Isaac Pitre: Pressing On for Greater Wisdom and Understanding (Ephesians

Isaac Pitre: Pressing On for Greater Wisdom and Understanding (Ephesians 3:19)
Isaac Pitre spoke at Faith is the Victory Church in Nashville, TN on 6/13/2022. Quotes: “Ephesians 3:19 says, "For this reason we also since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with all knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding." Darkness has no power, and God did that by transferring us into the kingdom or the authority of God.”
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Philippians 7 says, "But what things were gain to me, these I've counted loss." And he's talking about all the things in, you know, verses number four, five, six and seven. He says, "But what things were gain to me, I count them loss for Christ. Yet indeed, I also count all things with loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish." I'm reading out of the New King James, "That I may gain Christ."
Now we got to find, we got to really grab what Paul is talking about. He says, "I counted all those things loss that I may gain Christ and be found in Him not having my own righteousness, which is from the law but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection."
Woo! Underline that, circle it or just, just sear that in your mind. He says, "I'm doing all of this, gave up the things I counted gain, I just counted them as rubbish. Everything I've lost, it doesn't matter because I'm after something." And he says, "I'm after some knowledge. I'm after something that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to His death."
Now, this is crucial that you understand this, because his death isn't necessarily your death, in as far as the physical dimension. In other words, he's not saying, you know I want to suffer until I die, like Jesus did. That's not what he's talking about. He's talking about something different that you're going to understand. He says, "I want to know the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, if by any means I may attain to the resurrection from the dead."
So, he says again, "O, that I may know him, the power of His resurrection and understand His sufferings and what He went through so that I can arrive at the resurrection from the dead. Then he says, "Not that I've already attained or not that I've already arrived or am I already perfected but I press on." Somebody says, "I'm pressing too." What's you pressing for Paul? "That I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended it but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind me and reaching for those things which are ahead, I pressed toward the goal for the prize of the upward call."
He says, "I'm after something you all. I'm after something that the resurrection brought me into." He says, even in all his revelations, he says "I still haven't got there but I'm going to chase it till I leave here." Something happened in that resurrection that I'd need to lay hold of. So now let me just jump through the chase with this part because when I was young, they taught me that the pressing toward the mark and the high goal and all that was to make sure I reach heaven. That's great but that's not what Paul is talking about.
Paul, of all people, knew you don't have to press to make heaven. He of all people, is the one who gave us the revelation of redemption and how it's by grace and not of works, lest any of us boast. So, what is he talking about pressing toward? What is he talking about reaching after? Because heaven is a done deal. Look at somebody and say, "You are going to heaven. That's a done deal." No, the high call that we are pressing toward is something that Paul unpacked in the revelation of Jesus Christ, and here it is in Colossians chapter number one.
So, verse number nine says, "For this reason, we also since the day we heard it," meaning whenever these people came into the knowledge of Christ, whether it was the church at Ephesus, the church at Colossi, the church at Philippi, He always said the same thing. He was like, "You know, since you are now born again," he starts to say, "I've been praying for you, that you don't stop right there." And so, he is saying that after every church, he leads out like I've been praying since I heard you came to the faith since I heard you got this knowledge.