{"id":391,"date":"2014-09-29T16:02:14","date_gmt":"2014-09-29T20:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dsoemarko.us\/christian\/?p=391"},"modified":"2015-05-06T16:36:15","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T21:36:15","slug":"a-prayer-open-our-eyes-lord","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dsoemarko.us\/christian\/?p=391","title":{"rendered":"A Prayer: Open Our Eyes, Lord!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scripture: Ephesians 1:15-23<\/p>\n

\"PrayingHands_200\"<\/a>For a church or churches that he has personally taught for over 3 years,1<\/a><\/sup> for the saints who he knows have received every spiritual blessing from God, for the believers for whom he thanks God unceasingly for their faith in the Lord and their love toward others, the apostle Paul offers this prayer to God: that the Holy Spirit2<\/a><\/sup> may give them wisdom and illumination and that the eyes of their hearts may be opened in order that they may know God even more\/deeper<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Oh, how we need the same prayer, or even more!<\/p>\n

Pray<\/h3>\n

If it is the Holy Spirit who gives us the wisdom and illumination3<\/a><\/sup> needed in truly understanding and experiencing God, then we need to ask God for His help. Paul describes the spiritual blessings and some details on what he means by knowing God, so he expects believers to know about God with their mind and intellect, but for truly knowing Him by heart, he offers his prayers<\/span>. We need the same help from the Holy Spirit. Let us pray for for such an understanding.<\/p>\n

Note also that he is not praying just for new believers lacking in information about God. The church(es) he is praying for is at least 10 years old and have been taught by himself. His prayer is for a deeper understanding beyond head knowledge. From the descriptions which follow, we know it is not some kind of mysterious or mystical knowledge either. Rather, it is a true understanding and experience of God’s spiritual blessing<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Study God’s Word<\/h3>\n

One extreme is that we try to study everything with our own intellect but forget to rely on God. The other side of the extreme is the thought that knowing God can be attained through just prayers and special illumination of the Holy Spirit and that we do not need to study God’s word. If prayer is all that is needed, we would probably have just a word of prayer from Paul without the rest of the Epistle to the Ephesians<\/em>. We might not even have any of the letters in the Bible as Paul or other apostles could have written to different churches and simply ask them to pray and wait for the illumination from the Holy Spirit!<\/p>\n

The facts that the Bible is full of teaching, encouragement, explanation, illustrations of how we should live our lives, correction, and even rebukes, tell us that God expects us to reasonably understand His words in order to live a life that is pleasing to Him<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Outline (again)<\/h3>\n

Ephesians 1:15-23 is a long sentence or prayer which can be outlined as shown below:<\/p>\n

I have not stopped praying for you:<\/p>\n