“What stresses you out?” This was the opening question to last week’s sermon. All of us get stressed out, some of us more frequently than others. Different things stress out different people but there is something common to all stressful things: they are all about things which haven’t happened yet. Stressing out about something is essentially expending energy on imagined negative outcomes which may or may not come true. Ephesians 1:15-23 offers us a beautiful alternative. After sharing with the church in Ephesus that he has heard of their faith in Jesus and their love for one another, he lets them know that he prays for them. It appears he wants more for them than to simply trust in Jesus and to love their fellow believers. In verse 17 he tells them that he prays that God would give them a “spirit of wisdom and revelation” as they come to know him. Paul is praying that people know God and not just know things about God. Unfortunately, a lot of people know things about God but don’t actually know Him. They can cite facts about God but have a very shallow undeveloped relationship with God. Sadly, people in this condition are missing out on what is possible. As Paul says in verse 17, “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.” The more we know God, the greater our sense of hope. Hope is the opposite of being stressed out. It is also future oriented but unlike being stressed out, hope is belief in God’s promises of positive future outcomes. Paul’s prayer for the church in Ephesus, which the Holy Spirit inspired him to write about in this letter, is that they would come to know God intimately so that they would be filled with hope; so they would not be stressed out.
Wouldn’t you love to live a stress free life? You can. It starts by coming to know God and not just know things about him. The more we know God the more hope we have. The more hope we have, the less stressed out we find ourselves. So how do we come to know God and not just know things about God? First, we spend time daily in God’s Word. We do need to know things about God in order to know him. So, we spend time in God’s Word learning about God’s character, discovering what God’s priorities and motivations include. Second, we engage with God on a daily basis in prayer. Prayer is communication with God and just like with any relationship, it is essential that we spend time in conversation. In prayer, we ask God for direction, for insight and then we spend time listening to God in prayer. We wait for God’s response. And then, when that response from God comes, we trust it. We go with it. We move forward with it. God will not ever lead us in a direction that is inconsistent with his Word so again, we must spend time reading the Bible.
God wants us to know him. He makes himself known in His Word and by the power of His Holy Spirit, in prayer. As we come to know him more and more we will have more and more hope. And with that increase in hope comes a decrease in stress. Thanks be to God for who God is! May we all come to know God more and more.
