A Prayer for You

I am grateful the Holy Spirit inspired prayers that were recorded in the Scriptures. It is challenging and refreshing to hear how the saints interacted with the Lord. It is convicting and empowering to see what burdened them and what brought them joy. Flowing from their prayers for the saints is divine instruction into the kind of love that flows from our God. They are raw, affectionate, cosmic, prophetic, full of love for others, expectant, and reflect the character, majesty, glory, and power of the God. Amazingly, many of them transcend time and space and are still being heard by the Lord for us today.


It is my hope that the Lord answers Paul’s prayer in Colossians 1.9-12 for you.


May you be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding (1.9). 

I do not think you can ask for anything better. This is not a prayer for more scholarship, bigger and better churches, political utopia, A’s on a test, biblical literacy, more riveting blog posts, an article to be published, producing a compelling sermon, becoming respected worldwide in your area of theological study, being able to recite Bible verses at will, or anything of the like. Quite the contrary, this is as simple and complex as it gets. This is a prayer for the transformative discovery of the intimate knowledge of God’s will, which is girded by spiritual wisdom and understanding.


Paul tells us in Colossians 3.2 that Christ is the true essence of the knowledge of God and that in him are all the hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge. In Romans 8.27 we are told that the Spirit intercedes for weak saints according to the will of God. Anyone can state that God is sovereign. But it is a spiritual gift to live in the reality of that truth. The substitutionary atonement is something anyone can articulate and even write about convincingly.But it is a merciful gift to be transformed by the cross. You can live a great life, raise a nice family, help poor people, get clean water to places that need it, go four years through college, another four through seminary, pastor a church, minister to the nations, and get your doctorate, and never experience this glorious knowledge that Paul prays for. Only God can grant the knowledge and wisdom and understanding through Jesus that is necessary to transform us and cause us to live in the light of Gospel of the glory of Christ.


May you 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 (1.10).

J.I. Packer said that Christians often look at God through the wrong end of the telescope shrinking him down to pigmy proportions. Those Christians should expect, he says, to be nothing more than pigmy Christians. A true, biblical, Spirit-filled, Gospel-producing knowledge of God is the only fuel that ignites a life of joyful and fruitful obedience.


It is impossible to conjure up the kind of desire and joy that true intimate knowledge of God creates with a distant and mechanical acknowledgment of statements about God. In fact, the latter turns the Christian life into a dreadful life dominated by fear, anxiety, condemnation, and fruitless self-absorbtion.


Conversely, the ultimate display or evidence of intimate knowledge of the will of God is a life that brings pleasure to God by taking pleasure in God and bearing fruit. The best test of our knowledge, whether it is a gift of God or a detached unspiritual knowledge attained through human effort and common grace, is the kind of life this knowledge produces. The knowledge of the world puffs up, is devoid of love, does not kill sin, is full of hypocrisy, preaches without action, is susceptible to deluded plausible arguments (Col. 2.4), critical and harsh, seeks rewards from the praise of man, and does not change the heart and mind to love Jesus.


Anyone can know common and self-discovered statements about God as they are revealed in the Bible. But, spiritual wisdom and understanding through the knowledge of God’s will is a gift. And living a life that is worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him is also a gift. And, as you live in obedience and pleasing fruit, you come to know God more! The result of obedience is increasing knowledge of God! When your eyes are opened by the grace of God to the magnitude of God’s inscrutable and satisfying will, the result is a new life, a new will, a new affection, a new desire to please the One whose glory you are beholding.


What kind of life pleases the Lord? Colossians gives us many answers: A life that pleases the Lord is one that delights in the supremacy of Christ, fights to kill sin, labors to put on deeds of righteousness, is filled deeply and richly with the word of Christ, is saturated in love for the saints, displays active and obedient faith in the Gospel and all of the promises of our Savior, and one that does everything for the glory of Christ, just to name a few.


Are you spiritually dry? Are you overwhelmed with private and public sin? Are you halfheartedly committed to the Church? Are you consumed more with your comfort and ease than Gospel ministry? Do you care more about being respected for writing a good blog than living in obedience, even when you do not get recognized? Is your theology producing ungodly arrogance and judgment? Press on to know the Lord! Christ is what you need! In him are all the hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge!


May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy (1.11).

True knowledge of God produces power, strength according to His glorious might, and joyful endurance and patience. God graciously gives us these things through the redemptive knowledge of the Son to endure all that a true life of discipleship has for us. In other words, God gives us more than we can handle. And he does this so that we can experience his glorious might in suffering, his eternal joy in hardship, his steadfastness in trials, and his grace in afflictions. The Gospel is faithfully displayed when we are most like Jesus who, for the joy that we set before him, endured the cross.


So, whether you become a Hebrew scholar, a pastor of a church of 50, a faithful business owner, A Gospel bearing father/mother and husband/wife, a well-known blogger, or anything else the Lord might bring to you, may it all be an overflow of knowing God as your highest pleasure and satisfaction! And may this knowledge of God’s will make you wise and understanding producing in you a life that pleases him and bears fruit. And may you experience his glorious might as you seek to endure suffering until he comes to make all things new. May all of it overflow in thankfulness to God, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light (1.12)!