I want to introduce you to a way you can pray for your believing friends to experience revival.
Many of you enjoy speaking to your parents as often as you like. I was part of a funeral this week for a good man, a husband, and a father. He had been a member of this church for over twenty years and raised three great children besides his wonderful wife. I watched those three children go to his body laid in a casket and weep over him.
Later in the week, I watched three more children weep over their mother’s casket as well. She was equally a good lady and mother as the father earlier. An elderly son lost his emotions while standing over the body of his mother. I watched these adult children carefully as I have seen hundreds of children weep over the grave of their parents through the years. They were obviously hurting as they huddled together over the open casket.
Part of the reason we hurt so much in the loss of a parent is because we cannot talk to them anymore. Life is hard – really hard. And God knew this and he gave us the gift of prayer. Prayer is the gift where we can talk to our Heavenly Father about the things that worry us in life.
I’ve got good news for you today. Your Heavenly Father will never die! You’ll never find yourself hovering over God’s coffin weeping that you cannot speak to him anymore. No casket and no coffin can kill prayer!
God has been knocking on your door recently telling you that you need to pray. Have you heard Him?
Keep your Bibles open to Ephesians 1.
Now, if I wanted to learn to cook I might watch The Pioneer Woman to make a great meal. If I wanted to learn how to invest, I might ask for an hour of billionaire Warren Buffet’s time, the Oracle of Omaha. If I wanted to learn how to live healthily, I’d ask my doctor or a nurse for help. But if I wanted to really strengthen my prayer life then I would want to listen in on the prayer of the Apostle Paul.
It’s obvious to see in verse 17, you can see we are reading a prayer at the very end. It’s a prayer that God would open our eyes.
1) Echoing Prayers in the Bible
Have you ever read someone else diary? Have you ever wanted to read someone else’s prayer journal? You are reading Paul’s prayer journal if you will: “I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers…” (Ephesians 1:16).
Pay close attention to the prayers that are included in the Bible.
Can I ask you, “What do you pray for when you bow your head? What kind of things are you praying for?” Here’s a prayer that God thought so highly of that He put it in the pages of the Bible. Now, what if you were tapped on the shoulder to counsel the President. What if you were asked to speak into the ear of the President as you were invited to sit down in the Situation Room. All the screens are lit up with real-time information flowing across the large screens on one end of the room. Men and women from the NSC and all the brass from the military are seated around the room. Everyone is involved in an intense discussion over the South China Sea. You can see China is poised to strike American forces in the area at any moment. Young Navy soldiers’ lives are at risk aboard a host of ships and submarines. The question is to escalate the conflict or turn back for fear of starting another world war. Then the Vice President turns to you and asks, “How would you advise us to proceed?” With the President listening to you along with everyone else, the room quiets down. What do you say at this moment of crisis? Would you like to have something really good to say? Something beyond your wisdom, experience, and education? Of course, you would.
And if you are going to speak to the King of Kings, wouldn’t you like to have something to pray that is intelligent? Would you like to have something to pray that you are confident in? Sure – we would all like to pray with tremendous confidence.
You cannot do better than praying the prayers approved of by God Himself. Don’t be a fool with God. Don’t walk into Heaven’s oval office spouting off the first thing that comes to mind. Instead, pray the prayers you find in the pages of Scripture
Again, pay close attention to the prayers of the Bible. If you pray the prayers inside the Bible you will have unfair advantage over everyone else. Echoing the Bible’s prayers is like getting a head start in the race called life.
1) Echo the Prayers in the Bible
2) A Prayer to Fully Know God
This is a prayer for knowledge and wisdom. Now, there is a lot to this prayer as it begins in verse 15 and ends in verse 23, but I want to key in on one sentence of this prayer: “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, 18 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…” (Ephesians 1:17-18).
This is a prayer for knowledge and wisdom. But this is not the kind of knowledge you get in school. This is knowledge on a whole other level.
2.1 Cain Knew His Wife
The word knowledge in the Bible is a richer word than the word knowledge in English. In the earliest parts of the Bible, we read this: “Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch” (Genesis 4:17a). You read this and you think to yourself, “What? What do you mean he knew her and she had a baby?” It becomes pretty obvious that the word “knew” there is a substitute for our word “sex.” The Hebrew word for knowledge, which is “yada?”, is such a rich word that it always means not only information, but also a personal encounter.
Pause and think about sexual practices in America for a moment. Do you see the travesty of using sex with somebody you don’t know, somebody you’re not committed to, somebody who you don’t know in-depth, down to the bottom? So knowledge in the Bible is both information but it also an experience. This is a prayer you can pray for people who already know Christ to know God even better, even more fully. Think of this as a “revival” prayer.
2.2 To Know Christ
Again, the Bible is telling us to pray to know God more fully: “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…” (Ephesians 1:17).
Don’t be satisfied with your current level of knowledge of God. Jesus prayed this, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Again, to know God is both information about Him but also experience to Him. You are praying for a BREAKTHROUGH spiritually. It’s a pray to experience a revival.
2.2.1 Paul in Prison
[Pause]
If you were to listen to a prisoner’s prayer, what would you expect to hear from him? Maybe you would hear him pray for his safety? Might you expect to hear a prayer to deliver his family from pain and embarrassment associated with prison? Might you expect to hear a prayer to deliver him from the prison bars?
[Pause]
Paul is in prison. Paul is in prison when he writes, “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…” (Ephesians 1:17).
He doesn’t pray for a more just emperor or greater mercy from the prison guards. He doesn’t pray for bread for his next meal or that he could stay longer in the prison yard. Instead, he keeps asking that he may know Christ better. A fuller knowledge of God is more critical than a better life. Many of you are praying for a better life and if God were to grant you your request, you would quickly become overconfident. And you would quickly move to spiritual indifference. Some of you are praying against THE VERY circumstances that God has arranged so you would better experience Him.
Instead of praying to change the circumstances of your life… Pray to know God more fully more than anything else.
To know Christ fully means you can accept even the pain of unjust persecution. To know Christ more fully means everything!
2.2.2 Honey
No one has expressed this kind of praying better than Jonathan Edwards in a well-known sermon “A Divine and Supernatural Light.” At the heart of the sermon is a well-known illustration of honey. There are two ways to know that honey is sweet. You can know about the sweetness of honey with your mind, and you can also know the sweetness of honey with the sensing of your tongue. You can know that honey is sweet because people tell you about it and you believe them, but when you actually taste the sweetness of honey yourself, you know fully—mentally as well as experientially. When you move from just mentally knowing about the sweetness of honey to directly tasting it, you may say something like this: “I knew it was sweet, but I really didn’t realize what that meant. I knew but I didn’t know.” You may know a lot of facts about God and you may have spoken to a lot of people about their experience with God. But until you experience the richness of Christ yourself, it’s like only reading about the sweetness of honey.
Again, to know God is both information about Him but also experience to Him. You are praying for a breakthrough spiritually.
2.2.3 A Father Embraces His Son
Let me offer one more illustration so you can grasp the truth behind verse 17: “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…” (Ephesians 1:17).
Thomas Goodwin, a seventeenth-century Puritan pastor, wrote that one day he saw a father and son walking along the street. Suddenly the father swept the son up into his arms and hugged him and kissed him and told the boy he loved him—and then after a minute, he put the boy back down. Was the little boy more a son in the father’s arms than he was down on the street? Objectively and legally, there was no difference, but subjectively and experientially, there was all the difference in the world. In his father’s arms, the boy was experiencing his father’s full love for him.
When the Holy Spirit comes down on you in fullness, you can sense your Father’s arms beneath you and around you. When you experience a breakthrough with God, you experience a breakthrough of His great love for you. It’s really an assurance of who you are.
You have experienced God’s great love for you. Is this a hunger in your life – to know Christ even more deeply and fully? Paul would say, “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death…” (Philippians 3:10).
2.3 Continual Prayer
There’s this huge need to know God more fully even for those who already know Him. And it’s highlighted by the continual praying the Bible is calling for: “I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers…” (Ephesians 1:16).
These are regular, repeated prayers for quite a long time. You pray for your daughter to pursue growing in her knowledge of the Lord. And you pray again for your daughter to experience a breakthrough in her growth in her knowledge of the Lord. Rinse, wash, repeat. You keep at this prayer.
2.3.1 On Your Knees All the Time?
This doesn’t mean Paul stayed on his knees all the time. When he bowed his head to pray, Paul always remembered to give thanks to the believers in ancient Turkey. I am sure he spent a lot of time on his knees. But this means Paul prayed constantly while doing the normal activities of life. The Bible tells us we should “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).
2.3.2 The Need to Keep “at it”
Prayer should be the background music, the elevator music of our daily lives. The Bible says Daniel’s regular practice was praying 3 times a day (Daniel 6:10). We need to pray constantly for people in our families just like this. Pray for your friends consistently to know God better and better. The Bible tells us that we should “be constant in prayer” (Romans 12:12c).
Persevere in it. Stay at it. Be devoted to it. Don’t give up or slack off. Be habitual. It’s the opposite of random, occasional, sporadic, or even intermittent. Treat prayer the way you treat eating and sleeping and doing your job. Don’t be hit and miss about it.
If you want God to open Himself up to you, you must pray. If you want God to reveal more of Himself to your friends and family, you must pray for them. Pray for someone like this, “God, will you make yourself real to my friend, Brenda. Would you open yourself up to her so she can know you better?”
Have you noticed that somehow there is a great urgency to pray when there is sickness, financial pressure, and difficult decisions before me? I found it interesting that a 2004 study found that nearly 30 percent of atheists admitted they prayed “sometimes.” Another 2010 study says people that the older you grow, the more likely you are to pray.
Here’s a truth for you: you must be convinced that we are not going to make it unless we pray.
2.4 Personalize this Prayer
Fathers, what if you adopted this prayer for your daughters? Mothers, what if you inserted your son’s name inside this prayer? Students, what if you prayed this very prayer for your teammates? Make this prayer for wisdom your own, will you? So this is a prayer you can pray so that those who know Christ, know Christ even more fully. Here’s a prayer you should pray for those who know Christ to Christ even more deeply. This is a prayer to experience revival.
1) Praying and Echoing the Bible’s Prayers
2) A Prayer to Fully Know God
3) A Prayer for Wisdom
Again, this is a prayer you pray for those who already know Christ to know Him even more fully.
3.1 The Spirit of Wisdom
Look at one other aspect of the prayer: “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…” (Ephesians 1:17).
Why do believers need God’s wisdom?
3.1.1 Air Traffic Control
We are but minutes for one of the busiest airports in the world. And DFW airport has numerous control towers to navigate the planes. No plane is flying completely on its own. No plane flies blindly. You put up a series of planes in the air with no control tower to tell the pilot what he/she can’t see in the clouds and above him, and below him. If there is nobody bigger than him watching over him, he’s on his own; now he might make it ok, and he might not. There needs to be something that can see where you can’t see, and that’s why the knowledge of God is connected to wisdom. Adopt a prayer life that constantly asks God for spiritual breakthroughs. You need to submit to God’s will for your life.
3.1.2 Information Overload
The average student today takes in 34 gigabytes of data every 24 hours. If you printed that out, that’d be equivalent to 4.5 million pages a day. We are in overload, complete overload. We are swimming in information but we desperately lack real hard and firm truth to guide us.
3.2 Spiritual Eyesight
Paul prays that they may be given enlightened eyes: “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…” (Ephesians 1:18).
He says “the eyes of your hearts” or, “spiritual eyesight.” To have the “eyes of the heart enlightened” with a particular truth means to have it penetrate and grip us so deeply that it changes the whole person. The prayer is so that we can understand God’s ways and we can understand God’s purpose with people. We must have a heart that sees spiritual reality. This is a gift from God. That is why Paul is praying for it.
3.3 The Trinity
“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…” (Ephesians 1:17).
Look carefully at the word “revelation” for a moment. The original Greek word there is the word we get for the apocalypse and it means uncovering. You pray for God to uncover Himself for you like pulling back the curtains in a room and the room floods with morning light. The Spirit does this for the believer.
In fact, verse 17 is a rare verse where all three members of the Trinity are named: God, the Father, God, the Son, and God, the Holy Spirit.
You have a “Triple-A” salvation. God the Father authorized it. God the Son accomplished it. God the Spirit applies it. One God in three persons. But that Trinity, that Godhead, is the reason you’re saved.
He gave it to you based on the Father’s decision to authorize it, the Son’s decision to accomplish it, and the Spirit’s decision to apply it. Stop and give thanks to God for your faith in Christ.
Conclusion - EV Hill - I’ll be Praying for You
I want you to pray this revival prayer. When I was a young man, my grandfather would turn on TV preachers when I was at his home. We watched an African-American preacher named EV Hill. Hill tells a story about prayer that you need to hear. Hill grew up extremely poor and his mother wanted him to go to college.
Hill’s mother, who he called “Momma” all his life, took him to the Trailway Bus station as he was leaving their hometown of Sweet Home, Texas. “Momma” bought the ticket for the bus. “She had got me a dark suit, a couple of pairs of blue jeans and shirts. She wrapped a rope around my suitcase, and drew out $5 from her purse, gave it to me, and said, ‘Now go on to school; the Lord will make a way.’ And just before I boarded the bus she said, ‘I’ll be praying for you.’ I can still see her waving good-bye as the bus pulled out of the station.” Hill said he splurged on the way to college, and got to campus with only $1.83 left. He said he went straight to the registrar’s office and got in line. “The first thing I saw was a sign that said, ‘$83, cash, cashier’s check or money order.’ And the devil said, ‘Now which one do you have?’ Then I heard my momma saying, ‘I’ll be praying for you.’ The devil said, ‘Don’t be stupid; get out of line. This is no prayer meeting, … With all due respect to your momma, she ain’t in control now.’ And again, I heard my momma saying, ‘I’ll be praying for you.’ So I just stayed in line and kept easing on up. I was one up when the devil said, ‘You’re next. What are you going to do now with just $1.83?’ But once again I heard Momma saying, ‘I’ll be praying for you.’ So I moved on. I was just about to step up when I felt a hand on my shoulder and Dr. Drew said, ‘Are you Ed Hill?” I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ He said, “Get out of line.” Here I had come all this way just to be denied my place. But he said, ‘Son, didn’t you get our letter? We’ve been trying to contact you. We are giving you a four-year scholarship. It will pay your tuition, room, and board, and give you $35 a month for spending money.’“And once again I heard my momma say, ‘I’ll be praying for you.’”
