When I was a pastor of a local church, I would sometimes go into the worship service and say to my congregation, “Let’s all pray and ask the Lord to give us His blessings today.” Together we would ask, “Lord, pour out Your blessings. Give us Your blessings.” Every Sunday for several weeks I did that.
One Sunday morning I was sitting in my office thinking about the service. I thought about how I would go in and ask everyone to kneel and ask the Lord to give us His blessings. As I was thinking about that, the Holy Spirit spoke very clearly to me and He said to me, “Don’t do that. Stop doing that!” As I looked at my Bible in my lap, my eyes fell on Ephesians 1:3. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.” I had been asking the church to pray and ask God to give us something when God has already given us everything.
The need is not that God should give us something that we don’t have. The need is that we should know what we do have. Paul didn’t pray for the church to receive more. He prayed that they would understand what they already had. In Ephesians 1:17-19 Paul prays, “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.”
Are you praying for God to give you more of Him? He has given us everything He has to give in Jesus Christ! What is it that you need? Jesus Christ is your Source. All you need is Him.
Do you need wisdom? That’s Him. Do you need righteousness? That’s Him. Holiness? That’s Him, too. Do you need sanctification, guidance, strength? It’s all Him.
What do you need today? His name is IAM. I AM what? Anything you need. All the fullness of I AM is in Jesus. “For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him” (Col.1:19). All the fullness of Jesus is in you.
Don’t pray for what you already have. Just appropriate the sufficiency of the Christ who is living in you. You don’t have to struggle or beg for what you think you need. You already have it. Just let Jesus be Jesus in and through you.
MORE Devotional
