I had the opportunity to preach on Ephesians 1:15-17 a few years ago. It is Paul’s first recorded prayer for the Ephesian believers. As I prepared for that sermon I realized that if we were to understand this prayer rightly, we had to discern its connection with Paul’s river of doxological doctrine running through verses 3-14. God used my meditation on the connection between Ephesians 1:3-17 and Ephesians 1:15-17 to provide rich food for my faith.

The central request in Paul’s prayer (vv. 15-23) is in verse 17. He prays that “the Father of glory may give them a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him.” The question that arrested my attention as I studied was why does Paul refer to the Father as “the Father of glory”. Why didn’t Paul just say, “the Father”? Why did he add the words, “of glory”?

“Glory” is one of those words that is extremely difficult to define or explain. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently discovered a fairly new blog (launched this past August) that I really like. It’s the blog of Justin Buzzard. Why do I like it? Just read his most recent post—a book recommendation—and you’ll know why.

Wow. This book is good. Everything that Goldsworthy writes is worth reading, but this may turn out to be my favorite by G.G. So far, this is proving to be the best book I’ve ever read on prayer. It dovetails nicely with the sermon I preached on prayer several weeks back, though I still would’ve loved to have read this book before preaching that sermon. Here’s a few quotes I’m appreciating:

“A wrong perspective on prayer may well come from thinking of it as playing a part in establishing our acceptance with God. Prayer that is not the grateful response of the justified sinner is likely to degenerate into an attempt to gain acceptance

….if the sole motive to pray is, as I have heard it put in sermons, ‘Jesus got up early to pray, so how much more do we need to get up early to pray’, it is missing the grace of God in the gospel. ‘He did it, therefore we ought to’ is not the perspective of the gospel unless it’s linked with, ‘He did it for us because we are unable to do it as we ought.’”

Make sure you check out Justin’s blog.

Father, we come to you this morning as people who need to be redeemed. We need to be made whole. We confess that we need You to heal us for we cannot heal ourselves.

We confess our wandering hearts. We run after acceptance, prestige, wealth, order, pleasure and novelty in a desperate effort to heal our hearts. None of these can redeem us, none of these can make us whole. Yet we are slow to learn. Forgive us we pray.

We confess our faithless hearts. We have looked for redemption everywhere but in your arms. We haven’t looked there, because we doubt your love for us. Forgive us we pray.

Now, Father, accept our confession and receive us gladly. We ask this not upon our deserving it, or even the honesty of our confession, but for the sake of Jesus. You rejected Him, the innocent, in order to embrace us, the guilty. Amen.