Bible. When someone finds it, can you say that? What is it, Debbie? 9-7-6 in the Pew Bible.
Is that right? We did this a couple weeks ago, and someone had a large print Bible,
and it was totally wrong. All right, the book of Ephesians chapter 1, and tonight we're going to
start a new section of this book in verse 15, and we're going to read through the end of the
chapter, but we're going to focus just on the first half. So, Ephesians chapter 1, we'll read verse 15
through 23, but just focus on the first half in our teaching tonight. Let me read this for us.
For this reason, because I've heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for 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, and what is the
immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great
might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him in his right hand in
the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that
is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet,
and gave him his head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him
who fills all in all.
So friends, have you ever thought about what it means to really know something?
For the longest time, I knew that the older we get as humans, well, physically, our metabolism slows down.
I knew that for a long, long time.
However, now that I'm in my mid-30s, on the downward slide to 40, I'm starting to know that reality in a whole new way,
much more intimately than I did when I was a college student.
You know, so now I start to think twice before I consider that third or fourth or fifth slice of cold pizza
that's in the fridge, right?
Or another example, I knew, I knew for the longest time that whales, those giant creatures that lived in the sea,
I knew for a long time that they were really, really big and really, really powerful.
But then, one summer, Beth and I took a whale-watching boat tour off of Cape Cod,
and we got to see one of these giant creatures sort of swim under our boat
and then come crashing through the surface of the water just feet away.
And in that moment, I sort of knew it in a totally different way.
And I think this is helpful because, you see, there are kind of two ways, at least, that we can know something, right?
On the one hand, we can sort of know of something.
We can know about something.
We can have very true facts of something in our mind.
In other words, we can know something kind of intellectually or notionally.
But on the other hand, we can know something experientially.
We can know it personally.
We can know it intimately.
Not just with our heads, but deep down at the core of who we are,
we can kind of know something in our hearts.
So, in other words, we all know that there's a difference between knowing about something or someone
and actually knowing something or someone.
Now, the text that we just read tonight from Paul's letter to the Ephesians is a prayer.
It's a prayer for those to whom he's writing.
And after a prayer of thanksgiving to God in verses 15 through 16,
he's thankful for their faith in the Lord Jesus and their love for all the saints.
He's thankful to God for that, that he sees them in his life.
Paul then prays a petition to God on their behalf.
He prays that God would give them knowledge.
Paul prays for knowing.
And he prays that they would know God, not just in some notional, factual, intellectual kind of way,
but to really grasp the deep reality of who God is.
To really get deep down in their bones what God has done for us in Christ.
In other words, he prays that the eyes of their hearts would be lit up, enlightened by who God is and what he's done.
And tonight, I want to think about three things as we think about this knowledge that Paul prays for.
First, I want to think about why we need this kind of knowledge.
And then second, I want us to think about from this text how we get that kind of knowledge.
And then third, we'll sort of look at how Paul unpacks that kind of knowledge.
So first, why do we need that kind of knowledge?
If you look down at the kind of context of chapter 1, you'll remember that the first half of chapter 1,
in that first half of chapter 1, Paul has been rehearsing in the language of praise,
the incredible spiritual blessings that believers have in Christ, in union with him.
In other words, he's saying, here's what's true of all those who, as verse 13 puts it, if you look down at verse 13,
here's what's true of everyone who has heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Christ.
Here's what's true of you.
You've been eternally chosen by the Father.
You've been redeemed in time by the Son.
You've been sealed by the Holy Spirit for an eternal inheritance.
That's true of all of you in Christ.
But how many of us as Christians can know that, all that, but not really know that?
We know these things are true in our minds.
You know, if someone gave us a quiz and there were sort of multiple choices, we'd check the right box.
But, you know, so often it's as if the eyes of our hearts are still only half open to these realities.
And your heart, by the way, in the Bible, the heart in the Bible, it's like the center of your being.
I keep pointing here.
The heart is like the middle of who you are.
It's kind of like the control room of your whole self.
Your heart isn't just sort of your emotions or what you kind of like.
No, in the Bible, the heart is what shapes and what motivates all your thinking and all your feeling and all your acting.
It's something behind them that's driving them.
In other words, what's real or what's central or what's sort of alive in your heart is that's what's going to direct your life.
So if the eyes of your heart, as it were, if they're fixed on something, if they're fixed on something like human approval, what other people think of you,
if that's what your heart is drawn to, if that's what captures the deep gaze of your whole self,
then the things that you say and the things that you do and the things that you feel are going to be determined by what?
By what other people think of you.
By other people's opinion of you.
So you'll end up saying things to get them to like you because that's what's driving your heart and that's what's going to control your words.
And you'll end up doing things so that they'll think well of you, so that they'll like you.
Because in your heart, that's what's driving your actions.
But friends, what if the eyes of our hearts, for those of us who are people pleasers,
what if the eyes of our hearts were enlightened?
What if the lights came on for a moment?
So that we knew deep down that the Father of glory, as Paul says here, the Creator and King of all things,
what if we knew deep down that He actually chose us before the foundation of the world?
That He looked upon us in His Son and laid His eternal divine approval upon us in Christ.
For ordaining us from before the creation of the world to be adopted and brought into His family with the full rights as sons and daughters.
What if we knew that?
You know, if you've been coming to Trinity, you know that, of course, right?
I put that in scare quotes.
You know it.
You've heard it said.
You've heard it taught.
Just a few weeks ago, Pastor Matt preached on verses 4 through 6.
You know this truth.
At least you know about it.
You know of it.
Maybe you've had a true notion in your mind, but maybe your heart hasn't grasped it yet.
Hasn't become real to you personally.
Perhaps the lights haven't quite come on to that truth of what's yours in Christ.
Or think about guilt and shame.
You know, how many of us Christians, even as Christians, how many of us live under the burden of feeling like we never measure up?
How many of us feel like we always have to kind of keep people at arm's length?
How many of us feel that we're really a little too embarrassed to kind of build deep relationships?
Because we think that if people really got to know us, if they really spent time with us, if they really saw the true us, they wouldn't like what they'd see.
They'd just reject us.
And we know we'd screw it up anyway because that's all that we ever do.
And we keep beating ourselves up over our past sins and our past failures.
But what if our hearts could see?
What if it's the center of what controls our thinking and our speaking and our acting and our feeling?
What if it could gaze into the light of what Jesus has done for us?
What if it could really see that we have redemption through his blood?
The forgiveness of our trespasses?
Now, of course, everyone who's a Christian, even everyone who's sort of hung out with Christians for a while, would say, yeah, what's Christianity about?
What's Christianity all about?
Well, it's about Jesus dying on the cross for your sins and being raised for your justification so you can be put right with God, of course.
And yet, don't we really struggle to know that?
To get it.
To know it in a way that would actually erase our guilt and shame.
To know it in such a way that it would be the controlling reality of our lives so that we could befriend others and have relationships and know the freedom, the redemption.
That's freedom language of having our sins forgiven.
One more example.
In verse 11 of this great litany of praise, Paul writes that the God who chose us in Christ, the God who redeemed us in Christ, is also the God who works all things according to the counsel of his will.
All things are under God's providential, loving, fatherly hand.
Now, again, many of us kind of know that, right?
We would say that, yes, God's in control.
But if we really knew it, if the eyes of our hearts were really stunned by that reality, friend, wouldn't your anxieties and fears begin to lessen?
Wouldn't they start to unravel just a little bit?
Yeah, you'd still fight with them, but wouldn't they start to lose their sting?
And would not our need to kind of feverishly control things and micromanage things and at times try to manipulate and control things around us and manage our image?
Our need for control of ourselves and the people around us, wouldn't our grasp on that start to let go if we knew that our heavenly father works all things according to the counsel of his will?
Friend, I submit to you tonight that your and my greatest spiritual struggles, our biggest spiritual problems, the thing that hinders your growth in Christ more than anything else,
the reason that you can't control your anger or your lust or your greed or your pride or your discouragement is because what you know to be true in your head hasn't yet become real in your heart in a live and continuous way.
You see, friends, more often than not, what we need spiritually isn't new content.
Something new in addition to what we've learned.
Of course, we all have room to grow in our knowledge of the faith, right?
We all have room to grow.
And learning is a good thing.
But, you know, often what we need is to grasp more fully at the heart level what we already know to be true.
Jonathan Edwards, in a sermon called A Divine and Supernatural Light, once famously used this illustration.
He said, you know, it's one thing to know that honey is sweet.
It's another thing to actually taste its sweetness.
You can look at honey.
You can hear the reports of the people around the table all saying, this is really good honey.
My wife was just at a baby shower this weekend, and the favor was honey.
And she brought it home, and we all opened it up.
We all ate it at dinner, and our kids love honey, so they were just gobbling it down.
You can know it.
You can believe that, yes, that sticky golden substance in that tiny little jar is sweet.
But when you actually take up the spoon and put it on your tongue, and when you taste it, friend, then you've come to grasp its sweetness at a whole new level.
Suddenly you've entered into it.
You're enjoying it.
It's becoming a part of you.
And that means that the most urgent need of the church isn't better programs, and it's not the rigorous practice of spiritual disciplines, and it isn't better social justice initiatives.
All those things are good and worthy pursuits.
Yes, we want to do all of them.
But, friends, those are all streams that flow out of a fountainhead.
And the fountainhead, the thing that we really need more than anything else, is to know God.
To know Him.
To actually taste the sweetness of our union with Christ.
To taste it, and to realize and comprehend and grasp the spiritual blessings that are ours in Him.
Because that's the fountain out of which everything else flows.
And, you know, if you were to read this book of Ephesians straight through, you would start to see something kind of interesting.
That chapters 1 through 3 almost become a giant prayer that we would know the love of Christ.
So that, in chapters 4 through 6, we can start living as if God really loves us.
And let go of our old self and all of its broken ways that lead us into misery.
And start living into our new self.
Created after the righteousness of God.
In His own image.
You know, the way the Puritans used to talk about this is that we can have a lot of light.
But not a lot of heat.
And friends, sometimes I have that fear for us.
That we have a lot of light.
We have a lot of clear, biblical teaching.
We know many true things about God and Christ.
And we know where they come from in the Bible.
And all that is good.
Light is good.
Light, that kind of truth, is a gift of God.
But we can have that light.
And still not have any heat.
Still have no experiential, personal, transforming relationship with God.
And you know, this lack of heat doesn't just impact our personal growth.
And our own sort of personal change and growth in godliness.
It affects our mission too.
If the world around us hears spiritual words.
But doesn't see spiritual reality.
In our lives.
In our community.
Friends, then they're going to look elsewhere.
Our friends and our neighbors and our colleagues will look somewhere else.
To fill the spiritual void in their lives.
Instead of looking to Christ.
Who actually is the one.
In whom there is spiritual substance and reality.
And in whom they'll find every spiritual blessing that they've been looking for.
So we need this kind of knowledge.
Not just so that we can change.
But so that our neighbors and our friends can start to see that Christ can change them too.
So how do we get it?
How do we go from knowing to knowing to really knowing?
How do we get it?
And Paul gives us a two-fold answer here in our text.
The first part of that answer is at the end of 17.
In short, how do we get it?
Through the person of the Holy Spirit.
Paul prays that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Father of glory.
That is the Father from whom all glory descends.
I pray that this God.
Your God.
The God of our Lord Jesus Christ.
May give you the spirit of wisdom.
And of revelation.
In the knowledge of him.
That is God.
If you have an NIV.
It translates it I think pretty helpfully.
It says might give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation.
So that you might know God better.
It is God the Holy Spirit.
Who takes the truths that we know in our minds.
And makes them real in our hearts.
Let's explore this phrase a little bit.
Sort of the spirit of wisdom and of revelation.
What does Paul mean by that?
That is how he is describing the person of the Holy Spirit here.
Now wisdom in Paul's letters often refers.
Not merely to just a general understanding of how the world works.
And how to kind of practically live well in the world.
But more specifically in Paul.
Wisdom often refers to the knowledge.
The insight into God's saving purposes in Christ.
That is real wisdom.
If you look at 1 Corinthians chapter 2.
You see Paul unpacking that truth.
That real wisdom is an understanding of what God has done in Christ.
But you know you see it right here in Ephesians chapter 1 verse 8.
Look at there.
God lavished his grace on us.
He says in all wisdom.
There's that word.
And insight making known to us the mystery of his will.
Which is what?
To unite all things in Christ.
This plan of redemption in Christ.
So what is wisdom?
Real wisdom from God.
Real spiritual wisdom is to understand what God has done in Christ.
Is doing in Christ.
And will do in Christ.
That's spiritual wisdom.
And to know how to live in light of it.
It's similar with the word revelation here.
Revelation.
The spirit of wisdom and of revelation.
That word in general just means to uncover something.
Or to unveil something.
Right?
But if you glance over a couple of chapters.
In Ephesians 3.
1 through 6.
Just kind of scan your eyes through that passage.
You see that Paul uses this word revelation repeatedly.
In reference specifically.
To the mystery of Christ.
He calls it.
This mystery of Christ has been revealed.
To the apostles and prophets through the spirit.
Something they didn't know.
In ages past.
But now it's been revealed.
You'll remember a couple weeks ago.
We looked at Ephesians 1.9.
And the mystery language here in Ephesians.
Doesn't mean it's something we don't know.
Mystery for Paul here in Ephesians is a technical term.
It means something that was hidden.
Or partially known in the past.
Under the old covenant.
But now has been fully revealed in the gospel.
That's the mystery of Christ.
Something that God has torn open for us.
And surprised us all with.
So wisdom and revelation here are both terms.
That refer to a deep grasp and understanding of what God has done in Christ.
The spirit of wisdom and revelation.
The spirit of wisdom and revelation is the Holy Spirit who comes and helps us to know God in that way.
Through what he's done in Jesus.
So in order to move from knowing with our heads to really knowing in our hearts we need the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit.
That's why Paul prays.
Father give them your spirit.
Give them the spirit of wisdom and revelation.
Which doesn't mean they don't have the spirit.
Right?
Verse 13.
Everyone at conversion is indwelled by the Holy Spirit.
Sealed by the Holy Spirit.
Paul isn't praying that you'll get some kind of second blessing here.
Or that you'll get kind of more of the Holy Spirit.
Because you only got half of it when you became a Christian.
No.
He's just saying I want the spirit to come and continue to impart his wisdom and his revelation.
There's an ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in our lives to continue to unfold these things in our experiential knowledge.
Let me put this another way.
We learn in verses 3 through 14 that it is God who gives the blessings of redemption.
Right?
They come from him by his grace to his glory.
He chooses.
He redeems.
He seals.
But in this prayer here we learn that it's God who also gives the heart knowledge of these blessings.
He gives the blessings themselves.
And he also gives the ability to really grasp them.
In other words, it's God who accomplishes it.
And it's God who applies it to our hearts.
He brings the heat.
And that means we can't get this knowledge in any other way than from the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit will use lots of means.
But there are lots of things that we try to do in and of themselves to know God better that won't work.
Reading books of theology.
That's a great endeavor.
Oh, that we would read more good, solid theology and grow in our understanding of these truths.
But, you know, reading theology alone isn't going to make the truth of God real to your heart.
Or serving and loving one another in the church and taking our full part in the fellowship of the saints.
And loving and serving the world.
We can pour out our lives in service just as Christ did.
We can do all sorts of good works.
And as we'll see in chapter 2, good works are exactly what God has saved us to do.
But good works alone won't help us to really know God deep down like this.
We can try all those things.
But without the Holy Spirit, it's to no avail.
This sort of knowledge, the enlightening of the eyes of our hearts that will drive away all those false lords and false loves.
This sort of knowledge that makes Christ real and sweet to our hearts above all else.
It's a gift that comes from God through the working of His Holy Spirit.
And that brings us to the second part of our two-fold answer to how we get this sort of knowledge.
Okay, great.
It's something that God gives to us through the Holy Spirit.
If the enlightening of our eyes, of our hearts, is God's gift to give, then friends, don't you see?
That we must seek this gift above all in prayer.
Prayer.
That's why this whole section of Ephesians in the rest of chapter 1 isn't a command.
Paul doesn't sort of finish describing how we have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus and then say,
Okay, idiots, open the eyes of your hearts.
Get it done.
Thou shalt know God experientially.
That's not what he says.
Instead, it's a prayer.
He prays that God would do it.
And that God would graciously give it to us.
Peter O'Brien, who wrote probably one of the best recent commentaries on the book of Ephesians, put it this way.
He says,
Paul realizes that the Christian growth of his readers and his own missionary endeavors are wholly dependent on the living God
who gives generously to His children when we call upon Him in prayer.
Friends, this is how we started our service.
The beauty of the gospel is this.
That when sin had separated us from God,
and when sin had put us under the condemnation of death,
God sent His own Son.
He came in His own person, Jesus Christ,
to bear the penalty of our sin on the cross
and to rise again as our living Lord
so that now all who turn from sin
and place their trust in Christ are forgiven
and they have a permanent living advocate with God the Father forever,
Jesus Christ the righteous one who is their Lord.
That is the gospel.
That God has forgiven our sins in Christ,
not because of any works that we've done,
but because of grace and has made us His children
so that we can have unhindered access to the throne of God in prayer.
It is amazing what we do every single Sunday as we pray to God.
It is a theological wonder what you do every single morning when you pray to God,
even if you wake up in the morning and just say,
Help God!
Because your day is already overwhelming
and your feet haven't even flipped the floor.
Don't you see what you're doing there, Christian?
You are doing something that is a theological and spiritual wonder.
You are going before the King and God of the whole universe
who in ages past required people to go through endless rituals of cleansing
and go through endless sacrificial rites
and to approach Him through series of barriers and doors
because our sin was so great
and because of what Jesus has done,
all that has been leveled.
So that now wherever we are,
whenever we are,
we can lift up the eyes of our hearts in faith to God and pray.
And He hears us.
And He doesn't just hear us begrudgingly
because we keep coming.
No.
He knows what we need even before we ask
because He's our Father who loves us.
When we come to Him in prayer, He says,
I was waiting for you to bring that.
It's been a while.
Good.
Let's talk about that.
And friends, what does that mean about the purpose of prayer?
What's it for?
I like how John Calvin put it in the Institutes.
This is kind of a long quote, but it's a good one.
So stick with it.
He writes this.
He says,
After we have been instructed by faith
to recognize that whatever we need
and whatever we lack is in God
and in our Lord Jesus Christ,
in whom the Father willed all the fullness
of His bounty to abide,
so that we may draw from it
as from an ever-flowing stream.
Once we realize all that,
it remains for us to seek in Him
and in prayers to ask of Him
what we have learned to be in Him.
Otherwise, to know God as the master
and bestower of all good things
who invites us to request them of Him
and still not to go to Him
and not ask of Him,
this would be as of little profit
as for a man to neglect a treasure
buried and hidden in the earth
after it had been pointed out to Him.
It is therefore by the benefit of prayer
that we reach those riches
which are laid up for us
with the Heavenly Father.
It is true that we dig up by prayer
the treasures that were pointed out
by the Lord's Gospel
and which our faith has gazed upon.
Do you see what Calvin is saying here?
He's saying, friends,
prayer is like a shovel
and there's the field of the Gospel
and God says, go dig.
Go find the treasures
that I've laid up for you
and here's your tool, prayer.
The gift that my blood has given you
with untrammeled access to me,
go dig.
Go find it.
So, friends, are you digging?
Is your spiritual life cold tonight?
Has your relationship to God
lost its sweetness to you?
Maybe at one point you had
this burning heart knowledge
but now it seems it's sort of
moved back up just into your mind.
Then, friends, we have to ask,
am I digging up by prayer
the treasures God has given me in Christ?
They are yours.
Now take the spade
and cut down into the earth
so that you can find them once again.
Maybe your experience of the church
is mediocre.
Maybe you're disappointed
by the vitality you see
in your brothers and sisters in Christ.
You feel like as a community
it's just gone cold.
Then, friends, start digging.
In our text tonight,
Paul's praying this prayer
on behalf of his fellow Christians.
He's praying it on their behalf
and we should too.
So take this prayer of Paul's, friends,
like a shovel in your hands
and start to hit the earth with it
for your friends
and for your small group
and for your campus fellowship
and for our church.
For the church members
that you know by name,
pray this prayer for them.
Pray it for the churches in New Haven.
Pray it for the body of Christ
across the globe.
And that leads to pretty practical questions,
doesn't it?
Do you have a time for prayer?
Do you have a place for prayer?
Do you have a method for prayer?
You have set times that we eat, don't we?
I bet you rarely miss
one of your three meals a day.
It might kind of move a little bit
this way and that,
but roughly you eat in the morning
and you eat around lunchtime
and you eat sometime in the evening.
Do you have a set time for prayer?
Why not set one?
Because it feels inauthentic?
No.
You plan the most important things
in your life.
Why not set a time for prayer?
How about a place for prayer?
You have a place where you work,
your office, your desk,
your car,
wherever it is that you do your job.
Friends, Martin Luther once said
that the work of a Christian
is to pray.
Do you have a place for prayer?
A spot where you go
to do this work?
Do you have a method?
You've got a method
for physical exercise
if you exercise, right?
You do cardio three times a week,
you do upper body twice a week,
you do lower body twice a week
or whatever,
how many ever times a week.
Why not think proactively
about a method for prayer?
Friends, like anything worthwhile,
it's going to take some planning,
it's going to take some preparation,
it's going to take a bit of sacrifice.
But think,
if you're like me
and you kind of never exercise,
sometimes I daydream.
What would it be like
if I spent 30 minutes a day
actually exercising?
What if I spent like
five minutes a day
working on my core?
I would feel great.
My lower back would stop hurting.
I'd probably have a lot more energy.
I'd feel awesome
if I spent 30 minutes
every day exercising.
And that's probably true.
Friends,
have you ever thought
in your minds,
what if you would spend
30 minutes a day
in the spiritual exercise
of prayer?
Not as a labor,
not as something
that you have to do,
but as a way of digging up
the riches
of the gospel
for you in Christ.
The first few days,
it might seem like
you aren't getting anywhere.
The shovel's going to feel
a little awkward
in your hands
and you might get
a callus or two
because you're not used
to swinging it around.
But soon,
the treasures
will start coming up.
The Puritans used to say,
pray until you pray.
And what they meant
was that you need
to keep at it
until you really break through
to talking with the living God.
It takes a little effort
at first.
It's like exercise.
You got to get warmed up.
But once you get warmed up
and you hit your stride,
then it really starts to feel
like you're running.
Pray until you pray.
And friends,
we know that God is faithful.
Jesus once said
to His disciples,
if your earthly parents
know how to give good gifts
to their children,
how much more
will your heavenly Father
give the Holy Spirit
to them that ask?
And we sometimes read that verse
and we think,
oh, just the Holy Spirit?
Come on, Jesus,
there's a lot of other stuff
I need to ask for.
No.
Don't you see?
Don't you see
what we've been talking about tonight?
That the gift of the Holy Spirit,
His ministry in our hearts,
the Holy Spirit communicating
all the blessings of Christ
deep down into our souls,
radically changing us,
liberating us,
freeing us,
opening the eyes of our hearts
to really see them
and know them
and grasp them
and to know God.
What else do you want?
And Jesus says,
look,
your heavenly parents,
your earthly parents
know how to give you good gifts.
Don't you think
the heavenly Father
will delight
to give you the Holy Spirit
when you ask?
So I was hoping
to spend some time tonight
unpacking verses 18 through 19.
Some of you have been
looking at your watches
and thinking,
uh-oh,
he still has a third point.
But we run out of time,
so I'm not going to do that.
In the rest of our verses,
in verses 18 and 19,
which we were going to cover tonight,
Paul sort of starts unfolding
how he thinks the Ephesians
in particular
need the eyes of their hearts opened.
He wants them to understand
the hope that they have in God
because they've been called by God.
And he wants them to understand
the glory that they have
because they're God's inheritance.
And he wants them to understand
the power that they have
because they're united
to the risen and reigning Lord Jesus
whose name is above every name.
So instead of us unpacking these tonight,
here's what I want us to do.
Why don't you this week
take these three petitions
and use them in your own prayers.
Use them as tools
to begin praying for yourself
and for your friends
and for your fellow church members.
And ask that the Holy Spirit
will take these words
that the Spirit has inspired
and help you to start to grasp
what they really mean.
And you'll start to see
that the Spirit begins
to unlock these things
in your own heart
because God's a good Father
and He'll give the Holy Spirit
when we ask.
Let's pray together.
Lord Jesus,
we want to be a people
who don't just know about you
but really know you.
Thank you for the gift of your Spirit
that makes that possible.
Lord,
we confess that
prayer is often very hard
and so many things
drive it from our schedules
and from our minds.
and yet Lord,
help us to remember
that prayer is such
a wonderful gift to us
and that there are treasures
untold to be had
in unpacking
the great salvation
and redemption
that we have in Jesus.
Father,
as we come to you in prayer.
So Lord,
I pray that you would meet
the prayers of your people
as you promised.
Help us to grasp these things
and so be changed
into your likeness.
We ask this in the name of Jesus.
Amen.
Well, friends,
we're going to close
by singing some songs together.
Let's use these songs
as an opportunity
to continue in a spirit of prayer
asking God to open up our hearts
to see these things afresh.
Let's stand and let's pray.
Let's sing together.