R347 A Prayer for the Church

We all could use some encouragement and we'll find it together today in the Bible-based teaching of Dr. Don Wilton and a prayer for the church. Though the message is about prayer, we're about praying itself and would love to pray with and for you anytime at 866-899-WORD, jot the number down, 866-899-9673. We would love to pray with and for you.

And now Dr. Don Wilton. Would you join together with me and each one of us as we go to the Lord Jesus Christ in prayer. Our gracious God and our loving Heavenly Father, we come into your presence this morning with hearts filled overflowing, with hearts filled with gratitude for your grace and for your goodness to us. Father, you have chosen us. You have redeemed us.

You have included us. You have marked us and sealed us and guaranteed us by the deposit of your Holy Spirit. Father, despite the many times that we fail you, you have seen fit to visit upon us as a people and as a nation and we thank you today.

Thank you for what you have done and for what you continue to do in our community. Lord, what a joy it was to be out at the church park yesterday. With over a hundred and fifty children, with Keith Nicholson, our children's minister, and Eddie our recreation minister, and all the parents and to see God moving. And Lord, we just love our children so much.

They special gifts from you. Thank you for pouring out your Spirit upon them. Please protect them, Lord.

Watch over them. Help us as parents and as older people to be able to exercise wisdom and discernment as we seek to rear our children in the knowledge and admonition of the Lord Jesus. And we thank you for our teenagers, Lord. Lord, bless our people. It's so good to be in the house of God. And Father, more importantly than anything else, our prayer is today that that your Spirit would just ascend upon us for the sick and for the weary, for those who are discouraged this morning. Please bless them and watch out for them.

And Father, we're in the middle of an election year and there's so much being said on public platforms. Help us as a congregation. Help God's people everywhere to be able to make the right judgments based upon Christian values, upon the precepts of God's Word. Lord, we think of the Billy Graham Crusade September in Charlotte in Panther Stadium. We're excited about that and so many of our people are going, but Lord, we don't want this just to be an event. We want this to be a spiritual awakening. We want this to be a happening where God presences himself with us. And as we pray for your servants and those who lead, we pray for all the churches. We pray for Operation Andrew. We pray, O God, that we might see an unprecedented outpouring in the Carolinas such of which we've never seen before. We pray, O God, that you would get all the praise and glory that lost people would be there, that they would come to understand the light. They would come to know that you are the light of the world. Grant to us thy favor this day, for this is our prayer we pray together as a congregation in that name which is above every name, the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and for his sake.

Amen. Jesus said, you are the rock and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Jesus told his disciples many, many years ago that he was not up for compromise as far as he was concerned. He was not open to debate.

He was not open to any form of watering down what he believed he had instituted in his church. Upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. But I'm going to say to you today, beloved friends, that Satan is sure having a marvelous time trying to destroy God's church. You can go to England today and you're going to find churches everywhere that are in absolute ruin. Bingo halls, facilities that have been sold out, sold down the river, places that were once filled with God's people that today are nothing more than a furniture store or some other kind of facility to satisfy the community in which they live.

What a tragedy. I want to speak this morning on a prayer for the church. Please turn with me in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 1. Ephesians chapter 1 and I'm going to begin reading at verse 15. Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 15.

This is what Paul said. He said, for this reason ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and of your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep on 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 better the God of our fathers, the Lord Jesus Christ. I pray also 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 the saints and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the work of his mighty strength which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given 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 head over everything for the church which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way. What a powerful word from God's Word. May the Lord write his word upon our hearts this morning.

Let us pray together. Our Father, you told us that the gates of hell would never prevail against your church. And here in Paul's letter to the Ephesians, we read the heart cry of God's servant.

Lord, that is the heart cry for these United States of America today. It is the heart cry for our own beloved church, the church comprised of God's people. Father, write this word upon our hearts this morning. Help us to understand your word. And Father, for those that need to respond and make decisions today, oh God, we pray that they would be ready to step forward publicly and without apology, trusting Jesus Christ as their Savior. For we ask these things in Jesus' name and for his sake.

Amen. A number of years ago, I was teaching a seminar with the Reverend Junior Hill, wonderful man from Alabama, great man of God. We had a time of prayer with about a hundred seminary students and when I had got through praying after about 30 minutes, I looked down and Junior Hill was on his stomach and he's a very large man. He was on his stomach just spread out weeping before God.

I'll never forget it. It made a tremendous impression on my own heart and life. Many people have said as we have learned that Paul wrote this epistle on his knees minimally. I believe that Paul was stretched out prostrate before God as he wrote to the church at Ephesus inspired by the Spirit of God because of the things that were written upon his heart. There was so much that God had revealed to him that he came to the point at which he was saying to himself what is it that God wants us to pray about in the church? What should we pray about?

Where should our focal point be? And so Paul began to thank God and right there in verse 15 he says for this reason. Now what was the reason for his prayer?

We've looked at it. The reason was in verse 3 that they were chosen. The reason was that they were blessed. The reason was in verse 7 that they were redeemed. The reason was in verse 13 look at verse 13 or look at verse 13 again with me and you were also included in Christ.

Just think about that. Just think that God could take wretched sinners like you and me and that he could include us in the very heartbeat of everything that God is. Well he went on in verse 13 and 14 and he said I want to just thank God.

Why? Because we have been marked and we have been sealed and we have been guaranteed by the deposit of the Holy Spirit. He said in fact I want you to know people that you've been blessed beyond your wildest imagination and so it is that the Apostle Paul finds himself in the presence of God thanking God for the manifold blessings that had been poured out upon God's people. What an occasion to pray and then as if that is not enough we learn in verse 15 that Paul rests all of this upon those pillars of our very salvation.

The guarantee, the mark of who we are in Christ Jesus, the most amazing display of God's divine grace is found in verse 15 because he says not only have we been chosen and blessed, not only have we been redeemed and included, not only have we been marked and sealed and guaranteed by the Spirit of God, but this all rests on the guarantee of the mark of your salvation, of your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and of the love that you have for one another. What an unbelievable thing. No wonder the Apostle Paul was ecstatic. No wonder there is no punctuation.

There was no place to pause. This is the breathless wonder of the awesomeness of who God is. This is the outpouring of the manifestation of the blessings of God. This is the salvation that the writer to the Hebrews said, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? Paul was beginning to get to something here at this juncture in his letter to the church at Ephesus. He was saying to them, listen beloved friends, your faith and your love needs to be kept in a perfect balance.

They are separate but they one and of the same. Faith without love is absolutely meaningless and what he was saying is that unfortunately there are many many believers who have a loveless kind of faith. Listen to what Jesus said, whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him. In 1 John chapter 5 and verse 1, what a commendation.

So many believers today, beloved friends, have a loveless kind of faith. I went and looked back in my calendar 15 years ago almost exactly. I found myself preaching a crusade in a city together with Ed Lacey who was here with our young people a little while back.

Some of you may remember Ed. And one occasion a group of people came to us and they said to us, we want you to go into the high schools. And so we went off to one of the public high schools. We were very careful, very diplomatic. Some people were coming saying, you better be careful. The Anti-Christian League Union, the ACLU is gonna get off to you and this person's gonna complain and this person's up in arms and what about the Constitution and and all these other kinds of things. And we said, well Lord we're just going to go and we're going to minister as best as we can in Your name. Public high school. And I'll never forget that occasion because as we stood there in that gymnasium, the power of God came down upon that place.

Probably much like it's doing in the Pensacola revival at this present time. The power of God just came down upon that school auditorium. Had nothing to do with us, I can assure you. What I was saying probably didn't make sense to anybody because we were trying to hold back.

I didn't have a Bible in case someone would criticize us and and all these kinds of things. And we got down near to the end of that worship service and there was a tap on my shoulder and I turned around to look into the face of the high school principal and he was weeping uncontrollably. I mean he was just weeping in front of his whole faculty, in front of all the school.

They were all there, a quad A high school. And I'll never forget what he said to me. He said, Reverend, he said, I don't know what's going on around here but this Jesus that you're talking about's got all over me. And he said, I don't care if I lose my job. He said, I want you to tell these young people exactly what it is and I want you to give them an opportunity because I love these young people more than anything.

More than my job, my status, my position, more than anything in the whole world. I want these young people to know what I believe God is telling me right now. And right there in that public auditorium we had an invitation and kids came streaming out. I mean streaming out. They were all over and you'll never guess what happened. We went four hours. We were there at nine o'clock in the morning, left there at one o'clock in the afternoon. We ruined the whole day.

We upset the curriculum. We put everything in reverse gear and the Spirit of God came and Ed Lacey and I went back to our motel room filled with the Spirit of God and at about four o'clock in the afternoon there was a knock on our door. There were three members from the local First Baptist Church and they said, we've just come to tell you how happy we are.

We've just come to tell you what this means to us. We've just come to tell you that we believe that God needed to do this in our city but we also want you to know that we certainly hope that none of those blacks come to our church and try and follow through with this tonight. Oh my, that is a loveless kind of faith. Paul said, whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him. What a commendation and here in Ephesians chapter 1 as the Apostle Paul begins to come to grips with what God was doing in his own life. He begins to overflow with gratitude in his own heart. You're going to find gratitude and thanksgiving over 26 times in the writings of the Apostle Paul. In Romans 1 verse 8 he thanks God for the faith spoken throughout the world of the Roman Church. In 1 Corinthians 1 verse 4 he thanks God for the grace of God given to you. In Philippians chapter 1 and verse 3 he thanks God for every remembrance of you. In 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 and verse 3 he thanks God bound to give thanks God always for you and as one writer has said surely a man who could give thanks so much so often despite his circumstances must have been a person who must have abounded with the joy of Almighty God. What an incredible thing to give thanks to God.

You're listening to Dr. Don Wilton and don't go away he'll be back to complete today's message of prayer for the church in just a moment but you may have been seeing him pop up on television programs all across the nation talking about the book that just released a couple of months ago it's called Saturdays with Billy and if you haven't discovered what this is all about visit our website read the first chapter get some insight it's TEW online dot org also the place you can follow Dr. Don on his socials or sign up for the daily encouraging word email that's online at TEW online dot org now back to today's great teaching with Dr. Don Wilton. I become more convinced in my life beloved friends that here as we read these words in verse 16 I have not stopped giving thanks for you verse 17 I keep on asking God it is continual present ongoing tense it never stops it's infinite it has no ending Paul was saying the overflow of my heart is the expression of the joy of what God has done for me and because of what God has done for me I cannot stop thanking God for what he's also done for you and when Paul begins to talk at this juncture he is saying to the church at Ephesus I want to pray especially for you and so he begins to focus in on a prayer for the church it comes in three forms I want to give you the first two together because they are written together they are almost synonyms here in verse 17 number one he prays for a spirit of wisdom for the church number two he prays for a spirit of revelation for the church both in verse 17 and then in verse 18 he prays that the eyes of their hearts might be opened that the eyes of your heart might be enlightened let's look at these very quickly I want to join the first two the spirit of wisdom and the spirit of revelation together in verse 17 let's read it again I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ the glorious father may give you the spirit of wisdom now folks we've got to understand something here that word spirit there is the word new mom in the Greek New Testament but there's something very interesting about that in the Greek New Testament you know what it is there is no definite article before spirit now that's the the for those of you that don't know what a definite article is the the there is no the in front of spirit in the Greek New Testament you say to me well pastor why is the there well there is there because of our English language look if I read it without the there it goes listen I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ the glorious father may give you spirit of wisdom it doesn't make sense in English does we don't talk like that that is why that the article is put there but the word spirit there is not the same word that is used for the Holy Spirit why not because the Apostle Paul is not saying that this is not of the Holy Spirit when he talks about the spirit of wisdom he is talking about the consequence of the Holy Spirit he's talking about what the Holy Spirit does for the believer in 1st Corinthians chapter 6 we know that the spirit is given to all believers we know also in 1st Corinthians that the Spirit of God dwells in the body the temple of all believers we know the Apostle Paul is not talking about the human spirit because we are spirit we've been given spirit what Paul is saying here is no different to you and me looking at each other and saying boy he's full of good spirit isn't he he has a good spirit Jesus said it like this in the Beatitudes in Matthew chapter 5 he said blessed are the poor in spirit what was he talking about he was talking about the wisdom of God the wisdom that comes from the spirit and the Apostle Paul upon his face before God is looking across at those college students and he's looking across at those teenagers and he's looking across at those deacons and he's looking across at those Sunday school teachers and he's looking across at those educators and he's looking across at those preachers and those moms and those dads and he's saying upon my knees I want to pray that you receive a a spirit of wisdom. What is wisdom? It is that you receive not only godly knowledge, but you receive, my friends, the understanding and the capacity to receive the wisdom that God has already made available to His children.

What an incredible thought. You see, Paul is saying here, folks, you don't have to go out and look for a little bit more of a blessing. God's already given it to you. And Paul is saying that probably the greatest tragedy among the church at Ephesus among these people was that they were not willing and they didn't understand the availability of all that God had poured out upon them. And so he prayed that they would have a spirit of wisdom. And what does a spirit of wisdom do?

The spirit of wisdom means that you are able to translate and interpret and appropriate and apply all the riches of God's grace in the exercise of your day-to-day living, that you're able to live according to God's word, according to God's standards and according to God's directions. Mom and dad, what do you pray for your children with regards to? Ought we not to be praying that our children would grow up having the spirit of wisdom in them?

Ought we not to pray that our children would grow up knowing what it is that God sets before us? God is God and God has His standards. And I'm going to say to you, beloved friends, that I have met some of the most on fire, born again, godly people that are Democrats. And I have met some of the most on fire, godly people, born again, Christians who are Republicans.

And conversely, I have met some of the most immoral people who are Democrats and some of the most immoral people who are Republicans. And the spirit that he is talking about here is that which is already in us. You've got God's spirit in you. You need to appropriate God's spirit. So two things happen here parallel. Paul is saying, I keep asking that the God of our Lord, Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation with what purpose?

In order that you may know Him. Revelation, the means by which God by His spirit pours out His soul upon you and gives you a clear understanding. Wisdom, the interpretation of the data that you have received through the power of the Holy Spirit and the exercise and application of that knowledge to your daily life. What an incredible thing to think about.

Indeed, it is an incredible thing. And as Dr. Wilton leaves the pulpit and steps into the studio, I pray you'd open your heart to what he wants to share before we get away. Are you ready to give your heart and life to the Lord Jesus Christ? Why don't you pray this prayer with me right now? Dear God, I know that I'm a sinner and I know that Jesus died for me on the cross. Today, I repent of my sin and by faith, I receive you into my heart. In Jesus' name. My friend, I welcome you today into the family of God.

This is exciting news. Perhaps you just prayed together with Dr. Don Wilton to give your life to Christ or rededicate your life. Perhaps the Lord is still stirring in your heart and you wanna talk to someone. Here's our phone number, jot it down, store it in your cell, 866-899-WORD. It's where we would love to connect you with some resources if you just gave your life to Jesus or rededicate your life. Dr. Don wants you to have this packet of info. Call us at 866-899-9673 or meet us online at tewonline.org.

That's tewonline.org. And many are asking how you can pray and financially support the ministry. Well, it's by becoming an encourager. Mark 16, 15 says, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. This is the goal of the encouraging word. We want to send the uncompromising message of Christ to all.

Will you join us in this? We need your support. Become an encourager today. Call us at 866-899-WORD. That's 866-899-9673 to request information on how you can help support the work of the encouraging word. The encouraging word is a viewer and listener supported ministry. Thank you for listening today. We're grateful for your encouragement, but are here to encourage you online at tewonline.org or at the other end of 866-899-9673. The encouraging word.