Les Yeux de Votre Cœur — A Prayer for Sight

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — Prayed, Not Studied

Le has written our prayer today over these verses, and that is the correct use of them.

This paragraph is not a doctrinal statement that happens to be addressed to God. It is a prayer, and Paul wrote it to be prayed. Which means the natural thing to do with it is not to examine it but to say it.

And there is an old and reliable practice hiding in that. Anyone who does not know what to ask for another person can pray this paragraph over them and be certain of asking rightly — because an apostle wrote it, under the Spirit, for a whole church he had never stopped giving thanks for.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — The Word Le Learned on Day One Hundred

Something has come back, and Le did not go looking for it.

Verse 17 asks for the spirit of wisdom and REVELATION. The Greek word is apokalypseōs.

That is the word she asked about on the twenty-sixth of August — the hundredth morning, the first outside Portugal. Her own note that day: Apocalipse — the removal of the covering. And afterwards: amazing how the world distorts words that matter.

Eleven days later she is praying for it. Give us the spirit of the removing of the covering.

And that is exactly the right thing to ask for, because it names where the problem actually is. Paul does not pray that God would produce more truth. The truth is there. He prays that the cloth would come off it.

Which fits the psalm Le brought last night. She goes where the water is running. And here she is asking for the covering to be lifted so she can see where it runs.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — Eyes of the Heart

Here is a place where two translations differ, and the difference is worth knowing rather than hiding.

The King James has the eyes of your understanding. The Segond has les yeux de votre CŒUR — the eyes of your heart.

The two versions are following different manuscript readings, and the earliest and best-attested one is heart. Which is why nearly every modern translation, and the French Le has in front of her, says heart.

And that changes what is being asked for. Eyes in the understanding would be a request for a sharper mind. Eyes in the heart is something else entirely.

In Hebrew and in Paul's usage, the heart is not the seat of feeling as opposed to thought. It is the whole inner person — mind, will and affection together, the place decisions are actually made.

So the prayer is not make me cleverer. It is let the part of me that decides things be able to see.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — Enlightened, Passively

And the verb is the same shape as the one Le brought yesterday.

Being enlightened — pephōtismenous — is a perfect passive participle. Passive: it is done to you. Perfect: it happened, and the result still stands.

Exactly like pepeismai, I am persuaded, from Romans 8. Two of the great words of the Christian life, and both of them are things that were done to a person rather than achieved by one.

Which is why this is a prayer and not a discipline. Nobody enlightens their own heart, any more than Paul argued himself into being persuaded. The only available action is to ask.

And Le read the shortest version of this on Monday. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask. Six days later she is doing precisely that — and Paul supplies the words.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — What Paul Does Not Ask For

It is worth reading this prayer for what is missing from it.

Paul asks nothing about circumstances. Not safety. Not health. Not relief from persecution, which they were under. Not provision, not success, not growth in numbers. Not one request for anything outside a person.

Everything he asks for is sight. That ye may know.

Which is not indifference to their conditions — this is the man who took up collections for famine relief. It is a judgment about what changes a situation most. He is convinced that people who could see what they already have would face anything.

And note that he asks them to know three things they already possess. The calling is already theirs. The inheritance is already theirs. The power is already toward them. Nothing new is requested. Only the seeing of what was given.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — Three Things, in Three Directions

The three objects of knowledge in verses 18 and 19 point in three different directions, and together they cover a whole life.

The hope of His calling — l'espérance qui s'attache à son appel. Backward, to the moment you were called, and forward to what that calling was for.

The riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints — forward, to what is being kept. And note the direction Paul gives it: it is His inheritance, and the saints are it. The Segond: son héritage qu'il réserve aux saints. Le read this on the fifth of August, and read the mirror image of it yesterday in verse 11.

The exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe — present tense, currently pointed at them.

Called, kept, and carried. Past, future, and this morning.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — Four Words for One Power

In verse 19 Paul runs out of vocabulary and starts stacking it. The exceeding greatness of his power... according to the working of his mighty power.

There are four separate Greek words for strength in that one sentence — the general word for power, the word for power at work, the word for dominion or might, and the word for sheer strength. English has to repeat itself to render it; the Segond reaches for l'infinie grandeur de sa puissance.

And the first word, hyperballon, means overshooting — the throw that goes past the mark. It is a word for something beyond the range of measurement.

Then, having piled up four words for power, Paul does what he always does: he gives a measurement anyway. Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead.

The resurrection is offered as the ruler. That much power, and it is described as being to us-ward. Le's own words on the fifth of August: sight comes first — strength needs an anchor.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — Given to the Church

The prayer ends on a phrase that most readers slide past. God gave him to be the head over all things TO THE CHURCH.

Christ is head over everything — and He was given, in that capacity, to a particular people. The universal authority is not held at a distance from them. It was handed over on their behalf.

And then the last word of the chapter, which is almost too much. The church is called the fulness of him that filleth all in all. La plénitude de celui qui remplit tout en tous.

The One who fills everything is said to have a fulness — and it is us. Which is the same direction Paul was pointing yesterday, and the day Le read His inheritance in the saints.

The book keeps saying it from both ends: we receive from Him, and we are what He receives.