A message on what to pray
“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. 10 And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way”
Rachel just had her first baby—little Lillian. Rachel loves Lillian more than anything in the world. On the night before Lillian is to be baptized, Rachel calls her husband Michael into the nursery. Rachel asks Michael to pray for Lillian. “What should I pray?” he asks. “Everything,” she says. “Pray for everything. Pray that she would always be happy. Pray that she would always be healthy. Pray that she would have the best life ever. Pray that all her dreams would come true. Pray that… I don’t know. Nothing I just said sounds like enough. It all sounds so empty. No one is always happy. No one is always healthy. That’s silly, and it’s not enough.” There is a long pause and then Rachel tells her husband, “I don’t know what to pray for my own daughter. I want to give her everything, but I have no idea what to pray.” What should Michael do? What should he pray for little Lillian? What would be enough?
What if he prayed that Lillian would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will and that she would live for the Lord? That would be enough. That’s far better than praying that all her dreams would come true. Paul prayed that the Colossians would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will. He prayed that they would live for the Lord. That’s what we ought to pray for our loved ones. That’s what we ought to pray for ourselves. Pray to know the fullness of God’s will and to live for the Lord. That’s the claim of this sermon: pray to know the fullness of God’s will and to live for the Lord.
We will study this in two points. First: filled with the knowledge of God’s will. Second: living for the Lord. We will study being filled with the knowledge of God’s will in verse 9 and living for the Lord in verse 10.
First: filled with the knowledge God’s will. Letters in Paul’s day usually included wishes of health and wealth. “May the gods keep you and your family healthy. Blessings upon your business.” Paul, like Rachel, thought that was insufficient and so he improved upon that practice by, “asking God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way.”
That’s a sufficient prayer. Simple prayers of addition and subtraction aren’t sufficient for a life. “Give peace.” That’s addition. “Take away pain.” That’s subtraction. Those are sufficient in a pinch, but they aren’t sufficient for a life or for Lillian on the night before she is to be baptized. They aren’t sufficient for your loved ones either.
Paul prayed sufficient prayers and he prayed them regularly; verse 9, “For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you…” The “we” is almost certainly Paul and Timothy and, as we’ve seen, by saying that “we have not stopped praying for you,” Paul was saying that he and Timothy were praying for them in each of their three daily prayers.
The takeaway is that we Christians are to pray for one another. We aren’t simply to say that we will pray for one another and then forget to do so—and we know how sadly common that is for all of us. We are often like the disciples sleeping in the Garden of Gethsemane while a friend stands in need of prayer. Paul prayed for the Colossians; verse 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…”
Paul prayed that they would have a deeper knowledge of God’s will for them in Christ Jesus. God’s will for us isn’t limited to ethics, as in doing the will of God. It is much more than that. We saw that at the beginning of this letter. Paul introduced himself as, “an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.” God’s will is His plan at work. Paul was an apostle by the plan and purpose of God. We see this same us of will as plan in the early verses of Ephesians in which Paul tells the Ephesians that they have, “been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will.” That’s knowing God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
Paul later prays that these Ephesians would, “have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” That’s being filled, “with the knowledge of His will,” to come back to Colossians 1:9. Paul was praying that they would be filled by the knowledge of what God had done, is doing, and will do in Jesus.
Doesn’t that sound like the best request Michael could make for little Lillian—that she would “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that she might be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God”?
This fullness is an important theme in this letter to the Colossians—“asking God to fill you with the knowledge of His will.” The false teachers were likely saying that they could offer a fuller experience of goodness than the gospel. Belief systems say that today too. We need to realize what the Colossians needed to realize—a fuller experience than what the gospel offers is impossible.
What’s needed is a fuller knowledge of what you already know. None of us has anywhere near a full grasp on the love of God for sinners. None of us has anywhere near a full grasp of the wrath of God on sin. None of has anywhere near a full grasp of obedience. In the words of verse 9, none of us is full of the knowledge of His will. That’s why we are called “Bible-people.” “His will is not to be sought anywhere else than in His word,” as Calvin puts it. This where God tells you who He is and who you are. That’s the reason to read through the Old Testament in two years. That’s the reason to join a Bible study. That’s the reason to come to evening worship. It isn’t because that’s what good members do. It’s because it’s through the word that you are filled even further with the knowledge of His will. That’s how you grasp how wide and long and high and deep the love of Christ is.
You don’t need another message to find satisfaction. What you need is to go deeper into this gospel you’ve already embraced. If you think John 3:16 is all that’s needful or all that there really is, you’re behaving like a man who thinks the water molecules on the top of the ocean are the ocean. The Christian life is one of delving deeper and deeper into Christ. As M’Cheyne put it, “Unfathomable oceans of grace are in Christ for you. Dive and dive again, you will never come to the bottom of these depths. How many millions of dazzling pearls and gems are at this moment hid in the deep recesses of the ocean caves.” Paul prayed that the Colossians would keep diving. That’s what Rachel could pray for Lillian.
We need to dive deeper. After 40 years in the same congregation, preacher William Still said, “I have little hope of anyone learning categorically, decisively, from me unless he or she is prepared to sit consistently, almost exclusively, for years under the ministry of God’s word: thereafter, he or she will spend their whole lives digesting it… eat it, et it whole. All of nothing. For it is only “all or nothing” devourers of the Word of God who will ever be or do anything for God.” Do you think he’s right? Peter did. “Like newborn babies,” he said, “crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good,” as Peter put it. Pastors and elders are concerned about people who don’t crave the word for the same reason doctors are concerned about babies who don’t crave milk.
We must dig deeper into the gospel we already know. That’s the only way forward. That’s also why there are so many parallels between this section and the one before. “The day we heard,” in verses 4 and 9, “thanks to God” in verses 3 and 12, “always or not stopped” in verses 3 and 9, “understood and understanding” in verses 6 and 9, “bearing fruit and growing” in verses 6 and 10. The repetitions are there because Paul was repeatedly praying that the Colossians would continue in what had already been begun. He was praying that, “he who began a good work in them would bring it to completion,” as Philippians 1:6 puts it.
They continued by growing in the knowledge of God’s will. Paul further explained this knowledge of God’s will in verse 9, “knowledge of His will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.” This wisdom and understanding is a sort of “what is?” and “so what?” combination. This is knowing more about who Jesus is and what he means for sinners. This is knowing more about the love of God and what that has to do with that moment you walk into work tomorrow—the “what is” and the “so what”—the wisdom and understanding. This is where chapters 1 and 2 are heading. Paul doesn’t just pray that they would have a fuller knowledge. He prays that they would have it and then he spells it out for them in the verses we are going to be study for the next couple months. He prayed and then told what they needed to learn. That’s what pastors are to do with churches. That’s what parents are to do with children.
Paul was praying for wisdom for the Colossians, but the false teachers in Colossae offered their own knowledge. It was “speculative and theoretical” as Peter O’Brien puts it. It had everything to do with filling the self and little to do with obedience. Paul wrote these words to remind the Colossians that that’s knowledge has to do with obedience. It’s spiritual wisdom, meaning that it is of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit speaks through Scripture and what He says is to be put into practice. Spiritual wisdom isn’t found out there or inside you. It is found in the Spirit’s book. As Peter put it, “no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
So if little Lillian is going to keep being filled with the knowledge of God’s will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding she is going to be keep hearing from God and the only way to do that it is in this book in which God tells Lillian who He is, who she is, what’s wrong with her, and how it can be made right. Rachel, who loves Lillian more than anything, would be very wise to not just pray that Lillian would know God’s will but to do everything in her power to make that happen. There’s no point of saying that you will do anything for your child if you never pray the essentials or teach the essentials.
Now this knowledge for which we pray must be applied. As Alistair Begg’s radio ministry puts it, “the learning is for living.” We see that in our second point: living for the Lord. This point is really just the introduction to our next study in Colossians. You can see that by the colon in the middle of this verse. The rest of verses 10-12 tell us what it means to live a life worthy of the Lord and how it is that we are to please him in every way. Today we are just pointing our nose in that direction.
We do that by moving from knowledge to action. Our previous point—the knowledge of what God has done, is doing, and will do in Jesus—is the rest of chapter 1-2. This point—living for the Lord—is chapters 3-4. It’s all here—changes in your focus, changes in what you do with your desires, changes in your language, changes in your relationships, changes at home, changes at work, changes within the church. The question is whether we want to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will and live lives that are worthy of him. This study in Colossians will do you no good if you don’t change your way of thinking and put truth into practice.
This transition from being filled with knowledge in verse 9 to living it out in verse 10 is not for super-Christians. It is for all Christians. Putting it into practice is not something extra. “If you love me, you will keep my commands,” as Jesus put it. In other words, if you respond to God’s love by obeying, you have grasped God’s love for sinners. If you respond to God’s love for sinners by sinning, you haven’t grasped God’s love for sinners.
We must be both filled with the knowledge and put it into practice to please the Lord. Some church members want to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will but have no desire to please the Lord. They learn to please themselves. They are slowly becoming spiritual swamps which take water in but never give any out. They take the good news in, but never push any good out. That’s a swamp. Water comes in by rain but it never flows out. If that’s you, repent. Jesus didn’t just die so that you could appreciate being died for. He died so that you could and would live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way.
There is a scene in the movie Saving Private Ryan that give us a picture of living a life worthy of someone’s death. The movie takes place during World War Two. It begins with Mrs. Ryan receiving three separate telegrams on the same day each telling her that yet another son has died in battle. The army chief of staff hears about Mrs. Ryan’s tragedy and gives an order to bring her only remaining son, Private Ryan, home. The movie follows the eight men who were tasked with saving Private Ryan. Many of these men were killed in the process. After they finally find Private Ryan, the captain of the men lies dying and pulls Private Ryan close and tells him, “Earn this.” We soon see Ryan decades later with his family at the Normandy American Cemetery looking at their graves. He kneels at the captain’s grave and says, “every day I think about what you said to me that day on the bridge and I’ve tried to live my life the best I could… I hope that in all of your eyes I’ve earned what all of you have done for me.” As he stands, his wife walks up. He turns to her and says, “tell me I’ve led a good life… tell me I’m a good man.”
Now there are some obvious differences when it comes to that and Christianity, but the basics of living a worthy life are the same. The Christian is a man who can’t help but say to Jesus, “every day I think about what you you’ve done for me, and I hope that in your eyes I’ve lived a life that is worthy of it. Tell me I’ve served you.” That’s the man who really wants to hear, “well done, good and faithful servant.” Whoever is playing around with sin is just playing games not just with his own life but with the Lord. He’s going to regret it. Paul prayed that the Colossians would not play games. He prayed that they would live lives worthy of the Lord. He prayed that they would try to please him in everything.
The Christian’s life is all about living for the Lord. It is all about seeking to please the Lord as verse 10 puts it. That assumes that you can please him. That assumes that you can live worthily of him. We tend to assume that we can’t. We assume that our best efforts are all deep disappointments to God—“filthy rags” we wrongly interpret from Isaiah. We need to read our Bibles more. We need o be filled with the knowledge of His will. That would tell us that we can please Him.
Paul prayed that the Colossians would live lives worthy of the Lord. He prayed that they would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will. We parents would be wise to pray that for our children. Michael and Rachel be wise to pray that for little Lillian. That’s not an insufficient prayer. That’s a prayer that’s enough for a life. That’s why the Holy Spirit put it in here—for us to pray it. Amen