Today's Passage - Ephesians 1:15-17

River of Life Christian Church ︳www.rolcc.net/english Ephesians 1:15-17   "For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, 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."   Faith is in essence a subject experience.  Although we can analyze and categorize faith to become an objective knowledge, true faith can never be forced upon someone.  Strong faith needs to be established on the foundation of accurate knowledge.  We need to know what and whom we believe in so that we may take our faith from an objective knowledge to a subjective experience.  You can learn knowledge about someone from his biography, but you can only truly know this person by spending time with him.   We need to know more about Jesus and communicate more with Him; otherwise, our faith can easily become merely a form because we'll just be following tradition instead of understanding the true meaning of the faith.  We may also fall into fanaticism, seeking after experience but lose Christ.  Finally, we may fall into rationalism, where we only seek whatever is reasonable in knowledge, but we will exclude the all-power and eternal God outside of the boundary of such knowledge.   Paul said in Philippians 3:8: "What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord...."  He didn't say that Christ is great, like He's just an unreachable, most high God, but rather he said that knowing Christ is the greatest thing.  Clearly, the Lord we believe in loves to be close to us and communicate with us.  Knowing this, Paul said that "...for whose sake I have lost all things."  Because of his knowledge of Christ, he considered his job, position, knowledge and fame as "a loss", and such understanding gave Paul the strength to live and to serve, and a hope for eternal life.   When we look at our church and ourselves, we need to acknowledge that we are often lukewarm towards our faith.  May God open our eyes so that we may know Him better, and let Jesus Christ become the momentum that draws us closer to God, so that we will hurry to follow Him.                                                                                 Pray with Pastor Tong           Lord, please open our eyes so that we may truly know your beauty and mercy, righteousness and faithfulness, because you are the Lord who's sitting on the throne!  Let our hearts be stirred up by your fire again, so that we will hurry to follow you.  I pray in the victorious name of Jesus, amen!