Morning.
I’d also like to read a few scriptures before we pray.
In Luke 11:1:
It happened that while Jesus was praying in a certain place, after He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John also taught his disciples.”
And then in Matthew 6:9:
Pray, then, in this way:
Our Father who is in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.
And then in Acts 1:12, right after the Lord had ascended into heaven:
Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away. And when they had entered the city, they went up to the upper room where they were staying; that is, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas the son of James.
These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer, along with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers.
And then Ephesians 6:18:
With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints.
And pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.
But that you also may know about my circumstances, how I am doing, Tychicus, the beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, will make everything known to you. I have sent him to you for this very purpose, so that you may know about us, and that he may comfort your hearts.
Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with incorruptible love.
That’s right.
Our Father, we come today because You have opened heaven to us. There is no other reason that we can come, but You have opened it up to us. Lord, we want to honor You in coming into Your presence. Thank You for making this way.
Lord, for the purpose of opening heaven, we want that to be taken up today. We want what You want for this time to be revealed, to be spoken, to be heard, and to be responded to. Lord, other than that, there is nothing else that we want.
So, Father, we ask that You will be present in Your Word today. Speak to us, and then enable us. Thank You, Lord, that our salvation is all You. You are our salvation, and we give You our thanks and praise in Jesus’ name. Amen.
You know, I do not know why I brought two Bibles up here. Must be a reason.
This morning I want to finish up the letter to the Ephesians. I know it has been a long time, and I am not going to give a whole review of what we have covered, because we have covered it. But I do want to stop for this last section. I could have stopped last week, but I thought this section was just an important thing.
Last time we talked about the armor of God that we were to put on. Today we are looking at the last section, from Ephesians 6:18 to the end, where it talks about praying.
I am not going to tell you how to pray, right? That is not what Paul did either. He did not give an exegesis on how to pray. All he said was, “Pray in the Spirit; be alert when you pray.” So I am not going to do that.
But I do want to recall one thing from last week. When you come to verse 18 in Ephesians and it starts talking about prayer, Paul does not attribute it to being part of the armor of God. He does not say, “Well, this is the sword scabbard,” or, “This is the cape,” or whatever.
Prayer is not any part of the armor of God, but it is part of the soldier. This morning, in ending this, that is what I want to look at. We want to see what God is most concerned with. He is concerned with the soldier. He is concerned with the one who wears the armor.
He has given that one everything that he needs. It is not just the armor, but all power behind it. As we have gone through Ephesians, we have seen everything that we have in Christ and everything that has been given to this man.
What is it that God is after? Because Ephesians is, yes, a high message. It has things that we look into in the heavenlies that we see in no other book. Yet we see who it is spoken to.
It is not spoken to an elite. It is not spoken to those who would be in government, or those who would teach everybody. It is spoken to children. It is written to slaves, as well as husbands and wives. As Paul said in Corinthians, not many noble were called.
That is true, because what ennobles us is not who we are when we are called, but the One who calls us—who calls us into this army.
I grew up in the Vietnam era, and what a change it was to see some guys I knew in high school—such flunky dudes, you know—when they got drafted or joined the army. All of a sudden, they changed. They were very different. In some way, they were ennobled. They just were not the same people anymore.
It is the same for us. It is the calling that ennobles us. It is being brought into that place of service to God that ennobles us.
What is the really ennobling thing? It is prayer.
Like I said, I am not going to tell you how to pray, but I want to look at what I think God is after. Prayer is not merely an attitude of life. We can say, “Yeah, well, you have a prayerful attitude,” but it is not just that.
It is not just something we do instead of something we used to do. We have not been called away from one type of life to live another type of life.
In other words, I replace—now, I want you to know that I did not do this, but just for the sake of illustration—I replace doing drugs and having illicit sex and all those types of things. I replace that and say, “Well, I am no longer going to live that way. I am now going to read the Bible and pray.”
We have not been called to switch lifestyles, you know. We have been called to another life, and this life is a life of prayer.
Now, what does that mean? Do I mean that all the time we are praying? Does it mean that all we do is go to prayer meetings? No, it does not. But it does mean something, and that is what we want to look into today. What does it mean to pray at all times? What is the Lord after?
Looking at praying, Paul starts out in verse 18. What is that? I read the Lord’s Prayer for a purpose. First of all, the disciples came to Him—and actually it says one of His disciples, and it does not even tell us who. I guess it was not Peter. I guess it was not John. Maybe it was Bartholomew. Maybe it was Thomas. We do not know.
But one of them came and said, “Teach us to pray.” They wanted to know how to pray because, as they lived with the Lord Jesus, they knew something about the way He prayed had to do with the things He did and the things He spoke. They had to come out of that prayer life He had. So they said, “We want to know the secret. What is it?”
I am not going to give a big commentary on the Lord’s Prayer. I was raised Catholic and said it every night, as fast as I could. You know, how fast can you say it and be done without even listening to it?
But the first thing He says about prayer, and about the life and the person, is this: when you pray, say, “Father.” All I am saying is that there is a relationship there.
This relationship brings us to the point where He says, “Hallowed be Your name.” God wants to be hallowed—not by our singing a song or merely offering up a petition, but through a relationship.
When Israel was brought out of Egypt and brought to Mount Sinai, God brought them there so He could talk to them and give them what He wanted of them. What He wanted was to be hallowed in their lives.
He said, “I have a promise for you. I have a promised land. I want you to go there. But to be in that land, I have to be hallowed in your life.”
What does “hallowed” mean? We can say, for example, “I hallow my wife.” It means to sanctify. Of all the women in this room, I have separated one for myself. Why stop there? Of all the women in Richmond, Virginia, the United States—the world, for that matter—I have hallowed one.
But that is not even what the Lord is after. We can say, “I hallow God.” In other words, “I have chosen God to be my God.” Well, that means you have chosen a god. But to hallow means not just Him, but the relationship with Him—to set apart that relationship with Him above all things.
Sometimes we compartmentalize and say, “I hallow Him. I set Him apart, and He has this place.” But it is not that God wants a place in our life. He wants the place in our life. It is not merely that He alone wants His place; He wants this place with you.
Let me give you an example from real life. I go to garage sales. I do not go to garage sales because I like garage sales. You can ask my wife. I feel like, at a garage sale, you are like a vulture, picking off whatever is left over on the bones.
You get a good deal here and there. I have gotten some pretty good deals. But to me, it is kind of like picking over people’s stuff they do not want and carrying it away.
When we lived in California, my wife was always trying to get me to go to garage sales. I would say, “Nah, I do not want to.” But when we moved here—not because the garage sales are better here—and we got working, especially when Barb started to work, she had some really tough years.
Because we were so busy after moving here, with our kids and school things, garage sales became the only time we had to talk to each other without thinking about lesson plans, dinner, papers to grade, and lessons to plan.
So I started going to garage sales with her because that was the only time we talked together about things that were on our hearts. In that way, I want to say, that was hallowing for both of us. Do not think I am just bragging about myself. It was for her too.
Relationship is a two-way street. She wanted me there, and I had to be drawn into it. It is the same with God. God wants it, and we have to be drawn into it.
But after a few times, she did not have to rouse me out of bed and say, “Hey, do you want to go to a garage sale?” It became natural. “Okay, we are going to garage sales.” We drive around and talk.
That is what the Lord wants. He says, “Praying.” Hallowing. The first part of that is relationship. He wants us to value that relationship so much that we set it apart above all things—that we could miss anything else, but not that.
Some of us hallow our morning time, and that is a good time to start things up. But the Israelites had two times when they made offerings: once in the morning and once in the evening. That is not to say, “I have done my duty. I got my morning time out of the way, got my evening time out of the way, and now I am free.”
It says, “Pray at all times.” In other words, in every place and every situation, you are free to come into this relationship. You do not have to wait until you are by yourself. You do not have to wait until you are in a meeting.
I do not know how many of you pray in your car, have fellowship with the Lord in your car, or have it while you take a walk. You cherish that time. That is what the Lord wants. He wants that relationship.
Yes, you have the armor. You have all these promises. You have all this knowledge. But do you have the relationship? Knowledge will not pull you through anything, but the relationship will.
It is that relationship where you know the love of God is real that will pull you through when times get hard. Yes, the Word will help, but it is the experience—the experience of knowing He is there to meet you every time.
I think it was Stu who led a meeting once and used the verse from Micah:
He hath showed thee, O man, what is good;
And what doth the Lord require of thee,
But to do justly, and to love mercy,
And to walk humbly with thy God?
If you put that on the bottom, then do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly are built upon this foundation: walking with God. That is what God wants.
In this letter, He has shown you everything He has given you so that you will come to Him. That is why David says in Psalm 32, “Do not be as the mule or the horse.” They have to put in the bridle and the bit; otherwise, they will not come near to you. So He comes and says, “This is yours.”
Now secondly, concerning praying, it says, “With all prayer.” I am not going to go into all the forms of prayer, but Paul made two prayers in Ephesians, and I want to look at them.
The first is in Ephesians 1. I am not going to read it except to say this: “Open their eyes.” Part of our prayer life, part of our life with God, is to come and say, “God, I want to see what is mine.”
I do not want just to know about it. You look at Ephesians 1 and see all these wonderful things, and we can say, “Yep, I have read it before.” We have been to so many conferences, and we hear these things all the time. We read books about them.
I think Paul knew his audience. He says, “These things are all yours. Oh God, open their eyes, and let them see. Let them see these things as being theirs.”
That is a big thing about prayer: God wants to show us what He has done for us in Jesus Christ. He wants us to see.
When Israel was brought out of Egypt, God did not take them by the direct route to the promised land. He took them another way. It would have been a two-year journey—a two-year vacation in the desert.
All through that time, He wanted them to see that He was not only the One who kept them from the Red Sea and did away with their enemies, but that He was all that they needed. He was bread from heaven. He was water from a rock. He was healing when they needed it.
He wanted them to see. He wanted them to taste. Even when they came to Kadesh-barnea, they brought back the great grapes of Eshcol, and they got to taste what He had for them.
Brothers and sisters, God wants us to ask that He would show us the things that are ours. So many times, we just think, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I have heard it before.” That is me; I am not talking about you.
“Yeah, that is the fifth message. Did they not speak this last year? My gosh.” When God is trying to whet the appetite, saying, “Do you not want to know more? Do you not want to know more?”
As a teacher, I hate it when kids just read the textbook and give the answer: “Well, that is what the book said.” But you know what I really like? When they come up and say, “You know, I want to know more about this. Where can I look for it?”
When I give assignments, I say, “If you only use your book, you are not going to get any higher than a low B. You want to get an A? You have to look somewhere else.”
Brothers and sisters, please do not take me wrong. A lot of times we look to meetings and conferences for the Lord to show us things, and I am not saying that is wrong. But I think the Lord wants more than that.
I think the Lord wants us to be so touched in the heart that we take it home with us and say, “God, I have got to know. I have got to know for myself.”
We are studying in Luke—I’ve got to hurry, sorry—and in Luke He gives a parable. The disciples could have just listened and said, “Oh, that is good.” But they did not. They waited until everybody left and said, “What does it mean?”
The Lord did not say, “You are kidding me. You do not know what this means? I picked the wrong people.” He said something wonderful: “To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom.”
Brothers and sisters, that is our lot. But if we do not press in, it is just verbiage. It is just verbiage. We have to press in. God wants us to press in.
Remember Abraham, when God was talking to him about Sodom? “I am going to go find out if this is true.” Abraham did not say, “Well, go ahead. Have a good time.” He pressed in on the Lord, and he found the Lord’s character.
That is what the Lord wants. He wants us to press in because He wants to give to us. But He cannot give it if we do not want it. How do we show Him that we want it? By being passive? No. You have to press in.
Another thing is His other prayer. God wants to show us many things, and that is good. But once He shows them to us, He wants us to act. “Be careful how you hear.”
In Luke 8:16-18, He says:
Now no one after lighting a lamp covers it over with a container, or puts it under a bed; but he puts it on a lampstand, so that those who come in may see the light.
For nothing is hidden that will not become evident, nor anything secret that will not be known and come to light.
So take care how you listen; for whoever has, to him more shall be given; and whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has shall be taken away from him.
The Lord is not trying to hide things from us. He wants to put them on a lampstand. But what it means to “have” does not mean, “I have heard this before.” It means that once a person hears, he takes God at His Word and steps out and says, “This is mine.”
Remember, we talked about the shoes last time. Wherever you put your foot is yours. But if you do not put your feet down, what do you have? Nothing—just a teaching.
When you start pressing in on the Lord—“Show me what is mine”—and He says, “Okay, this is yours,” you say, “I take it.” Then He says, “Oh, you will take that? Well, how about this?” “I will take that too.”
But listen to the next part: “Whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has shall be taken away from him.” Some of us have teaching, and we think we have the good of it because we know it. But when the circumstances of life press upon us, we find out that we never really had it in the first place.
Be careful how you hear.
Paul’s second prayer was this: “Strengthen them in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in them by faith.” The first three chapters of Ephesians say, “Look at what I have done for you. Come, look at it. Examine it. Take hold of it.”
The second part of Ephesians is, “Walk.” Now that you see what is yours, walk in it. Take hold of it by walking in it. Paul goes on and gives all those things about walking.
Many Israelites failed to enter into the land. Some failed because they said, “We are grasshoppers. There are giants in that land.” Some of us will not enter in because we think, “Oh, that is for the spiritual people. Those are for the strong Christians.”
But it is for every Christian: slaves, children, women, men, the high and mighty, and the lowly. It is for everyone. No one is left out. No one.
Some of us love the world too much, like Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh: “Let me stay on this side. I am glad to be in the company, but you know what? It is so good over here. I will go to prayer meeting. I will help do this, and I will do some church functions, but let me stay over here.”
God let them. He was happy to let them remain His people. But those who pressed in found, because they found out that that was His will for them.
Do you know what His will is for us? Not merely that we be redeemed. It is finished. Someone spoke about the finished work being in the blood of the cross, but what is even bigger than that is what Paul says in Colossians 1:28: that I may present all men complete in Christ.
That is the finished work. Reconciliation is the beginning of redemption. Redemption is going the whole way. It is the finish.
Do you have that? Remember last time we talked about hope. Have you seen yourself finished? Have you seen yourself in Christ that way, so that when He comes back you do not draw back? Have you seen yourself like that? We need to pray that we do.
We need to see that finished work. We need to see that it is more than just the blood of Jesus—and please, I am not degrading that at all. But that is the beginning of this powerful work, this powerful thing that God has done for us.
The end is that we are completed. That is how powerful His blood is: that we be completed, not just begun, but completed.
We can be like those who came through the Red Sea and wandered in the wilderness. Their clothes never wore out, reminding us that Christ never dissipated. God fed them manna all the time; it came from heaven. But they never tasted the good corn of the land.
They were never circumcised. You know that? You go into Joshua, and it says they circumcised them. In other words, they never had the work of the Holy Spirit working in their lives to transform them. But that is what God has for us.
Do we press in? Praying with all supplication.
This prayer leads to conflict. It is going to bring you into conflict. There is a hymn—I cannot remember it, and I wish I had brought my hymnbook. I want to say it is by Bonar, but I am not sure. Maybe A. B. Simpson.
“Am I a soldier of the cross?” That is it. Are we to think that once we are saved, we are to be carried up to heaven on beds of ease? No, we are brought into conflict.
Once you have stepped out of the realm of the enemy, you are his enemy, and he is out to destroy you. You are brought into conflict.
But you are also brought into a wider scope of things: praying for all saints.
We are so self-centered. We think salvation revolves around us. If I am following God, He is in heaven scurrying around, saying, “Oh my gosh, what am I going to do now?” It is like playing chess: “I lost my queen.”
But Psalm 2 says God laughs. He is God. Yet we are all in the same place together. We are all fighting the same enemy. We all have the same battles.
Have you been freed from your flesh? Do you fight against your flesh daily? Oh, brother and sister, so do I. Do circumstances hem you in? Me too.
We are not only to hold our ground, but to help the person next to us—and the person next to them—hold their ground.
One of the best army movies I have seen is Band of Brothers. You do not see them in a foxhole saying, “You leave me alone. I do not care if the Germans get you, but I am holding my place. Just leave me alone.”
No. When someone gets hit, another guy goes out and gets him. When they see a hole in the line, someone goes there and plugs it up.
There is a great story from the Civil War, the Battle of Antietam. There was a little section called the Sunken Road, and the fighting was very thick there. They said bodies were piled two and three on top of each other, and men were walking on top of those bodies trying to hold the line.
One officer was General John Gordon. He was going up and down the line, encouraging the men as he stood on these dead people. He got shot four times: in the arm, in the leg, and finally right in the face.
He survived, and he wrote that if it had not been for the bullet hole through his cheek, allowing the blood to come out, he would have drowned in his own blood. But he fought the rest of the war. He was the one who received Lee’s sword in surrender at Appomattox. He was with them the whole way.
Brothers and sisters, we think, “Oh, it is so bad for me.” Well, what about your brother and sister? What about the ones in the trenches for you?
I will tell you something: a good way to get off yourself when you are down is to start praying for your brothers and sisters.
In praying, Paul here shares his life. He says, “I want you to know what is going on.” Brothers and sisters, you need a brother or sister that you can talk to, someone who can build you up.
When you are down, that person knows you are not fighting the battle by yourself. “Nobody knows what is going on in my life.” Okay, they should. Your brother and sister should. They are the soldier next to you. They need to know.
In praying, we are brought into conflict as people. But I will say this: because of this conflict, because of this relationship, because of the things that we see, prayer is where we are transformed. Prayer transforms us.
I have a brother here who moved up from San Diego. He came one time, and he has got the lousiest school situation. I thought I had one bad, but this guy has a bad situation.
We would call once in a while, and finally I saw him at a meeting last night. I said, “Well, how is the class?” He looked at me and said, “Well, as bad as ever, but God has changed my heart.”
God has changed my heart. Why? Because he kept going to prayer. It is bigger than himself. God has a purpose in it.
I remember telling you one time that I had the job from Hades. I had all these kids who had been kicked out, and I told you how I blubbered like a baby: “Okay, please get me out of here.”
Thank God, there was a guy who had the morning class for Christians, and we prayed together. He was having the same problem, and he was in the same place.
Isn’t that just like God—to make sure we are not alone, to give us a brother or sister to help us through? We banded together and said, “Lord, we hate this. But if there is something You are doing in this, have Your way.”
That is what it is, isn’t it? That is the prayer God wants: “Have Your way. Your will be done.”
So many times we look at that as a negative because we see the cross and death. Even our Lord, when He looked at the cross, His soul was filled with sorrow because He knew the things He was going to suffer.
But Hebrews says, “For the joy set before Him.” We might look at it and say, “Oh man, I have got to go to the cross. That is terrible.” But have you seen the finished product?
Have you seen the finished product? Can that enable you to go through? When you see the end—what this is going to do—can that give you what you need to go through it? I think it does.
More than that, God is not only in it for us and for the brothers. Pray for all the saints.
I have been talking about us as a fellowship here. Mac and Stella came from Brazil a few months ago, and they are going back. Last time they came, they gave us a testimony. We should be praying for those things—that their faith does not fail and that they are able to go through those things.
We just had two Russian men here. Pray for the saints. Brothers and sisters, if this is truly the last time, then we need to pray for the saints. We need to pray that the saints be strengthened so that they do not fall away and can endure the things that happen.
Who knows what will happen for us? We may be so overworked that we forget our own testimony. It may not be torture or anything like that, but simply being worked down. We need to pray for the saints—for all prayer, for all saints.
All the saints in Richmond. That does not mean only here. It is a whole city.
Getting back a little—just a segue, a parenthesis—in that job, I had some of the squirreliest, weirdest, gang-banging kids in there. We finally separated the classes so the girls came one day and the guys came another, except for some boys whose mothers said they had to be there all the time.
The kids would tell me this and that, and I would always say, “Well, you know, the Bible says.” Pretty soon they were saying, “Oh yeah, the Bible says.”
One spring day, when I had just the guys there, one of the kids asked, “Hey, you are always talking about the Bible. Why do you not tell us about it?”
We met in the shower room of an old high-school adult campus. Nobody came and visited my classroom. No one. So I shut the door and got to share Jesus with them.
God wanted them to know about Himself. Here I was worried: “Oh, my life is so terrible.” God was saying, “Yeah, that is right. But I love these people.”
I remember one boy, Caesar. I called his mom in for a conference because I was having problems with Caesar. She said, “So am I. What are we going to do?” Caesar was there. He was a big guy for an eighth grader, a gang-banging guy.
I said, “You know, I do not know what to do either. Do you want to pray?” His mom said, “Yeah.” Caesar was saying, “I do not want you praying for me. You quit that now.” So we just prayed.
The rest of the year, he was a different kid.
You see, God wants us to pray. What do I mean by that? He wants to be sanctified in our lives in such a way that He can use us in these ways.
Yes, it is good that we have all these truths, but if we are not walking in these truths, what good is it? Not much of anything, is it?
Prayer transforms us. “Give us this day.” Instead of being those who work by the sweat of our brow, we are becoming people who receive the blessings of God. We are transformed.
“Forgive us.” Lamech said, “I will be avenged seventy and seven times.” But we become people who forgive because the mercy of God is worked into our lives.
Eve said, “Hey, you do not need God anymore. You will know what good and evil is.” But it says here, “Lead us.” All of a sudden, we are becoming people who are led.
Do you know what Romans says about people who are led by the Spirit? They are the sons of God. Is that not what Ephesians is all about? Being turned into sons. That is prayer. That is prayer.
He wants us to realize that this is for all the saints. Things do not revolve around ourselves.
Finally, what does God really want of us? Yes, He wants us to know all these things that He has for us, but that is really for us, isn’t it? We are the beneficiaries of that.
But the last verse in Ephesians is a little thing that God wants for Himself:
Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with incorruptible love.
All that means is this. Buddy Holly had a song called “Not Fade Away”: “Love is love and not fade away.” This is the desire of God—what He wants from us. He wants a love that does not fade away.
Now, we know that the people in Ephesus, within a generation—because we read Revelation 2—had left their first love. I am not here to say we need to return to our first love, okay? I am not going to say that.
But I think if you read John, who was probably the apostle to the Ephesians in the end, his last verse in 1 John says, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” Because that is the thing that really draws us away from God.
We say, “Incorruptible love? That is beyond me. I cannot do it.” Okay. With men, it is impossible. But with God, all things are possible.
How do you keep the fire burning? How do you do it? Well, I just do my part. I make sure that I am hallowing that relationship. That is my part, isn’t it?
When the relationship is hallowed, the Lord fans the flames.
In Luke 18:1, Jesus says that men ought always to pray and not faint. You know what happens when you faint? You are unconscious. You are not conscious of what God has for your life. You are not conscious of His presence or His purpose.
When you pray—when you sanctify that relationship—that keeps you from fainting.
What does God want from us out of Ephesians? He has shown us all these things. He has shown the old man what He wants: to walk humbly with Him.
I will close with this. When you look at this and say, “Well, I do not know, Jim. This is just too hard for me,” let us close with this verse in Ephesians 3. Paul ends with his prayer:
Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us,
To Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.
Not just to my generation, not just to older people’s generations, not just to the youth—to all generations, forever and ever.
May it be so. That is what it says: may it be so. Let us pray.
Lord, we could say, “Yeah, I will do all these things,” but knowing ourselves, we must come to You and say, “Lord, first, thank You. Just thank You for all that You have.”
But Lord, we need help to press in. Lord, whether it is our being busy, whether it is just being full of ourselves, or whatever it is, we need help to press in.
Lord, give us this grace, we pray. By Your Holy Spirit, we pray that You will rise up in us and overcome our old man.
Allow us, Lord, to be ones that want not just knowledge, but those that know You. That is eternal life, Lord. That is what You said:
And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
Lord, that is what we want. Lord, all these things are ours. How can we not thank You? How can we not say, “Even this is too much”? We have to thank You.
But Lord, You know we doubt ourselves. Help us in our unbelief. Help us to draw near. Help us to sanctify this relationship that You won for us, that You bought with Your blood for us.
Lord, help us to see the finished work, that we might have hope, that we might have that expectation of knowing this can be done because God has ordained it.
Then let us give ourselves to You for the working out of Your salvation in us, to Your glory—the glory of God forever and ever. Amen.