Open the Eyes of My Heart

     Paul has just spent eleven verses of Ephesians listing what God has given His people in Christ. Chosen before the foundation of the world. Adopted as sons and daughters. Redeemed through Christ's blood. Forgiven. Sealed with the Holy Spirit. Given an inheritance. If the Christian life were a bank account, Paul has just read the balance and we are rich in God’s blessing.
     Then he prays. He does not ask God to give the Ephesians more. He asks that they would see what they already have. "I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened." That phrase, "eyes of your hearts enlightened," sits at the center of the whole prayer. Paul is asking for sight. Internal sight. The kind of knowing that happens below the surface of the intellect, where truth actually moves us.
     This assumes something about us. We can possess spiritual blessings and still live beneath them. We can know facts about God and remain unmoved. We can sing "In Christ alone" on a Sunday and come home ruled by the same fears we carried in. Paul writes to a church full of faith and love (he says so in verse 15) and still asks God to open their eyes. Faith can be real while sight remains dim. Information alone does not change us. The Spirit's illumination does.
     So Paul prays three petitions, three things he wants the Spirit to reveal to the heart: hope, inheritance, and power. These three, not by accident, map onto three kinds of people who fill every congregation.
     The first petition is that we would know the hope to which He has called us. Hope here is not a wish. It is not crossed fingers. The word points to a settled future, something God has bound Himself to bring about. When God summoned you in the gospel, He summoned you toward a future you cannot lose: resurrection, inheritance, the new creation, the church gathered home in glory. That future is as fixed as the empty tomb.
     Most of us do not live like this hope is real. We live like the next six months are the most important thing about us. We are ruled by what the doctor said, what the boss decided, what our kids are going through, what the market did this week. Those things matter. They shape how we sleep and how we pray. But they are not the horizon. Paul prays that we would see a horizon bigger than them. A Christian who sees the hope of God's calling is not a Christian who stops caring about the present. They are a Christian whose present is steadied by a future she cannot lose. This is a word for the anxious heart, the grieving heart, the disappointed heart. Ask God for this sight.
     The second petition shifts our gaze. Paul prays that we would know "the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints." The phrase is carefully worded and rewards slowing down. The grammar leaves open two possibilities. The inheritance could be ours, so that we inherit God, or the inheritance could be God's, so that He inherits us. Both are true elsewhere in Scripture, but here the syntax and the flow of the argument lean toward the second reading. Paul has already said the Spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance (verse 14). Now he celebrates something harder to believe. God counts His people as His inheritance. The saints (ordinary, flawed, still-being-sanctified people) are His glorious riches. His treasure. His portion.
     The God who made galaxies and names every star looks at the church gathered on a Sunday morning and calls them His glory. The one who has failed again is part of that treasure. The one who feels unseen is part of that treasure. The one who has carried a quiet sense of worthlessness since childhood is part of that treasure. Paul prays that the Spirit would let this land. You are not tolerated by God. You are treasured by Him.
     That reframes how we live with each other. If the saints are God's glorious riches, then the person sitting next to you in the pew is part of God's treasure. We cannot despise what God delights in. We cannot write off what God counts as His inheritance. A congregation that sees this treats every member differently. The lonely are not overlooked. The difficult are not dismissed. The weak are not marginalized. We are looking at God's treasure when we look at them.
     The third petition is the hardest of the three to believe. Paul prays that we would know "the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe." He strains language here, piling up four different Greek words for power in a single sentence. Each carries a slightly different nuance, and together they form one claim: the power of God is not distant. It is directed toward His people.
     Paul gives one measure of this power, and only one: the resurrection of Jesus. "According to the working of His great might that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places." If we want to know what God can do in our lives, in our marriages, in our congregation, we look at the empty tomb. That is the power available to us.
     Paul does not stop at the resurrection. Jesus raised from the dead is now seated above every rule and authority and power and dominion, above every name that is named, in this age and in the one to come. He reigns over every spiritual force, every political power, every civic authority, every voice that claims ultimate allegiance. For the Ephesians, who lived in a city thick with the Artemis cult, imperial temples, and magic, this was not abstract. For us, the list looks different (cable news, the economy, social media, the diagnosis, the family system that has held us captive for thirty years), but the point is the same. Christ reigns above all of it.
     Paul adds one more claim in verse 22. God gave Him "as head over all things to the church, which is His body." Christ's cosmic lordship is given as a gift to His people. He reigns over everything, and He reigns for us. The church is not a small, anxious institution trying to survive the century. The church is tied to the risen and reigning Christ, and the power that raised Him flows toward her.
     Three petitions. One prayer. Paul wants us to see a hope that steadies the anxious heart, an inheritance that tells the despised heart it is God's treasure, and a power that frees the stuck heart to live in the reign of the risen Christ.
     Paul does not pray for the Ephesians to work harder, try more, or muster more sincerity. Those things have their place, but they are not the answer to living beneath our blessings. The answer is sight, the Spirit's opening of our eyes to what is already ours in Christ. The Christian life is not primarily about acquiring more spiritual resources. It is about coming to grasp the ones already given.
     This reframes how we pray for each other, for our marriages, our children, our small groups, our congregation. We do not pray most deeply that God would add something new. We pray that He would open our eyes to what is already true. Father of glory, give us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation. Let us see the hope. Let us see the inheritance. Let us see the power. Then let us live in the light of what we see.
     Seeing these three things does not remove pain, slow the world down, or guarantee easy answers. It does something else. It puts pain inside a bigger story. It puts our worth inside God's delight. It puts our stuck places inside the reign of the risen Christ. Nothing on the surface of our lives changes, and yet everything is reframed underneath.
     This Sunday we will pray Paul's prayer with him, and we will pray it for each other. That the Spirit would open our eyes. That we would stop living as a rich people who act as if they are poor. That we would see what is already ours.