Filled with the Lord

The Foundation of Our Continued Faith

Colossians 1:9 NIV

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives,

Colossians 1:9

Paul responds to the reports of the faithfulness and love of the Colossians by praying for them. He prays for them without ceasing. So often, God is the One that we turn to when things are not going well or when things need to change. This is not what God desires for us or from us. He longs for us to walk with Him continuously. There is no pleasure in continually having to rescue us because we have wondered. He longs to shepherd us from one green pasture to the next if we will just follow, but He is loving enough to go and chase us and drag us along when we fail to be led. In response, Paul gets on his knees before the Lord on behalf of the Colossians faithfulness that the Spirit might keep them faithful.

Paul will walk us through what his prayers consist of. First, Paul prays for them to be filled with the knowledge and understanding of God and His will. The foundation of our faith is the depth of our understanding of God and His will. In other words, we can not hope to trust God with aspects of our life that we do not know and understand that He has control over. The level at which we know and understand God is the level at which our faith will remain.

Paul prays that they would know more and more fully God’s will for them. This is the prayer that most of us ask regularly, that we would know God’s will for our lives. The truth is that God’s will for our lives is less of a mystery than we give credit. God desires to be the Lord of your life. Everything that He has done. Every good work that He accomplishes is to move you from dependence on the world to dependence upon God. His will is for you to know him in every aspect of your life as the king, Lord and leader.

Paul prays that the knowledge and understanding of the will of God will continually grow in the Colossians so that their faith might grow in response and so...

Colossians 1:10

Colossians 1:10–14 NIV

so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and 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 giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

So that we might live a life worthy of God. It is God’s will that His glory might be lived out through us. Paul is praying that the Colossians understanding of God’s will might grow so that they could further grasp the ways and means by which God’s glory might be seen in and through them. Paul lines out the ways for them as follows. That they might bear good fruit. That they might grow in the knowledge of God. That they might be strengthened with all power. That they might have endurance and patience. That they might give joyful thanks.

It is our ability to experience this life in these ways is our inheritance. The aim for the Lord is not for us to inherit heaven. His aim is for us to inherit the unceasing joy of facing each moment of life with Him. The prize is not heaven, the prize is God.

Much of our walk with Christ is centered/focused on trying to obtain the fruits of the live lived worthy of God, but we miss the first thing needed, a growing relationship with God.