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The professional observers and media pundits suggest that now Bill Clinton has only his place in history to work toward. He will now be judged against the giants of the past, Lincoln, Truman, Wilson. That is one of the ways that history works. We judge the current events by the standards set in the past. Current NBA stars are now being set against the stars from the last fifty years. Madonna versus Marilyn Monroe. John Updike compared to Nathaniel Hawthorne. And when you compare the preaching and praying of the public church, the church on radio, the church in the public press, with the preaching and praying of Saint Paul, as in this letter to the church at Ephesus, one cannot miss the dramatic change that has taken place in preaching and praying as well. Listen to the preaching and praying of the public church today, and you will hear the message and the prayers addressed to individuals. When you listen to the preaching and praying of Saint Paul, you hear the message and the prayers to God for the church, for the whole fellowship of believers, for the body which is to become the body of Christ. Paul thinks corporately, thinks of the kingdom of God, thinks of the fellowship, prays for the whole church. Today's public praying and preaching are much more centered on individual salvation, praying for God to work in my life, praying for God to help me, and for God to give me the spirit of courage and hope.

Listen to the opening prayer of Paul for the church at Ephesus. Paul begins his letter with the customary greeting and doxology for the spiritual blessings God has brought to history in his work with the covenant people, the Jews, and then in the person and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the passage before us this morning, Paul moves into telling them what a testimony he has heard about them, about their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and the way they love all of God's people. So Paul says, "I never stop being grateful for you all in my prayers. Every day, every night, I give thanks to God for the faith of the church of Ephesus and for the love that comes out of that faith."

But that is not all. Then Paul tells them about what he prays for them. He doesn't just pray that they will continue to be strong in the faith and continue to love all of God's people. His great thanksgiving quickly turns into a prayer of intercession for the church. Now what kind of things do you think Paul prays for? Paul says he prays first for them to receive the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of knowledge, and the spirit of revelation which will reveal to them the personality and power of God. Paul prays that the church will receive the spirit of comprehension and understanding so that they will come really to know God, to grasp something of his majesty and greatness, to know the full measure of the scope of the providence and love of God. How many celebrities have you heard say that they really wish the public had a chance to get to know them because they are much more complex than the tabloids have presented them to be? Paul's prayer for the church is that they will receive the spirit of wisdom and revelation that will give them a wider, deeper, broader knowledge of the true personality of God.

Because when they grasp more and more of the personality, purpose, and power of God, they will comprehend more fully the hope that was given to them when they were called by God to his work. The spirit of wisdom and revelation of God would highlight for them the stunning blessings that are planned not just for them, but for all the people of God - no private individual blessings, but awe--inspiring blessings that are vast enough and rich enough to bless all of God's people. Where they become confident of the relationship they have with God, as they get to know God and trust God more fully, they will gain a sense of confidence about the future, about the struggle with good and evil, about the final outcome of history, because they will become more aware of the power of God: the power of God's love, the power of God's goodness to change. The power of God's grace to transform life for the better, the power of God to take that which is broken and make it whole, to take what is dirty and to make it clean, the power of God to take that which is dead and bring it to life.

Paul prays for the spirit of wisdom to come upon the church so that they will know the full quality of the power of God that God has to give to his people. Paul reminds them that it is a power that we have already seen demonstrated. We have seen something of the amazing properties of the power of God as God took Jesus of Nazareth out of the grave and gave him new life. God is not a powerless creator. There is an awesome kind of power in the love of God, and as we come to understand that love and that power we will understand the kind of power that we as the people of God have to turn loose in the world. The power of God's grace and love is an awesome power to transform lives. It is like no other power.

There was a story in the newspaper about the 82--year--old maid in Mississippi who had saved all her life and gave to the University of Mississippi a gift of $150,000, to endow scholarships for black students. The story was about the power of that small act of charity to change things. The woman is now constantly on the go. She is being invited all over the world to be honored for her act of love. She has flown in airplanes for the first time, stayed in the finest homes, eaten whatever her heart might desire, met governors, mayors, and celebrities who have all wanted her autograph. There is a frightening and awesome power in the power of goodness, in the power of compassion, a power which cannot be grabbed or wanted, for the woman did not give the scholarship money in order to become famous. But the act of goodness took an unknown maid and made her a somebody.

Paul says that the power of God took Jesus, who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, who did not have the army or the economic power to oppose the political power, who was crucified, and God's power took that Jesus out of the grave and gave him new life. God took that Jesus, who was despised and rejected by humanity, and has now installed him as Lord over all creation. The power of God's love took one who had reached the ultimate bottom and spun the whole wheel of history and established the one who was on the bottom on the top. The spirit of wisdom and understanding will bring into our heart and mind a more complete grasp of the nature and will and purpose of that power of God.

There is a persistent temptation to look at ourselves, to look at our resources, to look at the problems, to look at the needs, and to become discouraged; to look at the evil around us and to despair. We reduce the size and magnitude of the power of God that we have seen made visible in the resurrection of Jesus Christ to the limits of our minds and our understanding. That is why Paul prays for the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that our minds and hearts might be expanded by the knowledge of God's power, rather than letting us continue with such feeble concepts of God's power. The people of God who constantly renew themselves with a new appreciation and constant reminders of the vastness and greatness of God's power go forward in faith and service knowing that they are the channel through which God has elected to use that power. The church is not a weakling. The church is not a wimp. The church is only powerless when it looks at its own resources. Christ is the head of the church, the church is the body of Christ, and it is through the body of Christ, through the church, that the power of Christ will be fulfilled and expressed into history.

That is why our greatest sin as the people of God against the Holy Spirit is to think negatively or to think realistically, to say that we can't do that now, to think that evil cannot be overcome, to say that nothing can be done about that sickness, to close the doors on options for the future simply because we do not see how we can achieve that. God may not heal our sickness. God may not give us at this moment the resources to give good--paying jobs to everybody. God may know that what we need most is the struggle and not the success, but to say that it is not a possibility, to say that child abuse cannot be stopped, to throw up our hands and to say that we cannot reestablish discipline in our schools, to say that there is nothing we can do to help our young people come to a joyful and affirming understanding of sexuality within commitment, to say we cannot feed, with all the resources and food on this earth, all those in Africa who are hungry, is to deny the power and the potential of the love of God.

Paul prays for the church that it might have a spirit of wisdom and revelation so that it might grow in its knowledge and appreciation of the providence, the personality, the power of God's love, so that we in the church may always be full of more joy and possibility than those who suddenly win the Publisher's Clearing House sweepstakes, for we understand fully that we are the conduit into the world of that same amazing power that resurrected Jesus Christ from the grave, that took that rejected and despised Jesus and made him Lord over all creation and set him as Head of the Church, and who will send that power to his body so that he might continue to fulfill his mission and calling to redeem history.

Paul is praying for the whole body of Christ. Somehow it still seems to me that we have lost something of the greatness of the vision of a redeemed creation and history when all we worry about is the salvation of individual souls. As if all we have to say is that God will just have to deal with individual problems because God is not able to deal with powers, principalities, and kingdoms of this world. Paul says that a prayer for a new spirit of wisdom and revelation of the power of God will send us forth as the body of Christ. What a power! What a God.