The Holy Spirit expressed His desire for us through the prayer the Apostle Paul prayed for the Colossian church:
“For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love…” (Colossians 1:9-13).
The Lord’s desire is that we increase in every area of our lives. There is a simple progression that brings this increase. We may not grow to our full potential of fruitfulness overnight, but as a new lifestyle begins to emerge we will see the limitless possibilities ahead.
Notice first that His desire is that we be filled with a clear personal knowledge of His will for our lives. Ephesians 5:17 in the Phillips translation says, “Don’t be vague, but firmly grasp what you know to be the will of the Lord.”
With each new discovery of God’s will, we must make the determination to grasp onto it. Cling to it! Allow it to become firmly rooted within our hearts. Begin to yield to His will.
With each new wave of understanding, we must yield ourselves to His will in our lives. It is God’s will for us to be well. He is the God of the successful; yield to success. Yield to the attitude of a giver; yield to a life in prayer.
With every new revelation of God’s will comes the demand for a new commitment. We must rise up to receive all that He has for us.
It is only after we begin to see God’s desire for us that we can go on to the next part of this progression. “…That you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him…” (Colossians 1:10). When we realize that He has made us worthy, we can more easily walk in His will and become more pleasing to Him.
Understand from the beginning that we can by no means earn God’s blessing in our lives. His goodness is given by His grace and mercy. We can, however, limit God from working in us and through us. We prevent the goodness of God from getting to us through wrong thinking about God, or even a poor image of ourselves.
To live “worthy” of the Lord means to conduct ourselves in a suitable fashion, to behave in a way which reflects God’s character and thoughts. This worthiness actually means living as a display of the value and worthiness of Jesus. Make a decision today to live your life in a manner worthy of the Lord in all you do.
