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Praying for God’s Will
Colossians 1:9
Lord, Teach Us to Pray
February 2, 2003
We have been on a quest through the Bible for a better way to pray. Nothing should shape the way we pray more than the Bible itself, for in order to pray in an appropriate way, we need to understand God and his ways and we should also study the way the people of God pray on the pages of Holy Scripture. They are our models.
One great person of prayer in the Bible was the Apostle Paul. He is an interesting case study, for as I study the way he prays, he does not pray as I do! I pray mostly for my needs and the needs of others—for health, for safety, for my children’s spiritual welfare, for financial stresses, for the easing of grief and hardship. But Paul’s prayers are not heavily weighted in that direction. While he will at times pray for his needs and the immediate stresses in his and others’ lives, most of his prayers spring out of thanksgiving.
Whereas when I to pray, my prayers usually spring out of immediate needs and stresses, Paul’s prayers usually spring out of his thanking God and praising God for signs of grace in those he is praying for. Interesting.
In Colossians 1:3-8, Paul tells the Colossians how he always thanks God when he prays for them. Why?
“Because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints—the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel that has come to you” (Col. 1:3-6). Paul praises God’s grace in sending Epaphras to let these people know the truth of Jesus Christ; he praises God for the fact that this gospel is bearing fruit and growing all over the world (Col. 1:7-8).
And then, in verse 9, Paul writes,
“For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.”
“For this reason…” Paul’s prayers are prompted by his thanksgiving for the growth of God’s grace that he sees in these people—and it makes him pray for MORE grace in their lives!
That makes me ask, “How often are my prayers prompted by my genuine desire to see God’s grace in people’s lives? Or am I so programmed to pray only when there is a terrible need?”
And it also makes me ask an even more difficult question: “When I do pray to God a prayer of thanksgiving, what is it that I am most thankful for?”
Try this exercise: Write down everything that springs to mind for which you are thankful to God.
Amazingly, when I do this, my list is almost exclusively in the categories of material possessions or comfort. I am thankful for my house, for a meal every day, for a gorgeous wife, for three adorable kids, for our health, for our church, for our freedom to meet and to worship, etc.
Now, these things are wonderful, and I should thank God for them, never taking for granted all the gifts he has bestowed upon me. It’s just that when I study the prayers of
Paul, it is striking that his thankfulness in most of his prayers is tied directly not to his material possessions and comfort but to the
signs that God’s grace at work in others! Paul is thankful when people are boldly displaying their faith and showing love toward one another because they truly live in the hope that this world is not all that there is—they have a greater hope in heaven! He is thankful when people are out sharing the gospel with others, as Epaphras did with these people in Colosse. He thanks God that God is at work in the world by advancing the gospel.
D.A. Carson writes, “The unvarnished truth is that what we most frequently give thanks for betrays what we most highly value. If a large percentage of our thanksgiving is for material prosperity, it is because we value material prosperity proportionally.”
(A Call to Spiritual Reformation, Baker Books, 1992, p. 41)
You see, I am struck by how my prayers are so very different from Paul’s prayers. Studying Paul’s prayers sort of slaps me awake to the fact that if I pray for what I most highly value, then my values may not be exactly in line with what God values! The apostle values
people and their growth in God’s grace. That tells me what God values—he values
people and his work of grace in their lives and he wants us to pray for people (and for ourselves) in light of that.
If we are to pray biblically, we need to start praying like the prayer in Colossians 1. The foundation of our prayers should be more often our thankfulness for the signs of God’s grace in people’s lives. Based on that foundation, we will pray for more grace in people’s lives. That is what Paul prays for the Colossians, and that is what we should be praying for each other.
“For this reason (because of the grace we see in your lives), since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.”
Here is Paul’s one request for them: he prays that God would fill them with “the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.” The reason we pray this for each other is in order for our lives to be dramatically changed for the better. Verse 10 continues,
“And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.”
(Colossians 1:10-12)
--you live life seeking to please God in every way, not merely because you have to, but because it is the natural outflow of being spiritually connected with God and understanding the way he sees things and what his priorities are. When you are filled with the knowledge of God’s will, you no longer primarily look out for your own needs, you seek to serve others in every situation, for your spiritual wisdom and understanding sees every situation, every conversation, every nuisance, as a spiritual opportunity to show people God’s grace. You live in a worthy manner of being one of God’s children and are pleasing him simply because you are in tune with what he is doing around you.
--When you are filled with the knowledge of God’s will, you bear fruit in everything you do because God is producing fruit through a person who is intimately connected to the “Vine,” Jesus Christ.
--When you are filled with the knowledge of God’s will, you find yourself able to bear tremendous stress because of the endurance and patience that is in you supernaturally.
Oh, how I yearn for that! How about you? So this should be my prayer for you; it is the prayer I ask you to pray for me, and it is the prayer I pray for myself.
Now I want us to understand what we are being told to pray for here concerning “God’s will.” And it is not what we very easily assume. More often than not, we think of “God’s will” as an expression that refers to seeking God’s determination concerning the choices I make. It is assumed that God has predetermined what he wants his children to do, and we must try to discern “God’s will” when we are making a choice as to a job, or over whom we should marry, or over major purchases, or what church to attend when we move to a new town. It’s as if God’s will is some secret
bull’s eye in the sky that we have to try to hit the center of, even though we cannot see it.
Seeking God’s guidance is not a bad thing; in fact we should seek God’s leading by His Spirit in our lives—he is alive and seeks to move us toward what is for our best. But there is a danger in a theology that reduces God’s will to a bull’s eye in which I must be in the center or my life will be a mess. We might become so obsessed with trying to determine “God’s will” and trying to be in “the center of God’s will” that we might become paralyzed from boldly making choices and doing things in faith. Or this worrying may become just another form of self-centeredness, constantly concerned about what will happen to us if we make bad choices instead of focusing on others and boldly moving forward in seeking to love and serve others, no matter where that might take us.
God does not teach anywhere in Scripture that he has predetermined exactly what each of us should do and that if we veer off that course we are no longer in his “will.” That is a modern notion that needs to be reassessed in light of Scripture.
How does Scripture speak of “God’s will?” Let’s look at a few passages.
Paul tells us in Romans 12:1-2, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” According to this passage, our right thinking must be directly linked to right living if we are to be living in God’s will. We are to renew our minds—consciously reprogramming the way we think and act, so that our actions no longer look like the fallen world’s actions; we should not so naturally be living lives that is indiscernible from those who do not claim to follow Christ. Our lives are meant to be a spiritual act of worship as we sacrifice ourselves to God’s pure ways. When we find ourselves about to do something that does not match what Jesus would have us do, we are spiritually in tune with God’s Spirit so as to say, “No, that is not for me. Sure, everybody else is doing that, but it’s not for someone who is seeking to be a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.” In doing this, we will have
actually experientially lived as proof that God’s will is good, pleasing and perfect! Only when we are living lives that live out
what we are saying we believe, can we put that to the test! Living in God’s will is living in light of faith. Christians are called to embody their faith.
Psalm 143:10 reads, “Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground.”
This verse is not a prayer to “know” God’s will—as many of us are in the habit of doing (“Oh, Lord, Teach me Your will, so that I can know whether to refinance my house”). Look at the verse again, the prayer is
“Teach me to do your will.” The assumption here is that I already know God’s will, but I need to be taught
how to live it out! It is not so much that I need to have some great revelation as to what God wants me to do in order to live in the center of his will, for he has already told me what to do—it’s right here in my Bible! What I need to be taught is to move the will of God out of my head and into my life. I need to learn how to flesh it out in practical living! Living in God’s will is living in light of faith. Christians are called to embody their faith.
In his first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul writes, “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified…”
(1 Thess. 4:3) and then he spells out specific example of that becoming sanctified (or more holy) looks in everyday life, especially in the area of sexual purity—an area of life that is increasingly becoming a battlefield for Christian men in 21st Century American culture. Many Christian men are seeking God’s will in making business decisions or family financial decisions; in 1 Thessalonians, God says that his will is that we are to be holy—the verse in its context reads,
“It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God.”
So if you are a Christian man seeking to God's will, the questions you need
to be asking yourself are, "What am I watching on TV? What am I reading?
When I am on the Internet, what am I looking at?" Christians living in
God's will should be holy--avoiding sexual immorality. And this is no longer just a male problem—women have been taught by our culture to lust just as much as men. But what is God’s will? Living in God’s will is living in light of faith. Christians are called to embody their faith.
And then in the next chapter he writes, “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus”
(1 Thess. 5:16-18). To be in God’s will means living life in light of who God is, in earnest desire to grow closer to him, and finding all your satisfaction in him—this springs forth into a life that is genuinely joyful, and authentically gives thanks to God no matter what happens in life. Living in God’s will is living in light of faith. Christians are called to embody their faith.
In Ephesians 5:15-17, Paul encourages us to “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.”
When we look at a verse like this, it is clear that to “understand what the Lord’s will is” cannot simply be reduced to an intellectual pursuit.
God’s will is not merely knowing rationally the “right theology;” it is more holistic—it encompasses all that we are—what we think and how we live! What I need to be do is move the will of God out of my head and into my life. I need to learn how to flesh it out in practical living!
“Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise.”
Understanding God’s will is tied into being wise. Wisdom is not just mere intellectual understanding, it is
lived out understanding. A wise person is not one who has not lived out what he or she believes; a wise person has
tested and approved what he or she believes by fleshing it out in real life. Wisdom is embodied belief. Christians are called to embody their faith.
Now with that biblical background, let's look again at Colossians 1:9
“For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.”
Our prayer is this: “God fill us with the knowledge of your will.” This is not simply head knowledge of rational propositions, like a bunch of things that we can put into our head and thus “know God’s will.” It is accomplished
“through spiritual wisdom and understanding.” This is more than understanding right doctrine (though it cannot be less than that—we must think rightly in order to live rightly according to Romans 12). Knowledge of God’s will consists of
wisdom (which in the Bible is always tied into how I live; and embodiment of my beliefs) and
understanding (that is not merely rational human understanding but spiritual understanding, from GOD).
Our prayer is that we can get beyond our worldly ways of thinking and doing things. Our prayer is that we can get beyond our desire for head knowledge that looks good in the world but looks like foolishness from the vantage point of heaven.
Paul later warns the Colossians to watch out for deceptions that are “fine-sounding arguments” (Colossians 2:4) and philosophies that are merely
“hollow and deceptive” depending “on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ” (2:8).
Knowing God’s will is a spiritual adventure that encompasses our whole being—we know it in our head and we live it our in our lives. It is the product of
spiritual wisdom and understanding. And, frankly, our modern notions of “wisdom” and “understanding” do not line up with this ancient biblical model of what “God’s will” and “wisdom” and “understanding” really consist of. In the Bible, wisdom and understanding and God’s will are all tied directly to living out what you believe.
You see, you may know all the right doctrine, you may have mastered all the apologetic arguments, and may have all the right answers…but you still may not have surrendered your will to God’s will. You can still not be living the Christian life. You can still be miserable in your struggle against sin.
We have lived too long in an era in which Christians could know what they believe and separate that from how they live and still believe that they are in God’s will. God’s will was reduced to simply knowing facts and saying you believe all the right doctrine. Wisdom and understanding were redefined as simply knowing how to defend the faith with good apologetics.
Our prayer in a postmodern, 21st Century world should be more than that. We will
pray that God will fill us with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
Christians are called to embody their faith.
This will change not just what we think, but how we live. This will not only radically change our vocabulary but I will change our vocation. We will no longer merely talk like Christians; we will actually live like Christians.
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