Pleasing Him

DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE COLOSSIANS

PLEASING HIM

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

Having looked at God filling us with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding, we need to see why he does that. Paul goes on to tell us the reason is so that we may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work as well as much more, but we need to stop here for now. Again it is difficult to segment this whole thought, but if we don’t our thoughts spawned or rather inspired by the whole would turn into a book. Because God has filled us with what he has, there is no mystery considering his will for us and the reason we are fully aware of his will is so that we may live a life worthy of him. It would make perfect sense the only way we could live a life worthy of the Lord is by knowing his perfect will and the only way we are going to know his perfect will is by him filling us with it. There is also no way we could possibly please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work unless we were absolutely positively filled to the brim with his will for our lives. The question which arises out of this thought, is how would those believers have all that knowledge, or how did God fill them? Sometimes it seems we believers think the method by which we can know God’s will for us, is by reading his word. Certainly, his word is filled with all kinds of knowledge about him and his will for his creation, his plan for their salvation and how they should conduct their affairs or rather how they should live by faith. But the people of Colosse did not have the word of God as we do. They did not have multiple translations, with all the reference books and commentaries to help them decipher what others think is the truth. What the believers had available to them is the very same person we have available to us, the Holy Spirit. He reveals the will of God to us in an up-close and personal way, as he dwells within us. If we need to know something about the Lord, the Holy Spirit will reveal it to us. He is the one who began the work in us in the first place and he is the one who is going to bring that work to completion. Sure, we spend many hours, years, in fact, in the study of the scriptures. But, again, the Colossians did not have the scriptures yet Paul prays they will be filled by God so they can know his will in order to live a life worthy of the Lord. What we really need to listen to is the voice of the Holy Spirit because he is who God has filled us with. The Holy Spirit is the person who gives us the knowledge of His will with all spiritual wisdom and understanding. As we allow Him to guide us into all truth we then can live that life worthy of the Lord. Without the Holy Spirit, it would be impossible to live worthy of the Lord. There is no way in our humanity we could live in a manner that pleases the Lord. It is only as we are filled with the Spirit and allow him to bear his fruit in our lives that we are going to live that life worthy of the Lord and please him in every good work. How else are we going to live pleasing Him?