Continuing his prayer, Paul moves from thankfulness to request. It was his practice to let people know how he was praying for them. Further, his pattern was to pray specifically to God the Father. In Scripture we are encouraged to praise and honor the Son, and to some degree we may bring our requests to Him (see John 14:14). However, the predominate teaching of the New Testament is that when we bring our needs and requests, we pray to God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself said, “In that day you will not question Me about anything. Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask the Father for anything in My name, He will give it to you” (John 16:23).

Paul prays that God would give the Ephesians a deeper wisdom and knowledge of Christ. Peter wrote similarly, “… but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ… (2 Peter 3:18) . Spiritual maturity comes in the progressive appreciation of the depths of knowing Christ. This is not just superficial awareness of the facts about Christ, but an intimacy of the nuances and depth of Christ as the manifestation of God Himself. Paul writes elsewhere “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Col 1:15). The author of Hebrews writes, “He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power…” (Heb 1:3). There is so much to learn about the Lord Jesus Christ—we will spend eternity plumbing His depths more and more. Paul asks the Father that his readers would make progress in this very thing.

Further, Christian maturity, as Paul prays for, includes a growing insight into the hope that we have, what we really have to look forward to as believers. He describes the object of our hope, “the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.” We Christians have a perspective that in essence is otherworldly. The hopes and goals of this world are temporary and cannot sustain the human spirit. Our inheritance is Christ Himself, who is eternal. And so we look forward to His return. This is what He has called us to, and this is one of the key transformational truths that keep Christians going when, from all human perspective, there is no hope. We have been called to a higher plane of life where Christ is presently seated in glory and we are “in Him” (see 1:3).