Saturday, December 1, 2018

PT-3 "Petitions for Beleivers" from Eph. 1:17


SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/1/2018 10:40 AM



My Worship Time                                                                Focus:  PT-3 “Petitions for Believers”



Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Ephesians 1:17



            Message of the verses:  17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.”



            I have to say that from the commentary that I am looking at to help me to understand this very difficult letter that this section we are in is very long.  I stated that we would look at the beginning of this SD how this subject effects believers today.  Do believers today do as many in the past and not understand what they have in Christ, and do believers today try to add things that are not what the Bible has to say that they have.  We begin with another quote from John MacArthur to try and help us understand this important subject.



            “Yet today many Christians spend a great deal of time and effort vainly looking for blessings already available to them.  They pray for strength, although His Word tells them they can do all things through Christ who strengthens them (Phil. 4:13).  The pray for more love, although Paul says that God’s own love is already poured out within their hearts through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5).  They pray for more grace, although the Lord says the grace He has already given is sufficient (2 Cor. 12:9).  They pray for peace, although the Lord has given them His own peace, ‘which surpasses all comprehension’ (Phil. 4:7).  It is expected that we pray for such blessings if the tone of the prayer is one of seeking the grace to appropriate what is already given, rather than one of pleading for something we think is scarcely available or is reluctantly shared by God.



            “The Christian’s primary need is for wisdom and obedience to appropriate the abundance of blessings the Lord has already given.  Our problem is not lack of blessings, but lack of insight and wisdomto understand and use them properly and faithfully.  Our blessings are so vast that the human mind cannot comprehend them.  In our own minds we cannot fathom the riches we have in our position in Jesus Christ.  Such things are totally beyond the human mind to grasp.  Only the Holy Spirit Himself can search the deep things of the mind of God, and only the Spirit can bring them to our understanding.  ‘Just as it is written,’ Paul says, ‘Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which has not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him.’  For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depts of God.  For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.  Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God’ (1 Cor. 2:9-12).



            “God’s deeper truths cannot be seen with our eyes, heard with our ears, or comprehended by our reason or intuition.  They are revealed only to those who love Him.”



            I can say that I have learned much from this rather long quote, and I hope that the readers of this SD have too.

            As believers in Christ we all have many specific needs which include physical, moral, and spiritual needs, and for these we must ask the Lord’s help.  However no Christian needs, or can have, more of the Lord or of His blessing and inheritance that believers already have.  What God gives to us is perfect for He is perfect.  Paul tells us like he told the Ephesian believers not to seek spiritual resources, but understand and use those we given when we accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. 



            Look again at the last part of verse 17 which says, “may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.”  We see here that the spirit of wisdom is given through the Holy Spirit Himself, “as some interpreters suggest.  Pneuma (spirit) is anarthrous here, meaning that it has no article before it.  In such cases the indefinite article is usually supplied in English, as in our text:  ‘a spirit.’  Believers already posses the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:9), for whom their bodies are temples (1 Cor. 6:19).  Nor does it seem that Paul was speaking of the human spirit, which every person already possess (1 Cor. 2:11).”  MacArthur continues: “The basic meaning of pneuma (from which we get such English words as pneumatic and pneumonia) is breath or air, and from that meaning is derived the connotation of spirit.  But like our English spirit, pneuma sometimes was used of a disposition, influence, or attitude—as in ‘He is in high spirits today.’  Jesus used the word in that sense in the first beatitude:  ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’ (Matt. 5:13).  He was not referring to the Holy Spirit or to the human spirit but to the spirit, or attitude, of humility.   



            We only have a little bit left in order to finish this section and since tomorrow is Sunday and Sunday has its own things that must be done I will as usual only have time to do a shorter SD and so we will continue to look at this section in that SD, Lord willing.



            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I think my prayer life may be a bit difference after understanding that some of the inheritance that I have in Christ are things that I need the wisdom from the Holy Spirit to understand.



My Steps of Faith for Today:  Trust the Spirit of God to give me wisdom and understanding when I don’t understand the inheritance that I have in Christ.



Answer to yesterday’s Bible question:  “Zebedee” (Luke 5:10).



Today’s Bible question:  “Which book closes with the account of Paul’s first imprisonment at Rome?”



Answer in our next SD.



12/1/2018 11:37 AM






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