[Steve Myers] The apostle Paul prayed for something very interesting for the Ephesian church. You ever noticed Ephesians 1:17? He says this as he prayed for God’s people. He prayed that “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.” So why did Paul pray that they would have a spirit of wisdom and a spirit of revelation? Well, as we think about that, think about this concept of wisdom.

Paul uses an interesting Greek word when he speaks of this “spirit of wisdom”. It’s a spirit that deals with something that’s not normal – not the normal human way of thinking. That’s not the kind of wisdom that Paul is talking about here. He used the Greek word “sophias” which is an insight and a wisdom that isn’t natural. It’s not our natural way of thinking. And so this was an interesting word for Paul to use when he talks about the spirit of wisdom. That’s something that God has to give. We don’t have it naturally. So not just having knowledge, not just having understanding, but recognizing that it’s something that God can give us so that we’ll know how to approach a situation, so we’ll know how to deal with other people. And so Paul told them that he wished God would give them that spirit of wisdom. In fact, the proverbs talk about this. Proverbs 2:6 talks about the wisdom that God gives. And so that’s certainly something that we need to pray for, to ask God to give us that kind of insight and direction.

Of course, he doesn’t stop there. He also talks about revelation, the spirit of revelation. The word that he uses here in the Greek is “apokaluptos” – “apokaluptos”, almost sounds like the apocalypse. And yet it is kind of related, because it’s a revelation. It’s something that has to be revealed. In other words, this was something that was hidden, that was veiled, but when we pray and ask God, it can become clear. It can become visible. It’s something that we can then see with our mind’s eye.

And so, when we put that into the context of Ephesians 1:17, Paul says we can pray and ask God to give us insight, to give us that wisdom that we need right now at this moment of our life. We can pray and ask God for that very thing – that our eyes could be opened to something that we might not normally see. But with God’s insight, with God’s direction and the wisdom that He can give, we can see exactly what we need to know. And then of course with the spirit of revelation, we can also pray and ask God to reveal His word and His way more completely to us. We can ask Him to guide us, to enable us to be able to see those things that we need to see, those things that God wants us to see. And maybe ask Him for those answers in our life that we just can’t come to on our own. And so no wonder Paul prayed for the spirit of wisdom and the spirit of revelation.

Let’s ask God to do that very thing in our lives, to give us that spirit of wisdom and that spirit of revelation, so that we may more fully follow Him.

That’s BT Daily. We’ll see you next time.