Prayers for Knowledge and Wisdom – Ephesians 1:16b-17
Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 1:16b–17 teaches us that thanksgiving should lead naturally into intercession. After giving thanks for the Ephesians’ faith in the Lord Jesus and love for all the saints, Paul says he remembers them in his prayers. He does not treat prayer as a last resort, but as a primary ministry of love and service to the church. His prayers are personal, regular, and spiritual. He prays not merely that their circumstances would improve or their problems would disappear, but that they would know God more deeply. This challenges us to pray more like Paul: not only for physical needs, sicknesses, and trials, but for the spiritual growth of our children, our fellow church members, our pastors, our deacons, our teachers, and every believer God has placed in our lives.
Paul prays to “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,” reminding us that we come to God through Christ, our mediator, and that the One we address in prayer is infinitely glorious, powerful, and sufficient. His request is that God would give believers “the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him.” These believers already have the Holy Spirit, so Paul is not asking for them to receive the Spirit later, but for the Spirit to continue illuminating God’s Word, giving them true knowledge of God and wisdom to apply that truth in daily life. True knowledge of God is more than Bible facts, religious vocabulary, or correct doctrine in the head; it is personal fellowship with the living God through Jesus Christ by the Spirit according to the Word. No Christian ever outgrows the need to know God more. The more we know him as holy, sovereign, Father, and gracious Savior, the more wisely and faithfully we learn to live before him.
FULL SERMON TEXT:
As is our practice, we will pick up where we left off last week. We got halfway through verse 16. We began this new section last week, beginning in verse 15, where Paul turns from that sentence, one sentence of verse 3 through 14 in the original language, this opening doxology of praise, a theological, wonderfully rich passage, and then he turns to give thanks.
“For this reason,” we saw last week, “because I’ve heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love towards all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you.”
But Paul here doesn’t stop with thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is one part, one element of his prayers. Now this prayer will continue on through the rest of chapter 1 through verse 23. Obviously, we’re not doing that today, but we’ll get through verse 17.
But just keep in mind as we’re working our way through this, just like we did with the last section, the last section was all one long sentence, so it all went together. As we go through this next section verse by verse, remember where we are. This is all connected. This is all a part of Paul’s prayer now for the saints.
Paul is encouraged by what he has seen. This faith and this love, they are evident in the life of the church. The church having already been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places that we saw in verses 3 through 14.
Okay, Ella, bring it back. We don’t want to get too far before—All right, better.
So we already understand verses 3 through 14 are all the blessings that we currently have obtained in Christ Jesus. We have them. They are ours already. If we are in Christ, every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, beginning in verse 3 through 14, is ours right now.
And if that is true, that makes a difference in a believer’s life. Your faith will be evident. Your love will be evident.
So although they’ve already been blessed with all these things, they’ve heard the gospel, they’ve believed, they’ve been sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, and yet Paul still prays. Notice that. All of these things are true of us already, but Paul still prays.
And what does he pray for? Well, here in this passage where we’re walking into today, he did not pray that their life would get easier. He does not pray that their circumstances would change. He did not pray that all their problems would disappear by Tuesday. That would be nice, of course. Monday would be better.
But Paul takes it deeper. He gets to the root. He gets to the heart. He gets to what is most important for believers in their life. He prays that they would know God.
Paul’s prayer is not for believers to receive the blessings that he’s just praised the Lord for, because they already have that. But that they would understand and experience more of what God has already given them in Christ.
We don’t pray that they would be these things if they’re Christians. We pray that they would experience them and know God more and understand these things better. That’s what Paul prays for first here for these believers who have believed and are loving one another, as God has called us to.
So if you will, stand with me for the reading of God’s Word. I’ll begin in verse 15 and read through verse 17 this morning.
“For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love towards 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.”
Father, this morning as we see more of Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians, Lord, let this be our prayer for ourselves, for your church, Lord, that we would know you more.
Lord, this morning as we talk about what prayer is and what growing in wisdom and knowledge and understanding looks like, and as we cover these important truths this morning, I pray, Father, that since this is your Word from your mouth, Lord, that you would use it for the purpose you sent it out for. Lord, to teach us, to reprove us, to correct us, to train us in righteousness so that we may be complete, equipped for every good work you’ve prepared for us.
Lord, do this this morning by your Spirit and to the glory of Christ, in whose name we pray, amen.
You may be seated.
So notice here, he says, “remembering you in my prayers.”
Remember last time we talked about the fact that he had unceasing thanks for all of the believers. The thanks happens within prayer, so it is connected to that idea, so don’t disconnect those things. He’s continuing on, verse 16. We cut it off because we ran out of time. But this is part of the previous verse.
“I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in all my prayers.”
Thanksgiving, as we talked about last week, should be part of our prayers. We should be thankful to God, but thankful in particular, to what we talked about, for what we see God doing in our brothers and sisters in Christ, in the church.
Paul thanks God for them, and then he prays for them. So he gives thanks, and he also includes intercession. Our prayers should include thanks and also intercession, meaning prayers for other people. They belong together.
Notice here what we learn about Paul’s private prayer life. Paul gives us some insight. He gives us some behind the scenes. He tells the church how he prays for them.
Oftentimes, we can fall into the trap of thinking that public prayer is good enough. Now, don’t get me wrong, public prayer is important. Us praying together corporately, the church should pray together.
But Paul is showing us by an example, just as Christ did, that we should also be praying privately. And in particular here, Paul says we should be praying for one another. It should be part of our regular prayer life.
If you’re not having daily prayers, you need to be doing that. That should be a regular spiritual discipline habit in your life. And part of those prayers should be thanksgiving, but also intercession for other believers.
Paul gives us some insight into his own prayer life. He prayed privately for the saints. He didn’t just pray for them when he was around them. He brought them constantly, continuously before the Lord in prayer.
If the only time that you are thinking about or praying for the church is on Sunday or Wednesday, you’re missing the mark.
Look at Paul’s example to us about private prayer lives.
First of all, Paul prayed personally.
He says, “remembering you.”
You see, these believers that he’s writing to weren’t just a category in his mind, “Lord, thank you and bless all the believers all over the world.” They were people. They were individuals.
I can imagine him praying and the people he’s praying for, their faces come into his mind. He’s thinking about them and their families, the elders, the deacons, the congregation, fathers, mothers, children. These were brothers and sisters in Christ, people whose faith and love encouraged him. He prayed for them.
So this is a good correction for us who just kind of vaguely pray. “Lord, bless everybody everywhere.”
That prayer’s not wrong. Hear me. In fact, any of you parents who may have heard your children pray that prayer at some point in your life were blessed by it. When you are a child or you’re new in the faith, it’s good to pray that prayer. It’s better to pray something like that than knowing the necessity of prayer than to not pray anything at all.
But that’s not exactly Paul’s pattern here. Paul remembers particular people before the Lord. Again, not wrong to be generalized at some times, in some ways, or if you don’t know, if you don’t have information. It’s good to do that, but Paul is praying for individuals here.
Paul prayed personally, but Paul also prayed regularly.
We see that connected to the previous sermon from last week when we looked at his unceasing thanks.
Prayer was not Paul’s last resort. He doesn’t say, “Well, I’ve preached, I’ve taught, I’ve written to you, I’ve reasoned with you, I’ve counseled with you. I guess all we can do now is pray.”
That’s how we talk sometimes. “All we can do is pray,” as though prayer is the thing that’s left over when all the useful options have been exhausted.
Paul doesn’t talk like that. The New Testament doesn’t talk like that. Prayer should be a top priority for the believer.
Prayer is not what we do after ministry. It is ministry. It is a primary means of loving and serving others, especially those within the church. It is important to pray for one another. It’s not the last thing you should be doing.
And so I think, I don’t know how many sermons ago this was now, but we should be proactively praying for those in our church regularly. Not just praying reactively when we hear something’s wrong, but proactively praying continuously, thanking God and asking God to work in the lives of our brothers and sisters, because that is a primary way that we love and serve one another in the church.
I’m going to tell you this, and you should be able to tell me this too. If you’re not praying for me, you don’t love me that much.
We need to examine our prayer life. Are we praying regularly for one another?
Paul prayed regularly, but he also prayed spiritually.
Yes, Paul certainly cared about the outward circumstances that were happening in somebody’s life. He cared about the suffering that people were going through. He cared about the needs that people had. He cared for all of those things.
But here he prays for spiritual understanding. He prays for what is more important than the physical, the spiritual. He wants people to know God more, which we’ll get to here in just a minute.
The spiritual is much more important to pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ than the physical, than what is outward. Not that we shouldn’t, but again, oftentimes our prayers for other people are, “Lord, so and so is sick. Please help them.” Or, “So and so is not doing well right now, they’re suffering. Help them.”
Good, but are you praying for them when they’re not suffering, when they’re not going through something? Are they regularly in your prayers? Are you praying for their growth, for them to know the Lord as Paul shows us here?
What is it that you pray for most often when you pray, if you pray for other Christians?
It’s not bad to pray for those other kinds of things, but we need to be praying like Paul. We need to pray that people would know God better.
So parents, this is a challenge for you. Do you pray this for your children? Do you pray these kinds of prayers? Do you pray regularly for their spiritual wellbeing?
It’s a challenge to the church members, as I’ve already said. Do you pray for one another, for pastors, for deacons? For you who may be elders and deacons moving forward? Teachers of classrooms, whether it’s nursery all the way to the mature believers. Do you pray for the people that you serve?
Paul prayed because he knew that Christian growth depends on knowing God.
He says, “remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory.”
Before Paul even tells us what he asks for, what he is actually praying for, he tells us who he’s praying to. He says he prays to the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory.
Listen, sometimes we can fall into the Christianese kind of language, the way we talk. But that’s not what Paul’s doing here. He’s not just adding “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory” to spruce up his prayer.
He’s saying this because he wants us to realize, he wants the Ephesians to realize, he wants us to realize who it is that we are praying to.
Again, like we talked about last week, Paul’s not trying to make his prayer sound more impressive. God’s not impressed by our words. Jesus said that in the Sermon on the Mount.
What Paul is showing us here by example is the way that he addresses God matters. Do you realize who you’re talking to when you pray?
Again, some of the people from last week that we talked about, that keep Jesus in their pocket or on their shoulder, they’re not praying to the same God I’m praying to. Now, I hope I’m praying to the biblical God that we’re talking about here.
But do we understand who it is that we’re talking to? Or do we do like some people, like you’re just praying out to the universe and you’re hoping that maybe some random unknown God might hear you and go, “Hey, I’ll come help you”?
“If there’s anybody out there, please help me.” That’s not prayer.
The way we address God and direct our prayers matters.
First of all, the one we’re praying to, he is the God of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Again, like last week, that is very specific. It’s not God of the other religions. It’s not God of our own understanding. It’s not God within ourselves. None of that. It’s the God of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, this wording may raise a question. Well, wait a minute. If Jesus is God, why does Paul call the Father the God of Jesus?
Fair question.
But Paul is not denying the deity of Christ here. Paul is not, because that would be a conflict of what he’s already clearly taught about Jesus. He’s not denying the deity of Jesus here.
Scripture is clear that Jesus is fully God. John 1:1 says, “The Word was God.” That’s Jesus. Colossians 2:9 says the same thing, “In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.”
Jesus is God. Paul is not refuting that. Paul is not denying the deity of Jesus. But he is speaking of Christ as the incarnate Son, the mediator that he is. Because he came, because he took on flesh, because he died in our place, because he rose from the dead, because he sits at the right hand of the Father, ascended as Lord, he mediates between us and the Father.
He’s our mediator. Our prayers only matter because he’s the mediator. Praise God.
So he’s referring to that particular aspect of what Jesus fulfills in relation to his prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus is fully God, but he became fully man. In his humanity, we know that Jesus prayed. We know that he obeyed. We know that he trusted, suffered, and submitted to the Father.
And that’s why Jesus could say in his own words, John 20:17, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
Jesus wasn’t denying his deity. He was expressing in his humanity that God was Father of all. He is the Father, Almighty God.
So when Paul says, “The God of our Lord Jesus Christ,” he’s reminding us that we come to God through Jesus.
We do not approach God the Father on our own. We do not come to God with our record in our hand saying, “You have to give me an audience.” That would not go very well.
We come humbly, yet boldly, as Hebrews reminds us, into the throne room through Jesus Christ. We come through the Son who became man for us, died for us, rose for us, ascended for us, and now intercedes for us.
We discussed this briefly in Ephesians 1:3 when we said, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” But now he prays to this same God. The God who has blessed us in Christ is the God that we approach through Christ.
So Paul’s not praying to an unknown God. He’s praying to the Father who has revealed himself through his Son. He is the God of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But it also says he is the Father of glory.
This title means that God is glorious in himself. He is the source of all true glory. No one gives him glory. We ascribe to him glory. We glorify him with our praises and with our song, but we’re not adding any glory to him. He’s the source of it.
He doesn’t need our glory. He doesn’t need our praise. He doesn’t need our worship. He is the Father of glory. He is glorious, infinitely so, in himself. All glory originates with the Father.
And this matters because Paul is about to ask this God for something only this God can give. He’s asking for wisdom, for revelation, and knowledge of God. Those things do not come from human devices, from our ability to understand, from human cleverness. We don’t get there.
Remember, human wisdom is foolishness to God. Wisdom and revelation and knowledge of him come from the Father of glory.
And what a great title. They’re just perfect for this particular prayer because God’s glory, power, and grace are more than sufficient for what Paul is going to ask for.
God’s glory strengthens our prayer. When you pray, again, remember who you’re addressing. He is the transcendent God, meaning he is high above. He is above all things, outside of all things. He’s not bound by anything, and yet he is the imminent, personal God, our very present help in time of need.
You’re not trying to get God’s attention as though he was distracted by something else, believer. He’s fully engaged. You’re not trying to persuade God to care about you. You’re not informing him of something that he missed.
Beloved, when you pray, you’re coming to the Father of glory.
I’ll be honest, many of my prayers could be described as weak in my lifetime. But our weak prayers are helped by a clearer view of who God is.
If all we see are our problems, our prayers will be weak. But if we remember who this God is that we are praying to, then our prayers grow in confidence.
We can come, but we do become more bold in our prayers when we see the God who we’re praying to. He’s not weak. He’s not feeble. He’s the God and Father. He is the Father of glory.
He says, “remembering you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,” and here’s where the prayer takes on the request.
Here’s the request that Paul is asking: “may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and knowledge.”
Paul asked that God would give them the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of him.
These believers, listen to me, already have the Holy Spirit. We keep going back to it. Ephesians 1:13, they were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. When? When they believed the gospel. Right then.
So Paul is not praying here something that is contrary to what he just talked about three verses earlier. He is not praying that they would receive the Spirit here. That’s already been done.
He’s praying that the Holy Spirit would continue to work in them.
Paul’s prayer is not that they would receive the Spirit as though they did not already have him. The prayer is that they would let the Spirit function in their lives as both teacher and revealer.
We’ve already seen, back in verse 8, that God has lavished upon us wisdom and insight. That only comes from the Spirit bringing about regeneration.
It seems weird to pray for something that we should already have. But the thing we already have has not been perfected yet. So we pray that God would continue to bless us with the things he’s already promised.
Because it puts our attention where it needs to. It changes our direction. It changes our focus. Not as if we needed to be focused on it in order for it to take place, but that’s how God works in our life.
He points our attention to the promises he’s already made.
First, here, he says that the Spirit is the one that gives revelation.
There can be no true revelation of God apart from the Spirit of God, period. You cannot know one thing about God specifically unless the Holy Spirit reveals it.
The only thing you can know about God is that there is one and that he is powerful and creative, if you haven’t already hardened your heart to that, just by looking around.
But you definitely cannot know Jesus. You cannot know who this God is. You cannot know his glory. You cannot know him specifically unless the Holy Spirit of God reveals him to you.
We don’t discover God by climbing up into heaven. God makes himself known to us. He reveals himself.
Now, we do need to be clear here. That doesn’t mean that we go looking for new Scriptures.
“Well, I’ve read this one. So where you’re saying we need to know more about God, then I need to go find more.”
No, no, no. You don’t know this well enough yet. Amen. And you won’t till the day you die.
The Word of God is the special revelation of God himself. It is living and active. You never plumb the depths. You never reach the heights of knowledge of God from the Scriptures completely in this life.
It has everything we need to know God. And so as we know his Word more by his Spirit giving us this special revelation and illuminating it to us, we can know God more and more and more and more and more about who he is, what he has done, what he is doing, what he will do, how he works, how he doesn’t work, what he has promised, what he has declared.
So we’re not waiting for some private revelation. God’s Word is sufficient. He has given everything we need for life and godliness in his Word.
But what we do need is the Spirit to open up our understanding, to illuminate to us what God has revealed.
We need illumination of his special revelation. We need his Spirit to understand, to believe what we have understood, to love God, to love others, to obey the truths that we are learning.
Apart from the Spirit, we are helpless.
Listen, there’s a big difference between holding a Bible and understanding what it says spiritually. There are a lot of people who have knowledge of the Bible from a worldly perspective, but have no spiritual understanding of its meaning. And you cannot have that apart from the Spirit.
So the Spirit gives revelation, and also the Spirit gives knowledge.
Once again, there’s a big difference between knowing about someone and knowing someone.
Paul isn’t saying here, “I just want you to learn more Bible facts. Learn all the numbers. Learn the names of all the disciples. Make sure you have the names of all the Bible books memorized.”
There are a lot of those people who will spend eternity separated from God because they never knew him. They knew facts, but they did not know God.
Listen, if you know me at all, if you have learned anything from me, what I am not saying here is that the Bible facts don’t matter, doctrine doesn’t matter. That’s not what I’m getting at.
You need to know what the Bible says. You need to read it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again because repetition is how you learn. Truth is important.
But listen, you could read it over and over and over and over and over and over again, but if you don’t have spiritual eyes to see it, it doesn’t mean a thing.
So we don’t get to know God by ignoring what he’s actually said about himself. Don’t get me wrong. You need to know the facts. But Paul wants more.
He prays for more than just information to get sucked up in their heads. He wants them to know this God who has revealed himself. He wants them to know him personally, deeply, truly, not as the guy on his shoulder, but actually for who he is.
You can know a whole lot about Christianity and still be far from God, and that is a very dangerous place to be. And that, unfortunately, I believe is where a lot of American Christians are.
You have all the correct vocabulary, but you have no heart for God.
You can define the word grace and not be amazed by it. You can explain what prayer is, but you don’t pray. You can talk about the church and how much you enjoy church, but you don’t love the saints.
That’s just being religiously informed. That’s not being Christian. That’s not true knowledge.
Paul prays for the knowledge of God.
And third, it is the Spirit that gives wisdom, more than just information, more than just knowledge, more than just the revelation itself.
Paul prays that they would be filled with knowledge and with wisdom. He says the same thing to the Colossians in chapter one, verse 9. He says that they would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
We’ve talked about this multiple times before. Wisdom is not just being smarter. It’s not just being more educated. It’s not the person who has an opinion about everything. We already have plenty of those people.
The world is full of people who can confidently explain things they don’t really understand. You see that on Facebook all the time. You talk a lot about something you don’t really understand yourself, as if you have the right answer. It’s dangerous.
That’s not wisdom.
Biblical wisdom is the ability to understand God’s truth and walk in it. To know God’s truth and to follow God’s way. That’s wisdom. That’s biblical wisdom. It’s knowledge applied.
Wisdom applies the truth of God to everyday life. It takes what they learn about God and themselves and this world and everything that God has revealed in his Word and puts it into practice.
This is the kind of wisdom that comes from above, from the Holy Spirit, that shapes how we respond to everyday life that we go through, through the suffering, temptation, conflicts, family problems, church responsibilities, money decisions, everything.
The Spirit is the one who gives wisdom for how to apply what the Word says to our everyday life.
So beloved, this means that we need more than just good advice. We need more than tips and tricks. We need more than those life hacks that you watch on the reels and the tickety-tocks. Just waiting for the looks.
You need more than that. You need more than a better plan. A better plan is helpful, yeah, sure, but it cannot replace the Spirit’s work in your life.
You can’t schedule your life in such a way that you can do the Spirit’s work in your life. It doesn’t work.
So when you’re confused, pray for wisdom. When you find yourself cold to spiritual truths, you need to pray for the Spirit to open your eyes.
When you sit down to pray, or sit down to read the Scriptures, pray before you read, “Holy Spirit, God Almighty, help me to understand what I am reading.”
But then when you take it into everyday life, when you’re trying to actually obey God in a difficult situation, you know what God’s Word has said. In that moment, pray. Pray that the Spirit would make that truth clear and give you confidence and boldness to obey what he has said.
We need to pray for the Spirit’s help to give us revelation, knowledge, and wisdom from his Word.
He says, “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.”
This is Paul’s highest aim in his prayer: “in the knowledge of him.”
He doesn’t just want them to be wise and understanding. He wants them to know God more. He wants these who have faith in the Lord and love towards all the saints, more than even that, he wants them to know God.
That sounds so simplistic, but there is nothing in your life more important than this. Nothing.
“Well, I need to be nicer to my family and friends.”
You won’t be nice to your family and friends the way they need to be if you don’t know God better. If you just try to pick yourself up by your bootstraps and try to love harder, you’re going to mess it up. You put the cart before the horse. You can’t do it.
You need to know God. And if this is his Word, you need to know what he says about himself, and about what he expects, and about what he wants, and then you’ll learn to love your friends and your family the way they need to be loved, God’s way.
There’s nothing more important.
Yes, again, these are already Christians, so he’s not just saying that he wants you to know him in a saving way. That’s already happened. But there’s more. There’s more.
If God is infinite, you will never reach the end. You will always have something new to learn about God. As much as you think you know God, as much as you think you know God’s Word and know God from his Word, there is more. There’s always more.
Paul is praying that they would know God more fully.
So listen, beloved, no believer has outgrown the need for this prayer to be said about them, to be prayed about them, or to pray like that.
Listen, a new Christian, clearly, they need to know God better. But listen, you mature saints, you need to know God better. Your pastor, as awesome as he is—Amen—needs to know God better.
Your Bible teacher needs to know God better. The person that’s been in church for 60, 70, 80 years plus nine months needs to know God better.
Listen, nobody graduates. We’re in graduation season. Nobody graduates from the knowledge of God. You don’t get your diploma and say, “I know everything I need to know about God now.” That doesn’t happen.
First, knowledge of God is personal.
Paul doesn’t pray that we need to merely know about God. He prays that they would know him personally.
There’s a difference between knowing about a person and knowing a person, as I’ve said. You can know a lot of facts about public figures you’ve never met. You can know dates, you can know events, you can know quotes, you can know biographical details of this person, but that’s not the same thing as knowing that person.
And so it is with God. We must know what God has revealed about himself. We find that in his Word, but the true knowledge of God is not just what you read in the Word. It is in fellowship with the living God through Jesus Christ by his Spirit in accordance with his Word.
Knowledge of God is personal, but it’s also centered in Christ.
Remember, he’s the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. We know God through Jesus.
Jesus said this in John 17, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
Jesus also said, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.”
And then he makes it abundantly clear when he says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.”
There is no true knowledge of God apart from Jesus. He is the image of the invisible God. He is the final and fullest revelation of who the Father is.
If you want to know what God is like, don’t begin with your imagination. Don’t try to meditate and think, “Oh God, show me more of who you are.”
No, no, no, no, no. Look at Jesus as he was revealed in Scripture. That’s how you get to know who God is. Amen.
And this knowledge of God, the reason he’s praying for the knowledge of God for these people, the knowledge of God, knowing God, changes how we live.
Knowing God is not just an initial religious experience. It changes a person. Knowledge of God changes us.
And since every single believer needs more knowledge of God, like we just talked about, regardless of your age, regardless of your maturity level, that means your life should continuously be changed by that additional knowledge from the Spirit through his Word.
If you’re not continuing to change, even if you’re 80 years old, your knowledge of God has grown cold.
Knowing God changes us.
Think of some of these things we know about God. If you know that God is holy, if you know that, and he is by the way, in case you didn’t know, if you know God is holy, then you’re going to take sin seriously.
If you know that God is sovereign, and if you didn’t, now you do, God is sovereign. If you understand that and you know that, then you won’t see your suffering as if everything’s out of control.
If you know God as Father, then you’re not going to pray like an orphan. And if you know God as gracious, then you’re not going to try to earn what Christ has already purchased.
This is why Paul prays for wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. The more we truly know God, the more wisely we learn to live before him.
Church, what if your prayers sounded more like Paul’s here?
What if we prayed more like this for our church? “Father of glory, help us know you better.”
What if your prayers for your children sounded more like this? “Lord, give them the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of you.”
What if we prayed for our struggling brothers and sisters, not merely the, “Lord, please fix everything”? Sometimes that’s what we want. And listen, there are days when “Lord, fix this” is about all we can get out sometimes.
But Paul teaches us to pray deeper.
“Lord, help them to know you in the middle of all of this.”
Paul’s prayer teaches us what believers need the most. We need God to open our eyes. We need the Spirit to make us wise. We need the revelation that comes through the Word. We need knowledge that goes beyond just facts and brings us into actual fellowship with the God of all creation.
So pray these things for yourself. Pray this for your family. Pray this prayer for your church.
Father of glory, give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of you, because, brothers and sisters, there is no greater need. There is no greater gift. There is nothing better that we could receive than to know the living God through the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.