I would like to consider a prayer this week. This prayer by Paul can be found in the Bible. This prayer if applied to your life will change your life greatly.
Ephesians 1:17-19
17That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him:
18The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,
19And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power,
Every Sunday morning before our church service I gather with a group of men and we pray for the service about to begin. We start each week by quoting Eph.17 as a means to pull our hearts together. I have grown to love this verse dearly.
First I would like to look at the words “The Father of glory.”
This can be read the glorious Father, for God is glorious in Himself, in the perfections of His nature, and in all of His holy works. Also God is glorious to Christ as a father to him. God is also a glorious father to the saints, to whom he has shown inexpressible love, by adopting them into his family. God cares for us, as an earthly father cares his children; and protects us, and gloriously provides for us and our needs.
Your father may leave you an inheritance, but none like the inheritance that will come to you from your Heavenly Father in Glory. And speaking of Glory, what glories will you find there but that which are unspeakable.
The Arabic version reads, "God, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory", making all these things to belong to Christ:
The next words we find in this passage are “may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, in the knowledge of him.”
This truly is my prayer and I trust it is yours that I desire to know all that I can about God. The wisdom found in our LORD brings about a life in us worth living. The peace found in His words are but golden nuggets to hold on to.
As a young boy I was asked by my teen leaders to claim a verse from the Bible as a life verse. I claimed James 1:5 as my life verse.
5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
I must confess, I chose this verse for the wrong reasons. I wanted to be smarter then the average bear and I thought this was the meaning of the verse, therefore I claimed it as my life verse. Anyone that knows me, also would know just being smart is not the meaning of this verse or else God did not answer my prayer.
What is this wisdom then? Wisdom is skill in the art of living life with each component under the dominion of knowing God. The entire theme of the book of Proverbs is this: pursue wisdom. With the tone of a father giving instructions to his sons, Solomon writes:
Listen, my sons, to a father’s instruction; pay attention…. Do not forsake my teaching…. Get wisdom, get understanding…. Do not forsake wisdom…. Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost you all you have, get understanding…. Accept what I say…. I guide you in the way of wisdom.
Verse after verse, the message is the same. Seek wisdom because it is of great value. But is this just being smart as I once thought? The Bible gives us a qualifying factor.
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Prov. 1:7).
If you start with the wrong assumptions you will end with the wrong answer. Wisdom begins with God. Therefore we can only gain wisdom with a understanding of God. There are very intelligent men that are not very smart. The reason being is that they start with their base belief on the idea that there is no God, and with this false hope they will always end up in the wrong place. I call it false hope for good reason. For they hope there will be no day in which they stand before God.
Wisdom can only be found in the soul that has been awed by a view of God's majesty, that has had a vision of God's awful greatness, His unmatchable holiness, His perfect righteousness, His irresistible power, His sovereign grace. With this Godly base we will reach the right answers in life.
One may claim, ….Fear is only for the unsaved who need to fear God.
This I would have to disagree with. Those who are in Christ, are admonished to work out their own salvation with "fear and trembling." This is the idea given in the phrase a "God-fearing man." A God-fearing person will walk in the light and wisdom of God.
When we speak of godly fear, of course we do not mean a servile fear, such as prevails among the heathen in connection with their gods. We mean that spirit in which Yahweh is pledged to bless, that spirit to which the prophet referred when he said,
Isa 66:2
"To this man will I (the Lord) look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word"
Nothing will foster this godly fear like recognition of the Sovereign Majesty of God.
With this godly wisdom now in place we can now go to the next verse.
The eyes of your understanding being enlightened,....
God given wisdom or knowing God enlightens us to our need for Him. With the wisdom of God in place we now see ourselves as the sinners in need that we are. This is true both for the believer and nonbeliever as well. The more we know about God the more we see our need for Him and will lean on Him for understanding and not our own.
In verse 19 we read..
And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe
Meditate on this power of God, and press it often upon your minds. We believe God to be true, yet distrust him; we acknowledge him powerful, yet fear the movement of every straw.
Many truths, though assented to in our understandings, are kept under cover by corrupt affections, and have not their due influence, because they are not brought forth into the open air of our souls by meditation. If we will but search our hearts, we shall find it is the power of God we often doubt.
The belief of God's power is one of the first steps in all religion; without settled thoughts of this, we cannot pray lively and believingly for the obtaining of mercies we need, or the averting the evils we fear; we should not love him, unless we are persuaded he hath a power to bless us; nor fear him, unless we were persuaded of his power to punish us. The frequent thoughts of this would render our faith more stable, and our hopes more steadfast; it would make us more feeble to sin, and more careful to obey.
As seen above, wisdom from God brings this power in our life and the fear of God brings about this wisdom.