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In this world, we need to walk in faith, hope, and love. But faith and hope are temporary.
One day, we will see Christ in our resurrected body, and there will not be a need for faith and hope. Instead, He will complete our sanctification and we will love Him perfectly for all eternity.
In this body, we could not stand to be in the presence of God, but the body He will give us will be in perfect conformity with Him. We are already fearfully and wonderfully made, but what He will make us into will be even better. We don’t have the cognitive capacity to imagine what that will be like. But we will not be disappointed; we will be fully satisfied.
It is in light of this present and future wealth in Christ that Paul prays for the Ephesian believers in Ephesians 1:17–19a. He gives thanks for them, because they have been transferred to the kingdom of Christ and will be with Christ in glory.
Out of all the prayers he could have prayed for them—for their healing, their health, their well-being, their protection—he prayed for the highest good he could offer them, that they would be given a spirit of wisdom and revelation. The other prayers are for good things, but knowing God is the most essential thing.
Paul wanted the Ephesians believers to grasp the riches of their blessings more and more, ignoring the false narrative the world sought to give them. The world, after all, wanted them to focus on the temporal, and thus keep them in sin. But Paul reminded the Ephesians of their destiny, the hope of inheritance because of Christ’s call.
The wealth of the inheritance in Christ is beyond earthbound comprehension. Yet there is a present component to it. Walking in the power of the Spirit, our future defines our present. We begin experiencing joy in Christ now—we do not have to wait to rejoice as a new creation. We await the fullness of the promise, but we live out the promise in the present.
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Paul’s life-changing prayer in Ephesians 1:17–19a is part of a card in Ken’s Spiritual Renewal Card Set.
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