In Christ: Know It, Live It - 22 (The God Who Has Called Us to Hope)

"...Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you many know what is the hope to which He has called you..." Ephesians 1:18

The Apostle Paul's great prayer for the Ephesian saints (and us!) in the first chapter of that letter centers around the request that they might KNOW Him better (v.17). But what does it mean to know Him better but to know WHAT HE IS LIKE and WHAT HE DESIRES and DELIGHTS TO DO? In Paul's prayer, there are 3 things He asks God to illumine the hearts of the saints to. The first of these is "to know the HOPE to which He has called you" v.18.

Note:

• CALL refers to an INVITATION. The word is used in the NT of an invitation to God's Kingdom and its privileges. Who in their right mind, apart from Scriptural revelation, could envision the Sovereign God who rules the universe in infinite holiness issuing THEM an invitation to be part of His blessed Kingdom? But He has done it. God has issued Kingdom invitations to His ENEMIES! And not after long observation to determine their suitableness for His Kingdom; God has sovereignly (and irresistibly) issued invitations to His Kingdom to rebels who were actively and passionately REJECTING His Kingdom...to subjects of Satan. Such is our King and such is His glorious invitation.
• The particular Kingdom invitation God has issued to us in Paul's prayer is the invitation to HOPE. Again, this is God-founded, biblical HOPE...CONFIDENT EXPECTATION that God will come through and that our future holds ultimate GOOD. In Ephesians 2:12 Paul writes that before Christ we "had no hope and were without God in the world." The expectation we had before Christ was of fearful judgment, lonely dark torment, and a life here without ultimate meaning or purpose. DO YOU REMEMBER THOSE DAYS? Perhaps like me you lived to drown out thoughts of the future because they were so dark and empty and foreboding. Satan calls to destruction and despair. His is the downward call to the convulsive wretching of a ever-dying soul. We were all at one time headed down that hellish hallway. BUT GOD...
• This particular HOPE that we have been called to is nothing less than HEAVEN and eternal life with the Father and the Son. It is final possessing of our promised inheritance (Ephesians 1:5,11,14). God will get us and we will get God. What grace has done for us is stranger than fiction. But there is no fiction here. How precious are thoughts of Heaven to you? Does the HOPE of HEAVEN have motivating and drawing power on your soul? The power of heavenly expectation is dependent on the depth of our KNOWLEDGE of God now. If HE is not precious to me, if HE is not my increasing joy, if HE is not what I want more than anyone or anything else then Heaven will not be a joyful, empowering HOPE (1 John 3:1,2).

One primary way to deepen my joy in God and my HOPE of Heaven is to meditate on the fact that my Father in Heaven is the God who has INVITED me to share HEAVEN with Him, through Christ, for all eternity. This is what Paul prays here. That we may know God more deeply as the God who has called us to HOPE, and what that hope is. It is astonishing. HE is astonishing. May God grant us today the help of the Holy Spirit to SEE God as the God who has invited us to share all eternity with Him, when we deserve Hell, and all because He is the gracious God.