Praying Like We Mean It, Part 2

Today on Insight for Living... Talking to God doesn't come naturally to us because it often feels so one-sided.

In fact, sometimes it seems awkward and the words fail to come. Well, the key to advancing our prayer lives is found in the model Paul provided to the Ephesians. And today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll is teaching from Ephesians chapter 1 verses 15 to 19. In this passage, Paul gives us a whole new perspective on prayer and what it means to truly enjoy spending quiet moments in God's presence. Chuck titled today's message, Praying Like We Mean It. Paul prayed like he meant it. Remember where he was?

Under arrest. Now what would Paul pray and mean so much in praying it that would make such an impact that the Spirit of God would ignite his words and drill them into the text of sacred scripture? He's had this grand doxology of praise in verses 3 to 14, and now he turns to a meaningful intercession, 15 to 19. Our tendency is to go all the way to verse 23, but that's about Christ, which we will consider next time, but this is the prayer. For this reason, I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus, which exists among you, and your love for all the saints, do not cease giving thanks for you. He gives thanks for what he has just set forth in verse 15, and then he makes mention of things about which he intercedes in verses 17 through 19.

Got it? Let's look at the first part. For what does he give thanks? 15, he has heard of their faith in the Lord Jesus, which existed among them, and second, he gives thanks because of their love for all the saints. Now, faith in the Lord Jesus is not a reference to their conversion.

That was earlier. That's chapter 1, verse 13. You believe that Christ died for you and rose again. You believe that he forgives your sins if you simply call on him in faith. You are converted. Verse 13, I've got written in my margin, conversion. This is when they believed they were sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise.

We've looked at that. So verse 15 is not going back to that time, but is now looking at where they are in living their lives. I give thanks to the Father because you are living your life loyal to Jesus. You are trusting him regularly. When you come to those obstacles in life, you trust him to get you through them. When you deal with difficult people, you trust the Lord to help you in those relationships. When you encounter a situation in his plan for you that's difficult to understand, you don't panic. You rely on him.

You lean on him. I give thanks for you because of your life of faith in Jesus. You're living by faith.

You're walking by faith, just as you once, when you were converted, believed by faith. So this is a reference to their loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ. He gives thanks for that. But please observe that their loyalty to Jesus is not the only thing. He also gave thanks for their love for all the saints.

That balances it out, doesn't it? The loyalty to Christ is vertical. I live my life to please him, to obey him, to follow his teachings, to respond to others as he teaches me to do. That's loyalty to Christ. Now, the end of verse 15 says also your love for all the saints. Please observe it's all the saints, not just the saints in your church, or not just the saints in your Bible study group, or not just the saints who look and sound and smell just like you do, or just those saints that are your age, or those saints that you get along with a little better than those you don't.

It says for all the saints. I'm going to add something here that needs to be said in a practical way of admonition. You need both to live a balanced life. You need the truth that guides you into loyalty to Christ, and you also need others. If the truth you are getting is moving you away from people, there's something wrong with what you're hearing. Our loyalty to Christ should work its way out in a love for one another. A church that has truth but lacks love is not a church.

It's a big Bible class cultivating a clique leading to a clan that becomes a cult. Cults are very exclusive. We're right.

Everyone else is wrong. We have the leader we need to be listening to and listen to no one else. We need to follow one person's teaching, man or woman. We need to follow only that person. We're loyal to him.

Wait a minute. He said, I give thanks because of your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, not your loyalty to some person. When you follow the teachings of Christ, you discover that your arms pull away from yourself and open and embrace other believers. I hope in your growing up in Christ that your love relationship is deepening for others. I hope that you are not becoming exclusive, clannish, cliquish. I hope that you pray for other churches, that you believe in other ministers, and you read other books.

You study from the materials of other qualified teachers. Something dangerous happens when we only follow the teachings of one man. It borders dangerously close to idolatry.

They didn't do that. They had a love for all the saints. By the way, when that happens, we really begin to mature. We realize we need one another. When you're in need, you're not that particular.

You've got a flat and somebody stops. You don't say, are you an evangelical believer that is a pre-tribulational, pre-dispensation? Is that who you are? You say, hey, thanks. Whatever you can do, I'd like to have your help. That'd be great. You're sick and you've got somebody who walks in and says, I think I can provide this particular cure.

You don't ask a lot of credentials, that is, about their religion. You want to know, are you qualified to treat me? And if you are, I'm listening.

I'm open. Be careful, please, in your healthy state not to become exclusive and cultic. Be careful about that. He gives thanks that they weren't that, that they had faith in the Lord Jesus and they had a love for others.

It was growing. Please observe his intercession also, where he makes mention of them in his prayers. Ever had someone look at you and someone you really respect and heard them say, you know, I prayed for you this past week. Boy, does that make you feel great or what? There are certain individuals that I greatly respect and on occasion, I've had them say to me, Chuck, this past week, I don't know what you were going through, but I prayed for you.

Man, I feel wonderful about that. How about the Apostle Paul saying to you people in Ephesus, I make mention of you, I make mention of you in my prayers. What did he pray?

Verse 17, verse 18, verse 19. This is what he mentioned and he prayed like he meant it. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him.

That's great. I pray as I think about you people in Ephesus in a culture that's idolatrous, in a lifestyle that's licentious, surrounded by the majority who are listening to Rome and the emperor taking their cues from him, I pray that you will come to a full knowledge of God. How do I get to a full knowledge of God?

How do I get to a deeper understanding of the workings of God? Look at this 17th verse. Through a spirit of wisdom and revelation, a spirit of wisdom and revelation. See, I pray, I make mention of you in my prayers, verse 17, that God may give you wisdom, revelation that leads to the knowledge of him.

Start at the end, knowledge. Epignosis, it is the word for full knowledge, broad knowledge, deep knowledge, an awareness of the workings of God, an understanding of how he guides his people on their pilgrimage from earth to heaven. I pray that you will grasp a full knowledge of God at work, in you and through you and beyond you. And so I ask for him to give you wisdom and revelation.

I don't think the spirit of wisdom is the Holy Spirit. I think it is the cultivation within us of a spirit of discernment, that's the first translated here, sophia, wisdom, that you gain a discernment about life and you also gain an unveiling of truth. The word revelation, apokalupsis, is the same word translated revelation as in the last book of the Bible, the revelation.

It means the unveiling. I pray that the Lord would open your mind so that you are able to get his wisdom in the midst of your circumstance. That will help you come to a knowledge of him. And second, that he will unveil the truth so that you will have insight. That's how you get there. Wisdom mixed with insight, discernment mixed with insight leads you to a broader understanding of God.

Practically speaking, what does that mean? This is all part of the illuminating work of the Spirit. When you came to Christ, the Spirit of God began to dwell inside of you permanently. He took up his residence in you. And since he is God, he is there to do a work of God in your life. From him comes a grasp of spiritual understanding.

You haven't had it before you were converted. You walked according to the prince of the power of the air. We'll see that later in this book. You listened to the enemy, the adversary. You walked with him. You slept with him. You ate beside him. You took his advice. You followed his leading.

You obeyed. You cooperated because you couldn't do anything else before Christ. When Christ came to live inside you, with his coming came the Holy Spirit who sealed you. And now that he lives inside you, he is there to give you Sophia and apocalypsis, wisdom which is discernment and revelation which is insight. The wisdom is the ability to take biblical statements and apply them to practical situations.

Insight is the ability to see into the scriptures so that they are revealed, unveiled to you, and you get God's perspective. Example. I am moving through life and suddenly I find from my visit with my physician that I have a serious disease. Before I knew Christ, the first response would be panic and maybe even a touch of bitterness. I mean, I've lived a pretty good life. If there is a God, how could this happen to me? How could this occur in my life? But now that I've come to Christ, immediately through the prayer of my friend who's asked that I might have wisdom and revelation, I see this as an opportunity to trust God.

This is not an accident. God is sovereign over all of life, including my health. I'm taking fairly good care of my life. I'm eating as I should.

I'm getting the kind of nutrition I ought to get, the kind of rest, and I come down with this disease. Why? God's in it. There's a purpose.

There's a reason. He sovereignly is at work in my suffering. Now in things outside my control, He also is at work. Some of you find yourself in the middle of life. You thought you'd be rearing your family, happily married, and your husband or your wife walked out.

They left. You are now finding yourself in a whole different set of circumstances. Humanly speaking, you have reasons to panic, to rush to judgment, to be bitter, unforgiving, full of all the anger that that kind of circumstance, which is so unfair, brings to you. But in a spirit of wisdom, you begin to think, no, I'm not going to respond like that. That's a dead-end street.

I'm surrounded by people who live like that. And with a spirit of wisdom, I'm going to trust God to have His way in this. I don't know where it's going to lead, and so I need to find in His Word instruction, and suddenly a Sunday morning service like this becomes an oasis in your desert. And you turn from verse to verse, and you see from section to section that this is for me.

This is exactly what I need to hear. This is precisely the kind of insight I've needed, and it begins to make sense to you that God is at work in spite of the difficulty of your situation. Wisdom is the ability to take spiritual truths and apply them to practical, everyday circumstances. That leads to a sense of revelation, insight into what God's Word means in light of what I do from this point on. That's why He prays, makes mention of them in His prayers, and asks that the Lord would give a spirit of wisdom and revelation in a fuller knowledge of Him.

Let me give you a little tip. This is a great prayer to ask for your children. Pray for your children, especially those teenagers and on up, those moving into adult life, those who are now adults. Pray that God would give them a spirit of wisdom and revelation. You know why you pray that God would give that to them?

Because that's the only way it's going to come. James 1.5, do you recall that verse? James 1.5, If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it'll be given him. When's the last time you prayed for one of your children to have wisdom? Revelation.

Lord, I pray that as my son or my daughter opens the Scriptures, even if it's in a study they're involved in or even if it's in a church service or something they're not doing on their own, just they're being led, may the truth of Your Word begin to be unveiled. I'll tell you, when that happens, you get really serious about your walk. You start getting sensitive about it. And rather than just looking for the best looking man or woman you might consider marrying, you get beyond the looks. You start thinking about character. You start paying attention to spiritual truth.

Are they sensitive to the things of God? That will be better in the long run. That's wisdom.

That's realizing the value of character over and above appearance in the search of a mate. And then you get serious about the unveiling of truth and you start searching the Scriptures and you see, my, this is really for me. And a lot of this is in God's hands. I'm not going to panic.

I'm not going to let this drive me to some kind of addiction where I'll need something else to hang onto to hold me together. Wisdom and revelation lead me to the knowledge of him. Let me show you a verse of Scripture. I love this verse. Go to one book further, Philippians 3, verse 10.

Locate that. This is Paul's great desire. In case you wonder what Paul's goal was in life, I think 3 10 states it. That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to his death. That I may know him.

I think that's his determined purpose in life. What's yours? What's yours?

I'd suggest this is a pretty good one until a better one comes along. Choose this one. That I may know him. I may really know him.

The Amplified Bible says my determined purpose is that I may know him, that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of his person more strongly and more clearly. You say, well, Chuck, wait a minute. I'm a mother of two small children. I mean, you haven't got any idea. Well, that's right. We had four. So I can't imagine how easy it would be with two, but we had... I can imagine it's got its challenges, and some of you, well, I've got five. All right, hat's off to you. That's great. But let me tell you something. I don't care how many kids you've got running around. I don't care how many struggles you've got related to the domestic world in which you live.

This works. Lord, I pray for a discernment regarding how to know each one of my children. I pray that you would help me understand how you put them together when they came from my womb or when we adopted this child, how this child is made.

Help me know makeup. Help me know what's the best discipline, what's the best motivation. Help me know how to guide this child as you would have this child guided because he's different from her or from his brother. I need wisdom. I need the unveiling of truth so that I can be the kind of mother you would have me be.

I am, by nature, irritable when I am pressed for time and I'm weary and I get tired, then I tend to lose perspective. I pray that you would help me with the wisdom I need to do the best I can with the time I've got. That's how it works its way out. Now, back to Ephesians 1. Let me show you verse 18.

It goes even further. He's still praying. The first was that they would have a knowledge of him, a fuller knowledge of God. I pray then, this is a great statement, the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.

Isn't that great? The eyes of your heart. You can just see your heart batting here.

It's not about the organ in your body that pumps blood. In the New Testament, the word heart is the compilation of mind, emotion, and volition. Intelligence, emotion, and will. That's all contained in the meaning of the word heart. And so I pray, Lord, that at the seed of the mind and the emotions and the will of these saints who are friends of mine in Ephesus and you who are a part of the flock of Stonebriar Community Church and you who are visiting who love the Lord Jesus, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, that you will wake up mentally, emotionally, and volitionally, that you'll find your mind open, that you'll find your emotions willing, and you'll find your will submissive to the Father's direction. Whatever it may mean, not to where you want to go, not to do what you want to do, but I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened. This is a divine enlightenment.

Hear the light go on? So that I won't live my life clueless, selfish, going in the direction I choose to go, I pray that they will have their minds open, their wills available, and their hearts, their emotions on target so that they might know. Look at the word know again. I've got a little arrow pointed up to knowledge of him and know, here it's about knowledge. If you like to mark your Bible, mark the next three what's, W-H-A-T, that you will know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance that you may know what is the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who believe. You're listening to the Bible teaching of Chuck Swindoll. We're midway through a study in Ephesians chapter 1 that Chuck is titled Praying Like We Mean It. And to learn more about Chuck or this ministry, visit us online at insightworld.org. Just before we sign off today, all of us at Insight for Living would like you to know that we're praying this series will inspire you to become God's agent of grace in a world that's craving to feel a touch of his kindness.

2020 will go down in history as a year filled with uncertainty, fear, and even contempt. It's all the more reason to instill these biblical principles from Paul's letter to the Ephesians so that we become a people of grace. Along these lines, let me remind you that Chuck has written a daily devotional for you to add a measure of biblical inspiration into your day. Receiving the daily devotional by email is free. To subscribe, just go to insight.org and follow the simple instructions. While you're there, take a look at the Searching the Scriptures study notes that coincide with each of Chuck's radio messages.

These interactive notes are found at insight.org slash studies. And then finally, on Sunday morning, remember you can join the online worship service at Stonebriar Community Church. Just log on to your Facebook account and search for Pastor Chuck Swindoll. You'll find a link to our live feed there. Or stream the service directly from insight.org slash Sundays. And thanks for bearing in mind that all of these free resources are made possible through the generous gifts of listeners like you, including our monthly companions. A monthly companion agrees to give a contribution every month in the amount of your choosing. To become a monthly companion, call us. If you're listening in the United States, dial 1-800-772-8888.

That's 1-800-772-8888. Or to give a one-time donation online, simply go to our website at insight.org. . Join us again Monday when Chuck Swindoll's study called Praying Like We Mean It continues on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Praying Like We Mean It, was copyrighted in 2000, 2001, and 2009. And the sound recording was copyrighted in 2009 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.