All of us can think of people who have prayed for a long time before receiving the answer to their pleading. For some the answer is No! That can be hard to bear, but eventually, circumstances help us to understand that God had a much bigger plan than we imagined.

We have here a definition of the mystery we have been thinking about. No matter how long we have experienced or known about this mystery, there is always something new, something deeper to understand about Holy Spirit living in us and being our guide minute by minute through the day.

Most of us who read the Bible regularly find there are things we do not understand fully. Or we think we do until something suddenly becomes clearer than it ever has before. Sometimes a verse we have not taken much note of can shout at us with a deep message.

This verse is a prayer that most of us could use, not just because we are giving sermons, speaking in churches, teaching groups, or leading youth. But in ALL our conversations. Pray also for me, that whenever I speak…. We need God to keep a hand on what we say.

The word mystery is used 4 times in the first few verses of this chapter of Ephesians. The same word appears 7 times in this short epistle. We can get the impression that Paul was feeling that he did not know how to explain everything when he wrote this letter.

On saying that the wisdom of God was a mystery, Paul was saying that nothing was obvious, and only those who searched the scriptures for the truth would understand. In fact, once converted, Paul had discovered that the plan of God was hidden all the way through the Old Testament.

Some pastors and priests can be heard to say that the gift of tongues was only for the apostles. Others say that tongues is a language of the devil! In this chapter Paul makes everything clear. A message in tongues is aimed at believers, a prophetic message is for non-believers.

It sounds like Jesus does not want His listeners to understand, but that is not the case. There are many secrets and mysteries in our Bibles, not because God wants to hide things from us, but because He wants us to pursue Him. We must spend time studying His word.

Secrets and mysteries appear all through the Bible, and reading it regularly can convince us that The Lord knows the secrets of our hearts (Psalm 44). It is sometimes surprising for all of us to find that a verse, often one read by chance, can speak to our present situation.

For believers who have already died, they will have gone straight to Heaven. Many people across the world have had experiences of visiting Heaven, some have seen relatives there and been re-assured that they made it through! Others have returned from those visions convinced that Heaven is a real place.