Meditation for April 8, 2008
From The Rev. Peter A. Munson
Colossians 1:9-14
9 ... we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. 11 May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. 13 He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Discerning What God Wants
The writer of the letter to the Colossians (probably not Paul, but a successor to Paul) prays that the believers in Colossae will "be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God." (verses 9-10) To be a follower of Christ, among other things, involves seeking God's will. What did Jesus say at his baptism, when John thought that they might have things reversed, and that he should be the one baptized by Jesus? Jesus replied, "Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." (Matthew 3:15) In other words, Jesus wasn't concerned with whether it felt right or not. He was concerned with what God's will was in that situation, and he discerned that it was God's will for him to be baptized by John. Similarly, in the prayer he taught the disciples, he said they should pray by saying "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." (Matthew 6:10) And then, if we fast-forward to the night when he was arrested, when he "threw himself to the ground" and prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, we hear him say to his Father, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup [here meaning his suffering and death on the cross] pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want." (Matthew 26:39)
The "throwing himself to the ground" language suggests that, even for Jesus, there were times - as on the last night of his life - when there was a real internal battle going on between what he wanted (his will) and what God wanted for him (God's will).
This can be one of the great challenges of the Christian life - figuring out what is my will vs. what is God's will, and then committing myself to putting God's will ahead of my own.
I believe that God cares deeply about our own wants and desires, and that the things we want and desire are not necessarily always in conflict with what God wants for us. In fact, I would go so far as to say some of the deepest, most honest desires of our hearts are placed on our hearts by God. We get into trouble, it seems to me, when we push God out of the picture altogether, and stop asking, "OK, God, I have a pretty good idea what I want in this situation. But what do You want?" Psalm 37 has a verse that I have always liked and frequently returned to. "Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." (Psalm 37:4) Isn't that a wonderful verse? It's not that God wants to make us do a bunch of things that we will absolutely detest doing. God is not some sort of sadist. This verse suggests that if we continue to seek out God and delight in the love and graces of God, then God will give us what we most desire - and those are the desires of our hearts.
I think sometimes we don't know what the deepest desires of our hearts are. Sometimes we settle for wanting something that is so far short of what God wants for us. For example, we think what we really want is some latest product on the market. We think that purchasing and owning that thing will make our lives better, will make us happier, but once we have that thing - whether it is a new article of clothing or a new item of sports equipment or a new car or a new house - we discover that that new product doesn't really satisfy. We are longing for something more. We are longing for something much deeper, something that is a desire from way down deep in the heart - something, ultimately, that only God can provide for us. Something like a special relationship with another person... or something like a deeper connection with God.
Another big challenge of the Christian life is figuring out what God wants for us. That gets to the whole process of discernment, and how we hear God's voice. I think it begins with reading scripture. You can't really know what lines up with the will of God unless you are quite familiar with how God's will has been revealed in scripture, over the centuries. There are major patterns and themes in the Bible, it seems to me, and they give us major clues as to what is important to God. You find themes like justice, compassion, mercy, transformation, joy, peace, new life emerging out of death, sacrifice, and service. And so we need to ask ourselves, as we discern the "big questions", does this thing I think I want to do "fit in" with the God that is revealed in the Bible, and the things that this God cares about?
Perhaps another scripture to keep in mind as we try to determine what is God's will is this familiar one from Paul's letter to the Galatians: "By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." (Galatians 5:22-23) What God's will for you is - whatever it is - if you enter into that will, and do it, it will bring about fruits such as these - in your own life, and in the lives of others. If you consider the thing you are about to do, and you determine that it won't bear this kind of fruit, then it's probably not God's will.
And so, to borrow a phrase from the writer to the Colossians, my prayer for you is that you "be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God." (Colossians 1:9-10)