The Messenger 19
Introduction
The following prayer of confession appears in the Methodist Covenant service:
O God our Father who has set forth the way of life for us in Thy beloved Son: we confess with shame our slowness to learn of Him, our reluctance to follow Him. Thou hast spoken and called, and we have not given heed; Thy beauty has shone forth and we have been blind; Thou stretched out Thy hands to us through our fellows and we have passed by. We have taken great benefits with little thanks; we have been unworthy of Thy changeless love.
We may know in our head what we believe and even why we ought to believe it. That, however, does not necessarily mean that we are actually living it out. In all of us, to a greater or lesser extent, there is a measure of inconsistency between what we profess to believe about God and how we actually live out our life. The two don’t always line up do they?
On that note I want now to continue looking at the contents of Paul’s prayer in Eph 1.
Interceding for the believers
It was reportedly Archimedes, the ancient Greek scholar, who, as he was taking a bath, shouted out ‘Eureka!’ (literally, ‘I have found’). He suddenly understood that the volume of water that was displaced as he got into the bath was equal to the volume of his body he had submerged. I like to think of that as his Eureka moment.
If you are living a life in Christ, in union with Jesus Christ, it is because you, too, had a Eureka moment. You were blind, and then you saw the truth; you were deaf, and then you heard God’s call; you were ignorant, and then you understood that Christ died for you, even you.
For some it is instantaneous – a flash of revelation and insight. For others it is stretched over a period of time. But whether instantaneous or over a period of time it remains for each of us a ‘Eureka!’ – ‘I have found.’ Before that revelation you hadn’t understood what people were talking about when they spoke of God’s love for them. You hadn’t been able to see any real purpose to life. And then a light went on. “Eureka!”
As we have discovered, Eph. 1 has provided us with an insight into those amazing treasures imparted by the Holy Spirit at our salvation. In Christ we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing. And as we begin thinking about each of those treasures that make up this ‘every spiritual blessing’ it is a bit like peeling an onion – just when we think we know it all we discover that there is another layer to be peeled back.
If salvation simply marked our arrival at our destination we would in all probability become complacent over time. We would end up going through the motions of living a Christian life, saying all the right things but without the excitement, joy, passion and enthusiasm of one who knows he or she is on a journey with the goal always just ahead. We would lose our sense of anticipation that God has something new each day for us to learn, to discover, to experience of His marvellous grace.
Here is the point I want to emphasise: experiencing salvation is not our ultimate destination. It is only the start of the journey. It is what equips us to make the journey, stick with the journey and arrive at our final destination in Christ. But it is just the beginning; hence Paul’s prayer:
“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” (verse17).
If we think about the report that was brought to Paul in prison about the faith and love of those believers, we could be tempted into thinking they had it all. Perhaps they did have a lot more depth to their faith and lot more practical love for the saints than many professing Christians appear to have today. It is true that they might have had all those spiritual blessings God promised in Christ, but that didn’t mean they had fully grasped the incredible depths of those blessings. Look again at the focus of Paul’s intercessions for them. He kept on praying that the glorious Father would give them the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that they might know the Father better. Know the Father better!
Paul hit the nail on the head when he wrote to the Corinthian Church:
“Now we see but a poor reflection in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Cor 13:12).
We shall never exhaust the profound depths of God, the boundless generosity of His grace and love towards us or the riches of those treasures that He imparted to us in Christ. But we can take a lesson from Paul’s prayer. We, too, need to keep asking God for the Spirit of wisdom and revelation. We need those layers of onion skin to be peeled back if we are to grow in a personal knowledge of God and His gifts to us. It is what takes us from the experience of salvation into an ever deeper level of obedience and holiness. Think of holiness as wholeness, set-apartness, Christ-likeness. What I am wanting to get across is that our life in Christ needs to be made up of many ‘Eureka!’ moments as we get to know the Father and His gifts better and better with each passing day.
I remember when I was a young minister inviting a minister to preach at our church’s 75th anniversary. In his 90’s, he was the oldest surviving minister who had once served in that church. As he stood in the pulpit that white-haired saint of God said something I will never forget: ‘With all the wonderful things I have experienced in my life I know that the best is still to come.” What a change from many ministers I have met down the years who have lost their passion for God or even become cynical and bitter. How to keep our faith alive, fresh and exciting is part of the challenge of being a Christian, isn’t it? And the way to ensure that it stays alive, fresh and exciting is to keep on asking the Father for the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that we may know the Father better.
If you have a question or a comment about this series please feel free to write to me, Brian, at
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