Mike Bickle emphasizes the significance of the apostolic prayer found in Ephesians 1:15-23, which seeks the spirit of wisdom and revelation for deeper intimacy with God. He highlights that this prayer addresses the greatest spiritual needs in our lives and the necessity of persistent prayer to receive God's glory. Bickle warns against complacency in faith, urging believers to actively seek God's presence and understanding through prayer. He explains that the spirit of revelation allows us to see and feel as God does, empowering us to fulfill our divine assignments. Ultimately, this prayer is a call to experience God's power and presence in our lives, transforming our hearts and minds.

Thank you for the spirit of wisdom and revelation. We ask you to release it into our hearts, to empower our minds and our hearts in an active intimacy with your heart. We thank you in the name of Jesus. Amen. Tonight we're going to look at one of the real prominent apostolic prayers. And what I mean by apostolic prayers, it's a prayers of one of the apostles. There's about 25 prayers of the apostles in the New Testament. Most of them have quite a bit of repetition with other ones, but there's 12 or 13, 14 really distinct ones. And this is the most prayed prayer at IHOP, and I'm happy about that. This is a good one. And this is a prayer, Ephesians chapter 1, verse 15 to 23, that you really want to be familiar with. I have it titled, it's a prayer for the release of the spirit of wisdom and revelation, but it's a prayer for intimacy, for intimacy at the heart level to be increased, to release the glory of God in our life in three particular ways. Let's go ahead and just read through this. It says in verse 15, after I heard of your faith, Paul the apostle speaking or writing from a prison in Rome, and he's writing to the church that he founded. He was the one that spent three years in Ephesus in Acts 19 and 20, and the greatest revival in the early church broke out in Ephesus under Paul's leadership. So some years later, and Paul's now in prison, and he's heard a report. The Ephesian church is doing great. They're fiery for God. They're pressing in. They're radical in their faith and their love for one another and for Jesus. They're taking a stand, and Paul's in prison. He goes, oh, I'm just absolutely overjoyed. Of course, he could picture the elders, and he could picture some of the leaders that he had known from the early days of the revival. He says, after I heard of your faith, again in prison, hearing a report, he knows these people. I do not cease to make mention of you because I pray for you in prison. I pray hours a day for you, and here's what I pray. I mean, this is so brilliant. This prayer is because we can ask Paul, Paul, what is one of your main prayers, which is another way of saying it, what is one of the biggest needs in the body of Christ? Because if Paul prayed for this as one of his primary prayers, and it clearly is, that's the same thing as what is one of the greatest needs in the body of Christ, and you can make that personal. What is one of the greatest needs in your life? Here it is. Look no further. This prayer represents the greatest spiritual need in your life, or nearly, if not the most. It reveals the area of which Satan attacks us the most, because what this prayer is, the opposite of it is how Satan attacks us. This prayer represents what God the Father is committed to releasing in answer to prayer. But don't have a false confidence in the sovereignty of God. And what I mean by false confidence in sovereignty, it's when we, when we are late spiritually lazy, and we claim God's sovereignty. I don't want to bother with it, but God sovereignly just give it to me anyway, and the Lord says you can't trust my sovereignty in areas I'm requiring your active, diligent responsibility. And the Lord will release this to the measure that it's asked for. It's one of the most neglected, if not the most, who knows what the most is, neglected areas in the body of Christ is the glory of this prayer not being released. God will not give it in a vacuum just as a rule. I mean he's God, so he can give it one here, one there, anytime he wants. But the normal administration of the kingdom is such he will not give that which we do not ask for persistently. And he gives us according to the measure that we ask it. But beloved, this is Paul in prison, thinking of the church dear to his heart, praying the prayer most needed, most necessary to them, and the prayer that they need most, the prayer that Satan attacks this issue, this area most. And this is true of your life. This is the area he's attacking you in, I assure you. If you connect with God on the subject of this prayer, the enemy's kingdom will be disturbed through your life. He does not want you connecting on this subject. I heard a teaching on this prayer years ago. I was, you know, 20 or whatever, 20, 21, something. I can remember. It's the season, that season of my life. And so I got out Ephesians 1. Some guys said it was the most important prayer of the Bible. I didn't know what the most important prayer of the Bible was. The truth is I couldn't tell you very many prayers in the Bible. So I thought, hey, I'll take it. And I kind of took it by that guy's word. And now it's these 30 years later. And I tell you, it is one of the most important prayers of the Bible. There's not a question about it in my mind. This is a prayer that I've had as a high priority in my own personal devotion life since I heard it. I remember the day I heard it. I can remember it vividly. And I said, okay. And I read it. I thought, boy, this is an odd prayer. Didn't make that much sense to me, to be honest. I could understand one or two phrases of it. The rest of it was pretty much mysterious. But I took it by faith. I used to just read it to God and said, Lord, you know, Lord, thou knowest. I don't understand what half of it means, but thou knowest. Paul said in verse 16, I do not cease making mention of you in my prayers. He doesn't cease because he knows the measure, the measure of God's release is related to prayer, not only prayer, but it is related to prayer. It's related to other things as well, but it is related to the amount of prayer. Here's what he prays. I pray verse 17, that the God of the Lord Jesus, that's title one, that the father of glory, that's title number two. He would give you what you do not have of yourself. He's going to give you something. He's going to open his hand. He's going to give you that which you need most, that which Satan resist most. Here's what it is in one sentence. Here's it's one general prayer and three specific prayers that flow out of the general one. Here's the general prayer. He would give you in one sentence, the spirit of wisdom and the spirit of revelation and the knowledge of God and the knowledge of him. Now the him in its context is the father. However, Jesus said in John 14, nine, if you've seen the father, you've seen me, John 14, nine and Hebrews one, three, the well-known passage, Jesus is the exact representation of the father's glory. So we strain in a, in a unnecessary way to limit this to the father, not the son, because this prayer works in both directions, both ways. But just for your biblical sense of understanding the passage, him is actually the father, but it applies to the son as well. So don't get too worried about that. If you've been praying, oh, I've been praying the whole time, but the revelation of knowledge of Jesus, it's okay. It still works. The father doesn't mind. Holy spirit will minister to our heart and the appropriate way. And then he goes on in verse 18. Now he's going to elaborate on the prayer. He's going to say it again. He's going to give an, uh, an explanation of what he means in verse 18. He goes, here's what I mean that the eyes of your understanding or one translation says the eyes of your heart would be supernaturally enlightened by the activity of the Holy spirit. So that's the prayer in one sentence, the God would give you a spirit of revelation and the knowledge of God, father of the son, specifically the eyes of your understanding. That's the eyes of the heart. One translation says would be supernaturally aided by the power of the Holy spirit. It would be helped with a power that's not inherent within our own humanity. It's a foreign power. It's God, the Holy spirit, because our unaided mind, no matter how brilliant somebody is, they cannot enter into the realm of the glory of God except aided by the Holy spirit. It's not a matter of how rich, famous, smart, sharp, whatever. There's a big barrier there. The natural mind unaided by the Holy spirit cannot get into that realm of power and revelation. You could be a believer for many, many years, but if you're not giving yourself to the spirit of prayer, you will have a very minimal experience of being aided, aided by the Holy spirit to touch a new dimension called the spirit of revelation. It's not by human might or will. It's not by human finesse. It's by hungry hearts under the mercy and the aid of the Holy spirit in answer to a life of obedience and prayer. Beloved, can you imagine the eyes of the understanding supernaturally enlightened? So we see the things that God sees that we feel the things that God feels, of course, just in part limited way, but a little bit of that will go a long way to see what God sees about our lives and about the world and to feel what God feels. There's no amount of money in the world you can pay to get that operating in your inner man. That's the place where a free spirit, that's where the place of joy, that's the place of greatness and relevance and power is being able to see what God sees and feel what he feels. It's when you're not limited by your circumstances in prayer, you can go far away and change nations in prayer. You can have a very difficult circumstance, but you can go somewhere in the spirit and your heart is empowered. It's called the eyes of the understanding, supernaturally enlightened, aided by the Holy spirit. Now he's going to give the three specific prayers that are going to come under that general prayer. The general prayer is to have the spirit of wisdom and revelation, and he repeats it, the eyes of the understanding enlightened. Now he's going to give three specific prayers that are subunits, if you will, three prayers that flow out of this one. If the main one isn't in place, then the three specific prayers do not happen. So the verse 17, the spirit of wisdom and revelation is the root system, and these other three are the branches that come out of that root system. Prayer number one, he says that you would know, and the word know when talking about God, our relationship to God always means experience. It doesn't mean intellectual knowledge, it means know by experience. It's more than facts. There's an unction of God that comes with the facts on the heart. Number one, you'd experience the hope of his calling. Number two, you'd experience the riches, the wealth, the riches of being God's inheritance. Wow, Paul's in prison. I can just see Paul stopping us. Oh, I really like that one. I am your inheritance. Here he is in chains in Rome. Oh, I love it. I'm what God wants most. I'm what God likes best. I am his inheritance. I am what God longs for most. He's writing in prison with a sense of greatness and a touch of transcendence in his life, because he tapped into that. The number three, verse 19, you would know what is, or you would experience what is the exceeding greatness of God's power. Now he goes on the rest of the passage and describes three ways in which God's power operates in Jesus's life as a man. We have that at the end of the notes. I don't want to go to that right now and say brilliant, but it's a argument you have to pay attention to when you go into it. It's brilliant. There's three areas in which God the Father releases power upon Jesus as a man, as a human. That's the point. It isn't God anointing God. There is no great inspiration for us in our weakness that God anoints God. It's not God the Father anointing God the Son. I mean, it's not God the Father anointing the second person of the Trinity, Jesus in his deity. He's fully God, but it's God anointing him in his humanity. As a man dependent upon the Father, he has three different ways in which God the Father shows forth his power, and in these three ways, Paul's argument is this, and he spends quite, you know, as you can tell from verse 20 to 23, quite a lengthy argument, and it's really worth working through this passage. The point of it is, if God was willing to give this to the man, Jesus of Nazareth, to this extreme, God is willing to give power to other human beings that relate to him through Jesus of Nazareth. That's the logic, that this power is available in our temptation, in our human frailty, in our fears. This power is available, the power that God gave another man, Jesus of Nazareth. It's a power that God gives humans. That's the point of the passage. Okay, let's look at Roman number one. Continual prayer to the Father of glory for the saints. This is Paul's Revelation A. He has a revelation of the power of prayer, as well as we see that we see Paul's highest focus in prayer, that's to labor in prayer for the Spirit of Revelation. You have a loved one that knows the Lord or doesn't know the Lord. I assure you, this is one of the top prayers, most important prayers you can pray for them. When somebody comes to me, they go, how can I pray for you? I've been asked that many times over the years. I always say Ephesians 1 17. That's, I say, hey, I can't go wrong. You've got an unbelieving family member or a believer, a believer that's stuck and needs to get unstuck or a believer that's anointed and needs to get more anointed. Ephesians 1 17 is the prayer. Again, look no further. Here's your answer. For your own heart, for your own life, for the church, the ministry, the nation, for Israel, for the government. I every level that the Spirit of God would touch human hearts and power and human hearts would see and feel different by the strike of the arrow of the Spirit. I tell you, when the Holy Spirit touches us, not that you can always tell when it's happening, meaning, I mean, sometimes you can tell when the Holy Spirit's touched you, but sometimes there's no, I have no conscious, physical sensation, but all of a sudden my, I feel tender. I'm reading the word. I feel tender and it makes sense to love God and I'm going to be lost in God. I tell you, that's a, that's like an arrow of the Spirit touching my spirit. You know, I can't feel it that second, but I can discern it in this other way. Oh, I love the word or the worship's playing and I don't want to move. I just want to stay there. I go, oh, don't stop beloved. That's the Holy Spirit moving on your spirit. That's not the work of the flesh. That's not an unaided human mind or emotion. That's God moving on you and it comes in just little measures, little doses here or there, but we can sustain that. I don't mean sustain it where we have it 100% of the time. That's not what I mean by sustain it, but it could be a regular part of our life. It's not just something that shows up every six weeks for like a half hour and that one prayer moment, you know, that one morning, wow, it hit me again. I could feel it. No, this is something God wants us to live in on an ongoing basis. Again, I'm not, I don't want to exaggerate it and say 24 hours a day. It doesn't work that way because they're, uh, I don't want to go into that, but it just doesn't, but it can be the rule of our life. We can have it a whole lot more than not have it. If we, if we contend for it, if we want it. So Paul has this revelation of the power of prayer. I mentioned it earlier. Too many people have a really inappropriate, inappropriate confidence in the sovereignty of God. I mean, there's nothing grander than the sovereignty of God, but God won't do our job and we can't do his job. He will not do our job. We cannot trust him to do our part. He goes, no, that's illegal. You trust my sovereignty when you come to me in the means of grace with diligence and a sincere heart and weakness. Yes. Brokenness. Yes. Doing it bad. Yes. But with diligence and a sincere heart with all kinds of weakness riddled through the equation, that's a, that's a, an appropriate confidence in the sovereignty of God. I I've, I've used this illustration for so many years, but I'll just say it to you anyway, is, uh, it's the illustration of the farmer and the preacher. The preacher goes home to the farmer on Sunday, driving up and sees this beautifully manicured acres, hundreds of acres and all this. And the preacher says, farmer, well, God really blessed you. Farmer says, huh? He says, you should have seen this place when God had it. It was a mess and God will provide the sun and the rain, but the farmer has to cultivate the field or it will be a mess. Even under the power of the sun and the rain, it will be a mess. B Paul appeals to God two ways as the God of Jesus. And as the father of glory, these are significant. Number one, the God of the Lord, Jesus, what God did for Jesus in his humanity is the picture of what he's committed to do for other people. It's the ideal picture. What God did for Jesus, Jesus longed to please him and prayed and sought to obey and to walk in a servant spirit. Now we don't do it to the perfection Jesus does, but it's in the same spirit. And we feed our spirit on the word of God. And God says, I will be to you what I was to that man from Nazareth. Because in the old Testament, they prayed to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And the new Testament, they prayed to the God of Yeshua. And it's not to the God of the second person, the Trinity, it's to the God of a man from Nazareth who is fully God. But the emphasis is the fact he's human. And God says, the father says, you study what I did through that man, what I did to that man. Yes, we're not going to have the same measure of it, but we can have like kind, lesser measure. He says, you, you asked me, I will be to you the God of Jesus of Nazareth. Number two, Paul calls him the God of the father of glory. I love this father of glory. What a sentence, I mean, phrase. Now there's two different dimensions to this, and they're both massive. So we can't spend time with it, but you can develop it in your own personal life. He's the God that possesses glory. I mean, he has it all. He's the God of glory. He has power, wisdom, love. He has all the glory, the realms of glory. They're all within his domain. He has it all, but that's not the fullness of Paul's heart. Paul says he has it, but he's the God who gives glory. He gives the manifestation of his grace and power. He gives it to humans. That is the core truth to this whole prayer. It's, he's a God who longs to give the glory. And I don't mean the glory, uh, give the honor and the praise. That's what I mean by glory. In one sense, glory means that, but many places, glory, it's the realm of his power, the realm of his, of the Holy Spirit's manifest power and wisdom. He says, I want to give it. I'm the God who gives the glory to the people who can't live without it. If you can't live without it, I will give my manifest presence to you. I am the God of the manifest presence. You could say it that way. See, Paul had just outlined meaning, uh, earlier in Ephesians one. And those of you that are studying Ephesians one, you know, it's, uh, one of the clearest and most comprehensive statements in the whole Bible on God's desire to give his grace and glory to his people. I mean, you just can't, you can't find another passage. I mean, maybe a couple of them you could just put toe to toe with Ephesians one, but there's no passage that eclipses it in terms of understanding of God's desire to impart or to release his glory to his people. So Paul has just laid out verse three to 14, this magnificent statement of his commitment to give glory to humans, to weak humans. And now he says in verse, uh, uh, 16 and 17, he goes, I am the God of glory. Now ask me to be the God of verse three to 14, the God who would give it to you. I just, I just made a statement that I want to give my glory to you. Beloved, we are just so easily too easily satisfied with so little talking about to our IHOP community. God has so much more he wants to give us, and I'm not specifying any particular individuals or this or that. I just know as a people, and even in my own individual life, I know God has more he wants to give me. He is the God, the father of glory. He's not just the God of glory in the midst of dispensing the glory. He manifests his father's heart while he is, he's nurturing my life in your life and preparing us for the glory. He's acting as a father while dispensing or preparing us to receive the glory. Okay. Let's go to the top of page two F. So Paul says, okay. He said, I've just outlined the glory to you. Now I'm praying that the church at Ephesus would experience it more fully because this glory from verse three to 14, we're going to have it in fullness in eternity. But Paul's argument is, yes, you can have it in fullness in eternity, but there is a far greater measure that God would give. Now, the fact that God has ordained this glory for humans, he is God is committed. He's on record. God has acted in history to prove to you. He wants to give his glory to you even now, but he's not going to violate the principles of his kingdom. He's not going to have you be casually interested and then him to give you the deepest things of his heart to the casually interested. The problem with our culture, and I like being an American, but I, but we have a lot of traps in our culture that we need to be aware of. The problem with being an American is that you can be known as one of the most radical on fire Christians and be profoundly carnal and shallow because you're more on fire than the majority. And it's like, wow, that guy is so on fire. But from the esteem of heaven, the Lord says, well, you know, he is saved. It's true. He's saved. And so we can get, we can kind of get lulled to sleep by looking that we're more on fire than the other 99 people that we know. And we think we're one out of a hundred, but we're in a spiritually dull, superficial culture that does not prize spiritual depth. So I'm not trying to outdo that group or this group or anything. I just want all that I can, but I'm not looking around and getting my signals from around the nation or anywhere. I want to go hard for God. Not, I don't want to go harder than you. I want to go as hard as I can go in the grace of God. Gee, Paul understood that this one key, uh, general prayer, the prayer for intimacy, the prayer for the spirit of revelation. Oh my goodness. The spirit of revelation to move. I think of the Holy spirit brooding over the space of the earth in Genesis one, the spirits brooding over the church. He's brooding. He's hovering over our lives waiting to break in and power, wherever there's agreement and the earth and vessels with the word of God, because the spirit moves where the word is beloved. Genesis one is the pattern. The spirits brooding is hovering. And whenever the word is released, the spirit moves on it. The word reaches the natural realm. And in our particular individual cases, it's when our hearts are filled with the word, it beckons for the spirit to move in power inside of us. And what happens is that folks don't think it all the way through and they want the spirit to land on them, but there's no word. The spirit moves on the word. Genesis one, he creates when the word goes ahead of it. And in the earth and vessel in Genesis one was the whole earth, but the earth and vessel now is your individual life or the person you're praying for. But in our individual, I can't make somebody else get filled the word. But if I wanted, if I want the spirit to land on me, I want to fill myself up with the word and, and then, then the spirit ignites the word that's in me. So I challenged the people I've done this over the years, intermittently, and I wish I had, I do it more consistently, exhort people to do this 10 chapter a day thing. And if you've got something that's working, don't worry about stay with it. You know, if it's a nun, I'm already on a pattern. No, don't defer. You just forget my idea. If it's working, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But so many of God's people, they just don't, they kind of flounder. They don't know what to do. I encourage people to read 10 chapters a day in the new Testament, six days a week, and you'll get to the whole new Testament once a month. I've done that for years and have had youth groups do that for over the years. It's helpful. It's powerful, sneaks up on them, changes them. And then you get those, you know, those type of guys or gals, they want to go through the new Testament twice a month. It's cool. They'll really get behind on their TV shows, but it's really will be good for them. Gee, Paul understood that this intimacy, the spirit of revelation, which is the central prayer was essential for the other three prayers to be released. The other three prayers. Okay. H, I just talk about ways that God releases his glory. You can just kind of read that on your own. Roman numeral two, the spirit of wisdom and revelation, the knowledge of God. Now here's the critical, here's the essential prayer, the core prayer right here. The father of glory would give you the spirit of wisdom and the spirit of revelation and the knowledge of him. In other words, that the eyes of your understanding would be supernaturally enlightened light. And yet the eyes of your understanding of the eyes of your heart would be aided, aided by a supernatural power called the Holy spirit. That's the key prayer. And then the three other prayers flow out of that. And sometimes people may want to aim for one of the three prayers and they want to go, you know, a little shallow on the primary prayer. No, that the three flow out of the primary, but it's not like we're just trying to get the job done. We want to feel God, interact with God. Our, our spirit is alive when we know what God thinks and what God feels. We are at our highest as human beings. We are at our best when we can see and feel what God sees and feels even a little bit. We are at our best. We are at our optimum capacity. When we're in that flow, our spirit is the freest. Our joy is the fullest. Our success before God is the clearest and the surest. We may not achieve that much with our hands, but the way God counts success, we are the surest in that place. We just cannot, cannot live without this thing happening in our spirits. Hey, this is going to say what I've said three times. Paul's primary prayer focus is that the Ephesians would know, or they would encounter to know is the same as to encounter God. They would encounter God with supernatural illumination. This is what the church needed. This is what I hop needs. This is what the church down the road needs. That's what the church in Baghdad needs. The church of Jerusalem needs. This is what the prison ministry needs. This is what the Washington DC and George Bush needs. Everybody needs this prayer be Paul praise that they receive the spirit. It's a powerful revelation. It's called living understanding, living understanding. The heart encounters the spirit in living understanding and we see and feel differently. And we read life very differently. We evaluate our life so different under that influence. It's the most neglected treasure on the planet. It's the most available. It's completely free. Anybody can have it regardless of gifts or aptitudes. It's not about intellectual ability. Any human spirit can have this if they want it, it's free, but it is the most neglected treasure on the planet. See our greatest need is to receive a greater measure of this. Satan attacks this area. Mostly the area he attacks most in our life. All of us is through accusation and deception, which are really the same thing he accuses and deceives. It's the opposite of the spirit of revelation. If you really like somebody whether they're two years old, 20, 50, 80, it doesn't matter. If you really like somebody lock into this prayer for their heart and mind, whoever you like the most, pray this prayer for them. And then praying the spirit, just pray it over. You don't have to get all revved up. You don't have to shout it and scream it. You can, I like to do that actually, but you don't have to. You can just sit there in the bus under your breath. I really like that person so much. Lord release it, release it. You can just kind of whisper it. I'm telling you it's awesome what this will do. It will shift things in that person's life. It doesn't mean that you can violate their free will, but they will have, here's what you can guarantee, like the enemy, like the devil sends flaming missiles. You know what a flaming missile of Ephesians 6 is? You know what a flaming missile is? It's this heightened anxiety, a heightened sense of fear or doom or a heightened lust. You're just kind of bebopping along and oh man, just this kind of a feeling of foreboding that is irrational, a feeling of negativity, of rejection or any manner of lust, whether it's money or physical or pride, all those different types of lust. It's a foreboding, it's a heightened, exaggerated feeling and we have to rebuke it. And many believers don't know what's happening. It just kind of comes out of nowhere and they think it's just a really bad day. No, that's a flaming missile. Take a stand and say in the name of Jesus, no, expose it and rebuke it. And I'm telling you the missile will go out a whole lot quicker. Let's say it'll go out instantly, but it'll go out a lot quicker than if you ride it right out the storm. So many people, the spirit of rejection, I mean the whole earth, I mean the whole planet, all six million of us, you know, get hit with this thing, six billion. But the point is, some people, there's demon spirits that breathe on that and just, you're alone at nine, it's two in the morning, you can't sleep and this foreboding feeling of rejection at any level of life, you know, business, ministry, economics, physical, health, whatever, it's just fear and rejection. It is a demon spirit striking you with a flaming missile. Stand up and rebuke it. I mean, I have to stand up, but I mean, I'm talking about in your spirit, rebuke it, rebuke it. Well, it goes the other way now. You can have a just a total raw unbeliever and you can send a flaming missile from the kingdom of heaven. There they are right in the middle, they're lost and conniving and deception and a spirit of peace hits their spirit. They just kind of, they have a clear window of thinking, you know, for 18 minutes, you know, they're just like, you know, I'm just thinking I just want to forgive that guy and I don't know, I just kind of feel good. You can send a flaming missile, a good one, to them. You can't guarantee they'll act on it and reap the full fruit of it. I tell you, you take that loved one that's unsaved or that loved one who's totally anointed, I mean, one extreme to the other, they do better when that influence hits them. They just do better. More times than not, they choose good things when that spirit's on them. Send these flaming missiles over to them. That's what we do, you know, we have seven prayer meetings a week for Israel. We just bombard them with Ephesians 117. You know, I just think it's one of the hardest places in the earth to labor in the kingdom and we just say, Lord, just send those missiles. I just wanted to wake up going, hey, I feel happy. I don't know. I just feel good today. Boom, I hit it right on target. Give them 30 minutes, give them an hour and a half of a window of grace that would not have happened if we would not have prayed. It's not like it changes everything forever, but I tell you, life decisions are won and gained and lost through those 30, 60, 90 minutes of grace or depression at the right time or at the wrong time. Many, many glorious or horrible things happen in those windows. Well, I want to get this thing happening in my spirit all the time, not just here and there. D, the eyes of being enlightened. The eyes are enlightened. Paul is further explaining what he's talking about by receiving the spirit of revelation. I mentioned that already, but here's what it means. Your minds can understand. There's a clarity for a few moments. There's a clarity. And you know, one thing that I've learned to do over the years, because I know it's a spirit operate, it's the Holy Spirit operating a moment of clarity comes. It's a wonderful feeling. It's bright righteousness. You know what I do? I just can't stand not doing it. I have to write it down because I've, I've had it, uh, enough times where I have this unusual moment of clarity and joy. And then an hour or a day later, you know, anytime, anytime between a few minutes to a day, it's all gone. And I can't remember to save my life. I'm going, that was the most life-changing thing. The guy goes, what was it? I go, well, I don't actually don't remember it, but I'm telling you, I remember how life changing it was. Well, what was the point? It was awesome. I just can't remember it. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm dull, you know, unaided I'm a mess like you. And, uh, so write it down because you get a moment of clarity. And I've had enough of those over the years that I know what it is. I know it's a moment of clarity because my prayers or your prayers or somebody's prayer has landed and it just opens up that window on my spirit. I go, I am not going to lose this. I write it down. I got more notebooks. I haven't, you know, I'm honest about it is this statement. I haven't looked at half of them, but half of them I have looked at. I got stacks of them. I mean, poor aunt, she has to manage them all back there. There's notebooks, notebooks. I can't even read my writing because I was like under the, I had that feeling and I wrote, I'll never forget. And I look at three days, there we go. Oh, my note to sell, right? Slower when this is happening. But you know, I don't look at half of them, but half of my do look at, and I don't never know which ones I just write them anyway. Okay. Let's go to, uh, uh, top of page four. Let's get to the three prayers. They're really simple, but I just want you to understand the three specific prayers that flow out of the main one. Prayer number one, the father of glory would give you the spirit of revelation. You would experience the hope of his calling. Now the word hope in the new Testament, oftentimes not a hundred percent, but, but in these situations, uh, it normally, uh, means it's, it means assurance, or you could put a certainty, or you could put confident, confident expectation or certainty or assurance, a word like that. It means it's, it's a future certainty. Hope is a future certainty. Hope is not wishing. Wishing is not biblical hope. Wishing is wishing, but hope is a future certainty. It's as sure as the sun rising, it's just in the future. So here's what Paul prays. He says, Lord, he said, they, they have to know, they have to know what they're supposed to do. They have to know what their divine assignment is. Now, beloved, I don't have it all in the notes here, but you can develop it on your own. The expansive nature of your divine assignment. What do I mean by that? My divine assignment, the will of God for my life. It's not just talking about the most general sense of the call of God, you're called to be saved. It's talking about the Colossians four verse 12. I have it in there somewhere where he, uh, Epaphras, he labored that they would stand perfectly assured in the will of God. It's having this perfect assurance that, you know, your divine mandate, you know, your assignment, you know what you're supposed to be doing. I don't mean every minute of every day, but in the general flow of your life, I mean, the, the general theme of your life or two, you know, some people get and pray what shirt they're supposed to wear. Maybe the, maybe that's good for you. It's never worked for me. Somebody said, that's obvious. And so, uh, but what I'm talking about, not that kind of detail. I mean, if you do that, that's fine, but I'm talking about the hope of the, you're calling the, the, the, the several major trends of your life. That's what I'm talking about assurance. Now, what I mean by the expansive nature of it, God has an assignment for us today. He has an assignment for you in the next six, 12 months. It may not all be different, but he has an assignment for you the next three to five years. He has an assignment for you the next 50 years. He has assignment for you that he wants you to complete in 500 years, for real, 5,000 years and 5 million years. And so what is my assignment? Having understanding of your assignment is powerful. What this does to your emotions powerful, because if you know that what you're doing is valuable to God, even if it isn't big in the sight of man, because I'm telling you almost everything you do will not be big in the sight of men. 99.99999999999% of all the human beings in history have only done very small things. It's meant to be that way by the word of God. God meant it that way. Let's say it again. 99.999999999% of the entire human race from Adam to today have only accomplished externally very small things. And that is the will of God. So when you're talking about your assignment, don't talk about how big the platform is. That's not what I'm talking about. It's what you're supposed to do that God has called you to because your assignment, though, it affects other people and blesses them and mostly work locked in to how our assignment blesses somebody else. And it only blesses three people, which to God, that's a really good number. But to us, we see Billy Graham on TV and we go three. That's nothing. But much of our assignment actually is forming our own inner man if we do it with diligence and forming our future. Our assignment isn't only how it affects others. You can't measure it. Only God can measure it. But once you get clarity about the hope of his calling, you have certainty about God's assignment on your life. Then you measure it the way God measures it. You don't measure it the way man does. You measure it the way God does. And when nothing is happening externally, but you're in the will of God, you're profoundly successful and your spirit is alive and steady. Instead of feeling rejected and futile, you have revelation and living understanding of the glory of what you're standing, achieving nothing in man's estimation. But you're in the will of God doing it. I would say it again, 99.999999% of the people have achieved only very little. And we have this Western culture thing that if we don't build it big, we are irrelevant. And it is true. It is true. If building it big means meekness and understanding in your inner man. If building big means that, then you need to go for it. If building big means an external impact, the big business, the big ministry, the big, the whole neighborhood turned to the Lord. Everybody was blown away. Everybody went to the whole internet, to the whole world, everybody, right? That doesn't make it bigger to God. I was talking to somebody the other day and I said, do you realize you're wanting to get your thing from a thousand to 2000 or from 2000 to 5000, whatever, if it's money or people or mailing list or whatever. I said, do you realize you're dealing with the God that we know for sure has created a hundred million galaxies of which the Milky Way is one of a hundred million galaxies. And you're going to like stand before him and say, my church was 5,000 instead of 2000. And the Lord says, you know, one in a hundred million to me is like just an inch away. My numbers are way bigger. My numbers have 10,000 zeros. So the, you know, the difference between one and a hundred million is insignificant in me measuring something that impresses me as God. I says, don't, don't, don't go there. Get your eyes off of that. Build something big on the inside. And you know how you do it by this prayer, you have the assurance, you have a steady assurance that what you're doing is valuable to God. Though nobody may register as anything God does. And you can't get this with unaided thinking. As the spirit needs to breathe on that in your inner man. And it makes you feel near and dear to God. It gives you the sense of the closeness of his heart. And you can weather any storm if this thing is operating in your spirit. Okay, let's go to top of page five, paragraph, paragraph Roman numeral four, the second prayer. We want to experience the glory of being what God wants most, what God delights in. You know, it's the most stunning, awesome thing. It's awesome. Awesome. Awesome. We are the only creatures that have God's DNA in our being only humans, angels don't animals don't obviously demons don't only humans have God's DNA. And therefore, because we have God's DNA, and as we are what excites him, and we are what grieves him the most of all of creation, because his DNA is in us. We are what he longs most for. And when we can begin to understand that we are the Father's inheritance, we are Jesus's inheritance, we are the Father's gift to Jesus. It's just, it's not about how big or how famous or how anything or how many people pat you on the back. Beloved, I am awesome. I am awesome. And so are you by virtue of who's coming after me and whose prize I am. It's not how big anything is that I'm building. I am awesome because I am the prize the Father is giving his son. That makes my life powerful. It makes my life meaningful. It makes my life secure forever. You are the the prize that God the Father is giving his son. You may do a whole lot you may not do anything that men call important, but I tell you that doesn't change your greatness and your power and your value one degree with this revelation. Okay, let's go to the final one. You could just read the notes on your own. And I purposely gave you more notes than I knew we could cover because if you're gonna like really go for this thing, then you got to read it anyway, you got to go over it. I mean, this is the sort of thing you want to do thousands of times. I don't mean study my stuff on it, but you want to study it other places and journal it and talk about it and wow, this is who I am. Roman numeral five, the third prayer is that we had experienced the power of God. But it's the power of God on our mind, not just on our hands, on our hands to let's not minimize our hands, lay hands on people with the power of God. I want the power of God on my words. Not just on a platform, I want to talk to a person just in the hallway and the word to shift their spirit because I want to speak a word that has life that shifts their spirit when they hear it. I mean, just someone in the hallway doesn't have to be a sermon or a big event. The grocery store, the friend you're driving in the car, you say, oh, oh, oh, God loves me. I love God. I want to say words that produce that in people's spirits, power on our words. You don't need a pulpit to do that power in our hands, but that's not where we're limiting its power on your mind and its power on your emotions. Ephesians, I mean, Philippians four, six, that our minds, our minds and our emotions would be guarded by power. We need the power. Of course, Ephesians chapter three, 16 and 17 is the famous verse on power. And Paul launches from this prayer. The last point is power and Ephesians three, 16 or seven, he develops the power prayer. Beloved, we don't need to just give into the fact we're just going to be tossed to and fro by every crazy emotion and every idea that strikes us of, of lustful, prideful, grandeur, or despairing rejection and loneliness and fear. We don't have to be a slave to every thought that slings us from one wall to the other. We need power on our minds, power on our emotions. Stay steady. We evaluate our life as successful and, and great, even though there's nothing our hands have produced that anybody else has paid attention to. God's not looking at how big anything is. He's looking externally how big the size of our heart is. I'm telling you, that's the truth. This prayer gives an unction of the spirit on these kinds of subjects to your inner man. Amen. Let's stand.