No Mystery Whatsoever

DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE COLOSSIANS

NO MYSTERY WHATSOEVER

Col 1:9-14

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: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. 13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

NIV

There is not any way to cut this whole thought into little segments as we would lose the context of everything, however, having the whole context, we might be able to deal with portions of this one at a time. Last time we were thinking about Paul praying for them, it was whenever he prays for them, and that we might have thought that he only prays for them when he remembers them. However, he goes on to say that since he heard about them, he has not stopped praying for them. Again that may not mean he was in constant prayer for them, and no one else or that is all he did was always being on prayer for them, thus not ever doing anything else. Still, the point is that as we do pray for others, when we think about them, it would be good to pray that God would fill our fellow believers with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. However, if we were to personalize this, then we would have to think that someone is praying for us in order that God fill us with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. This then leads us to the fact that God has available to us the knowledge of his will. He is not hiding His will from us. He is not keeping it a secret but wants us to know his will with all spiritual wisdom and understanding. The Greek word translated as knowledge means full discernment, in order words, lacking in nothing, fully knowing, not partial knowledge. We also should note this is not something we can spend years in study learning as we go. This is an act of God who fills us with his knowledge and he does it through all, again not some, but all spiritual wisdom and understanding. The Greek word translated wisdom is Sophia and it carries the meaning of broad and full intelligence. But even having full wisdom, or intelligence without understanding can leave us lessor than God intends. So with all that wisdom, he bestows on us regarding his will, he gives us understanding. This Greek word means a running together, a flowing together, which implies everything makes sense, it brings everything in place. So as God fills us with the knowledge of his will and he does it by giving us the full intelligence of it and puts it all together for us. In other words, we get it, we can wrap our mind around his will, and have no doubts about what his intent for our lives are. There is no mystery here whatsoever.