Prayer 2021 1
pastoral prayers 2021: knowledge
(ephesians 1.15-23)
Jason Procopio
Welcome to 2021! I almost hesitated to bring up the fact that 2020 is finally over, because it feels like it’s already a cliché—I’m going to be one of the thousands of pastors around the world saying the exact same thing on this first Sunday of the new year: talking about how 2020 has been such a difficult year for all of us as individuals and for all of us as a church, and so on. But it needs to be said, because we can’t divorce ourselves from our context and act as if everything is as it was—it’s not.
This has been a difficult year. It has brought all of our churches face-to-face with a lot of challenges no church has ever faced in quite this way before. Just one example: for years I have resisted doing a livestream of our services. We refused to go down that road because we knew full well that if we did that, people would find it easier and easier to skip coming to service and just watch online. And we are and have always been convinced that watching the service online is not the same as being here, physically present with the body of believers. If the only exposure you’re getting to the body of Christ is through your computer screen, watching other people worship from far away, that’s not church. That’s not how we are called to interact with the life of the church.
And then the confinement hit. And the confinement hit for a good reason: I have never understood Christians who were angry at the government for enforcing a confinement on us. Given the challenge before them and the priorities of taking care of public safety, I completely understood that decision. But it presented us with a challenge: how do we—people who are firmly against the principle of “online church”—maintain the life of the church when we really and truly have no other possibility but to do church online? Especially when we don’t have our own building, and the space we rent for our services is closed to us, what do we do? How do we live as the body of Christ when the members of that body are spread out, physically isolated from each other?
This past year, in large part thanks to technology we didn’t have just a few years ago, we have at least begun to find temporary solutions to that problem. We have seen prayer meetings multiplied, to care for one another and pray for the church and our country during the week. We have seen more people reading the Bible with one another, because Zoom makes it a lot easier to speak face-to-face (even if it takes some getting used to). I have had more pastoral meetings in the last four months than I usually have in a normal year—again, because Zoom made access to one another much easier.
I am grateful for the way most of us have reacted to these challenges. We’ve discovered that even though it’s much more difficult, and it’s not ideal, it is possible to continue living the life of the church in this strange context. We’re hoping that this year things continue to get better, and that we can all get back together—adults, kids and babies—under one roof, to worship together at the same time. It’s not a sure thing that this will happen right away, but we’re praying it happens sooner rather than later.
But here’s the thing: even if that happens, the fundamental problems of the life of the church will not be resolved. The deepest problems the church is facing today are not logistical or technological in nature. People have been so distracted by our immediate problems—like not being able to meet in our common space—that we have begun to forget that the real challenges facing the church are the same problems the church has always faced, since the very beginning.
I felt this with particular force during the three weeks I took off from preaching last month. I spent a lot of time speaking with people and thinking and praying about not just where the church is today, but what challenges we as a church have faced over the whole of our six and a half years, since we planted the church in September 2014.
During those three weeks, I spent a lot of time thinking about you all. I know most of you in some capacity—many of you, I know very well; others, I know less well. And that’s okay. In a church our size the pastor can’t be expected to know everyone well. But whether I know you well or not, I spent nearly all of my time thinking about you. And I came away from that time with a couple of key conclusions.
Firstly—and this was both a little surprising and really encouraging for me—I realized that I genuinely and truly love you all. It surprised me, not because of you, but because of me: I’m not a person who loves easily, so I can see God’s work in my own heart when I realize that my love for you is absolutely genuine. Whether I know you well or not, I felt the weight of your presence in this church, and the fact that for whatever reason, God has placed you under my care for the moment. And I am very glad he has.
And secondly, because I love you, there are many things I want for you in the future. I’ve been able to put a finger on some very specific desires I have for all of you—desires of what I want to see God do in you and for you and through you. A large portion of my time during these three weeks was given to thinking about how we can help provide you with some of these things.
During that time, several times I found myself returning to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians—particularly to two specific passages, in which Paul prays for the Ephesians.
They caught me off guard every time, because those prayers informed and echoed my own desires for you. So as we begin this new year, I thought we could begin with two weeks which will be intensely personal for me: two weeks in Paul’s prayers for the Ephesian church. It is personal because these are the prayers I prayed for you most often during my time away; and it is especially appropriate because they will also serve to introduce the universal week of prayer, beginning next Sunday (December 10th).
So that was a very long introduction to explain why we’re doing what we’ll be doing for the next two weeks. With all that being said, please go with me to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, to chapter 1, verses 15 to 23.
15 For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might 20 that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. 22 And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
Let’s start at the end. Paul prays a certain number of things for the Ephesians (which we’ll see in a moment), and he makes it really clear that he has absolutely no doubt that God will answer his prayer. We can see his confidence in v. 19-23, where he tells the Ephesians what God is going to put behind his answer.
Power (v. 19-23)
He prays that God would bless the Ephesians (the end of v. 19),
according to the working of his great might.
This week we watched The Prince of Egypt with our kids for the first time in a while. And as always, what most impressed everyone is that scene at the end when Moses thrusts his staff into the Red Sea and in a massive gust, the waters rush away and part, and form two huge walls on either side. It’s an awesome (and surprisingly accurate) depiction of what actually happened at the Red Sea, which we see in Exodus chapter 14.
This is what Paul’s talking about when he talks about the working of God’s great might. It is the power to rule over all elements—natural and spiritual—to do what he wants to do.
And Paul gives specific examples of God’s might at work in recent history. Through God’s might, Christ was raised from the dead. Through God’s might, Christ was glorified; he ascended into heaven, and was seated at the right hand of God. Through God’s might, Christ was given all rule and authority and power and dominion—the authority of God himself to rule over absolutely everything in existence. And through God’s might, Christ was established as the head of the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
God’s work in Jesus Christ was, and still is, the most incredible flex in history—God made man, living a life as a simple carpenter, becoming an itinerant minister, being accused of blasphemy and crucified in God’s city…and then being shown to be the Ruler of all rulers, the Power of all other powers, Lord and God over all things.
Paul brings all this up because he knows that this is the incredible strength God will put to work to answer this very specific, very personal prayer. It’s almost too much—like using a nuclear power plant to light up a single light bulb. His point is that these things he is praying are certain to be answered positively by God because he is putting all of his power and might to work to do it.
And that is very good news for me as a pastor, because it fills me with the same confidence: that when I ask God to do this same work in you, I can be 100% positive that he will do it. You aren’t less important to God than the Ephesians were; you aren’t less legitimate children of God than the Ephesians were. God loves you as much as he loved them; he wants the same things for you as he wanted for them. What a blessing for a pastor, to know that God loves you so much that when I ask him to do these things for you, he will certainly do it.
So with the weight of that confidence behind Paul’s prayer, what does he pray for the Ephesians? What do I pray for you?
Gratitude (v. 15-16)
Firstly, I simply express my gratitude. V. 15 again:
15 For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers...
I know it can seem like a stretch to say that whatever Paul prayed in this text, I can pray for you, but it’s not. When he says “for this reason” at the beginning of v. 15, he means, because of everything he just said.
What did he say in the previous verses (v. 3-14)? He simply laid out the gospel. He talked about what God did in Christ Jesus to elect us, to adopt us, to save us from our sins, to bring us to new life, to make us like Christ, to reveal himself to us and to give us his Spirit. Everything he said in v. 3-14 is also true of every one of you who has faith in Christ, because this is how God saves people.
So the obvious response to all of that—to everything God has done for you, for the faith he has given you and for the love for one another he has produced in you—the only appropriate response is gratitude.
I feel this gratitude acutely, because I have seen God do this in you—in Eglise Connexion—over the last six years. I have seen him take some of you who didn’t know him, and cause you to be born again. I have seen him save you. I’ve seen him save you even when you weren’t particularly looking to be saved.
I’ve seen him take those of you who were already Christians before coming to us, and deepen your faith and your knowledge in him. I’ve seen you grow in holiness, in your love for one another and your patience with one another (not least of all, I’ve seen you grow in your love and patience with me!).
One of the things I love about my job is that as a pastor, I am often uniquely positioned to hear your testimonies—to hear the stories you tell of how God is changing you and causing you to grow. I am so thankful for what he has done in you all over the last six years. And seeing his work in you in the past gives me confidence that he will keep working in you in the future. Which is why at the end of v. 16, Paul continues by saying that he remembers the Ephesians in his prayers.
So what does he pray?
Enlightened eyes (v. 17-18)
Firstly, he prays for enlightened eyes. V. 17:
...17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened...
So this is the first basic work God does in us when he saves us: he opens the eyes of our heart. This “heart seeing” is difficult for us to wrap our minds around, because it’s not something you can easily analyze or measure—it is something that happens not just in our minds, on the level of our intellect, but also on the deeper level of conviction and instinct. It’s like what happens when you listen to a magnificent piece of classical music, like Vivaldi’s Concerto n° 4 in F minor, from the Four Seasons: you can analyze it if you try, you can know the theory and the technique behind it, but when a piece of music is truly masterful, you feel it in your guts.
God knows full well—because he made us—that the most effective way to push us toward a certain response is not only through our heads, but through our hearts. We choose to act not when we think we ought to do something, but when we want to do it.
So he doesn’t settle for one type of knowledge or the other; he doesn’t choose between heart-knowledge and head-knowledge. He reveals himself to us through his Holy Spirit, by opening our minds to see the gospel as truth and not folly, and by opening our hearts to believe and desire it: he opens the eyes of our hearts.
And this is what Paul prays for: he prays for this kind of knowledge—knowledge that doesn’t just reach our minds, but which stirs our affections, which moves our hearts and souls and gives us a full and deep conviction of these things.
But what are “these things”? What is the content of this knowledge? It’s very specific.
Hope (v. 18)
He prays in v. 18:
18 ...having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you...
This may be the single greatest burden I feel for you as your pastor: that you may know the hope to which God has called you, not just in your minds but in your hearts. That is why this prayer is so essential to me personally.
Because I know for a fact that much of the pain we feel in this world is heightened because we are unable to look up from our circumstances and keep our eyes fixed on the hope of the grace we will receive for all eternity.
Paul doesn’t give a lot of explanation of this future hope in this passage, because he doesn’t need to: if we just keep reading (as we should do), we would hear him explain it to us in very simple and very clear terms. Look just a little further down the page, to chapter 2, v. 4-7:
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that [and this is the key verse] in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Our hope is that for all eternity, God will continue to show us the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness. What does kindness from God look like? We have abundant examples all over the Bible. God’s kindness means rescue from danger; it means protection from harm; it means healing from sickness; it means the absence of everything which caused us pain—no more sickness, no more violence, no more poverty, no more death; it means a clear and unfiltered vision of his glory. And so much more—we could list God’s possible graces to us for all time and never get to the bottom of the list.
And our “hope” in this future grace is not what we usually think of as “hope” (as in, I hope the vaccine puts an end to Covid). This hope is a certainty, because it has already been secured for us. In a very real sense, Paul says, we have already been raised with Christ and already seated with him in heaven—our seats have been saved, our places at his table are assured.
We could talk for hours about what this hope in future grace changes for us on a practical level; let me just mention one thing. I have spent more time in pastoral counseling this year than in all of the previous years of the church combined. This has been an incredibly difficult year for many of you, for a lot of reasons which had nothing to do with Covid. Many of you suffered the pain of sin in your own lives; suffered the consequences of other people’s sins; suffered from illness and loss and anger, both just and unjust. Many of you actually suffered because you are Christians. And in that respect at least, this year is not unusual. The Bible tells us to expect suffering—both in general, and particularly because of our faith.
And I honestly don’t know how you’re going to meet that suffering head-on and honor God in it if your hope isn’t firmly anchored in what is to come after the suffering. The two greatest assurances we have in our suffering as Christians is—firstly—that none of our suffering is wasted in God’s hand, that he uses every pain and every loss for our good (Romans 8.28); and secondly, that whatever we are suffering is infinitely smaller than the glory that is waiting for us (Romans 8.18).
As Christians, we will struggle, and we will suffer; and we will not be able to stand under the weight of that struggle if we don’t know—firmly and intimately—the hope to which he has called us. So this is what I pray for you, every day: that you may know the hope to which he has called you. That every pastoral counseling session might end in an affirmation of the hope you have in Christ, might anchor you more firmly in what is waiting for you, not just in what you see right here and now.
inheritance (v. 18)
That’s the first thing. The second thing Paul prays is that his readers would know (v. 18c):
...what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints...
Now it would be easy to imagine that in this phrase, Paul is simply repeating what he had just said before, but in a different way. What is our hope, if not our inheritance? Paul mentioned our inheritance in the previous section of verses—he said in v. 11 that
11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will...
So our promised inheritance is an absolutely wonderful truth and promise for us. This inheritance is what we will receive from God because we are in Christ. In a very real way, being in Christ is like a marriage—this is why the church is called “the bride of Christ” on multiple occasions in the New Testament. When a husband marries his wife (not taking into account things like prenuptual agreements), everything that belongs to him, he now shares with his wife.
When we are in Christ, we receive the promise that everything Christ has, he will share with us. Eternal life and eternal health and eternal happiness in his presence; the reign of the kingdom of God with him, in the new heavens and the new earth… Everything Christ received for having conquered death and taken his place at the right hand of God, he shares with us. This is the inheritance we have been promised, and in v. 14 Paul says we have been given the Holy Spirit as a “seal”, or a down-payment, of this inheritance.
So these things are wonderfully true. But they are not what Paul is talking about at the end of v. 18.
Pay close attention to the words he uses. Whereas in v. 11 and 14, he very clearly speaks of our inheritance in Christ, in v. 18, he prays that we might know what are the riches of HIS glorious inheritance. Not our inheritance, but his—God’s.
This makes total sense if we think about it. How strange would it be if we received an inheritance in heaven, but God himself didn’t? He’s the one who did all the work. He’s the one who bought us, who saved us, who kept us, who transformed us. He’s the one who executed his plan of salvation, from beginning to end. It wouldn’t exactly be equitable for God to receive nothing, while we receive everything.
So if our inheritance is everything which Christ obtained through his life, death and resurrection, which he shares with us, what is God’s inheritance? Paul says it right there in the verse, praying that the Ephesians might know what are the riches of his glorious inheritance—where?—IN THE SAINTS.
This is one of the hardest truths to accept and to believe: WE—the saints, the people of God—are God’s inheritance.
This is not a new concept in the Bible. In the Law of Moses God said that this was his intention—in Deuteronomy 4.20 he told the people of Israel,
But the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his own inheritance, as you are this day.
Nothing changed between then and now. God always intended his inheritance—his great joy and reward for his work—to be his own people. He gives us everything, and in return, he gets…us. His people. His church, made perfect, freed from sin, seeing his glory and enjoying his glory forever.
And the reason why Paul prays this for the Ephesians, and I pray this for you, is because it is so incredibly hard to accept. If we are God’s inheritance, it seems an awful lot like he’s getting the short end of the stick here, doesn’t it? He goes through all of this pain and effort and toil…to get us? Like, has he seen us? Does he realize how small we are? How imperfect? How difficult? How inconsequential?
One of my heaviest burdens for you as your pastor is the knowledge that many of you think far less of yourselves than God does.
Now, I’m not talking about positive thinking, simply trying to bolster everyone’s self esteem by saying, “No in fact, EVERYONE is awesome!” The Bible has a much more realistic view of who and what we are. It says that in ourselves, under our own power, because of our sin, we have become futile in our own thinking; our foolish hearts are darkened; claiming to be wise, we are in fact fools; we exchange the glory of God for images of beasts (Romans 1.21-23). Under our own power, we are in fact dead (Ephesians 2.1). So I’m not saying those things aren’t true; they absolutely are.
What I’m saying—and what is amazing—is that even though all of these things are true about us, God loved us ANYWAY. He loved us when there was nothing inherently lovable about us. He loved us so much that he sent his Son, that whoever believes in him might not perish, but have eternal life (John 3.16). And through his love, he has taken the futile, unlovable things that we are, and made us new. Made us alive. Made us HIS.
But I know a lot of you don’t really believe that God sees you like that. In your head, sure, you believe it; but in your heart…not so much. A lot of you feel that God tolerates you, but that he doesn’t really like you. So I pray, along with Paul, that you might know the riches of God’s inheritance in you. We—God’s people—we are not a poor inheritance. God is not getting short-changed in us. The prayer is that we might know the RICHES of his inheritance—that it is a beautiful thing for God to receive his redeemed and holy people; and that we might realize the depth of his affections toward us—no matter how we might feel about ourselves today.
God doesn’t love you because you’re good. He doesn’t love you because you’re talented, or moral, or efficient; he doesn’t love you because of anything good you could give to him (everything good in you came from him anyway!). He loves you because you are HIS. For you other parents out there, you understand—I love my own children way more than I love yours. It’s not that your kids aren’t great; I know they are. But they’re not my kids. I don’t love my children because of anything particularly exceptional in them; I find my children exceptional, and I delight in them, because they’re mine.
Brothers and sisters, we are his. And God delights in us because we are his. He loves us because we are his. We are what God will enjoy forever—us, the bride of Christ, made forever pure and holy, the product of his grace, the result of his great mission, seeing and enjoying his glory. And I desperately pray that you would believe that.
Power, again (v. 19-23)
Lastly—I pray with Paul that you might know (v. 19)
what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe...
Here we come full circle, and return to where we started. I can tell you guys that God intends all of these things for his people. But you won’t really believe it—won’t really rest in it—unless you understand that God puts to work all of his infinite power to bring these things about. That the greatness of his power toward us who believe, the greatness of his power put to work for us, is immeasurable.
I pray this because I know how cynical we tend to be. We look at the situation around us—the problems of our own sin, or of the world we live in, or of the obstacles other people have thrown in the way of our progress. We look at all of the roadblocks, and we simply don’t have enough imagination to believe that God will ever get us over those things. We can’t see past the tunnel to the light at the end. And so we despair. We sink into depression. We give in to our cynicism.
This is normal—the psalms are filled with examples of people feeling these same things, expressing these same doubts—but even if it is normal, it isn’t right that we should feel this way. Because the power God puts to work in us and for us is immeasurable. It is the power he put to work in the life, death and resurrection of Christ; the power which Christ himself now wields as ruler of all things, as head of the church. It is the power that God has always had, and which assures that he will fulfill his mission. He will accomplish his plan.
So I pray that you would believe it. That you would feel the incredible assurance of God’s power to bring you where he wants you to be. That you would know the depth of his delight for you, because you are his children, and we are his people. That you would know that what is waiting for you is far greater than what is burdening you today. That you would know your God.
