A Prayer That You Would Know

When I wrote to you at Ephesus, I had just finished pouring out blessing to God for all he lavished on us in Christ. Now I turn to prayer — for you. "I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers" (Ephesians 1:16). Hear that: your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward the saints reached me even in my chains, and they made me thank God. So let me tell you what I actually ask for you, that you might ask it for yourselves.

I do not pray first that your circumstances would ease. I pray "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, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened" (Ephesians 1:17-18). Do you see the strange thing? I pray that you would know what you already have. The riches are yours in Christ, but riches unseen are riches unenjoyed — a man may starve at a full table in the dark. So I ask God to bring up the light in the room of your heart, that you would see three things.

See "the hope to which he has called you" — a settled future no grave can cancel. See "the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints" (Ephesians 1:18) — and marvel that God counts you, the people he has bought, as his own treasure. And see "the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe" (Ephesians 1:19). How great is that power? Look where it has already been spent: God "worked it in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 1:20). The same power that broke open the tomb and lifted Jesus to the throne is the power now turned toward you. Not a smaller measure. That one.

And where is Christ now? "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" (Ephesians 1:21). Whatever you fear today — the illness, the debt, the habit, the death that stalks everyone you love — it has a name, and Christ is above it. "He put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all" (Ephesians 1:22-23). Consider what he did with all that authority: he gave himself, the exalted Head, to you — his body — as your very own.

So this is my prayer for you today, and my charge: do not merely believe these things are true somewhere. Ask God to let you see them here, in the cold morning, in the ordinary work, in the chain you cannot yet break. You are not poor. You are not powerless. You belong to the One who fills all in all. Grace and peace to you.