Always More – Ephesians 1:15-17 (NIV)

Always More – Ephesians 1:15-17 (NIV)

15 For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, 16 I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. 17 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.

Oooo, sometimes it’s hard to stop – I read ahead the next several verses because I couldn’t resist. Too good. So exciting! I can’t tell you how awesome I love the fact that this excites me. It reminds me over and over again how REAL God is.

There’s no other way reading a book about old, dead Christians writing a letter to other old, dead Christians could be exciting to me other than an all-everything God! Too true. Too great!

Where was I? Ah yes. These verses are leading up to some greatness but I don’t want to bypass these… Ooo, we just had a big gust of wind blow a bunch of leaves down. I’ll resist making this all about seasons and such. LOL

Ok, "for this reason" What reason? Chosen, predestined, His will, you also, believed, marked, seal, Holy Spirit, to the praise of His glory. For that reason, Paul has not stopped giving thanks to God and praying for the Ephesians.

Interesting, what kind of prayers are the prayers of Paul? More Spirit. In addition to the seal, pledge, guarantee, Paul asks for the spirit of "wisdom and revelation." Reminds me of Solomon’s prayer: wisdom.

Why? "So that you may know Him better." End verse. Now given everything we’ve seen just so far you should know Paul doesn’t make a point and move on. He continues with a lot of "so that" and "for this reason" and "in order that" and it’s coming. That’s why the next verses are so exciting to me. He fleshes out this "know Him better" idea. But it’s a real chunk. So… I want to stop here.

I want to stop to take a second and recognize, before getting into the details, that the core of Paul’s prayer is for them to know God better through His Spirit. I don’t want that lost in the details of the implications.

The prayer is to know Him better. That should be our prayer. It’s my prayer. To see Him more often and more clearly. To understand His character. To trust Him more and more. To realize what happens is allowed by Him and also redeemed by Him. That’s the prayer. To know Him more and more and more over the years.

Because knowing Him more is always better. Knowing Him more means knowing good more. It means knowing love more. It means loving Him more. It means being more like Him. So we pray to know Him more.

How much more? More. Ok, I know Him more. Even more. Wow, I know and love Him so much more. Much more! He’s close to me and everything to me! MORE! ALWAYS MORE!!!