“For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.” Ephesians 1: 15-19
I really love this passage. It is rich with depth concerning the knowledge of God, and what it looks like to know God. This is the starting quote Keller uses in the introduction to his next chapter: “The Greatness of Prayer.” Within this chapter, Keller divides it using multiple headings: “The Supremacy of Prayer,” “The Integrity of Prayer,” “The Hardness of Prayer,” “The Centrality of Prayer,” and “The Richness of Prayer.” In what follows, I’m selecting a few passages from across these sections that resonate with me.
In the first section – “The Supremacy of Prayer” – Keller uses Paul as an example of how to pray for others. In particular he notes that Paul did not typically give a model on how to pray but instead gave us the details of what he asked God for in his own prayers. To quote Keller at length:
“What is that? It is – to know him better. Paul explains this with color and detail. It means having the ‘eyes of their hearts . . . enlightened’ (Ephesians 1:18). Biblically, the heart is the control center of the entire self. It is the repository of one’s core commitments, deepest loves, and most foundational hopes that control our feeling, thinking, and behavior. To have ‘eyes of the heart enlightened’ with a particular truth means to have it penetrate and grip us so deeply that it changes the whole person. In other words, we may know that God is holy, but when our hearts’ eyes are enlightened to that truth, then we not only understand it cognitively, but emotionally we find God’s holiness wondrous and beautiful, and volitionally we avoid attitudes and behavior that would displease or dishonor him. In Ephesians 3:18, Paul says he wants the Spirit to give them ‘power . . . to grasp’ all the past, present, and future benefits they received when they believed in Christ.” (pp. 20-21)
As I dwell on this quote, prayer becomes this most desirable experience. Falling away from it is the pretense of acceptance, and the struggle to keep my mind focused.
To know God, to catch glimpses of his beauty, to understand his holiness or grace or goodness is to be captivated by him. It is the look of awe captured in the heart and expressed through prayer.
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This must be what it means to be fulfilled in God, and find him to be the most valuable treasure, and this is largely accomplished through the discipline of prayer. Keller says it well in a follow-up paragraph:
“A rich, vibrant, consoling, hard-won prayer life is the one good that makes it possible to receive all other kinds of goods rightly and beneficially. He does not see prayer as merely a way to get things from God but as a way to get more of God himself. Prayer is a striving to ‘take hold of God’ (Is. 64:7) the way in ancient times people took hold of the cloak of a great man as they appealed to him, or the way in modern times we embrace someone to show love.” (p. 21)
Moving forward, we land in the section called “The Hardness of Prayer.” From reading Keller, prayer itself is a transforming experience, which is why it is so seemingly difficult. Keller continues to pursue the theme that prayer is more about transformation than technique. Many of us don’t have the patience or inclination to endure the true reality of who we are when in the presence of God, and so we don’t develop the endurance to come against the hard and difficult places in ourselves. To use an example from Stranger Things, we cry out in pain and abhorrence when we see our sin brought to light, in similar fashion to the “pollywog” that Dustin names D’Artagnan. Dustin finds D’Artagnan and adopts him, keeping him in his room, taking him to school, and showing him to his friends. What Dustin doesn’t realize is that D’Artagnan is from the Upside Down, a place just like Dustin’s own reality, but one that is covered in shadow and darkness. When Dustin shines a light on D’Artagnan in hopes of warming him up so he wouldn’t be cold, D’Artagnan lets out a shrilling scream. In prayer, when faced with the holiness of God Himself, and our sins are brought to light before our heart and mind, we struggle to stay there. We wiggle, and squirm, and roll away from who we really see ourselves to be. This is why prayer is hard. Keller says,
“The first thing we learn in attempting to pray is our spiritual emptiness – and this lesson is crucial. We are so used to being empty that we do not recognize the emptiness as such until we start to try to pray. We don’t feel it until we begin to read what the Bible and others have said about the greatness and promise of prayer. Then we finally begin to feel lonely and hungry. It’s an important first step to fellowship with God, but it is a disorienting one.” (pp. 24-25)
A final word for this post, which comes from the last section in the chapter, titled: “The Richness of Prayer.” From Keller,
“There is a longing in prayer that is never fulfilled in this life, and sometimes the deep satisfactions we are looking for in prayer feel few and far between. Prayer is a journey. . . . . One reason for the arduousness is because true prayer is ‘the soul in paraphrase.’ God does not merely require our petitions but our selves, and no one who begins the hard, lifelong trek of prayer knows yet who they are. Nothing but prayer will ever reveal you to yourself, because only before God can you see and become your true self. To paraphrase something is to get the gist of it and make it accessible. Prayer is learning who you are before God and giving him your essence. Prayer means knowing yourself as well as God.” (p. 30)
So much of this resonates with me, and bids me to start fresh in my time of prayer. I think, in one sense, this captures so much of what it means to desire intimacy with another, and to be truly known. Here Keller is speaking to that experience, of being known by God, of also knowing ones self, and finally of knowing God. It invites authenticity, reality, certainty, and intimacy. It is what everyone wants their relationships with others to be, and this is what the relationship with God should be like. The catalyst for this is prayer.
Coming to the end of the chapter, Keller makes a final appeal about prayer, namely that prayer is really about transforming us. Prayer is real self-actualization, and when all your sins are brought to bear before your heart and mind, it is about the realization that you are taking the first steps into truly knowing yourself, which is reflected in God’s grace to you as you spend time in prayer with Him. Keller assets,
“Though prayer is a kind of artillery that changes the circumstances of the world, it is much or even more about changing our own understanding and attitude toward those circumstances. . . . Through prayer, which brings heaven into the ordinary, we see the world differently, even in the most menial and trivial daily tasks. Prayer changes us. As plumb lines measured the depths of waters beneath boats, prayer is ‘a plummet sounding heav’n and earth.’ That means it can plunge us by the power of the Spirit into the ‘deep things of God’ (1 Cor. 2:10). This includes the indescribable journey that prayer can take us through the breadth, length, height, and depth of Christ’s saving love for us (Eph. 3:18). Prayer unites us with God himself.” (p. 31).
Dear God, teach me to pray. . . .
Resources:
Timothy Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2014).
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