Smith Wigglesworth was a revivalist from England decades ago. He was an out of the box believer who saw the Lord do some incredible things.
Wigglesworth once prayed for a horse and it was healed. We might pray for a beloved family pet, but most of us have never thought about praying for an animal before. The point is not the animals. The point is what happens when the Word of God gets into you so deeply that it starts coming out of you in every situation — including the ones you never expected. That is what revelation produces. That is what wisdom looks like when it is alive.
I pray that the Father of glory, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, would impart to you the riches of the Spirit of wisdom and the Spirit of revelation to know him through your deepening intimacy with him. I pray that the light of God will illuminate the eyes of your imagination, flooding you with light, until you experience the full revelation of the hope of his calling —that is, the wealth of God’s glorious inheritances that he finds in us, his holy ones! I pray that you will continually experience the immeasurable greatness of God’s power made available to you through faith. Then your lives will be an advertisement of this immense power as it works through you! Ephesians 1:17-19 TPT
We identify this prayer as one of the great prayers of the Bible. The Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. The eyes of your understanding being enlightened. The exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe. It is all in one prayer. And Paul is asking God to give it to you.
Smith Wigglesworth had a description of the Bible that has never left us. He paraphrased it this way: the Bible is the Word of God — supernatural in origin, eternal in duration, inexpressible in value, infinite in scope, regenerative in power, infallible in authority, universal in interest, personal in application, and inspired in totality.
And then Wigglesworth went further. He said the Word of God brings into a person the personality of God. It changes the person until they themselves become the Word of God — the epistle of God, as Paul says, a letter read by many. It transforms the mind. It changes the character. It takes you from grace to grace and gives you an inheritance in the Spirit.
Here is the practical piece. When you learn in the Bible what you have in Jesus, you can start to think — that is mine. I can ask for that. I can receive that. I can walk in that. That is how the Word helps you step into your inheritance. You begin to operate out of the abundance of what you already have in Him.
Information is what you read. Revelation is when the Holy Spirit illuminates it so it pops off the page and lands in your heart. You can read a verse a hundred times and then one day it is completely different — not because the verse changed, but because the Spirit is showing you something you needed to see right now. That is the ministry of revelation, and it is what Paul is praying for in Ephesians 1.
When we pray for wisdom, we are really asking for a revelation of understanding — about God, about ourselves, and about how life works. Those are the three things. Understand God. Understand yourself. Understand how life works. And when all three come together, that is wisdom in action.
Wisdom is not mysterious. It is the application of knowledge. Proverbs says wisdom is the tree of life. And Jesus is a treasure of all wisdom. So when we seek wisdom, we are really seeking Jesus — seeking more of what He sees and how He sees it, so we can apply it rightly.
James identifies four kinds of wisdom: our own, (worldly, demonic), and God’s. We want God’s wisdom. And here is something important — God does not ask us to check our brain at the door. He wants us to exercise wisdom as sons and daughters. He wants to train our thinking so that we naturally reach for wisdom that is His.
And then wisdom connects to maturity — because they go together. Maturity has three parts: wisdom, knowing how to apply what you know; responsibility, owning your part in situations; and self-control, not being driven by every impulse. When the Spirit of wisdom is working in you, all three begin to grow together.
Verse 18 says: the light of God will illuminate the eyes of your imagination. So much of what we hear about imagination is negative: do not let your imagination run wild. But God created our imagination for good. He wants to illuminate it. He wants us to begin to imagine again — to see ourselves the way He sees us, to see our situation the way He sees it, to see our future the way He sees it. That is what an enlightened imagination does.
And verse 19 brings it all the way home: the immeasurable greatness of God’s power made available to you through faith. A living epistle. Not standing on a street corner preaching — just living the Word out so visibly that people see something different in you and want to know what it is. That is maturity. That is wisdom made visible.
Here is something that came out of a hard season that applies to any hard season. God has innovation for people in difficult times. He wants you to thrive, not just survive. But here is the thing — if you are in fear, you cannot hear God clearly. Fear changes what you hear. You see things through the wrong lens. The restful place of peace is not a luxury. It is where you must be to hear what God is saying and step into what He has for you.
This is what the Spirit of wisdom and revelation produces. It opens your eyes to what God is doing — even in the middle of what looks like a hard season. And what He is doing is always for your good, always creative, always more than you could have thought to ask for on your own.
Praying outside the box,
Karen Conrad Metcalfe