Ephesians: Tear Down These WallsSample

Riding a motorcycle in the rain is not only dangerous because the roads are wet but because your vision is compromised. 

A motorcycle visor has no windscreen wipers or air conditioning to keep it fog-free. When it’s raining, you can still see, but your vision is blurred and foggy. 

Vision is essential to safe riding. It guides your decision making. It informs your speed, distance, and direction. 

In this prayer, Paul asks for spiritual vision.

This passage is often used to reveal the inadequacy of our prayers. 

“Look at your list. Look at Paul’s list. See the difference? Now pray more like Paul!” 

Potentially a fair assessment of our prayers, if we’re honest! 

But the revelation this prayer ought to deliver us is the light of God’s character and his blessings flooding into our souls. This is a prayer for a deeper understanding of God’s character and a richer experience of his presence! A prayer for a growing awareness of the blessings of the gospel.

Paul prays that we would see. Spiritual sight. That the eyes of your heart would be enlightened (1:18). 

Our culture seeks to inform us, educate us, and disciple us every day. Our vision is filled with the allure and promise of satisfaction, contentment, comfort, peace, and wholeness—all without God. 

Our vision, our attention, is contested space. Sure, we can see, but in the cloud and fog our vision is compromised. 

We desperately need to see properly. To have the light of God’s wisdom and revelation fill our hearts and minds. 

Spiritual wisdom and insight lead to these things: a growing knowledge and intimacy with God (1:17); understanding our confident hope and inheritance (1:18); and understanding God’s resurrection power at work in us (1:19). 

This prayer produces a resilient faith, a deeper experience of God, the power of God manifest in our lives, and a richer enjoyment of his good blessings! What a prayer!

Why not start right now? Ask God to give you vision, to give you spiritual wisdom and insight. He loves to answer a prayer like this!