Paul’s Prayer in Ephesians 1:17-20 | Mike Bickle

[Music] father we just thank you for your presence lord we thank you for touching hearts even these last few moments come and renew us and strengthen us we thank you in the name of jesus amen and amen thank you catherine henderson good job thank you thank you thank you well let's stand for a moment i'd just like to take a minute to greet you've been sitting for a while so just greet the folks around hello my name is tell me your first name if you know them say hey tell me something about you i don't know surprise me tell me something new about you it's a little bright bless you good job thank you guys thank you thank you okay if if you want the uh notes go ahead and raise your hand up high sometimes it's bright because i have it too loud and i'm working on it raise those hands up high let me see i don't know if lori are ushers oh okay they're doing it i just don't see them okay you want the handouts raise your hand up high we got a couple of ushers moving around okay good thank you ushers okay let's go ahead and have a seat if you would do that go ahead and open your bibles to ephesians chapter one ephesians chapter one amanda beattie are you here you come on up and there's a microphone there amanda's helping me with the class and with the students that are taking tests and have requirements and assignments we have one book required book by d.a carson he's a seminary professor for many years i don't know if he is today but i read this book some years ago called praying with paul a call to spiritual reformation where he takes eight of the 25 apostolic prayers and he develops them and the thing i like about the book he really connects people to the heart of god so i think you're going to like d.a carson i read this book some years ago and i thought this was insightful very helpful yeah i'm enjoying this book a lot um all right so just a few brief things that you'll want to pay attention to on your syllabus so on campus students i hope you found the word of the day signs there are a couple by the entrance just as you can say again i want to hear what you're saying word of the day is how we're taking attendance for our on-campus students and you don't say it publicly you give it because we would like to find out who is in the room um so we also have online students or we have you know on campus students if you have an excused absence or something there will be another form that will be individually assigned to you where you'll be able to affirm that you watched the teaching whether it was live or recorded check in that way so we got all of you sorted out for your attendance and that's for those because some of the folks here are just coming for the spiritual enrichment others are getting a credit yes at ihop you and so she's talking to the people getting a credit correct so i help you students word of the day sound booth and at the door online students you'll be individually assigned that form you'll see it on schoology um i just wanted to point out the three main things that we're doing during the class to help get the material more deeply in us so firstly there's going to be required reading every week and it will be the d.a carson book it'll also be mike's notes so this is required every week right every week and there is a schedule for it in your syllabus and there will also be descriptions on the folders week by week in schoology so you've got a couple of ways to see what the specific required reading is for that week um we're also going to have the main thing we're doing which i am super super excited about is a weekly prayer manual so what's going to happen over the duration of this course is we're going to start unpacking each apostolic prayer week by week take extra notes on it and answer some questions about it and when you're done you have a bunch of notes that you have made yourself that you can continue to expand on and pray so by december they ought to be flowing in these prayers and teaching these prayers be ready for it younger believers or even what i find so valuable as well take it into the prayer room and look over the different phrases that you've gotten into and the paraphrases and getting it into the language of your day-to-day prayer life with the lord um you also have two quizzes you'll see on the syllabus you're going to have a midterm november 6th and a final december 18th and that's just going to be about the contents of the apostolic prayers themselves what they talk about what the main points are um yeah so that's mostly everything if you have any questions you can reach out to me on schoology amanda beattie you'll see my name it's clickable you can send me a message there or what if they just went like like in the prayer room like do this all day long you know if you find me and you've got a question i will answer your question as best as i can so i think that's everything just for a minute how long have you been at ihop uh 17 years and i knew it was something 17 or 18 or something give us just a minute about you because some of the students are new here and others maybe were here last year but they did not run and you know uh spend time talking with you and stuff tell us a little bit because you did night watch for like 15 years 15 years yeah 15 years like six nights a week midnight to six in the morning 15 years that's intense so why would a smart person do white night watch for 15 years the salary yeah for sure and the salary for sure well the honest answer is when i decided to come do an internship fire in the night was shorter and that was what made my decision so we had three months instead of six months but then the lord hooked you for 18 years absolutely yeah i thought i was gonna do three months of the internship and not come back for track two and i'm really happy that did not work out eighteen years later the lord says i won that one yes he did you always win but you know he's done that with me i haven't i come in and i end up getting ambushed in a good way but sometimes in the moment i'm not that happy about it yeah but just the value i came to see in the night watch in beholding and blessing the lord 3 am in the prayer room you have to think about why am i here and you have to answer that question like a thousand looks like push-ups like a thousand times you have to realign why am i doing this yes and actually go right i'm here because he's worthy of it i'm here because i want to talk to him as my primary profession i want to encounter the lord i want to know him better like yeah the night watch was i i think everybody should give it a shot if they're able to you know some people like like samuel whitfield he did this he says i went on a missions trip but instead of instead of going on a missions trip for six weeks to europe or asia he said i did six weeks in the night watch i did a missions trip in a night watch i think it was four weeks or something like that i thought what an interesting thought it's great fun i like the night watch a lot so i heard a rumor about you so tell me if it's true oh dear i heard this is about five years ago sorry no it's true i heard you're a really good bible teacher well thank you very much no i asked you a question is it true or not true um i really enjoy teaching okay i know i've i've heard that a number of times anyway thank you [Applause] well let's jump right in session one paul's prayer in ephesians chapter one father we ask you just to come and touch hearts lord even now by the holy spirit i ask you to come and move on our understanding move on our hearts come and show us the things that you see holy spirit when you speak over our lives these truths and i ask that you had marcus tonight in the name of jesus amen well this is probably the most prayed prayer at ihop in the 21 years that we've been doing this 24 7. this would be the prayer that is if we counted all of them this would be probably five or ten times more prayed than any other prayer maybe not that much but clearly the most in this prayer paragraph a we're looking like always we won't look at all the notes some of them i'll just leave for you to take with you to look at later if you want it's really one general prayer but then it has three expressions to that general prayer and the prayer is that people would increase in the knowledge of god that's the one line prayer that's the general prayer and how are they going to increase in the knowledge of god by experiencing three big really big areas of the glory of god number one they would see the hope of their calling and the word hope often in the new testament it it has the same takeaway meaning it's confidence so paul's saying i'm praying the believers would have confidence in god's calling over their life that changed your life dramatically as our confidence in our calling increases because the clarity increases that's why the confidence incr increases the second is that we would know the riches of the glory of being god's inheritance what does it mean to be god's inheritance and how does that make us feel and the third one is that we would walk in the power of god in a greater way in a more consistent way so those are the three expressions of the glory of knowing him better and better i'm going to read the whole prayer here i pray that the god and father i mean that the god of the lord jesus christ the father of glory he would give to you i like to add that which you do not have until he gives it little by little by the spirit he would give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of god what does that mean that the eyes of your understanding some translations say the eyes of your heart the eyes of your heart would be opened little by little by the holy spirit why what's the point of that that the eyes of the heart are open to know him so that you would know and i have in the notes the word no there is the word that uh indicates experiential knowledge much much more than just factual information you would experience you could almost put the word experience in because when the bible uses this word in relationship to god it's talking about knowing by experience it experienced three things the hope or the confidence in god's calling on your life the riches of the glory of being his inheritance and you would know what the exceeding greatness of the power that works in you well what kind of power it's the same power that god used when he raised jesus from the dead that power is actually working in every believer's life so i have one two three i'm the same again just in the in the notes here to walk in confidence of god's assignment over your life to know who we are to god so that we can see how he sees and feels us feels about us because when we know who we are to him we see what he sees about us and how he feels about us that's radical stuff and then to experience the power of god in various areas of our life now one of the things we'll get to in a moment is a lot of people are experiencing the power of god because they have an idea the power of god is only this way and they don't know the subtleties of how the power of god moves they don't think of the power of god operating in their life therefore they don't really lean into it and paul is saying if you have the spirit of revelation which means the spirit of understanding you'll see the power of god is actually operating in small ways but it's real and when you see that it makes you more grateful for it it makes you more hungry for it and you're more aware of it when you see it but a lot of folks think of the power of god only as open powerful dramatic expressions so they miss so much of the power moving in their life and paul's saying actually it's the same power it's a smaller manifestation but understand it and cooperate with it and you'll experience more of it i'm getting ahead of myself that's on page four paragraph b paul had just outlined in verses 3 to 14 the riches of the glory of grace he just laid it out and i'll just let you read that on read that on your own and then here in this prayer he prays for that lavish grace he just outlined from verses three to fourteen that that passage is one of the most dramatic passages in the bible on the lavish extravagant grace and then paul switches over it says now i'm praying that you see it don't just take my word for it i want the spirit to mark your heart with the truth of what i just told you and that marking of the heart is progressive it's little by little now though i would rather just have an angel come and you know says yay man of god and i get it all but it's just inch by inch little by little he marks our heart and it's called here the spirit of revelation it's living understanding it's increasing ever so slightly incrementally but it's steadily increasing i don't mean every day is a great area of growth but as the months go by you look back and you can see and feel the truth more clearly than you did some months ago if you stay with it and then a few years go by and you see it more than a few more years go by and yet you see it more paragraph c paul prayed to the father and he called the father two names the god of the lord jesus and the father of glory both of those names are very important in this prayer paragraph 1 when he says i'm praying to the god of the lord jesus he's what he's saying he's saying several things but the one practical takeaway he's saying i'm praying to the god who did for jesus in his humanity these sort of things and jesus as a man now jesus is fully god but when he became a man he's still fully god but now he's fully man and he's the ideal picture of what god planned to release the humanity through redeemed humanity so when it says like the god of abraham it means the miracles or the way god related to abraham is the way he's going to relate when it says we pray for the god of abraham to touch you the god of elijah that's the god of power the god of david the god of jacob he takes the deceptive jacob and transforms him the god of jesus he's saying the ideal man is jesus and what god did in and through him in his humanity not his deity but in his humanity that's what god is ultimately aiming at for all believers now that only comes to fullness in the resurrection but he says that's the picture and i'm going to do more and more of that in you so i'm talking to the god of the man christ jesus to touch you and your humanity much smaller way but in parallel ways then he says then he gives a second title of god the father of glory though i love that phrase the very glory that god possesses as the father is the glory he imparts he says i'm the god that has all the glory and the glory meaning not all the attention not glory in that way that is how you talk about glory everyone's admiring him he's the center of attention that's not the sense of glory here it's manifest splendor in power he's the god of manifest splendor the god of indescribable beauty and transcendence and power and he's saying i'm the god of glory because i'm going to give that very glory i'm going to part portions of that to you i want to that's one of my names the god of glory the father of glory as a father it's my intention to release that glory that manifest splendor and power in your life and so those are the two titles that kind of set the tone for the one general prayer that we would grow in the knowledge of god and the three specific prayers the hope of his calling that we would see where we are his inheritance and we would understand how the power of god works in and through us well let's jump into the primary prayer paragraph d the one general prayer is for the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of god that's what the prayer is and the others are three aspects of it the spirit of wisdom and revelation i like to say sometimes living understanding about god now some people say is this about the knowledge of the father or knowledge about the sun both either or it goes both directions the holy spirit has been given to reveal jesus to us but jesus came to reveal the father that's what the scripture says so when it says the knowledge of him one commentator will say the hymn is the father the other one will say the hymn is the son i go well jesus said the spirit came to give attention and glorified jesus in the human heart and jesus came to reveal the father so they're not going to go wrong either way it goes and so but it's living understanding of the knowledge of god and the way that paul says the same thing a second time he goes let me say it more clearly that the eyes of your understanding or other translations like the new american standard says the eyes of the heart are opened now they're open little by little sometimes there's a a big encounter in a moment and we you know it's kind of like baby steps or big steps there's a few big steps in over 50 years but mostly it's baby steps but he's progressively letting the light shine and the darkness or the fog that's in the heart dispels just little by little and it's like you know not every day but just you know but regular is like oh oh yeah that makes more so i feel that a little bit more maybe the next day you don't feel it so much but then a couple days later you feel it again and that's living understanding dispelling some of the darkness or the fog of the heart and shining rays of light i just think of a cloudy day and rays of light breaking into the heart when it says the knowledge of god paragraph one that includes the knowledge of what god's like or the knowledge of how he acts and feels towards you i want to know how he acts i want to know what he's like and of course we have the written word but the holy spirit takes the written word and reveals jesus the living word and we go oh i know more how you act how you think how you see me how you feel wow i mean what a journey it's you know the ultimate treasure hunt in life the holy spirit is escorting us on this glorious lifelong treasure hunt we're discovering this gold and this treasure of what god's like and how he thinks and how he feels and how he sees us then we step over the line and we're in the age to come and then we get a resurrected body and the treasure hunt continues for millions and millions of years and the seraphim the living creatures around the throne it says in isaiah 6 they look at god they look at jesus in isaiah 6. it's clear they're looking at him and they close their eyes with their wings i mean they cover their eyes they're overwhelmed by a new installment or a new impartation of revelation of him and they're just like overwhelmed like the power of it works through their big and they kind of like they come up for air again and they see another glance a glimpse of him and they're overwhelmed again and forever and forever they ne they're overwhelmed they never exhaust the splendor in the beauty of this one who's fully god and fully man you know we'll be living in the new jerusalem with resurrected bodies one of these days in the new jerus new jerusalem will descend down to the earth they'll be in the millennium it was hey man how you doing doing great boy have you got new revelation on the lord yeah man with 600 years later i'm still in the resurrection i'm getting new stuff all the time is this ever going to end this newness and we'll look up at the throne and then this air from they'll be covering their eyes yet again no look at that that's the declaration his beauty and the knowledge of him is inexhaustible we never get to the bottom of that deep ocean but the journey starts now the day we're born again well the reason we need the spirit of wisdom and revelation which another way of saying it is living understanding is because the unaided human mind unaided by the spirit is what i mean we can have incredible intellectual abilities but this these spiritual truths cannot be gained by just intellectual ability there has to be those little sparks that's my term don't overdo that word little sparks little inspirational moments where the spirit we go oh so the most uneducated person can have far more revelation of god than the most brilliant theologian that's not encountering god but he knows the bible greek hebrew he knows all the bible verses but if he's not encountering the spirit his natural mind does not give him the capacity to receive spiritual truth it takes the spirit it takes it now when that brilliant mind also engages with the spirit like the d.a carson book and that man's been doing it it's obvious when you read the book you go wow but you don't need to have that incredible uniquely brilliant trained mind the youngest the newest believer can receive this inspiration i call these little sparks of light from the holy spirit it's really little moments of inspiration you know like somebody will say man that eight-year-old boy can you believe he got that i go well the holy spirit's not eight years old it's not an eight-year-old holy spirit it's a big holy spirit a little guy and and the holy spirit can spark an eight-year-old mind like an 80 year old mind it's it's all the same to him now often the holy spirit will take what you've learned and spark it or inspire it and open it up so we value learning it but it's more than just learning there's encountering and i have the verse there in first corinthians 2 that that uh it says we've received the spirit the day we're born again that we can know these things know by experience it means so that we can experience them we can feel them at the heart level see them more clearly then he tells us verse 14 first corinthians 2 the natural mind meaning just the human intellect by itself unaided by the holy spirit can't receive these things it requires the grace of god in the spirit they are foolish to the natural mind i mean even a school brilliant intellectual uh professor of theology because there's a lot of professors of theology that aren't even born again they i don't know why somebody would choose that profession but there's plenty of them you know they don't believe jesus is god they don't believe the miracles but they're brilliant minds and they know greek hebrew all this stuff some of these things seem like foolishness to them because it takes the aid of the holy spirit to see it the spirit gives us a capacity supernatural capacity to get it we don't have that capacity by ourself he enlarges our spiritual capacity little by little to feel more to see more to communicate it more clearly to others look at this one sentence here in paragraph two the strongest eyes are useless when the person is in a totally dark room and the strongest mind if they don't have the light of the spirit they cannot see these truths they are foolishness to them i go what you really buy that go oh buy it i would die for it are you kidding me i'm ravenously hungry for it yes i buy it off of page two well i've already mentioned the word but i just want you to see it on the notes that you might know and the word there is experiential knowledge it's more than just informational facts about god though that is valuable to have it i i value having informational facts about god and salvation but i know that without the spark that little inspirational moments it's not going to move me to humility and obedience it might equip me to win an argument in a theological debate but it won't move me to humility and obedience that's the acid test when truth moves us humility obedience love those are really all the same facets of the same diamond if i'm not moved to humility it hasn't moved me yet and i don't mean that one little flash of inspiration is humble but it kind of is like he gives us this day our daily bread as we feed on the word we get those little moments of inspiration enough to be humble that day and the next day we need daily bread to be inspired and stirred to go hard after the lord and we draw back from encountering the spirit and the word you know some months go by and now i don't feel like it i don't have the same kind of resolve i had last year and we can lose it but we can get it back that's the good news we can get it back to encounter god is the essence of salvation jesus said that john 17 he goes this is the essence of eternal life that you would encounter god forever the point is to encounter god and a a number of commentators will point out that when the word no in the old testament hebrew it's but it's it's the parallel word it said adam new eve meaning he didn't just have physical i mean informational knowledge about her he had intimate encounter it's the same idea that's of course hebrew and this is greek but it's the knowing of that level paragraph f now foundational the paul's approach to discipleship when paul is training people in the in on the new testament and his writings his 13 books he is always aiming at the heart of the believer being enlightened because he knows if that spark that's my word that those little moments of inspiration just little installments of inspiration just little moments he knows if that happens regularly that young believer will become a mature disciple in time why am i telling you that because if that's paul's approach that's our approach of pastoring people that's the approach we're taking when i meet somebody who's stuck spiritually or they're new spiritually i'm positive what they need most they need revelation knowledge of the man christ jesus more how he feels how he thinks how he sees them how he views their life and when they get little bits of that then they make different choices and they come up with they have different reasoning processes without that they're like well i'm trying to get with it it just i just don't seem to follow through well you'll reason different you're logic different you'll conclude things different with those little sparks of inspiration in your heart so as as a as a as a pastor and a shepherd i'm positive what you need most it's what i need most this it's not the only thing we need but without this the other things are not effective to move us to humility and love and obedience when we're under pressure when the pressure comes we'll go the other direction but we got the spark in our heart and not again that's just the word i always use when i think about it because i see that like the light array of light shining through a dark cloud of the darkness in my heart going oh when i hear that little bit of oh obedience makes sense if i lose that oh even that little obedience is harder to do i like to pray lord let me see what paul saw if i could see what paul saw i could love you and obey you like paul did i don't want paul's ministry especially the beatings of the prison and all that stuff i don't want paul's ministry i want i want the assignment that i have but i want to see i want to obey like paul obeyed and so i've prayed this for many years and i give you that prayer take it let me see what he saw and i can respond like he responded at the heart level because paul it wasn't like some super saiy there is no such thing paul was a weak and broken arrogant angry man who the spirit of revelation changed him little by little by little by little and i tell you if he can do it to paul he can do it to you let me see what he saw and i can obey like he obeyed and the holy spirit might say well then seek me like he sought me oh good point seek me the way paul sought me and we don't know exactly what he did but i tell you it was extravagant i'm sure okay let's get to the first roman numeral two and we're going to spend more time on the hope of his calling in less time on the other ones because the hope of his calling i think is the is the more uh it's a concept that is more it's not as familiar part of it's familiar to god's people but some of this is not familiar to god's people and this dynamic first specific prayer that he he makes here a lot of folks say just don't go there and it's such a glorious reality and then the other two prayers being his inheritance that's the revelation of his affection for us we'll hear that a thousand different messages and songs and so i won't spend so much time on that you i mean we get the idea i mean we don't have it that deep in our experience but we get the idea and the other one is walking in the power of god just a new paradigm or a more biblical paradigm of how the power of god actually operates in our life well he starts off and he says i pray read it again the spirit of wisdom and revelation that you would experience what is the hope of god's calling over our life now god's calling over our life i'm not going to spend time on this is the general calling we're in his family it's the it's verse 13 to 4 verse 3 to 14 that paul just got through saying when he starts the prayer he goes you have a calling in god that is explained in the first 14 verses of the of ephesians 1. that's true and that's some commentators will leave it there that they just say hey it's the first 14 verses that's the hope of our general calling to experience salvation and that's dynamic and that's big but i believe the calling goes beyond just our our place in the family of god in the general sense although that's phenomenal i believe it i like to use the word the divine assignment over our life we all are called in the family we're all called to that exalted position of being adopted as sons and daughters into the family i mean it doesn't get any bigger than that that's that's the ultimate calling to be in the family forever and all that's involved but there's a more specific tailor-made dimension to this it's the divine assignment for your particular life now the challenge on the divine assignment for your life is that god has a tailor-made divine assignment for you for this age the 70 years of this life the bible says we get 70 years 80 due to strength and now obviously everyone doesn't get 70 or 80 years but many people do so our divine assignment is our assignment in this life and there's several assignments over the course of 50 60 70 years there's not only just one there's very specific assignments over periods of years and seasons and sometimes the assignments change they often do you know after a number of years he reassigns us recommissions us to another assignment but the part that's often overlooked there's a divine assignment on our life for the thousand years that follows this year where we have physical bodies and we're actually on the earth because the new jerusalem is where we live but it's come down to the earth so we live in the new jerusalem and just in moments just seconds we could be wherever our assignment is on the earth with a physical resurrected body and a lot of folks almost never think of that as part of their calling and that's the biggest part of their calling actually that in terms of their ministry and impact and most people never think about it but paul wrote about that a number of times that's right in the center of new testament christianity the idea that we're enduring difficulties now because we have assignments in the resurrection that are connected to how we respond now and those assignments are glorious and big and dynamic and the lord is saying there's a continuity between how you respond in your assignment your short term assignment for your 70 years on the earth and what you do in your thousand year assignment your next one there's a continuity between the two and because we don't naturally know that we get caught up into our our assignment of this age and the assignment has more setbacks and challenges than we're going uh and the lord says well you don't really understand what i'm doing you don't really understand it yet because paragraph b here's the key i mean it's very simple artist divine assignment has two dimensions we have an internal assignment for our life and our heart to grow and an external assignment how we impact other people but not only do we have an internal and an external assignment we have a temporal one in this age and an eternal one that starts in the millennium and goes on past that and paul says if you can drop back take a step back see the big picture a little bit more by living understanding you will have it will make much more sense to make costly and even difficult decisions now because you're seeing that it's it's affecting your internal assignment your matter of fact your primary assignment in this age is internal it's to grow in love it's to grow in meekness it's to grow in gratitude and the problem is god's assignment for our life is quite opposite of how we would naturally think of it paragraph c before we develop that we'll get there in a minute that internal calling god has a tailor-made a call a calling or assignment for everyone's life this was one of the main points that paul prayed for in the life of believers look at these verses uh colossians 1 9 paul prays you'd be filled with confidence about god's will but god's will isn't just what city you go to what occupation you have and who you marry that's part of god's will god's will for your life is much much bigger than what you do and where you go god's will for our life is what happens inside of us in the journey as well that's the bigger part of god's will and a lot of folks don't think about that much they think and paul goes if you get confidence in that and you get anchored in having confidence of god's will in your life it will change the way your reasoning processes take place look at epaphras look at these words he always labored fervently those are three big words always laboring fervently in prayer that you would have confidence in the will of god like epaphras what did you know about having confidence in your calling that would make you labor fervently always that they would have confidence because if you get confidence of what these these general things that i'm saying we get confidence by the holy spirit you will be unmovable at the end of the day when the enemy comes against you and that's why in the new testament they labored for this well let's start with paragraph d our internal calling our primary calling in this age is our internal development to growing love growing humility grown obedience those are gratitude those are all facets of the same diamond love and humility and it's all the same in reality it's just different ways to describe it the only thing you will bring with you from this age to the age to come is the development of your heart you won't bring your database you won't bring your you know your economics your property you won't bring any of that with you your reputation you won't bring even you won't bring your failures you won't bring anything with you but your development in love or humility or gratitude again it's all the same god knows that and we don't know that so the lord hems us in he boxes it he goes i i lord make my life easier make my life bigger make my life more astounding let me touch millions or just well actually you won't even bring that with you you actually want what you're going to bring with you you just don't know you want it so i'm going to ham you in a few times and i'm not going to be the co-dependent parent you know who caves in when their parent their kids are complaining okay have your way kid anything just make sure i'm your best friend god says no no we're not doing it that way i'm not caving in because i know you will really be glad i held the line because you're gonna bring stuff with you into the age to come you'll go thank you thank you thank you that you didn't just cave in because i was mad at you for a while god i'm giving you one more chance lord says no i think we're good i'm not you don't really understand how important what i'm doing in your life is it's anyway it's i've got it written there the currency of eternity what's the currency of eternity the love you grew in in this age your love for jesus and for people and and that's not just sweet affections for a couple good friends i mean it's the way that we love people that we don't naturally even have attraction to but because god loves them we serve and we we say i want to see what you see about them and the lord says you'll take that with you to the age to come it's what we say and do that that sermon on the mountain lifestyle with no regard to whether we get honor or money for it in this age or how the size of our ministry is and now i'm not picking on young people because i'm not young anymore but most young people i've known i've been a pastor 45 years and i was in my 20s as a pastor they are almost they're so gripped if they're by the size of their ministry and how dynamic and where and the lord and i was everybody is when you're young because that's what you see and then some years go by and well the money isn't working and the honor's not working the people aren't responding and the power's not like i thought it should be by now and i got the ministry impact's not a big deal i thought i by now i would have taken over reinhardt bonkey's role by now and i got this little ministry nobody's even paying attention to the lord says you're on track you're on track like really and it takes a paradigm shift to understand our primary calling as our internal one our internal development because that's all that we'll bring with us like i i've teased t is not the right word but just having fun and i'll do something used too i always give you the answer ahead of time like right now i tell people your number one calling is to grow in the first commandment so then i'll talk to him a month or two later a student or an intern i'll say hey what's i got insight on your calling oh you got a prophecy what city what ministry who is she tell me what's my calling i go to girl in the first commandment man i go you don't understand that really is your primary calling that's not a joke so if i come up and ask you that just look at me and say i already know the answer but uh so i give it ahead of time okay another part of our calling is our temporal external calling it's our external impact in this age the temporal means are 70 years on the earth this is involves aspect of our position or our function whether in the marketplace or in a ministry organization or in your home or in the sports league well just whatever it's it's the position and the impact we're having and most people they think that's their main calling and the struggle in their early years with the lord is transitioning over to making that secondary important but not number one and that is a transition that takes time but paul starts right off praying let him see with confidence the layers and the priorities of god's call in their life because when you line up with and agree with god with what he's after in your calling you're internal before your external it then you don't get near as disappointed depressed and mad at people or mad at god or i'm tired of this thing by now it ought to be different the lord says yeah by now you should be deeper in humility yes you're right it should be different but no my ministry ought to be bigger people ought to be appreciating me more i'd have more power by now and the lord might say well who told you that well lord i'm an american and we think big is better and faster and easier that's isn't that why you're reigning in heaven so that my life is bigger faster and easier on earth in this age no that's a distorted gospel but anyway that's another point now our external calling is important it is important but it's it's the least important of the of the ones i lead out here it's important but it's the least important i mean if we have a big ministry impact but we haven't grown in humility and love we will be shocked when we stand before the lord because he's not going to ask us how big our conferences were how big our business was how big our kingdom business was he's not going to ask that he's going to ask you how how you grew and you know in love that's that's all he's going to evaluate go wait i had the biggest kingdom business in america and you're asking me did i grow humility really i thought you know yeah it was happening the lord says no no you mixed up you did not have revelation of your calling top of page three now again when i was in my 20s and and some a lot of 20 year olds today are a lot of hit much further than i was in my 20s and i was pastoring in my 20s and i was going hard after god but this was confusing to me i was reading all this not all but many revival stories and and my image of doing it right was the revivalist and the power and all these and the lord knew i will see that in my day but that wasn't the main thing he was after and that took me while shift over because nobody was talking this way in my world we were all talking big impact big this big that and nobody was talking deep growth on the inside well jesus says in luke 7 19 that there's going to be a lot of people that get the shock of their life they were faithful in very little they had a very little sphere of impact in terms of their individual life now collectively you know thousands of us and unity collectively we can have a real big impact but i'm talking about our individual impact almost everybody i'm talking about 99.9999999 percent of the body of christ they have a very little sphere of impact by themselves now again collectively it's bigger but they're not taught that they're taught it's going to be amazing and the breakthrough and they're going to be the center of the breakthrough and i believe in the breakthrough but jesus is going to give a lot of folks the shock of their life you could say you did very little that i gave you but you were faithful here's the shock of your life now rule over 10 cities in the millennium like you're kidding i didn't even have 10 people in my home group now i'm over 10 cities he goes yeah but you did it with all your heart you grew and humiliated love are you kidding me and he says that again in matthew 25 i gave you a few things now be ruler in the millennium and the resurrected body over many things what why didn't somebody tell me that back then i could have been happier in the few in the little things i'm just making up numbers to give you a sense of it my numbers are completely made up here paragraph one here they say there's a billion believers on the earth today i don't know if that's true i'm guessing about a thousand of them maybe ten thousand i don't know does it matter impact five thousand people directly on a regular basis the other 99.9 of them don't even get close to that and they're not supposed to now collectively they do but they're not supposed to the lord says that wasn't the point but we read the stories you know i don't know if it's a thousand or ten thousand today that are impacting five thousand that's a very small number when you think of eight billion people on the earth that's a really really baby number but to us that seems like maybe a big number only a small number of people have that impact but they're not going to be evaluated by that impact they're going to be evaluated by their faithfulness but the other 99.9 often not all of them by any means but lots of them get caught up by the guy or the gal with the big platform the big ministry the big business the big kingdom business they go how come i can't be the lord says no you got the wrong you're thinking you're doing this the wrong way shift over to the by the spirit of revelation to the thing that i'm speaking to in in your life about it's important that we see the continuity between being faithful in a little bit staying steady growing a lot of humility it has continuity to our eternal external impact because we're going to have many of you will be teachers in this age of course i mean most people are in some ways they might be teaching the children in their home or the kids in the neighborhood or a couple friends but everyone's teaching somewhat if they're paying attention to the lord but some of you will teach fives and tens in this age or twenties or fifties or hundreds or whatever but you may be teaching millions in the age to come you have no comprehension where this is going and so i wanna like keep my focus straight i go you know i wanna make an impact i'm not i'm not putting that down but i'm not going to sell out my heart for that i'm not going to network myself into burnout and in strife and manipulation and angered everyone who shuts the door who doesn't give me a platform who didn't give me the position i deserve i'm not going to give my heart away for those kinds of things like so many people do i go no i want an impact but i want a collective impact and i'm happy to have an individual impact but i know that's not what you're going to talk to me about on the last day you're going to talk to me about did i grow in humility do i grow in love well our paragraph f our eternal external ministry again when you have that other ministry in the age to come it'd be much bigger than what you can imagine you'll impact many more people in a greater measure of the glory of god than you can imagine you can imagine so i always i'll i'll end this part with this and i'm just gonna just mention the other ones because you kinda are in the direction of them already but uh i call this year this uh uh our life in this age the 70-year internship and then we go to our larger ministry with our physical body on the earth our larger ministry in the resurrection the people oh that's kind of cute like how much serious this can be this is an internship billy graham had an internship for 70 years he's taught in stadiums that was his internship that's not his main ministry billy graham is now going oh that was training it was important doesn't mean it doesn't mean it's not important but billy graham's calling in the next in the thousand-year millennial reign is quite uh more of the spirit of power and glory than he could ever have imagined imparting you know nobody thinks it's strange for somebody to go to college than med school the residency they you know they give ten years spent a couple hundred thousand dollars getting prepared to be a doctor so they spend 10 years for school a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt but they're admitted they're a medical doctor for 50. it makes sense to give 10 years for 50. but it doesn't make sense to give 70 years for a thousand because they have they don't have revelation of their calling they're thinking that 70 years is it but the 70 years is the internship it's your college years it's your residency using a medical term and then you're you're bigger i mean it's real it's all real the bullets are live and it really counts but it isn't the you're gonna have a far greater capacity to manifest and release the presence of god at a level you can't imagine on the earth with your physical resurrected body and and paul kept his eye on that he says it over and over through the epistles his islander all kinds of things for the exceeding greatness of the glory that's coming because i'm not giving up under these pressures he said that first corinth second corinthians 4 17 romans 8 18 there's a number of times he said that okay let's go to the second prayer roman number three paul's second specific prayer is about who we are to god this prayer is to realize we are god's inheritance this is a giant point i mean giant meaning really weighty with lots of facets paul prayed that the spirit of revelation and the knowledge of jesus they would experience oh i love this phrase the riches of the glory of belonging to him of being who he wants what a phrase the wealth of the glory of being who jesus wants as his inheritance can you fathom who you are because you're who he wants what why does he want you he sees something in you he said father i'll go but i only go if you give me them that's the inheritance i'm going for and the father says i'll give you the inheritance that you prize most them but we got to get the fog and the darkness lifted off of our mind to see who we are it's so not worth it to sell ourselves out for anything less than this paragraph b moses talked about god's people being god's inheritance that that god would have an inheritance paragraph c the god who possesses everything is waiting on something he doesn't have how could the god that possesses everything the thing he wants most he doesn't have and he won't take it by force it's your voluntary love because that's what i want most and i won't take it you'll give it to me or i won't have it that is staggering that creates an insight into the drama of your life in the journey of your life you are what he wants most i'm talking about as a born-again believer god won't force us to respond paragraph d i'm just saying the same thing over and over because it's fun to say the great prize of all the ages the father says son i'll give you the prize you want most i know i know what you want most i'll give you them and but you're gonna have to wait for them and you have all power but you can't take them they have to come to you on their own i know the spirit draws them and all that of course it's the spirit's work wow we are what he most desires that is a remarkable remarkable reality well let's look at top of page four who we are to god is foundational being his inheritance i mean to our spiritual identity when i see this more and i don't see it that clear i see it a lot clearer than i did 10 years ago 20 years ago 30 years ago i remember when i started prayer meetings i remember as a young pastor i remember it vividly vividly when it happened it was weird i had never been to a prayer meeting for revival that i ever remembered it was may 1979 i remember a long time ago so it's whatever it is 40 something years ago the lord spoke to me he said you're an intercessor i didn't know what an intercessor was i really didn't i'd never been to an intercessory prayer meeting that prayed for revival not one no one ever talked about it i went to the christian bookstore down the road i go because the lord made it real i go i'm an intercessor i go you got books on that they go no i go nothing like i got a couple books on prayer but most of the books on earth just said you got to do it they didn't say i go i mean i read these three four famous books but they just said do it or you're never going to grow okay chapter after chapter you better do it okay i got it can anybody tell me how to do it but being you know a young man i was 24 years old i'm 65 now being a young pastor i heard from god so i told everybody i've learned since then i just don't tell everybody everything i can get from god but i'm an intercessor they said what's that like i don't know yet i don't know i truly don't know but i'm gonna i'm jumping in and i thought okay let's do it and i didn't know i it was really going to be rough on the front end so i called daily prayer meetings and i'm not trying to be a hot shot here but by the grace of god i've kept them going since february i mean may 1979 says i've helped the lord help me do daily prayer readings ever since i called them but here's the point i'm getting at people said what are we going to do five people three people showed up day after days big ones were six no music i said i don't even know what we're gonna do i don't even know what god said revival well that took 90 seconds so i took these prayers of the apostles wrote them down on a piece of paper handwriting you'd have laptops in those days and typewriters and hand wrote them went to the xerox machine made copies handwritten pretty bad handwriting handed them all of these prayers the 25 prayers and i say there's 25 with doxologies it might be 29 there's different ways to count them 25 is a ballpark number and we started with ephesians 1. i remember i go lord i had everybody we had the i said and i just prayed like all of them every prayer meeting i read them lord give me the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him the eyes of my heart that i would be his inheritance said what's like i have a clue what that means it's weird to me and i said what these phrases were so not weird but they didn't connect at all i couldn't even make sense of them and i look at these just looking at this right now looking down and i go lord this stuff is like really dynamic stuff i don't know probably is not 100 true but i probably prayed ephesians 1 on a microphone nearly every day since then that's probably a couple times a week but anyway because it was always the first one on the list that's why it showed up on the iop list first because i had it in my list back in st louis i just put the list the way i had it they're not in order because i wrote them because i didn't find some of them till later in my writing and i was going to say rocks and i didn't want to write it over again so i got them all out of order but they're still out of order on the ihop handouts i said it ain't broke don't fix it just stay with it but here's what i learned about it you pray these phrases they bounced off of me and the guys and you know the three or four people in the prayer rooms we had meetings every day in the morning and one or two in the evenings and they were boring and i said like what are we doing i don't know let's just stay with it let's see where this takes us then after a little bit a couple phrases made more sense but the other eight didn't at all you know i read commentaries i i couldn't make any sense out of them either i go this is more confusing than i was and the guys you know i'm 24 25 26 27 28 now i came to kansas city we were 27 and people say what does he what do these phrases mean i said half them i don't know but let's just stay with it god knows as long as he knows it still works my point is i'm wanting to demystify this and just say get in a rhythm and just stay with it all your days it's one decision i don't have any regret for doing i look back then i said i'm so glad because you know you missed this and you missed that and this opportunity that number two and i go i'm just so glad somehow it made sense even though these phrases bounced off they didn't make most of them did not make sense but this went about being god's inheritance really didn't make sense i go god's inheritance is why does he need an inheritance doesn't he have everything that's weird why does he want us really i mean i know he died because he loves us you know i know that but we're his inheritance poor jesus really couldn't the father came up with anything better than this i mean he's god he could have come up with something better than this i mean i'm not joking but it's foundational to our spiritual identity to see where the object of his fiction it changes everything and i don't have it all i i've gained it a lot you know i've gone from a a zero to a one to a two to a three and the angel next to me and i said yeah i go back to two you don't have a clue where this is going you've got so much to learn in this you don't even know how big these things are okay i went from a one to a two okay we confess as his inheritance i love to say this we are his favorites why are we his favorites because he loves us and the way that the father loves him if jesus loves you like the father loves him all of you are his favorites we confess his heart is ravished for us what it's true like okay i say with my mouth to bring my heart into alignment i'm my beloved his desire is for me let's go to the third prayer roman numeral four because this one's endless this inheritance it's the affections of his heart it's the song of solomon it's all the love of god it's we could go on and on but i think you're on the right trajectory you get that what that one's going where that's going i mean the depth of it we can't we'll never exhaust the depth of it but at least i mean the the hope of the calling is more confusing because we don't think of it as as having an internal and an external and a temporal and an eternal all these dimensions and when you see it these other things then it it makes more sense to persevere but knowing that we are the what he prizes most wow again that bounces off easy stay with it line up your prayer and your confession let me see by the spirit of revelation i am what he desires most i am the great prize you are giving him father let me see this by the spirit of revelation by living understanding well the next one the final one i'll just spend a moment or two on it is the third specific request relates to how we experience the power of god and one of the keys is is how is rightly perceiving how the power of god works paragraph b we need this revelation to see that usually not always usually god releases his power to induce people in small measures not always there's dramatic miracles and there's a lot more coming but in the course of 2000 years in the course of 50 or 70 years of walking with the lord well we're entering a time frame i think where there'll be many dramatic miracles but i'm talking about the way of his kingdom is typically he releases small measures of power then he wants us to recognize it be grateful for it and then while we're grateful for it and recognizing it we're not despising it we're contending for the historic breakthrough as well because we have revelation of how his power works but when we don't see the small measure is real it's still god's god's power you know when you had that idea like i don't know i don't want to do this with god today and they thought nah i think i will that's the power of god actually that's not the devil and that's not the flesh that little moment of change no i think i will beloved that is the power of god working in you i promise you it is when you've got a situation and well you can slander give in cave in draw back or bless so you go you know what i'm not going to say nothing just i'm just asking the lord to bless them that's the power of god working in you that is not the devil working in you and that's not your flesh you go really well maybe there is it's not the measure that we we're thinking if i get blown over by the spirit that's the power of god everything less than that isn't the power of god and with that attitude we end i mean that perception not attitude we end up despising the power of god in our life instead of being grateful for it and then when we despise it what happens we keep waiting for the reinhardt bonky miracle power bigger than that and the years go by and it didn't happen the years go by he's like ah forget it i give up the lord says no you're misunderstanding how it operates there are times and seasons in history where i might give great breakthroughs but understand by revelation how my power works not only the small measures in you even the times and seasons in human history and we're entering that time frame i believe we're going to see tremendous manifestations of the power of god but the thing is he wants us grateful for the power of god in small ways our mind is inspired a little bit we read the bible it says god loves you and also your heart feels tender that's the power of god you say something to a brother or sister hey good to see you no lord is telling me that this little sentence about you they go wow thank you that's the power of god working in you really the tension is he wants us grateful for the small measures and recognizing it and that makes us hungry for the bigger measures and if the bigger measures are prolonged we don't get offended and bowed we bow out of the race how many i've said this over the years again i've been doing these again i'm not trying to be a big hot shot about this but i've been doing these daily prayer meetings since for 40 whatever years and i have seen so many people thousands of people collectively who jumped into the revival engagement for three to five years and when the power didn't hit our nation at the three to five years the next 10 20 30 40 years they had nothing to do with prayer meetings because they got offended because they were in it for the john g lake reinhardt bonkey level when it didn't happen they set up because they were not being grateful for the small measures because when you're grateful for the small measures that makes you hungry and even sustainable to trust god for the timing of the big measures i have seen thousands i don't really know the number but it has to be thousands who were on fire i mean they were every prayer meeting you could guess almost a little exaggerated but you know three to five years and for the next 10 or 20 years you can't find them in a prayer meeting i love jesus now i'm not really into that anymore and part of the reason is they didn't have revelation of how the power of god works they had an image it's either the revival and the knock me over power or it's not power so they never developed a gratitude and a leaning into with greater hunger they end up got it getting offended because it didn't look like they thought and they backed out of the race anyway i've got all that written down there let's stand before the lord lord we're asking you for living understanding lord we believe you for the greater book of acts miracles the lord i thank you that today i felt inspired to read your word today and talk to you i felt inspired to have godly conversations with people i felt inspired to say yes to respond to humility in a couple small ways thank you thank you for the power of god i want to see greater measures but i prayed for that lady i didn't really today but and her headache went away that's the power of god the devil didn't make it go away the little ache in her arm left lord says that still me lean into me don't despise any of it well i went from praying to talking okay let's go back to praying was the lady with a headache that took me off okay so lord here we are before you and we say yes to you father we say yes to you just anytime you're ready lord jesus wait upon you now what we do here on friday nights is the prayer room this is the prayer room right now we got the fire and the altar going we got a team down in the prayer room but it's here until 10. and so we're going to keep this going so if you're done engaging with the lord i'm asking you to go to the four-year to talk in that fellowship so that we just keep this as a first sanctuary in here then at 10 o'clock we shift it back down to the gpr but i'm encouraged some of you maybe open up your bibles take some of these notes and say lord help me connect with some of this here we are lord lord i ask for the spirit of wisdom and revelation to mark hearts i ask for the spirit of wisdom and revelation i ask that you'd mark hearts right now with living understanding raise up intercessors out of this class in a new way raise up teachers on prayer mark hearts with these ideas that many of these people will teach them and go deeper than anything we did tonight raise up shepherds that will teach these truths next 10 20 years all around the world technology gives us a chance to go far away [Music] if you would like prayer you come up here we're not gonna have people lay hands on you right now just to tell the rules change and stuff i want to honor them but you come up here anyway if you want to and you're saying i know i'm called to be more engaged in praying these prayers but i just need a little jump start i just need that renewal again now i'm hoping this class will help me with it but tonight i would like to be touched and a renewing of the importance of this come on stand on the front line if you would if you're the first one's up so the folks can come behind you come all the way to the front anybody that wants to [Music] give us clarity about our calling the internal the external the eternal [Music] i ask you for confidence in our calling that it makes sense to us [Music] give us clarity let's hear your voice [Music] lord release the spirit of revelation [Music] give us wisdom [Music] give us a spirit of wisdom and the knowledge of your son in the knowledge of jesus let us see what it's like how he feels how he thinks about us we want to [Music] beautiful jesus [Music] let us see what you see when you look at it give to us wisdom and revelation [Music] father of glory give to us with some revelations [Music] in the love of god [Music] knowledge of him [Music] to us with the revelation the knowledge of jesus

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Length: 77min 44sec (4664 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 20 2021