This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to our look together through Colossians chapter 1 and Daily Drive Time
Devotions, day 3 of our look through this chapter today. We're going to be
looking at verses 9 to 12. Yesterday we began a talk about God's working in our
lives, developing us worthy lives, lives that are pleasing to Him, and how He
does that.

We talked about the process of faith, hope, and love, how He works those into
our lives. We talked about the power of the good news, how He puts it into us
and then He shares it through us to other people. If I'm going to live a worthy,
a pleasing life, there's a third thing that Paul talks about in these verses.

He talks also about the purpose of God's will. Process of faith, hope, and love,
the power of the good news, and then the purpose of God's will. Listen to what
verse 9 says, "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.

" The knowledge of His will. Somebody on our research team wrote, "Knowing God's
will for my life seems to be the most difficult thing to accomplish. " There's
so much confusion.

Most people seem to interpret the Bible to fit their agenda. Waiting to hear
from God sometimes seems fruitless. Maybe I don't have the right mindset.

Maybe I don't have enough faith. That's an honest statement. It's also how many
of us feel much of the time.

How do I understand God's will? These verses tell us, "I've not stopped praying
that you would be filled with the knowledge of His will. " One of the chief aims
of a believer's life ought to be to know God's will.

So how do I know it? How do I understand it? Well, there are three key words in
these verses.

The word knowledge, the word wisdom, and the word understanding. And
understanding those three key words unlocks some things in understanding what it
means to know and to live out God's will. Paul, first of all, talks about
knowledge.

He prays that you might be filled with the knowledge of His will. And he uses a
form of the word gnosis, epigenosis, which literally means super knowledge.
Remember, the Colossians were being enticed by a false teaching called
Gnosticism, which was a reliance on human knowledge.

And Paul writes and almost a little bit tongue in cheek says, "Let me tell you
about the super knowledge that you can only get from God, the highest kind of
knowledge. It's the knowledge of His will. " And what does that mean?

His will. Well, you have to start with the simple. God's will is what does God
want?

Sometimes we think of God's will as what does God want for me? What agenda does
God have for my life today? Where is He showing me the most successful place I
can live?

Well, let's start more simply than that. God's will is what does God want? The
highest kind of knowledge is the knowledge of what does God want?

What does God want to do in this world? What does God want to do in my life?
What does God want to head history?

Because what God wants in the end is what is going to happen. God's will is done
eventually. God is going to have His hand work in human history, and in the end,
it is His will that's going to be done.

So I want to have knowledge, this super knowledge. What does God want? I also,
Paul says, I also want to have wisdom.

I want God, He prays, to fill you with His knowledge, the knowledge of His will,
through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And what is spiritual wisdom?
Spiritual wisdom could be known as a knowledge of what some people call first
principles, that which is most important.

Wisdom is a gift of the Spirit, God speaking into us, through us, that gives us
the capacity to understand the heart of God and His will in all situations. To
know something is one thing, to sense it, to feel it, to have a heart for it is
another thing. And Paul is speaking here when he talks about wisdom of God's
insight into everyday life.

How to understand ourselves and how the world functions and what's happening in
this world through that which God has revealed. The Bible tells us that what
Corinthians calls a natural man can't understand this. Now, natural man just
means a person, a human being, a man or a woman who is just understanding based
on our own human logic.

Paul prays here for spiritual wisdom, the ability to understand how God is
seeing things. You might call it God's perspective on things. If I have God's
perspective on things, it changes everything.

If I have God's perspective on what's important, I'm going to devote my life to
that. If I have God's perspective on a sin, that sin is going to look more ugly
to me than it's ever looked before. In my perspective, it might seem like that's
not going to hurt much.

In God's perspective, I realize that's going to destroy my life and other
people's lives. God's perspective changes everything. That is wisdom.

So I want to have knowledge. I want to know what God wants. I want to have
wisdom.

I want to have God's perspective on life. And then I also want to have
understanding. Understanding is the ability to apply that knowledge to any given
situation that arises in my life.

An insight or an understanding is a gift that helps me to discriminate in a
situation between what's true and what's false. Okay, that's the right way to
go. That's the wrong way to go.

So if I'm going to live out God's will, I have to have wisdom and I have to have
understanding. You might call understanding applied wisdom to the specific
circumstance that you're going through. Understanding means, oh, I understand
what to do in this situation.

An answer comes into your mind. That's understanding. As someone as well put it,
understanding is a clear vision of what needs to be done.

You might be struggling with a problem right now and you have no idea what to
do, what needs to be done. Well, the first thing you need is wisdom, God's
perspective on the situation, and then understanding. How do I live this will of
God in this situation?

You see, as I begin to understand God's word more and more, which gives me God's
perspective on life, then I have more understanding of what to do in the
specific situations of life. I find a lot of people, they pray for
understanding. They want to know what to do in a specific situation of life, but
they haven't invested the time to get wisdom.

They haven't spent the time in God's word that would help them to have the
understanding. It's like, God, please just give me the final answer, and I don't
want to take the time to study for the test. That's not the way God wants to
work in your life and my life.

He wants to work in our lives in a way that helps us to get to know Him, and
then out of that, I live out the life that He's put in place for my life. What
I'm saying is this. God's will is not an itinerary.

It's a relationship. It's a relationship in which you discover who you really
are, God's perspective on you, and then that itinerary for life flows out of the
identity of who you are in Jesus Christ. The more you understand who you are,
God's perspective, what God has done to make you who you are in Christ, you're
forgiven, you're called, you're given a new life, you're a new creation, the
more your behavior, the things you do, your understanding about life is going to
automatically change, will automatically follow.

If God gave you understanding without wisdom, you wouldn't have the power to do
it. You wouldn't have the desire to do it. You'd say, "No way am I doing that,
God.

" So first you have wisdom, and then you have understanding. I said there's
three words, but there's one more word I want to focus on here. Paul prayed that
God would fill us with these things.

Not just a small measure, but satiated with this, a full measure. It's not God's
desire that you just get by with as little as necessary of his wisdom and
understanding. He wants to fill you with it.

He wants to fill you with it so you can be the person living a worthy and holy
and pleasing life before him, be the person that he made you to be. In fact,
verses 10 to 12 are where we've been heading the last couple of days. Paul says
there, when we pray this, in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord
and may 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 might have endurance and patience and joyfully giving
thanks to the Father who's qualified you to share in the inheritance of the
saints in the kingdom of light.

What is this worthy and pleasing life? Paul just goes through a list here,
bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, getting to
know him relationally. Knowing God is the most exciting thing that can ever
happen to you.

He is the most exciting, captivating person in the universe, filled with fresh
ideas, concepts, possibilities, more than you could ever dream of. There's
nothing more exciting than knowing God. What is this worthy and pleasing life?

It's bearing fruit. It's growing the knowledge of God. It's being strengthened
with God's power.

That word strengthened in the Greek language is a form which has the idea of God
continually throughout the day, every day, giving you the strength that you need
as you need it. And notice it says here, strengthened so that you can have
endurance and patience. That is where God's greatest power is shown.

Patience that applies to problem, endurance that applies to people in your life.
God wants to give you both. And when you have that, that is strength.

And then he says, what is this life that is worthy and pleasing? He ends it by
saying, joyfully giving thanks to the father, because he's qualified you to
share in the inheritance of the saints. Now, the qualification comes not through
anything I've done, it comes through what Jesus did.

And that's why I'm thankful. In fact, as we end this look today at living a
worthy and pleasing life before God, I'd like to end it by doing what we were
just told to do. Joyfully giving thanks.

Would you pray with me? And just take a moment to say, Jesus, thank you. First
of all, thank you for my new life in Jesus Christ.

If you've never crossed that line and started a new life in Christ, start one
now. Thank you that you've forgiven me. Thank you that you want to lead me.

I commit my life to you. Thank you for my new life in Christ. And thank you for
what that means in my daily life.

For the hope that I have. For the direction that I have. For the fact, Lord,
that you've given me a life that means something in this world and into the
next.

God, thank you. I joyfully give thanks that you will never leave me or forsake
me. I joyfully give thanks that each and every moment of each and every day, I
can come to you and talk to you and depend on you.

Thank you. We pray this, Jesus, in your name, amen. Join us tomorrow.

We're going to talk about Jesus in first place in our daily lives.