EPHESIANS 1:15-23 A Prayer for Illumination 1:18 I PRAY ALSO THAT THE EYES OF YOUR HEART MAY BE ENLIGHTENED Soren Kierkegard told a parable about a poor peasant who could never afford to buy a pair of shoes. One day the peasant went to the city and earned enough money to not only buy shoes but also to get drunk. That night the man got drunk and passed out on the street. The next morning as he slept, a wagon drove up, and the driver shouted at him to move or he would run over his legs. The badly hung-over peasant woke up, raised his head looking at his legs. But he didn’t recognize them because he was wearing shoes and stockings. He laid his head back, closed his eyes, and shouted back to the driver, “Drive on, they’re not my legs.” Lest we suffer the same thing spiritually, Paul, prays, “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened” (1:18). The magnitude of the spiritual blessings described in verses 3-14 are to our spiritual consciousness what shoes were to that poor peasant – except multiplied by 10,000! The gap between what we were apart from Christ and what we are in Christ is too great for our little minds to comprehend (see 2:1-7). We need more than data and information about the transformation about the transformation; we need enlightenment. That’s what Paul prays for the Ephesians and what we must pray for ourselves and others – that we may: Know God better. “I keep 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 him better” (1:17). Know our hope. “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.” (verse 18). Know God’s power. “And his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working 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” (verses 19-20). These are stunning things to pray, much less to experience and understand. But they are nevertheless things we may – and must – ask God for, or we will be like the peasant who didn’t recognize his own legs. P R A Y Father in heaven: Open the eyes of my heart! I want to know you and the hope and power I have in Christ.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Nov 2014 09:46:54 +0000
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