Today on Real Life Radio, there's no greater prayer that can be made for spiritual growth than this. I can pray for your job. Listen, I can pray for your home. I can pray for your family. I can pray for your crisis.
But you know what the greatest prayer is? I can offer up for you is, Lord, in the midst of my brother or my sister's situation, I ask you, Lord, that they might know you more. This is Real Life. Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibs. I'm David J.
Thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God's Word, the Bible. Everything Pastor Jack Hibs is doing has a home. JackHibs.com. It's the place to catch the latest message, revisit a series, listen to the podcast, stream Real Life Network, or find resources that'll help you stay steady in God's Word. Whether you've got five minutes or an hour, start right there.
The site keeps it easy to watch, listen, learn, and grow. Visit JackHibs.com today and stay connected to what God is doing through this ministry. Visit JackHibs.com. On today's edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack continues his series now called "The Book of Ephesians," and a message titled "Things That We Need to Know." Ephesians is a letter the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus, showing every believer who they really are in Christ. And here Paul prays that we would truly grasp the riches that are already ours in Him.
You see, the moment we're born again, the whole world of spiritual wealth becomes ours, even if we don't know it yet. And like a child who slowly discovers all that comes with their family, we grow into what God has given us, and it all begins to open up through prayer.
So today, Pastor Jack teaches us. That the greatest prayer we can offer is that someone would come to know the Lord in a personal way. Christianity isn't about religion, position, or wealth, but it's about knowing God's nature so deeply that it steers us away from those things that entangle us, and in turn, we show others the way to Christ.
Now, with his message called "Things That We Need to Know," here's Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibs. Isn't that great to wake up in the morning? First thing, when your consciousness comes around, it's God's with me. Wow.
Okay, what's going on today? And the flesh says nothing. Fishing. Ha. Stay in bed.
Zip. And then the spirit says, "No, you know what we need to do. We need to get into our devotion, man. You know, you missed it the last few days. Come on, let's go get into the devotion." Okay, flesh says no way, and you're laying there, and there's this war going on.
Isn't that weird? Before your feet ever hit the ground, it happens in milliseconds too. Have you noticed? Then you get up, and as soon as you start going with it, the flesh just by now kind of like gives up. All right.
But have you noticed if we don't yield and go spend a moment with the Lord? And I don't know what kind of props you need. I need props. I'm a Hands-on kind of propy kind of guy, and I I'll always go out to the kitchen to the bay window and I look outside towards the sun if there's sun or whatever and I just look out there. If that doesn't do it, I'll open the sliding glass door, which everybody doesn't like because the cold air comes in, but it means something to me, and I'll listen to the morning, and it's like oh man, God help me.
I feel like I'm dead. And then I'll hear a bird sing, and our robin will go across the yard, or whatever it is, and it's like, yeah, neat. And that's how God speaks to me, and that's how I get my batteries going. And then I'll get into the word, and things that happen for you, it's different. Maybe it's Beethoven or Mozart in the morning.
Some people, fine. But be wise about this. Paul got in the mood and mode to be praying always. The Bible says, pray always and don't cease. The Bible says, "Pray and don't give up praying." We need to remember that.
But listen, we backslide in prayer. We're going to backslide in Bible reading. We'll backslide in our conduct, and then we stop going to church, and we wind up messing up good time, and we're not accountable to anybody anymore. By the way, I came across this great verse the other day, and it's Psalm seventy-seven, thirteen. Read this yesterday.
I love this verse. Isn't this a great verse to hang over the front of a church? Your way, O God, is in the sanctuary. Who is so great a God as our God? Isn't there like a little bit of boasting in there?
I like that. Your way, O God, is in the sanctuary. So come on, let's get on in the sanctuary. And by the way, who is so great a God as our God? In other words, get into the sanctuary, man.
And fellowship, because we have such a great and awesome God. But you cut that out of your life, you're gonna, you're gonna hurt. You don't want to do that. Verse 15 says, Paul says here, after I heard about your faith in the Lord. Yeah, I underlined faith in the Lord.
It's twofold right here, faith in the Lord, and number two, your love for all the saints. Those have got to go hand in hand. The Christian life is lived on two planes, always, always two planes. Our relationship Godward is displayed by our faith in God. Listen, everyone, did you get it?
Our relationship toward God, Godward, is displayed to the world by our faith. We don't. This isn't. This is important. Our faith.
Please, are you growing in the Lord? Is the Bible challenging your heart? When you come in and out of a message or listen to a message on the radio, whatever it is, are you challenged by it? That feeling's a little uncomfortable when you're challenged by the Holy Spirit. It's a little bit unnerving because, do I dare say the word?
We hate this word, change. Change. The Holy Spirit wants us to change. We are changing by the power of God, and when we seek Him Godward, our relationship with the Lord is displayed throughout the world by our faith. Are you trusting God?
Have you yielded your life to Him? We sang this beautiful song tonight about trust in the Lord. If we're trusting Him, we will be a people that are saying. God, whatever you're going to do with my life, just can you fast forward a little bit? Because I'm thinking, I don't want to, I don't wind up, I don't want to wind up having a stroke in 10 years and not be able to do mission work.
So if I'm going to have a stroke in 10 years, speed it. Let me get some work done now. You know what I'm saying, or is it just me? It's just me. By the look of your face, it's me.
I don't want a moment wait. God, let's go, let's go, let's go. Let's get you know. I want to burn out for God. I'd rather burn out for God than burn out for something else.
So let's go, Lord. And I want to be associated with a fellowship, and I think you do too. That we're committed to God, and our faith shows it.
Well, do you think we should go up and take those guys? Joshua says, or Jonathan says to his armor bearer, "Let's go." God doesn't need the whole Israeli army to whip these guys. If God's with us, He'll use the two of us to whip the whole army. Don't you like that kind of thinking? I mean, that's awesome.
It's great thinking.
Now you know, let's try it. You know, I think that's fun. I think it's kind of bloody, but I think it's fun. But that's the way the walk ought to be. Is your walk a dynamic?
Paul is praying for this church because their walk is a dynamic. Man, he's prompted to pray for them because they're dynamic in the Lord. I love it.
So faith is our display of our relationship to God. But look at the second thing: is that our relationship manward is through love. If we have faith in God, we're going to have love toward our brothers and sisters. And this is God's love. This is God's love that we'll have for them, and God can only give this love.
So, don't try it on your own. You can't do it. Even in the family of God, there's people we have a hard time with, and you might say, "Gosh, how can I be a Christian? That guy drives me nuts." God has brought that guy into your life to drive you nuts, so that you will fall to your knees and say, "Lord, you know we're so... Lord, help me to love Brother John more." When the truth is, it's God.
I can't stand that guy. You got to help me. He's my brother, and I feel really bad about it because he's just driving me up the wall. And the Lord says, "Thank you for that honest prayer." The fact of the matter is this: you need to ask me for your for my love and patience for him, because I love him, and I've brought him into your life to sharpen you. If everybody around us was just like us, think about it.
We would really not get along very well. Our degree of love, though, for those around us reveals our level of faith in the Lord.
So we need to be careful about that and prayerful about that. And faith and love, and love and faith, will be going together. I love what Saint Augustine says. I've said it before, and I like it so much. And Billy Graham did a little bit more to it.
But Saint Augustine says, "Love God and live as you please." Doesn't that sound a little heretical? Love God and live as you please. The point is, if you love God, you can live any way you want because the way that you want to live is pleasing to God because you love God. That's how powerful we're talking about this love toward our brothers and sisters, living like we please, and our faith toward the Lord will be governing our lives. Billy Graham says, "I can choose to live." Billy Graham says, "Now, as a Christian, I can choose to live any kind of life I want.
I choose to live for Christ. Isn't that great? That's true. By the way, nowhere in the Bible are we called to be monks. Did you know that?
Think about it. You get saved, you go climb up in a mountaintop, and you sit there for the rest of your life. Zero evangelism." The Lord tells us to go out into the world. Jesus said in John seventeen fifteen, in his high priestly prayer, he says, "Father, I do not pray that you should take these out of the world, but that you should keep them in the world." I wish he wouldn't have prayed that prayer, but he did. He's talking about the disciples.
Lord, Father, I pray for them, and I pray that you don't take them out of the world, but that you leave them in the world and they use them. Wouldn't it be great, Lord Jesus, come into my life? I know that I'm a sinner. I receive you now as my Savior. Up in heaven, that'd be a great ride.
But nobody would ever come to faith in the Lord. There would never be anybody out there telling others about what Jesus has done out of their lives. It's amazing. Look at verse sixteen. He says, "I do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers." He was a man of prayer.
Now look at verse seventeen. Very important. He says here that we might really know God personally. I want you to jot that down, starting at verse seventeen. He wants us to know God personally.
This is what he's praying for. And there's going to be four requests in Paul's prayer. Jot them down. Four requests. Paul will request four things in his prayer.
By the way, you might want to use this as a pattern for prayer. If you know anyone, if you know anybody to pray for, who's a brother or sister in the Lord, you ought to pray this prayer. And I mean it seriously. You know friends that you want to grow, want to see grow in the Lord. You pray for them.
Paul was like that. He did it to the church at Colossi. He did it here to the church at Ephesus. He did it to the church at Philippi, and he always prayed the same type of prayer for spiritual perception and Christian maturity. He didn't ask for wealth, for money, for position, for power.
Let's remember that. You're listening to Real Life with Pastor Jack Hibbs. To learn more about this ministry or to catch up on some previous episodes, go to jackhibbs. dot com. That's jackhibbs.
dot com. And now let's get back to today's message. Once again, here's Pastor Jack. But he gives four. Request.
He offers up four requests for these brothers and sisters. The first one, the first purpose here of Paul's prayer is in verse seventeen that we might know God personally, and that is the greatest thing that we could ever do in life—not religiously, but personally. He says in verse seventeen, "Here it is, number one: that God, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation." In the knowledge of Him, that we might know God personally, and note this in verse 17 at the top, the prayer is directed to God, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory. Man, that's who you're praying to. Isn't that great?
You don't bow down to some statue. You're not bowing down to some icon. You bow your knee. You offer your prayer to the living, awesome, omnipotent, eternal God of all heaven forever. When you pray, He listens because you come through the name of Jesus Christ.
That's who you're praying to. And the very prayer that's offered up here, Paul is asking, "Oh God, I want these people to know You." There's no greater prayer that can be made. For spiritual growth than this, I can pray for your job. Listen, I can pray for your home. I can pray for your family.
I can pray for your crisis. But you know what the greatest prayer is? I can offer up for you is, Lord, in the midst of my brother or my sister's situation, I ask you, Lord, that they might know you more. Do you understand that? That means really, when things come into our lives, God is engineering in that situation one primary thing that you would know Him more.
To know Him, Paul says in Philippians three ten, "Oh that I may know Him, the power of His resurrection." Oh yeah, that sounds good to me.
Well, the next line is, and the fellowship of his suffering, being conformed to his image. Paul took it all. I'll take the sunshiny days. I'll take the rainy days. I'll take the negatives.
I'll take the positives because I'm in Christ, and God's going to work it all out for my good. It's a great thing. We need to pray specifically too. Notice his prayers are specific. God will answer these prayers, people.
It's. God will answer Paul's prayer, and if we pray these verses here, God will answer our prayer. You listen. You want to know how much I believe that? John fifteen seven says so.
For one thing, jot it right down in your margin. John fifteen seven. That if my word abides in you, you may ask what you will, and it shall be done unto you. What's the key? Pray Bible.
You've heard this before. But you can open up this right now and pick someone in your life. Maybe right now, the Holy Spirit would even bring somebody to your memory, to your remembrance. I need to pray for Johnny, and you write that down. And this is what you would pray for, Johnny.
You would say, "Lord, I am asking you right now. Lord, you are the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, Lord, you are the Father of glory, and I am going to ask you, Father, that you would give." To Johnny, the spiritual wisdom and revelation of the knowledge of you, and Lord, I'm going to ask you, and you keep praying Scripture. God will answer your prayer, guarantee it. I don't know about you, but that really excites me to no end.
God will answer these kinds of prayers, and look what He's asking for. He asked for Johnny. He asked for wisdom. The word wisdom here means. Wisdom, the exercise, the exercise and use of knowledge.
Did you know you can be a PhD, Harvard, everything, and be able to ace a test? You can be the smartest man in the world, and you can be an absolute lame brain because you have no wisdom. Wisdom is the use of knowledge. I knew a guy who was really brilliant in electronics, but that guy. He could hardly tie his shoes.
He could hardly figure that out. It's so strange, and he would say stuff. It's like, what? I mean, this guy's brain wouldn't even fit in my head. But he had no wisdom to execute the knowledge he had.
It didn't matter how smart he was. He was dangerous because he didn't have wisdom. You want to teach your kids, by the way, wisdom more than knowledge, and boy, am I barking up a touchy tree. We got our kids plugged into the mode, and by the time they're three, you know, have your seven-year-old email my three-year-old. You know, catch you on the internet.
Let's go surfing. You know, in my day, you just put racks on your car to go surfing.
Now, when you go surfing, you plug your face into a computer, and we're we're we're doing this thing about knowledge, the superhighway. We have got less wisdom than ever before in the human history. We think we're so smart. We're not smart. We're tantalized and titillated by the latest technological boom.
And we don't have any wisdom. We're missing it. Teach him wisdom. He says wisdom. He says here revelation.
What does this mean? The word means appearing, the coming to the light, the manifestation. Specifically, he's talking about of truth. And the word knowledge. This is a great word in the Greek.
It means the recognition of the full discernment of. And what's he talking about? Of God to come to the full discernment of who God is. And people, what he's insinuating here is: Do you and I understand God's nature? If you understand God's nature, it will steer you clear of a lot of pain in the future.
If you understand God's nature in the Bible, you can read Scripture easier because you know His nature. You know things that He does and that He doesn't do. You know His nature. Have you ever had this happen in your life, or maybe you know somebody where you hear something about someone? Oh yeah, you know what?
He just robbed the bank. That's insane. I know him. That's a rumor. That's wrong.
That's false. That's a lie.
Well, how can you be so sure? I heard it from Trixie down the street. I'm telling you, I know the guy, and I know his nature. You see what I'm saying? If you know someone's nature, you can almost predict their stability and their faithfulness to whatever that is.
And Paul is saying. To have knowledge of the Lord is to know His nature, and that's very important. First Corinthians two sixteen, the Scripture says, "For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ. That's amazing. By the way, it's past tense.
We do have the mind of Christ if we're born again. Look at verse eighteen now. The eyes of your understanding being enlightened, the eyes of your understanding.
Some of your Bibles might say, "The eyes of your heart being enlightened." And why does it say that? Because your heart. He's speaking about the seat of the real man, who you truly are.
Some of your old translations will say the heart, and that's not a bad translation. But it's. It can be said the eyes of your understanding, as it does in the New King James Version Bible, it means what you really know down deep. May the eyes of your heart be opened. What do you know for sure?
That's what he's talking about. Oh Lord, he's praying. May their eyes, may the eyes of their heart, their understanding be enlightened, illuminated. You know, you know, man is born blind spiritually. The heart of the unsaved man is blind.
First Corinthians two ten, Paul says there, God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the Spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Second, or excuse me, First Corinthians two fourteen says.
But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned or understood. We are all born into the world spiritually dumb, blinded, and even when we come to Christ in faith, we need to grow. That's why you're here tonight to grow. But enlightenment comes from the Holy Spirit. You might want to jot these verses down.
John fourteen twenty five. Jesus said, "These things I have spoken to you that while being present with you, but the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance everything I've said to you." Isn't that amazing? That's enlightenment. Holy Spirit does that. You remember picking up the Bible before you were born again, and you read it like this, and then like this, and it's like, who reads this thing?
Remember those days? It's like, man, the words don't even—it's like a foreign language. It is. Unless the Holy Spirit touches you, and then the light comes on. In John sixteen twelve, Jesus said again, "I still have many things that I want to say to you, but you cannot bear them.
However, when the Holy Spirit comes, the Spirit of Truth, He will guide you into all these things, all this truth. For He will not speak of His own authority, but whatever He hears from Me, He will speak and tell you of things to come. Isn't that amazing?" We will never understand the Bible, people, without the Holy Spirit. We'll never make it. Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs here on Real Life Radio with his message called "Things That We Need to Know." Thanks for being with us today.
You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack's series called "The Book of Ephesians," a series through Paul's letter to the Ephesians, discovering the riches, the walk, and the triumph of every believer. And we'll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio. Do you need encouragement, clarity, and solid teaching for everyday life? At JackHibs.com, you'll find sermons, podcasts, devotionals, and streaming content designed to help you grow in your faith. Visit JackHibs.com today and stay connected to what matters most.
Hey, I'm very excited to promote this new book by Dr. Tim LaHaye. Not only a mentor of mine, but a precious friend, he has written a book: How to Study Bible Prophecy for Yourself. Remember, Dr. Tim LaHaye is the one that brought you the remarkable Left Behind series.
I bet with all of your knowledge of Bible prophecy, there's still a hole somewhere. And this book is going to help you as he walks you through how to study Bible prophecy for yourself. How to study Bible prophecy for yourself. Get it for a gift. Of any amount at jackhibs.com.
Hey, thank you again so much for listening. And if you'd like to hear or see more of what we do here, you can always go to jackhibbs. dot com for all the latest on what's going on with this ministry. And please, if you're ever in the Southern California area, come see us at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills. We'd love to see you there in person.
It has been so good to be with you today, and I pray you find yourself in the grace and. Mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. See you on the next episode. This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners. Visit us at jackhibbs dot com.
That's jackhibbs dot com. Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in His Word. We'll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.
