A Prayer for Clear Vision

An open Bible on a kitchen table with a cup of coffee - Image by iStock

Ephesians 1:17-21 Prayer (NIV)

¹⁷ I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.  ¹⁸ 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,  ¹⁹ and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength  ²⁰ he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms,  ²¹ 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.

One time I was squinting at the breakfast table with my grandsons when one of them asked,

“Pappy, what’s wisdom?” I laughed and told him, “Well, when I was your age I thought wisdom was what old people got after they’d messed up enough times.” He nodded like that made perfect sense.

It kinda does.

But Paul’s praying for something infinitely better. Listen to what he prayed: “I keep asking… that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation,

so that you may know Him better…I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened…”

He’s not asking God to make us smarter sinners.

He’s asking God to make blind hearts see. Because here’s the truth I keep learning the hard way:

I can wear out three Bibles, quote Ephesians in my sleep, and still live like an orphan if the eyes of my heart stay shut. Some mornings I wake up and the fog is thick:

bills, doctor voicemails, headlines, that argument I still haven’t apologized for.

Everything looks dark, small, hopeless.

I’m reading the promises with my eyes, but my heart is wearing sunglasses in a basement.Then the Spirit flips the switch. Suddenly I see it:

the same power that cracked open a borrowed tomb,

that lifted a dead Man out of the grave clothes and set Him above every throne in the universe,

is pulsing inside this 80-year-old chest right now.The same power. Not a weaker version.

Not a souvenir.

The identical, grave-busting, hell-shaking, darkness-expelling power of God is alive in me.

In you.That’s not pep-talk.

That’s resurrection reality. So today, right now, I’m praying Paul’s prayer over you (and over me) the way I prayed it over my grandsons when I tucked them in:

Prayer

Lord Jesus,

Open the eyes of our hearts.

We’re tired of living half-blind.

Clear the fog.

Burn away the fear.

Let us see You high and lifted up, and let us feel the same power that raised You from the dead start surging through our Monday mornings, our hospital rooms, our broken marriages, our secret addictions.

We don’t want more information.

We want revelation.

We don’t want better theology.

We want to know You (really know You) until our hearts burn like those two on the Emmaus road.

Enlighten us today.

Not tomorrow when life is calmer.

Today, in the middle of the mess. Because once we see You for who You really are,

nothing in this world looks the same again.

And we will never be the same either. In the name of the One who walked out of the grave and into our hearts, Amen.

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