irritation should cause you to investigate or examine, ask deeper questions.

What's going on beneath the surface?

Why do I feel this way?

What is causing this provocation?

The phrase, it's because you don't know yet, provoked curiosity in me.

I started to wonder, well, what is it that she knows that I don't?

And if I don't know, well, I want to know.

I thought about calling this sermon, it's because you don't know yet.

But if you don't have context for it, I thought that might sound a little judgy.

So then I thought about calling it, and if you don't know, now you know, Casey.

I thought that, you know, it was super sanctified saints up in here that wouldn't know how to finish that line, but apparently, you know, but uh but a line that would be more true to the heart of this message is actually the sentiment that Paul prays for the church in Ephesians 1.

So in Ephesians 1, Paul repeatedly says, I pray that you know.

I pray that you know, I pray that you know is the message of today's, is the title of today's message.

And before we go any further, I want to stop and pray again that God would help us to know more deeply.

So again, we just pause and we ask, Lord, that you would help us to know you more deeply.

Holy Spirit, enlighten the eyes of our heart.

Okay.

Help us to see as you want us to see.

Okay, help us to become more aware of your presence.

Holy Spirit, you are welcome here.

Illuminate our hearts and our minds, and let us be transformed because we have experienced you more deeply.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right, for the last two weeks, Pastor E has been leading with the question, why church?

That's the series that we're in right now.

It's called Why Church?

And if um if you haven't heard us say the sermon series out loud and you've just read the title, maybe you read it as why church?

Why church?

That's actually a great sermon series that might be for another time because I've asked that question from time to time too.

Why church?

But that's not what this sermon series is.

This sermon is why church.

And in this series, we're looking at what it means to build community from a kingdom perspective, from a biblical lens, what it means to build community in a spirit-filled way, and in a way that helps us live out our identity in Christ.

Um, it was gonna be a short two-part series before we launched into a series on the Great Commission, and we're still gonna head there, but before we go there, we sense that the Lord was actually inviting us to sit in this series, Why Church, for a little bit longer.

For several months now, uh we as a staff have been talking about how to live into the invitation of Ephesians 4.12.

Um, Ephesians 4.12 says this.

It says that we are to prepare God's people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up.

We are to prepare God's people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up.

Another way to say this is that we are called to help equip the saints.

That's you, that's me.

We are the saints, God's people for the work of ministry.

Now we know that not everyone is called to full-time vocational ministry, but if you are called to be a part of God's people, if you recognize that you are a follower of Jesus, you've been called, you've been invited, and you've said, yes, I want to walk with Jesus, then you are called to works of service.

You are called to the work of ministry.

Now we've been talking about gifts and the body of Christ.

We're one body, many parts, and every one of us has gifts.

You got a gift, you got a gift, you got a gift, everybody's got a gift, right?

And Ephesians 2.10 also emphasizes this by saying that we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

So we've each been given gifts.

We're each called to both be prepared and help prepare others for ministry.

This is what discipleship is.

And we recognize that we were created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

But what we hope and what we pray is that you know that who you are is more important than what you do.

Let's start there.

Who you are is more important than what you do.

And you could argue that they're equally important in that what you do flows from who you are.

And of course, we're not called to do nothing, but starting from a place of knowing who you are because of whose you are allows for us to live out these good works.

Now notice Ephesians 2.10 starts with an affirmation of our identity, an affirmation of who we are.

For we are God's workmanship, God's handiwork, God's masterpiece.

We're a masterpiece, you're a masterpiece, you're a masterpiece because a piece of the master is in you.

You reflect the image of God.

The Imago Day is in you.

So we've got to know who we are.

We are God's masterpiece.

We got to know this before we can go on to do the good works that God prepared in advance for us to do.

And we must first recognize that we are God's masterpiece, and it is Christ Jesus, our identity in Christ Jesus, and the power of the Holy Spirit in us that enables us to go and do these good works.

So knowing who you are, who you really are, who you're really meant to be in Christ Jesus is the key to knowing and living out what you're really called to do.

But before you can know who you're meant to be and what you're called to do, you have to start with who God is.

Who God is.

This is why we just finished a series called God Is.

For weeks, you heard several speakers speak on several different ways in which we we can relate to who God is.

And um, and and like we said in that sermon series, we said we could preach about this every week until Jesus returns and never run out of things to say about who God is.

And essentially that is what we do every week, even if we're not in that sermon series, because whenever we open up the word and preach from the word of God, God is giving us a revelation of who He is.

So we're preaching every week about who God is, we're preaching every week about the love and the goodness and the grace of God.

But we have to start there.

Do you understand how good God is?

Every week we're giving you an invitation to know God more deeply.

They didn't know that this was gonna be what I was preaching on today when they chose that last song that we just sang.

Holy Spirit, you are welcome here.

Let us experience the glory of your goodness.

Make us aware of who you are.

Like this is what this is what this whole message is about.

Lord, open the eyes of our heart, help us to know you more deeply, help us to recognize that you are here, there, you're everywhere.

And God, what's a lot oftentimes we're just so blinded, we're just so distracted.

So, God, let the prayer of our heart, this message today is all about the hunger and the thirst that we really have.

And and so we're invited to pray, Lord, help us to know you more deeply.

Knowing God more deeply allows us to have a greater sense of who we are and what we're called to do.

So as we linger in this series about um why church, we hope that you'll have a deeper understanding of the of the nature and the purpose of the church, who we're called to be collectively and what we're called to do together.

That's what the book of Ephesians is all about.

So for the next several weeks, as we dive deeper into the identity and the purpose of the church, we're gonna be using Ephesians as our text.

Now I know I just um I called it the book of Ephesians, but really it was written as a letter.

And um, though the letter is addressed to the believers in Ephesus, Paul wrote this letter for a broad audience.

He intended for this letter to be circulated.

He knew that there was gonna be a broad spectrum of believers who were going to read this letter and be encouraged and receive instruction from this letter.

I don't think that he ever could have imagined that thousands of years later, on the other side of the world, there would be people looking at this letter and still gaining encouragement and instruction from it.

But praise God that we do have this letter.

And praise God that the prayers that Paul prayed for the saints back then are prayers that are being prayed for us right now.

This week, as I've been preparing for this message, I've been echoing the prayers of Paul.

I've been praying as Paul prayed, that I would know, that you would know, that we would know God more deeply.

That God would give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that we would know God more deeply.

That God would open up the eyes of our heart.

So not just having knowledge here, but really that our hearts would know experientially who God is.

This has been my prayer, this has been our prayer for weeks, months, years now.

That this church would know God, not just up here, but know God experientially, intimately, in a way that would impact your life and a way that would inform the way that we are to be the church.

I've been echoing these prayers that we would know God more deeply.

So let's turn to that passage right now.

Let's read the passage where Paul praises prayer right now.

It's in Ephesians 1, starting in verse 15.

So 15 verses in, Paul's saying this in the letter.

He says, For this reason, and we'll get to what he means by for this reason in just a second, but he says, for this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God's people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.

That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in all the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion in every name that is invoked, not only in the present age, but also in the one to come.

And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be the head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

Paul wrote this letter, among other letters, uh, while he was in prison.

But if you didn't already know that, by the tone of this letter, you probably wouldn't be able to tell at all that Paul was writing this letter from prison.

In this letter, he wasn't writing to them saying, Hey, you gotta help me up, I'm locked up, I'm I'm I'm behind bars.

Um, hey, I need you to go, I need you to send me this, I need you to put some money on my books.

I need you to go go talk to this person, get me out of here because I'm wrongfully imprisoned.

This wasn't Paul's posture.

You wouldn't even know that he was imprisoned by the tone of how he writes.

You wouldn't know that this is a man who is being persecuted and wrongfully imprisoned.

Because Paul starts this letter with an emphatic, praise be to God, praise be to God.

He goes on to talk about all the spiritual blessings that we have in Christ, and then he breaks out into thanksgiving and prayer.

You know, Paul was imprisoned, but he but he wasn't.

Paul was still on mission while he was in prison.

He didn't write to the saints in Ephesus to garnish sympathy or support, he was writing to encourage them.

And if anything, he was writing because though he was the one that was locked up, he believed that he possessed something that they needed on the outside.

He wrote these letters with an urgency to encourage them and to pray for them.

He didn't need people to feel sorry for him.

He was like, I'm praying for you.

He already had his freedom.

He already knew.

He already knew the secret to knowing how to be content in any situation.

He knew the key to being free even when he was behind prison bars.

He knew how to have joy while being persecuted.

He knew not only how to stay encouraged, but he knew how to encourage other people.

Even when from the outside it looked like he had every reason to be discouraged.

Paul knew something that maybe others didn't know yet.

And he wrote this letter in case they didn't know.

We know that from reading this letter that Paul was a praying man.

Paul prayed because he knew that what he knew was so good that he didn't want anyone else not to know.

He knew that there were some who didn't know yet, and he knew that there were some who knew maybe a little bit, but they needed to know more deeply.

And then he knew that there were maybe some people who thought they knew, but they didn't really know that they didn't know.

You know, I could keep going with this, but he just really wanted people to know.

Because Paul says, I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation.

I keep asking.

This means he was consistent in his prayers, he was constant in his prayers, he prayed without ceasing.

He keeps praying that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that we may know him better.

This was the reason why he prayed.

Oh, I pray and I pray and I pray every day, every day.

He was the original bone thug, okay?

He was the one who prayed constantly that we would know.

We would know how good his grace and his glory is.

And he prayed constantly that we would know him better.

That was the heart of his prayer.

I just I just pray that you would know God better because he knew how good it was to know God deeply.

I keep asking so that you may know him better.

Paul's most passionate and persistent prayer is that we would know God better.

And you know, even in telling us that he keeps praying for this, what he does is he tells us a bit about what he already knows about God.

The God of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus is Lord, Jesus is the Christ.

He and the Father are one and they are glorious.

So is the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit gives us wisdom and revelation.

We hear so much about who God is, even as He introduces that He's praying for us.

Paul prays that we would be filled with the Holy Spirit who gives us wisdom and revelation so that we would know God better.

You can feel that urgency and the excitement and the longing that Paul has for his brothers and sisters to taste and see just how good God is.

It's like he's saying, you know what?

You've only just begun this journey of knowing God and loving God and knowing how good it is to know and love God.

You know, whether you've been walking with God for five days or five decades, we really have only reached like the tip of the iceberg.

There is so much knowing and loving God that we have not yet experienced.

And Paul, you know, for Paul, it actually took suffering and hardship for him to really be able to dive deep into the well of how good God really is.

He experienced a grace that was sufficient for him.

You know, he's famous for having this prayer.

You know, I have this thorn in my side.

We don't know what that thorn is.

Maybe it was like a physical ailment, or it was something that he felt was a burden in his life, and he prayed.

He said he prayed three times that God would remove it.

But instead of removing it, God told him, My grace is sufficient for you.

And in your weakness, my power will be made perfect.

And so it was in his times of weakness and hardship and feeling like he had lack that he was able to see God for who he is and recognize God is all that I need.

Oh, it's so good to know God.

It's so good to be loved by God and cared for by God.

And I wish everybody knew him like I knew him.

So he prays, he keeps praying that we would know him better.

There's an ache in Paul's heart for us to know God more deeply.

This is why throughout the scriptures, we we see things like, you know, we hear things like, man, you know, no ear has heard, no eye has seen what God has prepared for those who love him.

We we we don't even know what we don't know yet.

It's exceedingly abundantly more than we could ask or imagine.

And this is why it's better to be one day in his courts than thousands elsewhere.

Man, this was the heart of the psalmist, of the people who really experienced God.

And so once they tasted and saw how good God is, it was like they they just wanted everyone else around them to know, know for yourself how good God is.

This is actually good news.

We haven't really even begun to understand just how good God is.

Let me tell you what Paul means by know, to know God more deeply.

In Greek, the word that's used here is epinosis.

Epinosis.

Epi means intensifying or directed towards, and gnosis is knowledge or to know.

So it's not just knowledge, or it's not just knowing, it's intensifying knowledge.

Epinosis is an intensifying knowledge directed towards God.

It's a deep, full, and personal or experiential understanding rather than a superficial or abstract just awareness of facts.

You know, we know that there's a difference between knowing about God and actually knowing God, right?

Like we don't want to be anemic Christians who know facts about God, but don't know the power of really knowing God experientially.

We all know that knowing facts and knowing from experience is different.

Just like book smarts is not the same as street smarts.

Memorizing facts on knowing how to swim doesn't mean you're gonna know how to swim.

You can't just go and jump off the deep end if you read a book on how to swim.

Knowing about love doesn't mean you know love.

Reading about love, knowing facts about love doesn't mean that you know love.

And the same applies to God.

Knowing facts about God, knowing about God is not the same as knowing and experiencing God.

The ironic thing is that this actually also happens to mean it's the same thing as saying knowing about love doesn't mean you know love because God is love.

Pastor E referred to 1 Corinthians 13 last week.

Remember, there's this one part, there's a couple things that I remember like its sounds.

He like sang the song Killing Me Softly and all that, right?

Um but he also, do you remember this moment where he just went for a long time?

He held that note for a long time, so we we would remember.

But do you remember?

Do you know what the context was?

So what he was what he was saying was that um that's from 1 Corinthians 13.

He says that even if I speak in tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I'm only a resounding gong.

I'm just noise or a clanging cymbal.

Now we're lucky he didn't come up here with like a cowbell or something.

But it doesn't matter.

You might have impressive gifts, you might be able to speak in front of people and have some powerful impressive words.

But if you have not love, then it means nothing.

You're just noise, you're just a mmm, you're just a sound.

So, in the spirit of what 1 Corinthians 13 continues to say, nothing that we do, nothing that we have, nothing that we give means anything if we have not love.

Nothing we do, nothing we have, nothing we give means anything if we are not in Christ, who is love.

Paul knew that the biggest blessing to have, the biggest blessing to know, the biggest blessing to experience is to be in Christ Jesus, to be loved by God, to know that you are chosen by God, adopted by God, to be sons and daughters.

You're not strangers, you're not just acquaintances, you're actually adopted in as sons and daughters.

In Ephesians 1, 3 to 5, in the very beginning of the letter where Paul goes straight into praise, he says this: he says, Praise be to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.

In love, he predestined us to be adopted as his children through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and his will.

God chose us to be adopted as sons and daughters.

I know that for those who have been adopted or have adopted, that not everyone's adoption story is pleasant or easy.

There are many, many beautiful and redemptive stories around adoption, but there are some really hard and heartbreaking stories as well.

And sometimes it's a bit of both.

Let me give you some context around adoption in the Greco-Roman culture where Paul was uh writing this letter from, because it can differ in a lot of ways from our ideas on adoption today.

So, in our context, uh, adoption often involves a baby or a child in need of someone to help raise them and nurture them.

And it often involves a person or people who desire to bring a child into their home to be part of their family.

But the purpose of Roman adoption did not involve caring for and raising a child.

In fact, in most cases, adoptees were either already adults or near being adults.

And they were almost always exclusively male.

In Greco-Roman society, which was of course a patriarchal society, adoption was a way in which wealthy or prominent families were able to secure an heir.

So if they did not have a son of their own, they would adopt a son to carry on the family name and assume the privileges, duties, and responsibilities of a son.

This came with an inheritance, of course, but it also meant caring for aging parents, maintaining the estate, and assuring a proper burial.

So adoptees didn't necessarily have, they weren't necessarily coming from an unstable home life that they needed to be like rescued from.

And like I said, adoptees were usually adults that chose to enter into this agreement.

So then you wonder, well, why would someone agree to be adopted then?

Well, in some cases, an adoptee was leaving behind family debt or some other kind of less than ideal situation.

Or in many cases, their biological family had at least two male children.

And rather than having to split the inheritance or give it all to just one son, the adoptee's family could have more to give to their one male heir, or at least have fewer to split the inheritance among.

So then the adoptee would not have to share an inheritance when they were adopted into this new family.

He would not have to share an inheritance or remain dependent on his brother, but would now instead have a full inheritance of his own.

And he would eventually lead his own household.

An adopted son would have full rights to the family inheritance, would have wealth and position, and it was a legally binding agreement that could not be undone by anything that the adoptee had done in the past.

Are you seeing some of the gospel parallels here now?

This was a legally, like it couldn't be changed because they found out something about the adoptees' past.

Once they were adopted, they were adopted into the family and they were a rightful heir.

See, this was the thing that adoptees understood, or what the people that heard or read Paul's letter understood about adoption.

Here's the other thing: adoptees were often already familiar with the family that would adopt them.

In fact, adoptees were chosen by the family that wanted to adopt them because they had characteristics or attributes that the family saw as admirable, strong, and trustworthy.

So, with this as the cultural backdrop to adoption, when the saints in Ephesus hear that they were chosen by God to be adopted as heirs, not because of things that they had done or because of their attributes, but because of Christ Jesus, they understood the implications of the fact that they were chosen by God to be adopted, and they understood that this was a great honor, that this was a great blessing, and that whether Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, that they were chosen by God to be adopted as legitimate sons and daughters.

They understood what came with it, the inheritance that came with it, and they understood the responsibilities that came with it as well.

So this is why in Ephesians 1:15, Paul says, For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you.

Ephesians 1:15

I have not stopped keeping you in my prayers.

Because he knew that they would know what an honor, what a blessing, and what a responsibility it was to be adopted as sons and daughters.

So Paul prayed for them constantly.

You know, I was gonna use these following three points as a sermon outline and preach from each point for eight minutes.

Um, but you know that's not how I preach.

So I'm just gonna give it to you this way.

These are three things, a summary of what Paul prayed for in Ephesians 1, 17 through 19.

When Paul says, I pray that you know, and I keep praying that you know, Paul is simply simply praying that we would know who God is.

He prayed constantly that we would know more deeply who God is.

He says, Through wisdom and revelation, I pray that you would know God more deeply.

He also prays, I would pray that you would know who you are, that the eyes of your heart would be enlightened to know the hope of your calling and the riches of your inheritance.

I pray that you would know that you are adopted sons and daughters and you would know the power, the privilege, the responsibility that comes with that.

I pray that you wouldn't be distracted or deceived by the things of the world that would try to keep your eyes off of who you're really called to be, who you really belong to, and what you're really called to do.

He says, I prayed for you.

I pray that you would know because if you really knew who God is and how good it is to be loved by God and what it means to be an adopted son or daughter, ooh, you would live your life with purpose.

You would live your life with passion, you would live your life with power.

And so he continues to say, I pray that you would know what he has given you in the incomparably great power for us who believe.

It was the same spirit, that same power that raised Jesus from the dead that lives in you.

I pray that you would know that, that you are marked and sealed, and you've been given the guarantee of the Holy Spirit.

And that when you recognize that you have been created in Christ Jesus to do good works, it's not because you can do good works on your own, because, but it's because the power of the Holy Spirit lives in you and works through you.

So now that we know that the forefathers and the four mothers of the faith have been praying for us, this church, that we are the fruit of prayers that were prayed thousands of years ago.

How now shall we live?

How shall we live knowing that these prayers were prayed for us, that Jesus Himself prayed for us, that the Spirit intercedes for us now.

How now shall we live?

Well, for one, we need to keep praying too.

Like Paul, this can be your guidebook.

Like Paul, pray for wisdom and revelation so that you would know him better.

Don't just rely on his prayers, don't rely on somebody else's prayer, prayer for yourself.

Lord, please give me eyes to see, Lord, give me the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that I may know you more deeply.

Pray that God would open the eyes of your heart.

Ask God for the ability to see things in ways that you've never seen them before.

Open up my eyes so that I might see the way that you want me to see.

Practice awe and wonder.

Be intentional about praying this prayer.

God help me to see you.

Help me to understand you, experience you more deeply.

One thing that I love about my parents is, you know, they're like, they're seniors, they got time, they're like my they they watch what they eat, they like, they exercise, they go on walks, okay?

And so one thing I often like make my make fun of my dad for this, but they'll go on walks, and my dad takes pictures all the time of trees and flowers.

They live in Vancouver, it's beautiful, right?

There's lots of natural beauty there.

But like if you look at his Facebook, it's all trees and flowers.

But here's the thing that I admire about that.

My dad knows how to pause and be in awe of God's creation.

He knows how to pause and see God in those moments.

God speaks to him through flowers, through trees.

My mother-in-law, too, she she walks as well.

And when she's on her walks, you know who she how she sees awe, how she sees God, uh, God's creation, how she she takes time to wonder.

She she sees it in God's people.

She walks the neighborhood, and there's certain people who are outside on their front steps all day long, and and and she'll stop and she'll look at them and she'll be like, that is an image bearer of Christ.

So she spends time getting to know them, prays for them.

And she often talks about them with awe and wonder, like, man, God is doing some amazing things in and through that person.

And I I I it convicts me, it challenges me because I want to stop and notice God in the everyday moments.

Make me more aware of your presence in the everyday.

God, help me to understand that many encounters that we have are potential for divine encounters, but we've we're just asleep.

We're not paying attention.

God, open the eyes of my heart so that I may be more aware of your presence, that I may be able to walk in to moments and know the riches of this moment.

And maybe there are times where God wants to activate the incomparably great power that He has given us.

Maybe there's a moment for us to pray with someone, to connect with someone, to be a blessing to someone else, and we miss it because we're distracted or even deceived.

So pray that we would know God more deeply.

Pray that God would open the eyes of your heart and teach God, ask God to teach you more of his glory, to see his glory.

And pray this for other people in your life as well.

Keep praying.

Just as Paul prayed for them and someone prayed for you.

Someone has been praying for you.

Someone prayed for you years ago.

There are people that you may not even know have been praying for you.

You didn't get to where you're at right now on your own.

Someone prayed for you.

We are the fruit of someone else's prayer.

Paul prayed this prayer years ago.

Jesus prayed for the future believers.

We've been prayed for, and we've been commissioned to pray for others as well.

Another time that um I've shared the story about my mom saying the phrase, No ajing mullazagre, it's because you don't know yet, is when I shared about how when I was younger, it was hard for me to engage in early morning prayer with my mom.

I would go to early morning prayer with my mom at her church sometimes.

Um, and it wasn't hard just because it was at five o'clock in the morning at church with older Korean people, my parents' age and older.

It was hard because Koreans be praying loud and all at once.

And these were Pentecostal Koreans too, so they were not discipled to pray quiet.

So I would go with my mom to pray, and sometimes, you know, I'd tell her, I'm I'm trying to pray right now, mom, but dang, it's loud.

Mom, I'm trying to pray, but like, yeah, everybody's praying all at once.

This person praying in tongues, this person's on the ground, like their face to the ground, this person just calling out to God.

And so it's hard for me to concentrate, mom.

It's hard for me to pray here sometimes.

And then she would look at me and go, just because you don't know yet.

I had a lot more life to live.

I had a lot more to experience before I would know how to pray like these immigrant parents were praying.

I had a lot more to go through to know how good it was to be loved and seen and rescued and adopted by God.

I had more life to live to know how good it is to walk with God and know that I'm not alone.

And so it's true, I didn't know.

But now I am a daughter who has been equipped and is continuing to be equipped for the work of ministry because someone, more than once someone prayed for me and they continue to pray for me.

And you are who you are because someone prayed for you and they continue to pray for you.

And so would you receive the tag?

You're it you need to be praying for someone too.

Pray for someone, they need your prayers.

Pray that you would more know God more deeply, and that they would know God more deeply, and because they know the depth of this love, that they would live out their identity as ones redeemed and given power by the Holy Spirit.

So let's keep praying, saints.

I wonder, I just want to give an invitation.

Is anyone here who wants to pray with me that you want to know God more deeply?

Is there anyone else who who wants to pray with me that the eyes of your heart would be enlightened, that you may know the hope to which He has called us?

You can pray from where you are.

Like we say, you can always come up to the altar if you want to pray at the altar.

After service, you can go over there and there's a prayer team that would love to pray with you.

But the charge today is to know that you have been prayed for, and we have been commissioned to pray for others as well.

So may the prayer of your heart be that you would know God more deeply.

God, we pray right now.

We continue to pray this prayer.

Paul said he he prayed it, he kept on praying it, and he prayed it with fervor and with passion that we would know you more deeply.

So, Holy Spirit, do a renovation in our lives, knock down walls that need to be knocked down.

God transform us from the inside out and help us, Lord, to know how deeply we need you.

How good it is to be loved by you, how empowering it is to know that you are with us and for us, and that you are everything that we need and everything that we could want.

God, let us not be satisfied with cheap substitutes, let us be satisfied in your presence.

Holy Spirit, take us deeper.

Let us be people who are marked by your love, known because we know you, and we want to make you known to the world around us, Lord.

Thank you, Jesus.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.