Prayers for Wisdom

Good morning, Chapel family. How we doing? Good. Glad you're here today. Welcome to those of you who are joining us online. If you have a Bible, please turn to Ephesians chapter one. That's where we're gonna be in just a moment. And for those who celebrate on this happy Sunday, go Bills. And also with you. Thank you. Yeah. We're starting a new series today. I'll say a little bit more about that in a moment, but I want you to just think about what comes up in your spirit, what arises in your heart when someone tells you, "I'm praying for you." Has that ever happened to you? Maybe here, maybe it's happened even when you come on a Sunday, and someone, a friend, a loved one tells you, "Hey, I'm praying for you." Or maybe you've been in a spot in life, as many of us have, where maybe you find yourself in a dark valley, a deep pit of some kind, just a season of discouragement. And at just the right time, someone sends that text, gives you a call, you open up a card in your mail, and it tells you that, "Hey, I'm praying for you." And as wonderful as that is, sometimes it's even more helpful when someone says exactly what they're praying exactly for you. "Hey, I'm praying for you today that you would know God's comforting embrace, or I'm praying that you would be reminded throughout your day of God's deep love for you." Something like that. It's been a little more than three months since my dad went to be with Jesus. And the outpouring of love and support through this church family to me and my family has been overwhelming in the best way. The emails, the calls, the cards, the texts, but certainly the prayers. And so, as I've thanked you before, I'll thank you again for that. And really what has stood out to me in this season is the specificity of prayer where some really close friends have sent me particular scripture that they're praying on my behalf or praying specifically something in this way for me at this time. And those things are so personal and meaningful to me, and I hope that you have enough of a reservoir to draw from where you've had those experiences as well. What we're gonna be studying in this series called "Prayers for the Church" is actually a glimpse into what Paul prayed for some churches that he was connected to. But these were people, men and women, families, people that he knew and that he had a connection with in some way. And whether that was a church like Ephesus that we'll see that he had a hand in starting to plant this church, or whether that was Corinth, or Philippi, or maybe a place like Colossae where he didn't personally help to start or birth that local church, but he had a relationship to them. What we're gonna see in this series is kind of like an opening up of Paul's prayer journal, and we're gonna see not only what he prayed, but specifically how he prayed for these people, these believers in Jesus that he had relationships with and that he was connected to. And so what I hope for us, not only today but in this series, is that we recognize these prayers have impact not only for the original audience but for us as well. And so today what we're going to do is look at something that Paul wrote to the Ephesians. And I'm gonna tell you right up front where we're going so that you know where we're gonna be heading, and then you'll know when we get there, and then I'll remind you of where we went. Sound good? So here's our main thought for this passage today. Paul prays for the Ephesians to keep growing in knowing God. This is the trajectory of the passage in Ephesians one that I'm gonna show you in just a moment. Paul prays for the Ephesians to keep growing in knowing God, but how did we get there? All right, well, before we get to, like, "What does this mean for me?" we need to know what it meant for them. That's always good Bible study practice. What did it mean for them before we say, well what does it say to us in our time? We will get there, but we need to start in the proper place. So starting in that proper place, let's look at verse 15 of Ephesians chapter one just as we begin this section, I'm gonna show you eventually verses 15 to 23, but for now, just 15. "For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God's people." That's how this passage begins. "For this reason," well, what reason? I'm not gonna read it to you right now, but what you could do if you wanted to is go back and look at the first 14 verses of Ephesians one at a later time, and you will see that Paul has just been on a tear, telling the Ephesians all of the things that God has done when he placed them in Christ. The whole theme to this point in the book has been you are in Christ. And I counted 10 things. You can fact check me later if you want and send me a note if I'm right, but you could see at least, I think, 10 things that Paul says that God did when he placed these Ephesians in Christ. He says He blessed us, He chose us, He predestined us, He graced us. I mean, he goes on and on and on. So he's been saying all of this that God did when he put the Ephesians in Christ. And now 15 says, verse 15 says, for this reason or really maybe for these reasons, he says, "Ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord, in the Lord Jesus, and heard about your love for all of God's people." Now, Paul had this personal connection to many of the Ephesians because he spent three years in Ephesus helping to birth this local church. So he knew many of them by name. He knew many of them by face. He had firsthand relation contact with them. So he knew these people, but it had been several years since he was there in Ephesus. And so as a consequence, some of them he knew, but others he had just heard. And what he heard was good. He heard of their love for all of God's people. He knew that in evidence, a key evidence in fact, of genuine faith in Jesus is a love for God's people. So some he knew that firsthand, but others he heard about. So he says, "Ever since that time." Then pick it up in verse 16 and 17. Leave this here for just one second. He said, "I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. And I keep asking." Now just pause here. Do you see the intentionality of Paul's prayer here? These people are dear to him, and one of the ways we know that is because he says, "I haven't stopped giving thanks for you." "Remembering," this is in the present participle in the Greek language, and all that we need to know for that purpose today is that this means a continuous, ongoing, repeated action. "Remembering you in my prayers," He says, "I keep asking." So Paul's not just throwing up a prayer at the buzzer. He's not just tagging on a prayer at the end of his dinnertime prayer. This is something he's repeatedly doing, he's consistently coming back to, he's remembering them in his prayers, he keeps asking God and he's praying for them. Well, what is he praying for? Well, let's look. "I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ," look at this next part, "the glorious Father may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know Him better." Let's put 17 up just by itself so that we can look at it in full. He says, "I keep asking that the..." Did you watch this? "The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father," or the Father of glory, "may give you the Spirit." Now, do you see how Trinitarian Paul's prayer is here, that he's injecting this Trinitarian language? "I'm bringing my request to the one true triune God." And he says, "I keep asking that he may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation." Now, what does he mean by that? What is Paul's purpose in asking God, the father of glory, for the spirit to be given to the Ephesians? Why does he pray that? Don't they already have the spirit of God? Yes, they do. Because as Paul says in another place in Romans 8:9, if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. Well, what do we know about these Ephesians? What I've already told you the first 14 verses of this passage, they're in Christ, they're in Christ, they're in Christ. So we know they are in Christ. They belong to him, therefore they have the spirit. Because if they weren't in Christ, they wouldn't have the Spirit. But they're in Christ, so they have the spirit. You with me? That was not encouraging. All right. They are in Christ so they have the Spirit. Because if they weren't in Christ, they wouldn't have the Spirit. Are you with me?

- [Congregation] Yes.

- Much better, thank you. So we know that they are in Christ. In fact, the beginning of this letter, verse one of chapter one, says, "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to God's holy people in Ephesus," he expands that thought, "the faithful in Christ Jesus." So they're in Christ. They have the spirit. So why does Paul pray, "I'm asking God to give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation"? I think we can confidently assert here that what Paul is praying is that he's asking God to amplify a particular ministry of the Holy Spirit. He asking God to maximize the impact of a particular role that the Holy Spirit plays in the life of a believer. And we know this because often throughout the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is referred by many names. And it's not like, is this a different spirit, another spirit? No. This is one and the same Holy Spirit, but that spirit, he's called by many names. He's called the Spirit of Truth. He's called the Spirit of Adoption. He's called the Spirit of Faith, the Spirit of Grace, the Spirit of Holiness. Many other titles in addition to be called our counselor, our advocate. So what we know is when those titles are used, they are highlighting a particular aspect, ministry role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. And so he says, "I'm praying that God would give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation." That's the title he chooses here, but for what purpose? Well, we don't have to guess 'cause our text tells us. Look again at 17. "I am asking for the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know him better." Isn't that great when we've got a so that in the text. We don't have to say, "Well, why is that there?" That's why. So that you may know him. Everybody say this word, better. All right, a little better next time on this one, all right? So that you may know him-

- [Congregation] Better.

- Better. That was far beyond better. That was great even. So you may know... I got somebody over there. That was good So that you may know him better. That's why Paul is praying this for the Ephesians. Your text may say or translation may say, "in the knowledge of him," it's the same idea. Well, what does that look like to know him better? Paul continues. Look at 18 and the first half of 19. "I pray 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 his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe." I don't think Paul's adding another thing on his prayer list. I think he's expanding on the first thing in his prayer list. He's praying for these Ephesians to know God better. And what does that look like? He's saying that your spiritual eyes would be enlightened. In other words, your eyes need to be opened wider to let a little more light in. In fact, the word there in enlightened comes from the Greek term photizo. photizo is where we get our English words like photography or photograph come from that root. And I don't know much about photography, but if we'll go with that thought for a moment. A camera needs light in order to capture an image. And so if we stay in that analogy for a second here, God wants you to capture the image of his son. And so the spirit comes and shines a bright light on Jesus so that you can see Him as He is, that your eyes would be enlightened. It's the same idea that Paul talked about in 2 Corinthians chapter four. Look what he said in verse six. "For God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' made his light shine in our hearts." Same words in the original text, just noun in verb forms. "Made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God's glory displayed in the face of Christ." Same idea, same words, same goal that the light would shine so that Jesus could be seen more clearly by these Ephesians. And so as the Ephesians know God, as they know him better, they will also know. Paul lists three things in our passage. He says, the hope, the inheritance and the power. These Ephesians needed to know the hope of their calling because Ephesus was hostile to faith in Christ. It was not a conducive environment, a favorable place to follow Jesus. Ephesus was not kind in that regard. There was a temple, a famous temple to Artemis, the Greek goddess Artemis, in Ephesus. And cult worship of Artemis was commonplace. And the practices that went along with that, I'm not gonna name in this room today because of their graphic nature. But this was common, as common as going to the grocery store, was participating in cult worship with the priestesses of Artemis. And that was some of the... That was the world that some of these Ephesians were called out of. And so Paul wants them to know the hope of their calling because this is where they were. This is who they used to be, to know that they're called to something better and greater. They needed to know the hope of that calling, but they also needed to know the riches of their glorious inheritance. That's what he says here. They needed to know the riches of their glorious inheritance because, man, they remembered where they were. They remembered who they used to be, and Paul knew some of their stories. So he remembered where they used to be, who they used to be, and he'll remind them. If we went into chapter two, we would see that he talks about who you used to be. You used to gratify the desires of your sinful flesh just like everybody, but that's not who you are anymore. And where they were going was better than where they had been. And so Paul wants them to know the riches of their glorious inheritance, but also these Ephesians needed to know the power that was available to them. Because living for God in a twisted culture needed supernatural resources. These Ephesians needed supernatural resources to say no to the old way of life to say yes to the new in Christ. And as Paul talks about this incomparably great power for us who believe, he starts to riff on it. It's almost like it triggers a thought in his mind, and he wants them to know this is no ordinary power. Look at the second half of verse 19 through 21. "That power," he says, "is the same power as the mighty strength that He, God, exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come." This power that he's talking about is resurrection power, got Jesus up from the dead. It's ascension power. He took his place at the throne. And it's eternal power, far above all rule, all authority in this age and the age to come. It's resurrection, it's ascension, and it's eternal power. And that same power, Ephesians, is now at work in you. That's what Paul wants them to know. They need to know this power. This is the same power that catapulted Jesus from the grave to the throne and put Him in His proper place as He rules over all of the universe. And that's exactly how Paul completes this thought. Look at verses 22 and 23. "And God placed all things under His feet and appointed Him, Jesus, to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way." Their Lord, Paul wants these Ephesians to know, their Lord is the ruling authority over the entire universe. that includes the church. And yet this Lord, this King, this God can be known. He can be known. He's the one who sits at the control center of heaven and earth and all of the universe. He is the power above every power. Every other claim to power is subject to Him. He's the one who sits on the throne, only Him, only Him. He's there. He's the king, He's the Lord, He's God, and this God wants to know you. What a thought. What a thought for these Ephesians to hear this, that this God not only invites them to know Him, but that He can be known. So that's why I said at the outset that Paul prays for the Ephesians to keep growing in knowing God. But what about us? What does this say to us? Well, much the same. And since we're talking about prayers for the church, I'll word our main idea this way. Our prayer for this church is that we would all keep growing in knowing God. That's our prayer. All of us together, this is our prayer that we would all, not some, not half, not the spiritually mature or the people who've been Christians for a long time, not the people who go way back to the beginning of this church, but all of us, that we would all keep growing in knowing God. That's our prayer for this church, for all of us together. You see, on our own, in our human capacities, apart from the spirit of God enlightening our hearts, Jesus of Nazareth is just a teacher who was killed like a criminal, just a good guy, a moral example, pretty good inspiration. On our own, on the human level without the intervention of the spirit, Jesus, from a human standpoint, is nothing more than that. And many people live like that. Many people live with that as their understanding of who he is. But when the spirit of God activates your heart, when the spirit of God first shown His light into your heart, you saw Jesus for more than just that. And as you turned from your sin and embraced Him by faith, that spiritual light bulb went on for the very first time, and you saw who He really is, God in the flesh, your Savior, your Lord, your King, your God. But it doesn't end at conversion. That's why I say we need to keep growing in knowing Him. Because many times throughout our lives, in fact, the spirit of God wants to widen our scope, open our eyes, shine His light more brightly into the deep, dark corners of our lives so that even there, the glory of Christ is reached. And He does that repeatedly. Here's the beautiful thing. We can never exhaust Him. We never run out of knowing Him. You think you know him now. I'll talk to you in 10 years, 20, 30. We will never plumb the depths of who God is, 'cause He is limitless in His character. It just goes deep, deeper than any ocean, deeper than anything you can fathom. So we will never run out of things to know about God. It's never gonna be like, "Well, I figured Him out." You didn't. If you think you did, you didn't. We'll never plumb all of the depths. And yet He invites us and He can be known. He invites us to know Him. So this was Paul's prayer for the Ephesians, and it's ours as well. And why is that? Again, much the same as the Ephesians. We need to know the hope of our calling. Just like they did, we need to know that. We need to know the hope of our calling because although the temple of Artemis is in ruins today in Ephesus, the idol factory of our hearts is in full swing. We may not go to the temple of Artemis like the Ephesians once did in their old life, but there are plenty, plenty of new temples where we seek meaning, fulfillment, satisfaction, purpose, whatever it might be, more idols all around us. And sometimes the number one idol we face the most is the one that looks back at us in the mirror. And we were called to something greater. And the question really is, where are we actually looking for hope in this life? Where are we looking for hope really, to something temporary or something eternal, the one who called us? We also need to know the riches of our glorious inheritance. We need to know this. The Ephesians needed to know this. We need to know this because, like them, compromise is all around us, and we too struggle with the temptation of Esau. Remember him? Who traded his inheritance for a bowl of stew, who traded something future for a fleeting pleasure now, And the temptation of Esau is still a temptation for you and me, to forsake the glorious inheritance that awaits us, and instead compromise for something temporary that cannot satisfy our souls. So we need to know the inheritance that awaits us because, like the Ephesians, where we're going is better than where we've been. We need the light turned on so we can see the treasure trove in God's presence. As the psalmist said, it's not on the screen, in your presence is fullness of joy, at your right hand are pleasures forever. Not temporary, fleeting, empty pleasures. Forever pleasures, all of them at his right hand. We need to know that so we don't settle, but we also need to know the power that is available to us. We need to know the power that is available to us. Did you notice in verse 19 of our text that Paul said that this incomparably great power for us who believe. This is for us, that same power just as we sang, that same power alive in me, in you. The power that got Jesus up from the dead is in your life. God changes lives with this power. God transforms stories with this power. He rewrites the ending with this power, and that power is available to you and me. My pastor growing up used to say, "How could the God who made the entire universe move into your heart and life and not make a difference?" Well, I'll take that one step further. How could the God who raised Jesus from the dead and has that kind of power at his disposal move into your life and not start to change things? And so I reject the idea that's just the way I am. That's not true. For the Christ follower, that's not true. That's just the way I am is not accurate because resurrection power exists in your life. So from the sourest disposition to the strongest addiction, Jesus has enough power and He can be trusted with it, and that's available to us in Christ. So if Paul prayed this for the Ephesians, and if this is our prayer for us all, I guess another question I would have is, well, how do you know when God is answering that prayer? I pray that you know him better. Well, how do I know? How do you know that God's answering that prayer in your life? How do you measure it? How do you track it for you, for me, personally? If I can just be a little transparent for a moment, I used to measure my spiritual progress by spiritual insight. And I say that to my own embarrassment. I used to think that my time with God was rich when I had an interesting nugget to share the next time I preached, or the next lesson, or the next devotional. I prayed often for the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so I could know more. I did not pray as often for the Spirit of wisdom and revelation to know Him. And that's an error. That's a faulty way of thinking about spiritual progress. And it took a sharp, severe, but necessary mercy for God to break me of that wrong way of thinking, and He's still breaking that way in me and rebuilding it with the right things. But just knowing a bunch of stuff does not equate to spiritual maturity. 

Just knowing a bunch of stuff does not equate to spiritual maturity, and I missed that for a long time. Maybe you've been in that spot too. And judging by how many people came up to me and said that after the first service, I know that I'm not alone in that. But the Pharisees knew the book better than anyone, and Jesus told them, "You missed it. You missed it." So how do we measure this? By conforming to the image of Christ, maturity in him. And so how do you know when you are maturing? I really want you to think about that. How do you know when you're growing? If it's not just these things, then what is it? Maybe an analogy could help us here. I saw a recent Gallup poll just from last month actually, August of '25, that said 84% of Americans self-reported that they believed their diet was healthy or somewhat healthy. 84% of Americans. And you know where I'm going, right? 'Cause at the same time... Oh, and in that survey, yeah, either healthy or somewhat healthy, reading nutrition labels, paying attention to all that stuff, okay? At the same time the CDC released a report that said 73% of Americans are overweight or obese. Somebody's not telling the truth. 'Cause, I mean, I read the labels too. I'm eating the package of Oreos, I'm like, "Dang, 34 grams of sugar, man." Reading the labels, what does that do? Yeah. So 84% say they have a healthy diet. There's too many McDonald's in America for 84% of people to have a healthy diet. 73% are evidently not healthy. 84% think they are. Okay, so what does that teach us among many maybe interesting and humorous things? Our perception of ourselves does not always match reality, or to put a little more bluntly, we are capable of self-deception. So if I ask you, "Are you a healthy disciple?" you probably would say, "Yeah, I'm here, aren't I? I was here last week. Hey, I got the notes from your last sermon. Hey, here they are. I got my name embossed on my Bible." Are you a healthy disciple? But if I started to press just a little bit further, and you could do this with me, and say, tell me about your time with God. How frequently? What's He saying to you in that time? Tell me about your time in prayer. Tell me about how difficult it is for you to be generous, to open up your home, to release some assets, to give money. Tell me about how many people you build relationships with who don't know Christ. If I started to really ask those questions and you started to ask those things of me, do you think maybe we'd have a more clear picture than just, yeah, I'm pretty good? Do you think it's possible that maybe like the 73% of Americans who are struggling with their weight, but certainly are in that 84% who think they're eating healthy, do you think that some of us may think we are healthy but are actually self-deceived? And so it's good for us from time to time to ask hard questions of ourselves. If the prayer is I wanna know God better, how do I know God is answering that prayer and how am I cooperating with it? How am I cooperating with him in the answer to that prayer? And so, what I want all of us to do is actually take that kind of spiritual inventory. We're all gonna do this together as a church. And the way that we're gonna do that is by doing something maybe a little bit different. But within this worship gathering, we're all gonna participate in a discipleship survey, and it's completely anonymous, and you'll be able to do it on your phone. And if you got an email on September 1st from Jonathan Drake at The Chapel, and you read it all the way to the end, 'cause I know you do, and you saw me say, "Hey, bring your phone to church this Sunday," you're not gonna hear me tell you that very often, now you know why, and I'm not gonna tell you that ever again. But this Sunday is only time. Now, here's why we're gonna do this, okay? Two reasons, at least. One, this will help you, as a disciple of Jesus, take your spiritual temperature, take the vitals on your walk with Christ. And that's necessary for us to do from time to time. It's good for us to do from time to time. And if we walk away from doing something like that, feeling shame or guilt or some sort of inferiority, that's not coming from God. That's coming from the enemy who wants you to feel defeated about where you are and so that you can never get past it, but the spirit of wisdom and revelation will confirm, "This is where you're starting from? Now come a little closer." That's the first reason. The second reason is this will help us all as a church, together, every one of us, assess, are we creating? 'Cause this is our church. This isn't just like... Don't say The Chapel is a separate entity. It's you. It's me. This is our church. We should care about whether we together are creating the right atmosphere for discipleship to flourish. And so we should be able to ask ourselves, are we doing that? How are we doing? Are we creating an environment that's conducive to people following Jesus?

- So at this point in our message time, we actually, as a church, took a few moments to fill out a churchwide survey. This was for our congregation, for our body to be able to take some inventory, some spiritual inventory to just assess how are things going with our walk with the Lord. What are things that we need to grow in, and what are things that we need to be mindful of? And we did this as a way to have a moment where people can think and reflect, and hopefully it's been impactful in that regard. But we also realize that the survey is now closed. So we thought, hey, well, what can we still do for those that are watching at least for this time here together? And we thought that we would just give you a brief opportunity to just reflect on just how is your walk with the Lord going? Are there areas or are there specific things that God's pointing out in you that maybe you need to give some extra attention to? And how can we be mindful of those things and bring those things before the Lord? So what we're gonna do is we're going to spend just a brief moment out of the truth of what we've just heard to be able to spend some time reflecting and thinking about just our walk with Jesus. And this isn't a way to create any guilt, or shame, or anything. This is just a way to just get honest before the Lord and let Him examine and search our heart so that we can continue to walk with Him and walk closely with Him. That's what we want for you. So take a brief moment, and you're going to see some questions here on your screen, and just pray, seek God with them, and just ask the Lord to search your heart. So do that now. And then after that, we're going to resume our message with Pastor Jonathan Drake as he closes up some closing thoughts here for us. And then I'll be back to give us some next steps out of that.

- As we close, I wanna share with you one more story and one verse. There was a man, William Randolph Hearst, who in the early 1900s was a newspaper media mogul. And he owned a bunch of newspapers, and he actually was a politician at one point too, very wealthy guy. And he had amassed quite a large art collection. Famous works of art were in Hearst's possession. And one day, he was reading about... The story is told that Hearst one day was reading about a particular work of art in a catalog, and he just became obsessed with it. And he told one of his assistants, "I want you to find this piece of art at any cost, no matter where it is, find it." So the assistant says okay, and Hearst had the money to do whatever he wanted. And so the assistant goes out and he... I mean, there's no internet database, So he's going from gallery to gallery, and he's visiting different famous places and writing to places and trying to track down this work of art for his boss. And finally, months go by and the assistant comes back to William Randolph Hearst, and he says, "Sir, I have good news." "Well, what is it?" "I found that work of art that you wanted?" And Hearst is excited. He says, "Great, awesome. Where was it? How much was it? Where'd you find it?" And the assistant turned to his boss, Mr. Hearst, and he said, "Sir, it was in your warehouse." Mr. Hearst owned this work of art, had not realized it, and it was sitting, collecting dust in his warehouse. He couldn't enjoy it. He wasn't appreciating it. It was just sitting there. The Apostle Peter, in full agreement with the Apostle Paul, said in 2 Peter one, "His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowing Him, through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness." That power that we've been talking about, it's available. It's the power that allowed us to know God in the first place. We don't know God because we were exceptional. We know God because He called us by His own glory and goodness. We don't grow in knowing God because we are exceptional, or because we have resources, or because we're determined. we know God and we grow in knowing God because His divine power has given us everything we need to live the life that He's called us to. But friends, brothers and sisters, for many of us, that power that's available to us lies dormant. We don't realize it's ours. We don't lean into it. We don't ask for it. We try to do this on our own. The power that you need, the power that I need to say no to temptation, to say no to the old life, to say yes to Jesus, to continue to follow him in the midst of a twisted and corrupt generation, the power that we need is ours. It's in the warehouse. it's yours. it's mine. And I can't think of anything more tragic than for a Christian to not know that and lean into that power. I can't think of a word other than tragedy for a Christian who doesn't recognize that the power you need to know God and to grow in knowing Him is available to you. Ask. Ask Him. When was the last time you started your day asking to know Him, to live for Him? God, I need the power to live for you because I don't possess that power in myself. When was the last time you asked Him? When was the last time you asked? When was the last time you asked for somebody else like Paul? And so my prayer today is that, as I've been asking this week in preparation for this message, I ask now in front of you that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, will give you, will give me the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that we may know him better. And I keep praying that our eyes would be enlightened so that we would know the hope of our calling, that we would know the glorious inheritance that is ours, and that we would know the incomparably great power for us who believe. I pray. Really, our prayer is that we would all keep growing in knowing him. Let's bow together for a word of prayer. With your heads bowed in your eyes closed, if you're here today and you don't know God personally through Jesus, then our text has something to say to you as well, because I pray that the eyes of your heart would be enlightened for the very first time that you would see Jesus for who he is. And if you're here and you need to begin a relationship with Jesus, turning from your sin and turning to Him, I'm inviting our prayer team to come down to the front of this room right now, and they'll be in place after our service concludes for you to just come up and say, "I need Jesus." You see, you may know about Jesus, but this invitation is for you to know Him. And there's a world of difference between just knowing about somebody and actually meeting them, knowing them, living in relationship. And that's what's available to you today. So when we dismiss in just a second, I wanna invite you to come down front. Just say to one of the prayer partners here, "I need Jesus." They'll take it from there. And Father, for all of us, I pray that you would draw us close to your side. Thank you for this church that so readily embraces an opportunity to do some inventory of ourselves, and that is willing and ready to ask some tough questions about ourselves and our collective here. I thank you for that God. And I pray that you would overwhelm any deception that the enemy wants to bring our way, that where there's a gap between where we are and where we know we ought to be, that the enemy wouldn't have opportunity to discourage us with the size of that gap, but that his voice would be silenced, and that the spirit of wisdom and revelation would draw us in and help us close that gap, that we would be cooperative with your spirit, participating in what you want to form in us through your Son, Jesus. And that we would do all of this not for our credit, but for your glory. Because everything we have is from you. You've given us the power to even take a step of faith and follow you. And I pray that we would lean into that power daily. This same power that rose Jesus from the dead now at work in us who believe. Thank you, God, for your grace to us. Thank you for your word. And I'm so thankful for this body of believers, brothers, and sisters, and friends. We pray all of this in Christ's name. Amen. Amen.