Filled With the Knowledge of God’s Will, Like Really Filled
Colossians 1:9 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,
10 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;
11 being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy;
12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.
13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,
14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
All spiritual wisdom and understanding don’t refer to the way they are praying, they refer to the measure and qualities of the knowledge that you’ll be filled with. Not that you’d just know God’s will, but that you would know it with all spiritual wisdom and understanding. Let’s pick that apart.
If I know something in my spirit, I know it deeply. I might not know for sure if taking the Lloyd was a good idea or if I should have just gone down Lincoln, but I can know deep down in my soul that I love my wife like crazy. That is a knowledge that isn’t going to shake. From that deep-set love, all of my decisions in the day will be influenced and guided.
If I am FILLED with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom, I’m going to be confident of it. I’m going to know down to my bones what God is doing and what He wants to do.
I could talk in italics all day about it, that’s how deep it would be.
There are a lot of things that we might be confident of. There are several sides of arguments that we might take on several issues, but what if we knew God’s love on a deep all spiritual wisdom level? I wouldn’t have to argue about it to convince myself or others because my confidence in that truth would be so evident to me. I don’t have to argue that I need air to breathe or that the Sun is warm. Those things are obvious in my life. What if I knew God’s will with such obviousness?
And understanding. Not that I can explain every single apologetic answer or every single act of God. I can’t even do that for my wife or my kids that I see and talk to every day. Why should I be able to understand God? But there is a way of understanding His will that comes from knowing Him. I might not know why my wife does something, but knowing her so well, I can understand why she would do something.
Knowledge of someone’s will with all understanding means more about knowing THEM than it does about knowing what or why they do things.
This is Paul’s prayer. To be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding is rooted at knowing God personally. To be filled with that knowledge is to be filled with the Holy Spirit and know the intimate closeness of being in Christ — so close to God that we are as close as being inside of Him.
To be in Christ is to be IN God’s will. That is all spiritual wisdom and understanding. It’s worth praying for that for ourselves and for every person around us.
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