Welcome And Lighthearted Opener

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Well, good morning, everyone. Welcome to Coppel Bible today. My name is Michael, and I'm not the new pastor, I'm just the newly shaven pastor. I had a mustache. Hey, what are you clapping for? Come on. I had a mustache that was a bit unruly, and my wife was gone for the weekend and she liked it, but I shaved it. So anyway, I didn't ask her for permission. I'm just trying to model transformation. That's all I'm trying to do up here. Well, if you don't know, my name is Michael, one of the pastors. Grateful you're with us. If you're a visitor or guest, really am uh thankful you're here. And know that I wish that I could introduce myself to you. And so after this message, I'll be right out in that lobby and uh hopefully get a chance to connect with you out there.

Mountaintop Truths In Ephesians 1

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Then if you've been here the last few weeks, you know that we've been walking through Ephesians. When I say walking, I mean crawling because Paul doesn't ease into this letter. In fact, Paul climbs Mount Everest in one breath in verses 3 through 14. I mean, it's so beautiful. It's like he pulls back the curtain of eternity and says, Look, do you see who you are in Christ? And in one long, massive run-on sentence, he writes some things that are so true to those who are in Christ. He says, You are chosen in him. He says, You are adopted in the beloved. He says, You are accepted, you are redeemed, you are forgiven, and you are sealed with the Holy Spirit. I mean, these are beautiful truths. And Paul is bringing it. It is one long sentence of

Why Paul Stops To Pray

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worship. But as you get done with verse 14 and into verse 15, Paul stops. He kind of does something out of nowhere. He he stops sharing these beautiful spiritual truths and he prays. And you kind of are caught off guard. You're like, whoa, whoa, this is going really good. You probably need to start another sentence. But this is going really good, Paul. Why would you stop these beautiful truths and all of a sudden start to pray? And I think it's because one, Paul's a very wise man. But I think it's also because he realizes something we often forget. We can know the truth of God's word in our head. And if it never makes its way to our heart, then we're missing the point of it. And so he just told them truth, unbelievable truth about their identity in Christ, things that are now in their head as they know, but maybe it hasn't made its way to their heart. And so Paul, being a good pastor, pauses to pray, and the prayer is simple. It's a prayer for spiritual sight. That the eyes of their heart would open up and they could actually see the God of the one who wrote these truths and be changed by

A Story About Failing Eyesight

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it. Now I think we'd all agree sight is pretty important. When I was in high school, or actually in eighth grade, my sight started getting bad. I had 20-20 vision. I was trying to figure out what's going on. It happened in eighth grade in a football game where I got my first concussion. I was seeing blue out of one eye and green out of the other, and it was like static. I was so out of it, I knew I need to just take myself out of the game, and I walk to the sideline. I sit on the bench, and unbeknownst to me, I was on the opposing team sideline. And so they're coming up, coaches are coming up, players are coming up, and I'm just like thinking they're saying good job, and I'm at high five and all this, and they're going, dude, you're on the wrong side. And I'm like, Yeah, yeah, this is great. We're winning, we're gonna take the win. And then all of a sudden, here comes a gurney, and they put me on it and put me in an ambulance. My parents follow me to the hospital, and I have a concussion. By the time I get to 10th grade, though, I had a few of them. And I know what y'all are thinking, like, ah, now we know it. We know what the problem is with you. We we got there's some screws, some wires missing, screws loose. And that might be true, Lord willing, there's no long-term effects. We'll know in a few decades. But anyway, in 10th grade, it's like halfway through a day, school day, and my eyes would be hurting so bad. And I would try to strain and see the paper in front of me, or the screen, or or or what was on the board, or whatever the teacher had in there, and my eyes would be hurting and they'd get blurry, and it would hurt to close them, but I knew that I needed to close them just to give them a reprieve. But I could feel after a while, literally halfway through the day, it was mainly my right eye more than my left, but I could feel such tension that I could feel literally like a nerve going to the back of my head, give me a migraine. And then I go play football. And so my head's getting bashed around. I was running back, my head just getting bashed around. And I can remember being so prideful and stubborn that after a couple weeks of that, I was like, something's not right. So I go to my parents, of course, go to the doctor and optometrist and all of this. And the doc says, Look, your body actually is trying to heal. We we thought it was healed, but it's not. You need to take a break from sports. And I was like, I'm in 10th grade, I'll be all right. You know, and he's like, No, no, you gotta, you gotta take a break. And I go, okay, well, maybe it won't be that long. And he goes, You also need to go to the optometrist and get uh prescription glasses. I was like, come on. I'm a football guy, right? I'm a sports guy. I I don't need glasses, I'll be all right. And my mom is there, like, no, no, you go wear them. And so guess what? I go to the doctor and I get these glasses and I put them on, and I didn't have anything crazy happen all at once. And I just thought, man, I look like an idiot, and I'm gonna show up to school, and all my friends are gonna make fun of me, and I'm not gonna like this. And so while I'm in the car, uh I had the glasses on. My mom drops me off. I say, hi, mom, see ya. Kink. Put them in the pocket. I walk into school. Now, anybody ever, I mean, maybe it's just me, anybody ever just been like, wow, I am really dumb? Anybody ever thought that? It takes me a while, but I get there eventually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had this moment after about a week and a half of fighting the pain with the solution in my pocket. I was like, I don't care what people say, I've got to just try these glasses out. And so I show up to school one day and I get these glasses, and I'm like, oh my gosh, what are people gonna think about me if I wear these glasses? And so I walk into school and some people made fun of me, but they were kind of my friends, they're just kind of giving me these jabs. And I was like, I don't really care, it's worth it. I get about halfway through the school day, and all of a sudden I notice my eyes don't hurt. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. I get to football practice, and the first time I take them off at football practice, I go out to practice football, and I didn't have a migraine. I had one after practice because that's how football practice goes. But going into practice, I didn't have one. And over time my vision began to get corrected. And now I don't even have to use them. These are actually not them, these are red light

Prayer For Spiritual Vision

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glasses for or blue light glasses for nighttime. But anyway, I needed glasses at this time, and the glasses for me changed everything. Now, here's the deal: it wasn't that I needed new eyes, I needed corrected vision. And there's a difference there, and I believe this is the prayer Paul is gonna pray to all the followers of Jesus. And what we're gonna find out this morning is prayer is the only way to receive better spiritual vision. Prayer is the only way that the eyes of your heart will be open because we're gonna see that God's the one who gives us this great gift of spiritual insight. So as we get into the text, I feel like we should just model Paul's prayer. We should just put it into practice right now. So I'm gonna pray that the Lord will open our eyes up. But here's what I literally don't want to just say that, and you're like, okay, I'll close my eyes and listen to your prayer. I want you to pray it. I don't care if you pray it out loud. Pray it out loud, pray it in your heart, pray it in your mind, whatever it is. But we need to go to the Lord as we're about to open up the truth of his text and ask him to reveal himself to us through it. So would you bow your heads and let's pray. Father of glory, we have heard a lot of sermons in our life. We've read a lot of scripture, we've probably done a lot of devots, we have a lot of truth and information in our mind, your truth, and that's good, but what we need most is spiritual sight to see it and to understand it. And since that only comes from you, Father, we are asking you this morning, would you open up the eyes of our understanding, the eyes of our heart to receive not just the truth on surface level, but to be able to dive deeper into it, to see you clearer from it, and then be changed by it. I'm gonna pray all of this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

Wisdom, Revelation, And Knowing God

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All right, if you got a Bible, and I hope you do, open it up to Ephesians chapter one. We're gonna be in uh verses 15 and 16 to start. I got a little bone to pick with Barketh sitting on the front here. Uh he had 11 verses and three sermons to do it, and I have nine verses in one sermon. So thank you, Barketh, for that. I appreciate uh not letting me get make this two or three. I'm kidding, yours were a little bit more dense. A little bit more dense, it's all good. But we're gonna make it through all of chapter one this morning. So we're starting in Ephesians chapter one, verses 15 and 16 to kick it off. This is what Paul says. Therefore, I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers. Now, Paul starts this with one word. Therefore. Therefore, simply a hinge word here. It's a hinge from what he's saying right now, but what he said just before, which are these beautiful truths about your identity in God, that you are chosen, you're adopted, you're accepted, you're redeemed, you're forgiven, you're sealed by the Spirit. And in light of all those things he says, let me pray for you. Now I find this interesting because part of me is like, man, it's so good, verses one through, or even one, but three through fourteen, it's so good. Why not keep telling us more spiritual truth? Like, why not just why pray? Let's just pray in a little bit. Keep the truth coming. This is so good. And I think it's something so important for us. And as I've gotten older, I've realized this. That Paul realizes following God is less about fixing your behavior and more about fixing your vision. And if you can see clearly, the behavior will flow. And we, I think we get that backwards in our day, in our age. We all have plenty of truth about God and about his word and how we should live, and we may be able to buckle up and go do it, but we're missing the point of it. He cares more about your heart being enlightened than you doing these things for him. Now he wants you to do things, we're called to do things, good works. We're about to hear about that in a couple weeks. But we can't miss the heart of the Father. And so we can have information, but if it never makes it past our head into our heart, then essentially we're doing religious activity, which is known as legalism. We're missing the heart of the Father. And he's going to pray against that. He's actually praying that we wouldn't miss that. So he starts with this word, therefore. So the Ephesians here, it wasn't that they needed new truth. I mean, after you read three through fourteen, it's such beautiful truth. What they needed was new sight, like the Holy Spirit in them to give them clarity about the truths Paul just stated. And that's how this works. The Holy Spirit works in you to reveal that truth. Did you know that you can know the truth and not live in it? Do you know Paul says these things like we have resurrection power available to us? That is a truth. And we can know that truth, but you know what we do so often? We live like it's Good Friday and not like it's resurrection Sunday. We live like the power isn't fully there. Jesus died. What are we gonna do? So we halfway live this experience, he wants us to, but we know he didn't stay dead. He rose from the grave, and that resurrection power is available to us. Well, we can know it and not live it. And Paul is gonna pray that we would actually know

From Facts To Epignosis

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it and live it. And we see this starting in verse 17, this petition of the prayer. In verse 17, he goes on and says, This that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of him. Notice what he didn't pray for. You could create a big list. Well, let me give you a couple things. He didn't pray for new blessings. He didn't pray for a new circumstances, he didn't pray for your favorite sports team to win, inflation to lower, or your mother-in-law to move to Alaska. He didn't pray for any of that. He prayed for one thing that's far greater than any of those things, and it's spiritual sight. Wisdom working with revelation to give you a deeper knowledge of God. This is what he prays for. Notice how he addressed God here. He calls him this phrase that's only used here in the whole New Testament, the Father of glory. The Father of glory. Because glory is who God is. He defines glory. But here's what's stunning about glory: glory stepped down. Glory didn't stay up in the heavens, glory came down because in Jesus, the Father of glory, made himself visible. He made his glory known and seen. Early on in John chapter 1, verse 14, John says, The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have beheld his glory. Glories of the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. The Hebrews writer picks up on this. Hebrews 1, verse 3 says that Jesus, the Son, is the radiance of God's glory, the exact imprint of his nature. And even Paul, in his second letter to the Corinthians, says this when he's talking about darkness and light, that God has shown in our hearts to give the light of knowledge of the glory of God, and that's a lot of stuff there, but let me just tell you what it points to. He ends it by saying, in the face of Jesus Christ. That the light, God Himself, the glory of God, it's all seen in the face of Jesus Christ. So if you want to see the Father of glory, look to the Son. So Paul is saying here. He's not a reflection of the glory, he's the very revelation of it. And so, since he's the revelation of the Father's glory, the question is, how do we know God deeper? What do we need to do to figure out how to know God deeper? I want to know God's glory. I want to see the Son. I want to behold him. How do I do this? Well, he gives us two things here, but the but before he even gets to that, he tells us this important truth that the Father of glory has to give it. He says, the Father of glory may give to you. So this type of resonance, this type of depth, this type of seeing, not just knowing the truth, skimming the surface, but it getting to your heart, open up in your heart, go through all of your being, and now you live it out. That type of depth, which is what he wants from you, only is received. It's not achieved. You can't force your way into knowing more about God. You've got to look to him and you've got to pray this prayer. And so Paul is asking, I'd ask your father to open your eyes. Are you doing it? It's a simple

Beholding Jesus Transforms Us

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prayer, which prayer is pretty simple in general. We're just going to God, but Paul wants us to be specific. Are we asking God to open our eyes? And so you see here, what is he asking the Father to give? And you see these two words, a spirit of wisdom and revelation. And those lead to a knowledge in Him. So this is important because wisdom and revelation obviously are needed, but they are not the destination. They're the path you take to get to the destination. The destination is knowing God, but it starts with having first a spirit of wisdom. Now we get this wrong sometimes. Wisdom is not intelligence. Now that's an aspect of it. You got to know some facts, you got to know some things. But wisdom isn't just having Bible facts in your head. Wisdom's not going, oh, I know all this all the songs I sung in children's church back in the day. I could sing Father Abraham. Like wisdom is knowing those things. You gotta have, or wisdom part of it is knowing that true, but it's more about living it out. So you know the truth and you live it, and that's wisdom. So as you go to work tomorrow and you're irritated with your boss or a coworker, you could lash out or you could know what God's word says, information, true, gotta know it, and then you do it, and that's wisdom. So it's not just having it, it's actually doing it. So a spirit of wisdom that Paul's talking about here, what I've learned is when the truth of God's word moves from the pages of scripture into the posture of your life. That's biblical wisdom. Now that's hard to do because I want to, you know, quite often close the Bible up and let my opinion take the lead. That's not biblical wisdom. Biblical wisdom, a spirit of wisdom, is when you let this not just get into your head but move down to your heart and you live it out. This is where Paul's going here. Now he doesn't just use this word wisdom, he used this word revelation. Now, here, revelation does not mean new truth. Did you know? This may surprise some of you. God's not up in heaven writing Ephesians 7 right now. You know that? He's not up there writing Ephesians 7. He's not like, hey, Craig Rochelle, Bible app, I'm gonna send some devos your way. Can you just put them in the app for us? That's not what this means. Revelation, literally, it's beautiful. It means the unveiling of existing truth. Literally, you are blind to what God's word says until he opens up your eyes through the power of the Holy Spirit to see it. So when the Spirit of God takes whatever's in the Bible and makes it alive in your life and

What Opened Eyes See: Hope

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in your heart, that's revelation. And some of y'all have had this happen. I mean, if you've been following Jesus, following Jesus for any amount of time, you've probably had this happen. You've had a verse you've read a hundred times, and you kind of skim it and you know it. But on the hundred and first, for whatever reason, it clicks. It's a verse you've memorized, you've prayed over for you or your family, you've underlined it three times with three different highlighter colors. It's on a coffee mug, it's on a Thomas Kincaid painting at your house. I don't know. But on that hundred and first time, your eyes came into focus. You didn't just let it stop with the mind, it went into the heart, and the Lord started doing something there. That's revelation. It's not new content, it's opened eyes. So wisdom and revelation are needed because they help us in one aspect, they help us know God. Now, Paul here doesn't use a casual word for knowledge or for knowing. Now, if you can geek out with me in the Greek for a minute, I think this is important. There are really two um or a couple primary words I should say for knowing in the Greek. One, oida, oida, o-I-D-A, oida. This is data, this is facts, this is information. So let me give you a couple examples. I

God’s Inheritance: How He Sees Us

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know Austin is the capital of California. I mean Texas. Because I have daughters, I also know that the national animal in Scotland is the unicorn. And I also know that a tomato is classified as a fruit, which makes salsa a smoothie. I'll make the rules. That's oida, though. This is information, okay? You win trivia night at Twisted Root because of oida. Jeopardy contestants, a lot of oida, a lot of information, a lot of data. They got a lot of knowledge about a lot of things. That's oida. Paul doesn't use that word here. There's another word, gnosis. Gnosis. It's the experiential side of oida. It takes information and it begins to experience it. It begins to live it out. Maybe not at a full deep level just yet, but it's taking this information and it's knowledge it's gained through engagement with it. So let me give you some examples. Oida is knowing that a crispy cream donut is made with a lot of sugar and just a touch of angel dust. That's oida. Gnosis is when you're driving down the road and you see the Shekinah glory of the hot now sign-on, and you go through the drive-thru and you let one of those sugar-filled, angel-dusted donuts melt in your mouth. That's gnosis. It's the experiential side of it. Let me give you another one. Oida is parachuting. I know what that is. Gnosis is strapping up, getting in a plane, going 13,000 feet up, door opening up, you

Resurrection Power For Daily Life

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look down and you jump. That's the experience. That's gnosis. But here's why I tell you this this is very important. In Ephesians 1 17, Paul doesn't use oida here. You don't just need some facts about God. I mean you need to know some stuff, but he doesn't use this word. He actually doesn't even use Hy Gnosis. He takes Gnosis and uses that as the root, and he intensifies the word. He uses the word epignosis, which just means it is a full, mature experience of knowledge. Gnosis is the beginning stages of it, and it's good. Epignosis means something deeper. That this knowledge was so transformative that you want to live your life based on it. That's what he's saying here. It's a knowing that reshapes your fears, it reshapes your loves, it reshapes your desires, it reshapes your ambitions, it reshapes your very lives. That's epinosis. And that's his prayer. Not that you just oyed a know some things, or gnosis have experienced some, but epinosis been transformed and want more of it. This is what he's praying here. Now, Paul writes about this also in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 18. He says this beautiful verse. He says, And we all with an unveiled face, we get the chance to behold the glory of the Lord. And we are being transformed from who we are into that same image, from glory to glory. And what he's saying is when Jesus died on the cross, the veil was torn. There is no more separation between us and God because Jesus, the mediator, paid the price. So now we don't have to hide ourselves from God's glory. It's too great for us. No, Jesus made a way, and so now we can unveil our face and we can look at God. And we look at God, the Father of glory, through the Son of Jesus, and we behold him. Did you hear anything in that text about doing something for God? And we pray more and we go to church and we read more scripture and we witness more. Now those are important, but this scripture clearly states the most important thing you can do is behold Jesus. That you go to his word and you begin to look at truths about him and you just look to him. And as you look at him, not at the world around you, you are transformed in his image, which is the goal of Christianity. Conformity to the image of Christ. This is what Paul

Christ Enthroned Over Everything

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is praying for all of us. But before any of the changing, the outward changes, there has to be a moment of looking to him. It's a moment when something finally comes into focus, and what came into focus is you saw him clearly. And I got a video I want you to see real quick that shows this. Ready, buddy? Ready? Ready? Let's see, ready. What do you think? Do you like them? Can you see? Look how handsome. You like it? Can you see everything? Look at my can you see better? Are you crying? Do you see daddy different? Oh my goodness. You see a little different. Is it nice? Oh, it looks so adorable. The best part of that video isn't that his eyesight brought everything into clarity. It's that he saw his father. And I don't know if he caught it, but the only time he leaned towards something or someone was when his eyes caught his dad's. And he leans in and he gazes at him. Nothing else mattered. And the mom, I don't know if you caught this, asked a perfect question Can you see daddy different now? And then what does the dad do? As a loving father would. These beautiful, sweet touches of love, rubs his cheek, pats him on the stomach, and he's just gazing with tears in his eyes at his dad. That is the posture and the prayer that Paul is praying for all believers. That we would be believers who do that before we ever do anything for him. We just look to him. And

Living Monday Through Saturday Power

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as we get into verses 18 and 19, Paul's gonna show us what these opened eyes, these clearly seen eyes, what what actually we can see. When God gets into our heart through the power of the Holy Spirit and opens it up, what is it we're looking at? What is it we can see? How is he gonna assure us? Look at what he says, verse 18 and following. He says, At the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his mighty power. Now he starts here with the eyes of your understanding being enlightened. Your translation may say the eyes of the heart being enlightened. What is Paul saying here? He doesn't just mean your emotional state is going to light up. In the Bible, the heart was the seat of the emotions, but it carried more than just your emotional state. It carried your thoughts and it carried your will and it carried your desires, it carried your affections. Everything about you literally is the control center of your life. Paul here is praying that the control center of your life, the thing that you make every decision from, that that would be opened up to be revealed and see who Christ is more and more clearly. To behold his image. And when you begin to look to Christ and it begins to change you from the inside out through the power of the Holy Spirit, Paul says there are three realities that will come into focus for you. The first, well, let me just say it all three: hope, inheritance, and power. The first one, hope. He says that you may know what is the hope of his calling. Now we've talked a lot about hope at this church. It comes up quite often in the Bible. We always want to clarify, hope is not what we think it is in our day and age, where it's like, oh man, well, I I hope the Dallas Cowboys actually win a playoff game next year. And maybe, maybe not. Chances are slim. That's not what he's saying here. What he's saying here, what biblical hope is, it's a confident certainty that is rooted in God's promises. I heard a pastor say one time, biblical hope is standing on your tippy toes of faith and looking over the fence at what's to come. Like you see it, you're excited for it, but this is biblical hope. And I think when he says the hope of his calling, I think Paul talks about this in Philippians chapter 1, verse 6. Because I think the hope of his calling means that we're going to be confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in us will finish it and complete it until the day of Jesus

Three Practices: Word, Sight, Prayer

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Christ. And when our eyes open to the biblical hope that we have, did you know anxiety can begin to be loosened in your life? You're looking at what's to come. It's not a maybe, it's a promise. And you can look at the future. I know life is hard, and I know hearts are all over the place, and stress comes and emotional uh state swing. I get all that, but we can be secured, settled, looking at what's to come. And so biblical hope can look at pain and say, You're temporary. Biblical hope, I think, can look at temptation and say, I've got something better coming. That's what begins to come into focus as the eyes of our control center of life are focused on Jesus. The next thing he says that you need to know are what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. Now, notice he does not say your inheritance. He talked about that in earlier verses in Ephesians. This is kind of a crazy thought. What Paul is saying is you need to rejoice and know how God views you because God views you as his inheritance. And you're like, are you kidding me? You have everything, and I can't wait for you to be with me for all eternity. You're his inheritance. This is what Paul is saying here. And I think for some of us, this is hard to believe. Why? Because I think we're so used to living in shame, and we're so used to living in with regret. And though we're free from the power of sin, sin still affects us, and the devil loves that when that happens because he has a little bit of a foothold where he can hold you down. Anybody here ever got onto a dog? I got a couple dogs, I get onto them. What happens? They run away one of three places usually. One to the closest corner and they look down, or two around a chair because they want to hide from you, or three under the table. And we think that's what we do when God's mad at us and we're looking out of the corner of our eye like is he gonna accept us or is he gonna push us away? But what we see here is that you are the inheritance for him. You know what this means? You're not tolerated to God, you're treasured. Do you mess up? Yeah. Does he love you? Yes. And I'm not just trying to make that sound cliche. He cares about you. You are his treasure. The third thing we see um out of this text is about power. He says, so that you may know what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe. Now, this actually should also go into the next couple of verses. I don't want to talk about that separately, but he uses a bunch of words in this verse and the next verse for power. I mean, he like unloads the dictionary for this word power. He he's stacking word on top of word like strength and force and energy and dominion. What he's saying is you have a power towards you based on you being in Christ, based on the Holy Spirit's ability in you, and it's not just a gentle nudge from heaven. It's a power greater than what you imagine because it's a grave emptying, it's a throne claiming resurrection power, and it's available to you now. This isn't a one day when I get to heaven, I'll have it. It's a you have it right now, so use it. Power. This is what Paul wants them to know and to understand. And if you're thinking, well, that sounds great. Okay, that sounds good. I don't even know what this all means, but but how do I know I have this power? How do I know my hope's secure? How do I know the Lord loves me like you said he did? Like what power could do that? Well, Paul doesn't give us a theory. He takes us to a tomb and it's empty. That's the power he's speaking about. Look at what he says in verses 20 through 23. He says, which he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead, seated him at the right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion in every name that is named, not only on or in this age, but also in that which is to come. And he puts all things under his feet and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all and is in all. Paul says that this power is toward all of us who believe. So the question is, are we living it? Is this just one of those information oida that we know? Oh, it's available, that's great. Paul is praying that you would pray, that you would desire, that you would go before the Lord, that you would look at Christ and you would say, The power you have, you say I have, and the Holy Spirit's in me. Help me live in that power and not my own. Because it's available to you. But so often we just push it to the side, oh, you know, on a Sunday, let's let this power come out because I'm with all my people. I'm at the church, I got God's word open. I better live it. It's easy to live through God's power on a Sunday morning. But what about a Monday and a Tuesday and the rest of the week? What about when the phone call from the doctor isn't what you thought? What about when the call from your kids isn't what you hoped? What about when the thing came that shocked you more than anything? Is his power just not available at those times, only in the good times? No. His power is available to you at all times. And what kind of power is it? It's a power who took a crucified Savior, walked him out of a throne, set him on a grave, or set him, um, walked him out of a grave, I should say, set him on a throne, and to put all things under his feet. So you may be thinking, man, I got a lot of things over my head. Well, good news is, it's under his feet. What we tend to do is we think about the things that are just over our head, the circumstances of life, and we let it overwhelm us, we let it take us, we let it pull us, let it drive us, let what's happening in the culture make us nervous, anxious. And it's hard. We're gonna be battling those thoughts until our last breath leaves our lungs. But do you know God's bigger than any problem? He's bigger than any of those things. You know what, he wants us to pray for the problems of our life. He wants us to go to him. But are you going to him to see him and saying, help me know you? Because if you're bigger than all my problems, I don't want to just pray for my problems, I just want to pray to know you. Because that will give me a confidence to live even with all these problems in this day, in this age. The one who holds the universe together is the one who's over the church. Meaning his throne is not against you, he is ruling and reigning for you. He is the head of the body, he is the we are the bride, and he's been the most faithful spouse that the world has ever known. He cares about you, he loves you, you are his not just now, but forever. We need to let those truths get into our heart. And so, what do we do with all of this today? I think when you see the risen King, I think you start to live differently. But as I've looked at this text, studied for it, I prayed for Paul Pray. I said, Lord, open my eyes up. I need- I want to see you. It can be real easy for me to like try to put words together to make it sound good, but I'm like, I want to just be you. Help me. And so, what do you have for me? And I literally have three things that two are pretty obvious and one maybe not so obvious, came from the text that I'm gonna challenge y'all with. I think this is what we do with this text. The first thing, simple, open your Bible. You do need to know truth. If you notice the pattern in this, Ephesians 1 starts, it's not the prayer. Ephesians verse 3 through 14, not the prayer. All spiritual truth. Ephesians 15, the prayer begins. In other words, truth was received and got into the mind, and then Paul's like, but let's pray that it gets into the heart. So you got to know the truth. Where is the truth found? What's found in God's word? So literally, so simple, but we push it to the side. Are you opening your Bible? That's where I'd start. We can't have revelation without something to reveal. So God will open our eyes through his word. The second thing is ask for sight. So Paul's saying, the Father of glory will give it. Ask him. So read the word, open the Bible, ask him for sight. And then the last one is just pray. This prayer we see from Paul is specifically about God opening up our heart to the truth of his word where it comes out into our lives. That's what he wants. But I don't want you to be amiss. I want you to know he cares so deeply about your life. He wants you to go to him with any request, with any petition. And so I don't want you to miss out on that. I don't want every prayer to just be open. My eyes, though that's important. In fact, at the end of Ephesians in Ephesians chapter 6, Paul says this and pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and all kinds of requests. What's he saying? Make sure you're talking to your father. So open your Bible, ask for sight, and then just pray.