Open The Eyes Of Their Heart Lord

Open The Eyes Of Their Heart Lord

Ephesians 1:18-21 “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,  and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.”

In the verse right before this one Paul is praying for God to give the Ephesians a Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that they may know him better. Then in this verse it starts off by saying that he prays the eyes of their hearts may be enlightened in order that they may know the hope to which God has called them, along with the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people and his incomparably great power for us who believe. I love how this verse points out the importance of understanding things with our heart and not just our minds.  We can know something with our mind and yet if it just stays in our mind and doesn’t go anywhere else, it may not change our lives.  There is a difference between knowing something intellectually and knowing something with our whole being.  

I read an article, (CLICK HERE) for article, that said the Bible is like our manual for living a Christian lifestyle.  Think about all the various manuals you have in your life for all your appliances.  Did you read them?  Did you read the manual to figure out how to work your TV?  Did you read the manual to figure out how to use your microwave?  What about the one that came with your cell phone?  I am guessing most of us did not read these manuals.  Maybe we read parts of them, like the quick start guide, or if we ran into a problem we may have read the part that talked about that problem we had.  We don’t tend to read the whole thing.  The same can be true of the Bible, as we do with so many owner’s manuals, we read it superficially or hardly at all and then wonder why the Christian life isn’t working the way it’s supposed to! We need to go back and read the manual carefully, asking God to give us His wisdom and understanding.

Only God can give us the grace to understand the Bible with our whole being, with our hearts and our minds.  There are many aspects of our faith that we know on a superficial level and yet if we want a deeper understanding so we can actually live it out in our lives, we need to ask God to move it from just head knowledge to heart knowledge as well.  For instance, we can tell people all day long that God loves us and He has a plan for our lives, and yet if we don’t truly believe that in our hearts, we won’t live our lives as if this is true.  If you know in your heart that God is working all things for your good, then you don’t worry as much about the things that happen in your day to day life.  You don’t worry as much even when you hit bumps in the road and big things go wrong, because you know with your whole being that even though this sucks a lot right now, God is going to work it for your good.  If you don’t know this down deep in your heart, then even if you know it in your brain you will be more anxious, you will worry about all the various bumps in the road, you will not have peace in the storm.  

This is why Paul is praying for God to give them a Spirit of Revelation and Wisdom. We all need to pray for this.  If we want to truly understand who God is and what He has in store for us then we all need the gift of Revelation and Wisdom.  There is always a deeper level to our understanding, to our spirituality, to our relationship with God.  The only way to go deeper is through God.  He is the one that reveals the deeper meanings of His word.  Jesus even talked about how He used parables because the people weren’t able to comprehend what he was saying with their hearts.  They needed to have things explained in ways they could see with their eyes and things they could wrap their brains around. However, the disciples were granted the grace to understand some of the parables at a deeper level.  They were seeking a deeper understanding and so they were granted it.  

Now that we have looked at what St. Paul was talking about when he prayed that the eyes of their hearts would be enlightened, let’s look at what the rest of the verse says.  The first line says, “In order that you may know the hope to which he has called you.” We are all called to a greater life.  We are called to an eternal salvation.  We are called to spend eternity with God in Heaven.  Do we have hope for that call?  Do we believe that Jesus died on a cross to save us and to make that call possible?  The article I read talked about two facets of this hope.  The first part is that our salvation doesn’t rest on us choosing God, but on God choosing us.  As Paul puts it (2 Tim. 1:9), God “has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity.”  The second facet of this hope from the article is, “The hope of His calling is the certainty of increasing blessing and joy in Christ, beginning now and lasting through all eternity.”  This goes back to what I was talking about earlier.  We can have hope that God is working all things for our good.  We can have hope in all of the promises that were made all throughout the Bible.  God does amazing things for His people.  

The next part of the verse says, “the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people.”The article I read goes into great detail on two different ways to interpret this part of the verse.  I will not go into a lot of detail, I will just state the two ways as the author did and if you want to look at how he came up with these two ways you can check out the link to the article.  Either way you interpret this phrase, whether we are heirs to a vast fortune in heaven or whether we are God’s special inheritance (both are true), the application is the same. We must live as citizens of heaven who belong to God. We must live as saints, God’s holy ones, separate from this evil world. Paul was praying for the eyes of the hearts to be opened so they could fully grasp what it meant to live as a people of God.  He wanted them to truly understand the importance of living our lives separate from the world.  God wants us to live as a holy people set apart from the rest of the world.  He wants us to live in the world but not of the world.

The last part says, "and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.” This part is so important that we internalize it and make it known throughout our whole body.  Once we can really grasp this information, once it makes its way deep into our heart, then our lives will never be the same.  We will never again doubt if we have the strength to make it though.  We know we do because we are keenly aware of the power we have inside of us.  Once we truly understand what it means to have the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us, we will be unstoppable, the enemy won’t be able to touch us.  That doesn’t mean he won’t try, but it means we will know he won’t defeat us.  

Unfortunately, this is not something we can come to know on our own.  God reveals this to us bit by bit as we need it, search for it and ask for it.  We can not will our belief in the power of the Holy Spirit, believe me, I have tried.  Faith is a gift from the Holy Spirit.  I have prayed over plenty of people and felt like I believed they would be healed and they were not.  I heard a speaker once, and I can’t seem to find the talk again, but it was Mary Healy and it was a short clip of a talk.  I heard her say something like, we can’t will our belief in healing.  It is a gift from God. That doesn’t mean we should stop trying to heal people.  We should keep believing as much as we can and with each time that someone is healed our faith will grown.  God will grow our faith in His time.  God will open the eyes to our heart to see the power we have inside of us on His time line all we can do is keep asking.  I do think the more we ask, the more we desire it, the more he will open them.  If we seek, we will find.  

The article talks about six things God wants us to know about the surpassing greatness of His power.  I will list them here, and you can get more detail in the article. (CLICK HERE)  God wants us to know the surpassing greatness of His power:

Saved us.

Enables us to persevere through trials.

Enables us to overcome temptation and live in holiness.

Enables us to serve Him faithfully.

Enables us for everything that He has called us to do.

To keep us to the end.

If things aren’t going right for you.  If you are struggling to live this Christian life, which I think most of us are, maybe we should go back and read the manual God gave us.  Maybe we should immerse ourselves in Scripture and find out what God wants us to do.  However, as we have learned today, we can’t just read the scripture and understand it.  We also need to keep asking God to open the eyes to our heart.  We need to keep asking God to help us understand what we are reading.  We can continually ask for wisdom and knowledge from God and when we ask, He answers.  He will help us if we just ask!

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today.  Lord, we are asking for your help understanding all we read in the Bible.  We are asking for your help to understand all we see in the world.  Lord, help us to distinguish what is of You and what is of the world.  Help us to figure out how to live the life you want us to live.  Help us to truly understand the strength we have because of the Holy Spirit living inside of us.  Lord, we ask that you truly open the eyes of our heart to see the incredible power we having inside of us.  We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus.  If you would like an autographed copy of my book you can find it on my website walkboldlywithjesus.com or Click Here.  If you want to receive my weekly newsletter Click Here.  I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow.  Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I!  Have a blessed day!

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