PRAYING COLOSSIANS 1:9-11
I love Colossians 1!
The chapter starts with Paul cheering on the church. From Paul’s words, it appears that people were talking about the Colossians’ great faith in Christ and the love they have for all the saints. Then Paul explains why they have this great faith and love — “because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.” (1:5)
This changes everything for the believer! Jesus is our hope laid up in heaven! He is the One we set our eyes on and He is the joy set before us! When we start to live from this place it aligns everything else in our life into its proper perspective.
That’s why Paul continues on into his prayer:
And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; ' Colossians 1:9-10
UNDERSTANDING GOD’S WILL
Because we often misrepresent the good news to be primarily about us — we usually think about God’s will as something we should do. But here Paul is connecting the saints to the thoughts and emotions of a person — that same hope laid up in heaven. Who is he? What is he thinking? What is he feeling?
The Passion Translation says:
Since we first heard about you, we’ve kept you always in our prayers that you would receive the perfect knowledge of God’s pleasure over your lives, making you reservoirs of every kind of wisdom and spiritual understanding. Colossians 1:9 TPT
There it is! Our hope is FIRST in God whose glory is wrapped up in his great pleasure over us. It’s from this great pleasure that he wills everything — Genesis to Revelation — and everything in between. It’s from this place that God leads my life, my family, my church, my community, my city, my nation, and ultimately the entire universe!
PRAYING GOD’S WILL
So when I pray this prayer I am asking that God would touch me with the knowledge of His thoughts towards me and others.
I can also connect my prayer to Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3.
That according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. ' Ephesians 3:16-19
I’m desperate for breakthrough in so many places in my life but I’m not focusing on my need. Instead I’m focusing on His resources, not just to give me what I need, but to give me Himself!
And then I want to pray that I will order my life around the will of the One who takes great pleasure over my life. What God thinks and feels towards human beings is dynamically connected to everything he does - and everything he desires. His desire that none would perish, but all would come to the knowledge of God is not a mere function of his role in the world, but rather flows from deep desire in his heart. I want to touch that desire and I want to reorder my life (finances, relationships, priorities, decisons) around his desire and his delight.
I like to start at the beginning, thinking about God’s delight in us at creation. What was the dream in his heart? What moved him at the fall when he prophesied that “the seed of the woman will bruise the serpent”?
'And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.”' Genesis 3:15 NKJV
Then I move through scripture to feel God’s zeal to redeem his lost creation — in phrases like:
“Through you I will bless all the nations of the earth …” — Genesis 12
“I want you to be to me a kingdom of priests …” — Exodus 19
“I will bring all nations to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house …” — Isaiah 56
“Let your kingdom come, and your will be done on the earth as it is in heaven …” — Matthew 6
“Father, I desire that they would be with me …” — John 17
And so so many more! As I meditate and pray and behold him in the word, I am transformed by “the knowledge of his will”.
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 3:18
It’s only then that I can continue in the passage — believing that God will give me a walk worthy of the Lord — believing that I can please him. And then I can really bear good fruit — because now I’m abiding in the vine and growing in the knowledge of God.
