As we prepare for a New Year, it’s an opportunity to take a moment and reflect on how reading God’s word fits into our lives. Are we embracing the power of prayer and seeking real and lasting transformation?
On this episode of Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah examines the Apostle Paul’s prayer for the Colossians. David believes this prayer holds a profound lesson – the distinction between simply reading the word and applying it to our lives.
Paul is praying that the people to whom he is writing will be filled with the will of God in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. Every single word in the prayer is critical. The request is simply that God’s people will take seriously this book we call the Bible.
Filled With The Will of God
‘When we set our mind to read the whole word of God,’ says David, ‘ultimately we get the word of God in our thinking and we know what’s going on in the Scripture. I think that Paul’s prayer takes it to the next level. It’s one thing to know the word of God and understand what it says.’
But Paul is not satisfied with that accomplishment. He goes on to say his prayer is that the people might be filled with the will of God in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. Paul uses a number of terms in this verse, and we need to understand the will of God and the wisdom of God are synonymous with the Word of God.
‘The foundational truth is the word of God,’ says David. ‘And what Paul was praying, first of all, was that this coalition of believers might be filled. That they might be saturated, understand and completely know the word of the Almighty God.’
Wisdom and Understanding
But Paul then adds the phrase, that you might be filled with the will of God in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. So often we fill our minds with the truth of the word of God, but the spiritual understanding part escapes us.
‘To be filled with the will of God in all wisdom is to know and to acquire the information that’s between the covers of the Bible,’ says David. ‘But to have it in spiritual understanding is to know how to apply it to your life so that you can make it work every day.’
David believes that the gap in our evangelical churches today is not necessarily between what we do and don’t know, its between what we know and have not applied in our lives. ‘My prayer is that we will never be content just to be biblically literate.’
The Promise In Your Heart
Paul’s prayer for us is to really learn the word of God, and progress in knowledge. ‘It says that you will be walking worthy of the Lord,’ says David, ‘fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God.’
‘This is a good time for us to look back over our shoulder and say, do I know more about God this year than I did last year?’
Increasing in our knowledge of God should be part of our goal for the new year. ‘God has promised He will always be with us as He was this year,’ says David, ‘and as He will be in the year to come. I hope that’s the promise that’s in your heart.’
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