John Stott on Faith and Reason

17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better. 18 I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and His incomparably great power for us who believe. (Ephesians 1:17-19a, NIV 1984)

John Stott comments on the verses above: 

Divine illumination and human thought belong together. All our thinking is unproductive without the Spirit of truth; yet His enlightenment is not intended to save us the trouble of using our minds. It is precisely as we ponder what God has done in Christ that the Spirit will open our eyes to grasp its implications. It is commonly assumed that faith and reason are incompatible. This is not so. The two are never contrasted in Scripture, as if we had to choose between them. Faith goes beyond reason, but rests on it. Knowledge is the ladder by which faith climbs higher, the springboard from which it leaps farther.

Thanking God for His Work Abroad

For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of Wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better. (Ephesians 1:15-16 NIV 1984)

On the above passage, D.A. Carson notes in A Call to Spiritual Reformation:Priorities from Paul and His Prayers:

In the same way we give thanks to God when we recognize His quiet and effective work in our lives, so also [should] we thank God when we hear of His work in others. If we hear of a substantial number of people in another city or country who have been genuinely transformed by the gospel… we [should] thank God for so working in them that they have become Christians. That is what Paul is doing.

So, if we intend to imitate the prayers of Paul, we will be attentive to reports of the progress of the gospel, not only in circles immediately around us, but also from places we have never visited. We may subscribe to a missionary organization’s newsletter; we may receive the pray letters of some who are working abroad; we may glance at the news reports found in some Christian magazines. When we find reliable reports of people who have, by God’s grace, become Christians, we [should] learn to respond as Paul does: we [should] immediately turn to the God whose grace has sovereignly intervened in their lives, with such happy result, and offer Him praise and thanksgiving.

If even the angels of Heaven rejoice over a single sinner who repents [as Jesus indicates they do], it does not seem too much to ask the people of God to offer thanksgiving at the same news.

God's Choice of Us for Our Greatest Good and the Magnification of His Glory: An Overview of Ephesians 1:3-14

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ, 4 for He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight; in love 5 He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Christ Jesus, in accordance with His pleasure and will, 6 to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the One He loves. 7 In him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding, 9 and He made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in Heaven and on Earth together under one head, even Christ. 11 In Him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will, 12 in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of His glory. 13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of His glory. (Ephesians 1:3-14 NIV 1984)

While God’s eternal choice of us in Christ was made “in love” (1:4) and “in accordance with His pleasure and will” (1:5)—and was therefore not random or arbitrary—His choice was NOT made based on our being better than others or our being lovely in and of ourselves; it is not as if we, prior to becoming Christians, were just so awesome that God couldn’t help Himself but to love us and save us. That would make us the objects of His praise; it would make it so that others should praise us as well. No—look at Ephesians 1:6—God’s choice of sinners like us was made “to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the One He loves”: or, as the ESV has it, “in the Beloved”. The one that God the Father loves—His Beloved—is a reference to Christ. Referring to Christ moves Paul, in Ephesians 1:7-10, to consider the gospel work accomplished by Christ in history. Then the Apostle returns to the theme of God’s sovereign choice of a people in Christ for the end of His glory being magnified; look at Ephesians 1:11-12, “In Him, we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of His glory.” Paul wants His readers to be assured that the blessings that he and the other earliest believers enjoyed would be enjoyed by everyone who believes in Christ; look again at the first part Ephesians 1:13, “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation”. All the blessings of God, even His own indwelling presence in “the promised Holy Spirit,” mentioned at the end of Ephesians 1:13, belong to us; as we trust in Christ, we are God’s possession. All of this eternal, sovereign grace, which impacts us in time, is “to the praise of [God’s] glory,” as Paul writes at the end of Ephesians 1:14.

Predestination Produces Praise and Prayers

For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of Wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better. (Ephesians 1:15-16 NIV 1984)

As we see in this passage, and in several New Testament verses, the Apostle Paul flows straight from praise to prayer. His praises are built on deep theology and deep love, and so are his prayers. The words "for this reason" at the beginning of Ephesians 1:15 point back to the line of thought expressed in Ephesians 1:3-14. As recorded in Ephesians 1:3, Paul praised God because He "has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing that is in Christ." And the crowning evidence of God's 'spiritual blessings' toward us (which is breathtaking, if we really consider it) is that "[God] choose us in [Christ] before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight" (Eph 1:4). This choice that God made of us "before the creation of the world" was not arbitrary, as if He were rolling some eternal dice and randomly choosing some people and not others; rather, God's choice was accompanied by His wisdom and love, as the Apostle Paul also declared: "In love, [God] predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will" (Eph 1:4-5). Far from being a cold doctrine, producing a group of iron-faced, ice-hearted "frozen chosen," Paul viewed the eternal predestination of those who are elect in Christ as a motivation for praise, thanksgiving, and prayer for others.