A.W. Tozer begins his classic, The Knowledge of the Holy with this provocative sentence: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”

He goes on to argue “We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.”

His words, of course, reflect the psalmist’s comment concerning those who worship idols (Psalm 115:8), “Those who make them will become like them, everyone who trusts in them.”

If Tozer was right, then Martyn Lloyd-Jones was also right when he said, “Our supreme need is to know God.”

He meant, of course, to know God well, to know Him deeply, to know Him truly, as He is revealed in His Word.

The atheist claims there is no God for us to know, and the agnostic states that if there is a God we cannot know Him.

But Paul met God in the person of Jesus Christ, and he knows that a man really cannot understand much of anything else without a knowledge of God.

This willful ignorance of God led mankind into corruption and condemnation. In Romans 1:18ff, Paul describes the stages in man’s devolution: from willful ignorance of God to idolatry (substituting a lie for the truth) to immorality and indecency.

Where does it begin? It begins with an unwillingness to know God as Creator, Sustainer, Governor, Savior, and Judge.

The believer must grow in his knowledge of God.

• To know God personally is salvation (John 17:3).
• To know Him increasingly is sanctification (Phil. 3:10).
• To know Him perfectly is glorification (1 Cor. 13:9-12).

Since we are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-28), the better we know God, the better we know ourselves and each other.

It is not enough to know God only as Savior. We must get to know Him as Father, Friend, Guide, and the better we know Him, the more satisfying our spiritual lives will be.

There is a legitimate sense in which every believer has come to know God.

Jesus prayed (John 17:3), “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”

After 25 years as a believer, the apostle Paul said that he had not yet attained to knowing Christ as he ought, but he pressed on toward that goal (Phil. 3:8-14). And if that was true of Paul, who wasn’t exactly an average believer, how much more is it true of us!

As the prophet Hosea wrote (6:3), “let us press on to know the Lord.”

That his readers would know God more deeply is the main theme of Paul’s prayer (Eph. 1:15-23). He has just unfolded in one long sentence (1:3-14 in the Greek) that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

These blessings include being chosen by the Father (1:4-6); redeemed by the Son, who has also revealed to us God’s eternal purpose (1:7-12); and, sealed by the Holy Spirit (1:13-14).

Paul’s prayer shows us that we should pray often for one another and what we should pray when we do pray.

We should also apply Paul’s prayer to ourselves. We often pray, “Lord, heal me of this illness. Give me this job. Help me to do well in school.”

While there is nothing wrong with such prayers, they are rather shallow. We also ought to be praying, “Lord, give me a spirit of wisdom and revelation in knowing You. Grant the same for my mate and my children, and for all of the saints in our church.”

No truer statement was ever uttered than Paul’s when he said, “We don’t know what to pray for as we ought” (Romans 8:26). I am afraid that far too much of our praying is superficial and selfish.

PRAYER POWER.

Many churches—and many Christians—act as though truth were the only emphasis that matters. Just give us good preaching and sound doctrine, and everything else will fall in line. Solid preaching and doctrine are important; in fact, they are essential. But so is prayer. A church or individual Christian who gets a steady input of truth but little or no prayer is like a beautiful sports car without oil in the engine. It may look and sound great for a while, but sooner or later it will break down. Prayer is the oil that keeps us running. When we pray for others, we ask the Holy Spirit to strengthen them. That’s why it’s so important that we pray for one another as Ephesians 1:15-16 teaches. Prayer also unleashes his power in us—power to guide, convict, encourage, heal. If the church depended on your prayers, how long and how well would the church keep running? When you say to someone, “I’ll keep you in prayer,” be sure you do it.

Burton Coffman observed: “According to the Scriptures, it is ‘the heart’ that imagines (Genesis 6:5), understands (Matthew 15:13), reasons (Mark 2:8), thinks (Luke 9:47), believes (Romans 10:9), and loves (1 Peter 1:22).

These passages are more than enough to identify the Scriptural ‘heart’ as the mind or seat of the intelligence” (emphasis added).

Here, the “eyes of [the] heart” constitute our intellect and mental, spiritual recognition of other-worldly truths.

The biblical heart is clearly a vital aspect of our intellect, recognition of spirit truths, and the faithful humility we exercise in Christ.

Christians differ from non-Christians in the way they see life. In fact, our enlightened eyes perceive life in a way the world cannot imagine. What can the ekklesia see that the world cannot see?

Can a person who is not a Christian know God as a Christian knows God? The Bible tells us about the limited knowledge of those who do not belong to Christ.

They are “darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart” (4:18).

Non-Christians can no more come to see and know God as Christians do than a bat could see the room you are sitting in right now as you see it.

Life outside the ekklesia is perceived one way. Life inside the ekklesia is perceived another way.

Paul prayed for God to give Christians something very special: “a spirit of wisdom and of revelation” (1:17b).

He wanted them to have a “Christians-only” kind of insight into what God has done in Christ, as well as the impact Christ has on those who belong to Him.

What God Wants You to Know (Ephesians 1:18-19). When you buy a new gadget, it comes with an owner’s manual that tells you how to operate it.

Many of us skim the manual quickly (at best), or never bother to read it at all. That’s too tedious, and besides, we think that we’re smart enough to figure this out without reading the directions.

But then we can’t figure out why this ‘poorly made’ product doesn’t work right! Maybe we need to go back and read the manual!

God has given us His Word as the manual for our salvation. It tells us all we need to know to walk with God and live wisely in light of eternity.

But, 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.

God wants you to know the hope of His calling, the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and the surpassing greatness of His power toward believers.

To know these important truths, you must ask God to enlighten the eyes of your heart.

Sin blinds the minds of unbelievers and renders them incapable of understanding the truth of the gospel, unless God opens their blind eyes (2 Cor. 4:4, 6).

But here, Paul is writing to believers (“saints,” “us who believe,” 1:18, 19). Even though God has opened our eyes to see and believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, we still must seek Him to enlighten the eyes of our hearts so that we will come to a deeper understanding of these crucial truths.

Here is how this applies: As a believer, you are always in need of the Holy Spirit to enlighten the eyes of your heart to the great truths of the Bible.

Many Christians have a “stick your head in the sand” attitude when it comes to grappling with the difficult doctrines of the Bible. They say, “I don’t bother with theology. I just love Jesus.”

Some even think that studying theology is spiritually dangerous. But they are being intellectually lazy and exposing themselves to spiritual danger!

Certainly, there is always the danger of spiritual pride that comes from thinking that you know more than others know.

There is the danger of stopping at knowing doctrine, rather than allowing the doctrines to give you greater personal knowledge of the God of whom the doctrines speak.

But the antidote to these dangers is not to remain ignorant. Rather, it is constantly to be praying as you study the Word, “Lord, enlighten the eyes of my heart so that I may know, love, and obey You better!”

God wants you to know what is the hope of His calling.

The hope of His calling reminds us that He took the initiative in our salvation.

Paul writes (Rom. 8:30), “And these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.”

The practical application of this is that your salvation does not rest on your choosing Christ, but rather on His choosing you.

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.”

As Christians, we should be filled with hope because we know that God has called us to salvation.

God wants you to know what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.

It would have been a tall prayer if Paul had prayed that we would know God’s inheritance in the saints. It grows even taller when he prays that we would know the glory of God’s inheritance in the saints.

But it is mind-boggling when he prays that we will know “the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints”!

In Ephesians 1-3, Paul is emphasizing that although the Gentiles were formerly alienated from God and strangers to His promises to Israel, now in Christ they are equal members of God’s covenant people.

Just as the Jews were formerly God’s chosen inheritance, now His inheritance is in the saints, the church, made up of Jewish and Gentile believers on equal footing.

Our future is that throughout eternity we will actually share in Christ’s glory!

God wants you to know what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.

Again, Paul piles up words to describe God’s power. It would seemingly be enough to mention the power of God, who is omnipotent.

But, Paul adds, “the surpassing greatness of His power,” and then goes on to say (1:19b-21) that this power is “in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.”

There are at least six ways that God wants us as believers to know the surpassing greatness of His power toward us:

1. God wants us to know the surpassing greatness of His power that saved us.

2. God wants us to know the surpassing greatness of His power that enables us to persevere through trials.

3. God wants us to know the surpassing greatness of His power to overcome temptation and live in holiness.

4. God wants us to know the surpassing greatness of His power to serve Him faithfully.

5. God wants us to know the surpassing greatness of His power for everything that He has called us to do.

6. God wants us to know the surpassing greatness of His power to keep us to the end.

Michael W. Smith’s song: Open the eyes of my heart, Lord. Open the eyes of my heart, I want to see You, I want to see You. Open the eyes of my heart, Lord, Open the eyes of my heart, I want to see You, I want to see You.

[Chorus] To see You high and lifted up…shinin’ in the light of Your glory. Pour out Your power and love, As we sing holy, holy, holy…