A Prayer You can Always Pray
Ephesians 1:15-17
S. I. C. C.
August 5, 2001 (Morning Service)
I would have liked to have seen Paul’s prayer list. It must have been a douse. I am sure he prayed for all the churches he started and for the ones he had heard about and acquired an affinity for–like the church in Rome. He prayed for all the elders in all of those churches. Many of whom he installed i to the eldership himself. He prayed for political leaders , some of whom he met and had the opportunity to preach the gospel to. He prayed for the other Apostles. Some of whom had already suffered a martyr’s death. Others of whom might have been in faraway, secluded places preaching the Good News and planting churches. He prayed for a lot of individuals in the churches that he started or visited. He prayed for his own guidance and direction in life. I don’t think Paul spent much of his prayer time on the mundane. Paul’s life was not mundane, I don’t think his prayers were either. In a sense every one of Paul’s prayers was one of life or death. If it wasn’t life or death in a physical sense, then it was life or death in a spiritual sense. That is why it caught my eye when I saw his prayer for the Ephesian Christians in Ephesians 1. If Paul prayed it, it was worth praying, it is worth my learning from. For that reason, I am slowing down my sermon series on the Book of Ephesians. I am planning to spend the next few weeks on this prayer. After that, I am not sure if I will go back to my regular schedule from Ephesians, or if I will continue with a more in-depth study from the book.
I want you to think for a moment about prayer, namely intercessory prayer. When you are praying for a person how do you normally do it? What is it you pray for a person? If you are like me, your prayers might be very different from the way Paul prays for the Christians in Ephesus. For the next few weeks we are going to pick apart that prayer and look for two things: 1) ways we should be praying for others 2)things we should be seeking in our own life.
The first thing Paul intercedes for on behalf of the Ephesian Christians is a spirit of wisdom and revelation. Paul knows that everything in human action starts in the mind. We think it before we do it. Paul’s prayer for the Ephesian Christians is that the Father grants to them a spirit of wisdom and revelation. The Christian life is a life of volition. The first step is to decide to be a Christian and to live life as Christ would want us to live.
Some things are inevitable. Sometimes they are inevitable because of natural events that take place. Rain is inevitable. Decay of buildings, no matter how beautiful is inevitable. On the other hand, a lot of things are inevitable only because a key person or persons has made key decision. The closing of the dump here on Staten Island was inevitable when key political leaders agreed on it. The details really didn’t matter. Inevitably, they got worked out because the decision is made. The building of the Brooklyn Bridge was inevitable once the decision was made by key people. It didn’t matter that the original designer and foreman of the project died and his replacement was laid up with the bends during most of the construction. The bridge was inevitable because the decision was made in the minds of key people. In the Christian life success is inevitable when we resolutely decide to do it. We are key. When we decide to be true to our faith it will happen because the only other key cog is God himself. His decision was made a long time ago. He wants you to decide to be true to Him. It is really a matter of will–it is up to you. Make the right decision and the right life will follow.
Anytime you make an important decision, you have to know the facts. If you are going to buy a new Television set, you can go online and compare the features and price of every television set sold today. You can check them out from the $100.00 19" portable to the $5000.00 flat screen plasma. If you get the right information you are likely to make a decision you will be happy with. In the spiritual world, that research is called revelation. Paul prays that the Ephesian church-goers receive from God a spirit of revelation. Revelation, that is a nice ten dollar theological term. What does it mean? Literally it means to uncover, reveal. One of the constant prayers we should pray for ourselves and those whom we love is that God would give to us and them a spirit of revelation. We should be praying that God will reveal or uncover his will for us in the decisions we make in this life. We want God’s will to be as plain as possible to us. We need to develop an ability to know God’s will for our lives in specific circumstances. There are a few basics that we have to have in line before we can do that.
• We have to be familiar with God through the reading of scripture. We have to come to know God through His word, which is His primary means of revelation. As we read Gods word, study it, and memorize it we will become more and more familiar with who God is. We won’t want to disappoint Him. We will also read about God’s people who followed His will throughout biblical history.
• We have to know God’s people in the church. When we know God’s people and spend time with them, we get used to seeing others who are searching for and finding God’s will in their life. As we do that it becomes more natural for us to search for and find God’s will in our life.
• We need to develop the discipline of Prayer. The purpose of prayer is to meld your will with the will of The Father. Prayer is the exploration of God’s will for you in your life. I don’t know how it works, but I know it works. When I pray regularly I am more confident that I know God’s will–that I am doing the right thing. At times I am extraordinarily aware of God’s will in my life when I am living a life of prayer.
There isn’t formula for revelation that we can follow that will automatically give us an understanding of God’s will in our life, but if we follow a plan that involves reading, studying and meditating on God’s word, spending time with God’s people and praying we will be doing things that God will use to move us toward knowing His will. He will uncover it before our eyes. He will reveal it to us. It will be a revelation.
Revelation though, is the second part of the section of Paul’s prayer I am talking about today. I spoke about them out of order because I thought it would be easier to understand the spirit of wisdom after we discussed the spirit revelation. Both are necessary. Both are dependent on each other. We cannot be wise without revelation. We cannot understand revelation without wisdom from above. Paul prayed that the Ephesians would have a spirit of wisdom. That is my prayer for you also. It is my prayer for myself. Wisdom is the ability to discern right from wrong, good from evil. Wisdom has little to do with knowledge. It has a lot to do with how we apply what we know about life. We need to seek after wisdom in this life. A wisdom based on our understanding of God needs to be the guiding principle of our life. It is the practical application of the revelation we get from God. Almost a year ago I had a series of sermons from the Book of Proverbs from the O. T.. There we find guidance for dealing with everyday situations. How to spend and save money. Friends and mates we should seek. Advice we should listen to. The type of work ethic we should have. The type of life we should live. I a very real sense our life is made up o f a series of decisions. The decisions are innumerable. When we make the right decisions, our life will be better than if we consistently made the wrong decisions. Wisdom is what gives us the ability to make the right decisions. When that wisdom is based on revelation from God, we will be making decisions based on our relationship with Jesus. Proverbs s1:7 tells us that the fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom. Though many people make the right decisions about many things even though they don’t know God, the only way to assure that we will make the right decisions is to base our concept of right and wrong on our knowledge of and fear of God.
How do we develop the wisdom of God in our life? It begins by developing the spirit of revelation which I just spoke about, then we need to spend time applying those things that are revealed in everyday life. It starts pretty early in life. Mom or dad might say, “I cannot see you in the other room, but God can, so I expect you to behave.” Mom was taking revelation from scripture: God is omniscient. He sees everything. She applied that revelation to everyday life: since God knows what you are doing, you shouldn’t beat up on your sister in the next room. God sees you doing that. That is the foundation of wisdom. God knows us. He sees us do everything we do–right and wrong. It is the tip of the iceberg, there is a lot more to know about God that will change the way we live our life, but start with remembering God is watching. That might help you to choose right.
This week I want you to pray this prayer for yourself and for a few other key people in your life. Pray that God will grant you and them a spirit of wisdom and of revelation. With that spirit you will gain a better understanding of who God is and how to apply that understanding in our everyday life.
