WHAT GOD WISH YOU KNEW
I have been neck deep studying books written by people I consider profound Christian Authors – Men who God has used and is using mightily to do His will upon the earth. The more I study, the more I realize that there is one major prayer and portion of the Bible that almost all of them constantly highlight and lead us to pray.
It almost feels like the Holy Spirit keeps revealing this one prayer to God’s children from generation to generation. What is this prayer, you ask? It is found in Ephesians 1:16-23.
Here the Apostle Paul revealed the prayer he has been offering ceaselessly for Believers – That the eyes of our understanding may be opened or enlightened to know the hope of God’s calling upon our lives and what are the riches of the glory of His mighty power.
That God may give unto us the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation in the knowledge of Him (and it runs down through to verse 23).
By the time I read the fourth book imploring me to pray this into my life, I knew this was no longer a joke or just another piece of information to skim through and not act upon. So I began praying this into my life. I prayed it here and there, now and again – You know, I prayed it because I was encouraged to pray it, but it wasn’t until today, as I read the book, The Triumphant Church, that the understanding behind these words came to me and OMG!
The truth is that the Holy Spirit needs believers to pray this prayer because He wants the eyes of our understanding to be opened so we can understand Jesus’ complete victory over Satan in the triumph of the cross. He wants us to understand what Jesus’ seating on High really means for the believer.
The Wisdom and knowledge the Holy Spirit wants to reveal to us is the believer’s joint-seating with Christ as a benefit of our redemption, because joint-seating with Christ is a position of authority and triumph over Satan. God wants us to see what we have as rights and privileges by virtue of being in Christ.
It gets even more interesting, because for so long, believers have been ignorant of Satan’s devices, so he has been able to take advantage of them. But God wants believers to get the wisdom and revelation of the knowledge of Jesus and His word, so the eyes of their understanding will be enlightened to know their authority in Christ.
God wants us to know that we are no longer subject to Satan because we have been delivered from his dominion and authority (see Col 1:13). God wants the Body of Christ to know that we aren’t a defeated church; instead, we are a Triumphant Church. We are to reign in life through Jesus Christ because we have a position of authority over the devil.
Regarding temptation, many times people have the idea that the Holy Spirit only leads us into good and easy places, where the going is never hard; but that’s not always true. As we grow and mature in Christ, we find out that sometimes, it is in the hard places that we grow the most in God.
Jesus was led by the Spirit of God into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Jesus overcame Satan in this encounter with the Word of God; hence, no matter what temptation comes our way, we are certain that victory is always our portion because we have not only been put in the position (Joint-Seating) with Christ above all principalities and powers, we have also been given the weapon – The Word of God which is the sword of the Spirit.
The Body of Christ needs the eyes of our understanding enlightened to understand Jesus’ complete defeat of Satan. This is the wisdom of God that God wants each believer to understand – Satan has already been dethroned and the believer has victory over him in Christ (see 1 Cor 2:6-7).
Satan has been dethroned by Jesus Christ at the cross of Calvary and in His resurrection. Satan has been removed from his throne, his place of authority – Jesus already did that for every believer, unless the believer gives him, Satan, access or authority over them through lack of knowledge of God’s Word, disobedience, or failure to exercise their rights in Christ.
And it is this lack of knowledge and access that the Holy Spirit wants to prevent; hence He is trying to get the Body of Christ to pray for the enlightening of the eyes of our understanding.
The fact that Satan has been dethroned and stripped of his authority is the wisdom the Holy Spirit is trying to get across to the Body of Christ. The wisdom of God is that believers only need to stand in Jesus’ victory over the devil because they are in Christ. Jesus’ victory over the devil is our victory. That’s why believers do not need to make war on an enemy that is already defeated.
The wisdom of God – Bible wisdom – is that Satan is a defeated foe. But that’s not the wisdom of the world. Satan, the god of this world, doesn’t want people to know this. The wisdom of the god of this world is that believers still have to struggle and war against the hosts of darkness in an effort to try to defeat and overcome them. Satan wants believers to spend their time trying to fight a ‘War’ that has already been fought and won by Jesus because the devil knows that is a waste of their time.
Make no mistake, Satan still has power over unsaved people in the world because they do not know he has been dethroned. ‘Satan’s wisdom’ is that he still rules and reigns in the affairs of men. Satan has even blinded the minds of some Christians so they believe that too. That’s why believers need to get the eyes of their understanding enlightened – To see the truth and power of the finished work of the cross.
