Daily Update #322
Colossians 1:10a
“And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please Him in every way”…
You may have noticed that we are tackling this wonderful letter in bite-sized chunks. Please don’t feel cheated that we ‘only’ have half a verse to consider today. It is a ‘humdinger’! By St Paul’s time Colossae in modern day Turkey had been in decline for many years. It has been described as ‘diminished to a second-rate market town’. But, as Paul shows us here, no place and no individual is beyond God’s love. His wish was that believers experience and live out the truth of the gospel. We are learning a lot about the virtues of the Colossian church as it faced up to the false teaching that was around in 60AD. That is why, as Martin explained yesterday, Paul wrote in verse 9 “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.” Today we learn what this should lead to in believers’ daily lives.
All Christians still need “all spiritual wisdom and understanding” from God so that we can lead worthwhile lives that match up to God’s loving ambitions for us. In the original Greek for verse 10a above, Paul is writing ‘walk worthy’. The word he uses is ‘peripateo.’ It means ‘to walk about or around.’ It is used in the New Testament about the way we live, behave or conduct ourselves. Living a life worthy of the Lord is about our daily behaviour. We are incapable of ever being worthy of God’s forgiveness and salvation but He still offers them to us. With the help of the Holy Spirit our lives can increasingly reveal the perfect character of Jesus. Over and above godly living, a vital outcome of the acquisition of spiritual wisdom and understanding is still available to Christians today. This is that we “may please Him in every way,” also translated as being “fully pleasing to Him”(v10a). This begs the questions ‘how pleasing are we to our Lord’ and ‘can we be a blessing to Him’?. Let’s reflect on those questions now and adjust our prayers and our lives accordingly. I hope that the following texts will help us to be more determined about pleasing our Lord and better prepared to achieve it:
“ I (Jesus) seek not to please myself but Him who sent me’ (John 5:30).
“Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God” (Romans 8:8).
“Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him” (Heb 11:6).
“Live as children of light… and find out what pleases the Lord (Ephesians 5:8 and 10).
“So we make it our goal to please Him” (2 Corinthians 5:9).
Today’s Prayer: Father, please make us more determined to have lives that are truly worthy of you. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you sought only to please your Father and not yourself. Thank you that this selflessness took you to the cross to die for us. We ask you Holy Spirit to give us the spiritual wisdom and understanding we need to lead lives which are worthy of the Lord and pleasing to Him. Amen. (Mike W)
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Tomorrow’s Reading: Colossians 1:10a