Your Will Be Done

Colossians 1:9-14

Introduction

Over the past three weeks, we have been considering the Lord’s prayer by looking at the preface and each of the first two petitions. The goal of our consideration of the Lord’s prayer is to understand better what Jesus is teaching us to pray. This week we are going to look at the third petition, which is “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”, by examining Paul’s prayer for the church in Colossae.

Prayer

Before we look at the passage today, I want to relate to you something about me that has helped me grasp what we are praying for in this petition. I grew up in New York, living there for 17 years, before moving to Illinois for college. Growing up, although I wasn’t the consummate sports fan, I enjoyed racing, football, baseball and hockey. My favorite teams were from a hodge-podge of cities. My favorite baseball team, to this day, is the Baltimore Orioles. Baltimore is the birthplace of my father and is where his parents lived throughout my childhood. I don’t recall ever attending a baseball game in New York (although my sister was and still is a dyed in the wool Yankees fan) but I do recall going to games in Baltimore to watch the Orioles. My favorite football team was the Baltimore Colts, although the New York Giants did hold some sway in my heart as well. Unless my dad has tossed it out, there is still a worn, well-used Baltimore Colts football in his garage with the printed signatures of the Colts all over that ball. Needless to say, I hated the Jets and one quarterback in particular (his name shall remain unspoken!). Well, fast forward to 1996. My favorite team had stolen away years ago in the middle of the night like a bunch of cowards to Indianapolis, leaving the home of Fort McHenry barren and a new team was going to be formed (the Baltimore Ravens). I now had a problem, I could continue to sulk in the loss of the Colts or I could find a new team worthy of my affections. Unfortunately, 1996 also corresponds to the several years of living in the Chicago area and, as most people around here know, no team in that town is worthy of such affection. Therefore, with hopes of football glory, my eyes looked north to the frozen lands of green and gold (the same colors as my high school). I was quickly rewarded with an impressive 1996 season and Super Bowl victory and a heart-breaking loss at the end of 1997 season. However, I was still deep in enemy territory and I needed much endurance and patience. In 1999, Beth and I were finally able to move to Wisconsin, where I could learn what it means to love the Packers, being encouraged by the Packer faithful to express my delight and conform my ways so that all who see me will know that I love the Packers! Needless to say, there is much growth left in my life because I am more apt to talk to you about NASCAR than the Packers. But, my Packer friends still hold out hope for me in my backsliding ways, knowing that the glory of the Packers will one day convince me to leave my worship of lesser sports teams.

Although this is a humorous story, it is the story of many of our lives. We find it easy to worship things in this world but yet say it is hard to worship God. We find it easy to change the way we talk, the way we dress, what we do, what we think about and even who we love when it comes to our favorite sports teams, but we say it is hard to love Christ, obeying His will. By running after everything but God, we prove that we love sin because the problem isn’t learning to worship or follow. We need God to transform us from the inside out that we might delight in God and do His will. Today we are going to consider Paul’s letter to the church in Colossae and, in particular, his prayer for that church found in chapter 1. Paul is praying “Your will be done” and, hopefully, by considering his prayer here, we will understand better what we are praying for when we say “your will be done.”

Jesus teaches us to pray “Your will be done” so that Christians will pray for one another unceasingly.

As I said last week, the petitions in the Lord’s prayer flow from one another. Here we find that Paul is praying that a specific group of Christians would know the will of God and act on that knowledge. Paul is praying to the Father on behalf of fellow believers whom he has not met. Paul has heard about this group of believers in the city of Colossae from “his fellow servant” (v 7) Epaphras. When Epaphras preached the gospel in this city, God’s sheep heard Jesus’ voice in Epaphras’ preaching and they repented and believed. Looking at verses 13-14, Paul is praying “Your will be done” because these people have been delivered from the kingdom of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son. The Father has answered the prayer that His kingdom would come in the lives of these people, and so, Paul, after giving thanks for God’s saving work in verses 3-8, prays the third petition of the Lord’s prayer for these Christians. And Paul’s prayer is an on-going, unceasing prayer for these believers (v 9). Paul knows that it is God’s will for God’s people to know and do the will of God, that is, that we would be holy (Leviticus 11:45, “You shall therefore be holy; for I am holy”). Paul also knows that is we ask anything according to God’s will, that God hears us and He will give us what we ask for (1 John 5:14-15). Therefore, Paul unceasingly prays with confidence for God to do what He wants in the life of these Christians.

This is an example and an encouragement to us. We too are to pray unceasingly for believers, including ourselves, that we would know and do the will of God. As we heard from John a few weeks ago, the Lord’s prayer is addressed to “Our Father”. John said that God is our Father because He is first the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ and, in Jesus Christ, we are adopted into God’s family. God is our Father and the “our” denotes that there is a people of God and so we are to be praying for one another. With this petition, we are praying that God’s will would be done perfectly (“as in heaven”) in the lives of Christians because God’s kingdom has come into their lives. The word “unceasing” is a challenge to me. How does one go on day after day praying any particular prayer? And if you go on praying any prayer day after day, how do you keep that prayer from becoming rote and lifeless? These are important questions because we are commanded in the bible to “pray without ceasing”, as Paul is doing here. I think John said it well a few weeks ago when he stated that we don’t pray because we already have what we want. We don’t see a need to pray because our lives are already full of what we love. However, we do find ourselves praying for what we love if we find we are lacking it. The question then is, what do we love? If what we love is a Red Robin California burger, then we will find ourselves either praying that we have money to go to Red Robin or praying that our dining partner will want to go there too! If we love the Badgers, then we will find ourselves praying that they would beat Michigan State, even if our praying is only occurring in our dreams now (or nightmares as some might put it). You know, it is funny how I can find myself longing for something of this world, even in my dreams, but I rarely dream of Jesus and heaven. If we are to keep praying unceasingly “your will be done”, then we need to feed our souls with Christ and ask God to give us a right view of ourselves that what we really need is Him. Only by being taken up with Christ as the only One who can satisfy our souls can we keep on praying for one another. If we truly believe that we need more of Christ and less of this world, then we will unceasingly pray for God’s will to be done in our lives and in the lives of other Christians.

Jesus teaches us to pray “Your will be done” so that Christians will

• pray for one another unceasingly.

Jesus teaches us to pray “Your will be done” so that Christians will love the will of God.

Taking a look again at verse 9, we see that Paul asks the Father to “fill” these believers with “the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.” First, Paul is saying that even though these people are in God’s kingdom, they are still lacking and, therefore, need to be filled. It is not that there is the absence of obedience to God’s will in Colossae. Look back at verse 6 where Paul says the gospel is “bearing fruit and growing – as it also does among you”. And again, in verse 8, Epaphras “has made known to us your love in the Spirit.” The Christians in Colossae exhibit the signs of conversion which are changed affections and a changed life. But, the repentance, faith and obedience exhibited at and since their conversion is only the beginning of their being made holy, so, Paul asks God to fill them with the knowledge of His will. When I think of Paul talking about Christians needing to be filled, I like to think of a drinking glass with a small amount of water in it. We often talk about a glass being partially filled and that explanation is partially correct. However, the reality is that every glass is full even though it is only partially filled with liquid. When there is some water in a glass, the glass is full of air and water. If water represents holiness and air represents the deeds of the flesh, then the new Christian only has a small amount of water and lots of air in the glass. Sanctification then, is the filling of the glass with water (holiness), displacing air (sin) until we are filled to the brim (complete maturity in Christ). Note that Paul asks that this filling would come not by human understanding but by the work of the Holy Spirit (“spiritual wisdom and understanding”). It must be reiterated that nothing good is produced in our life and nothing right can be beheld by us without the illuminating, enabling work of the Holy Spirit. People do not by nature see the greatness of God, delight in His commands, understand what is required of them or obey God’s will without the work of the Holy Spirit. Paul says elsewhere that we can know the thoughts of God only because we have the Holy Spirit in us (1 Cor. 2:6-16). The work of the Holy Spirit is essential and our praying “your will be done” should reflect the necessity of His work in this filling, as Paul does here.

Secondly, Paul’s prayer is specific in that he knows that there is a body of knowledge that each Christian needs to have and be growing in. The will of God that Paul is praying for understanding of is the revealed will of God as given to us in the bible. He is not talking about the hidden, secret will of God regarding things like what college you are supposed to go to. The Bible is the only source of revelation about God, His Son, His salvation and our responsibilities in light of this reality. There is no other book in this world that will teach you about the One True God or be able to help you to live, as Paul says in verse 10, in a manner pleasing to this God. If you want to be a master gardener, then you will spend your time reading books by experts in the field and maybe even taking a class under an expert instructor to improve your skills. You won’t spend your time reading NASCAR Illustrated because it won’t help you become a master gardener. Likewise, Christians shouldn’t think that they can become mature Christians without growing in their knowledge of God’s will (e.g., getting to know the bible better). We should be encouraging one another and praying for one another that we would know God’s word better. As Christians, we need to understand that if we are not seeking to know the bible better then we are not obeying God’s command to us. Paul prays that the Christians in Colossae would know the facts of God’s will.

But, Paul knows that facts are not sufficient. He also asks the Father to give wisdom by His Holy Spirit, which is the ability to apply this knowledge rightly for the purpose of pleasing God (v 10). In Colossae, we read later in chapter 2, that there were people passing judgment because of what food people ate or what days they observed as festivals. Paul knows that men turn into laws things God didn’t command and that these laws are, as Paul says, “of no value in stopping” sin, which is the goal of Paul’s prayer (v 10). So, Paul asks God to help these believers by giving knowledge of God’s will and a right understanding of applying God’s will to their lives and the lives of other believers. We should be praying that God would give us His wisdom because we need a right understanding of God’s will and how to apply His will to our lives.

Finally, Paul is asking that God would give these believers a delight in God’s will. The work of the Holy Spirit is not solely to illuminate truth and impart wisdom to the Christian, but it is also to glorify Christ to the believer (John 16:14). To glorify Christ means that the Holy Spirit gives the believer the spiritual eyes to see, a spiritual mind to perceive and a heart that delights in the greatness of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit reveals the excellencies of the Christ in His being and His work. The spiritual wisdom and understanding that Paul is praying for necessarily involves the Holy Spirit making much of God and His law to the Christian and giving the Christian affection for this great God and delight in God’s ways. Christians would not obey the will of God if they only know the facts of God’s will and know how to apply it to their lives. Rather, seeing rightly must be accompanied by feeling duly, to paraphrase John Piper. It is the work of the Holy Spirit that we would both see God rightly and have right affections for Him. Obedience that comes about without right affection is not pleasing to the One who is being obeyed. For example, I love the illustration of buying flowers for my wife on my anniversary. If I know that my wife loves long stem red roses and so I buy a dozen on my anniversary then my wife is probably going to say “How sweet of you to buy these for me.” And if I respond, “Oh, it’s no big deal, I am just doing what I am supposed to”, then it is a good bet that my wife won’t view my actions as pleasing. God commands that we love Him with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind. Obedience to God’s commands must by His definition come from a heart that loves Him and delights in what He delights in. Therefore, Paul is praying for these believers that the Holy Spirit would illuminate truth, impart wisdom and produce a love for the will of God.

We need to be praying Paul’s prayer for one another. No matter how mature we are in the Christian life we are not as mature as Christ Himself. God’s plan for the church is that through the equipping of each of us for the work of ministry, we might all be built up into maturity in Christ (Eph. 4:11-16). Our praying “your will be done” is one of God’s means for completing this work. Again, regardless of our maturity in Christ, we all need to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. We all need to know God’s will better, to have greater wisdom in regard to God’s will and to love God’s will deeper and more fully. We know that God wants us to know His will and we know that each of us needs to grow in this area, therefore, this is a very practical prayer. As a matter for putting this prayer into practice, you can be praying Paul’s prayer for the individuals and families listed on the tear-off portion of this Sunday’s program. God has given us His word, including Paul’s prayers, so we might know what to pray for each other. Therefore, I encourage you to take the tear-off this week and pray Colossians 1:9-12 for each of the individuals listed there.

Jesus teaches us to pray “Your will be done” so that Christians will

• pray for one another unceasingly,
• love the will of God.

Jesus teaches us to pray “Your will be done” so that Christians will do the will of God.

Now Paul is not just praying that these Christians will know and love the will of God, but that the result would be action according to the will of God. We just saw that Paul is praying for spiritual wisdom and understanding. However, a deeper understanding and love for God’s will is not an end unto itself. Rather, knowing God’s will is supposed to result in the Christian doing God’s will. Paul is quite clear that knowledge of God’s will should result in walking “in a manner worthy of the Lord”. God’s goal in the life of a Christian is to conform that person to image of His Son (Romans 8:29). This work will not be completed until either we go to Him or He comes for us. To conform to the image of Jesus doesn’t mean that we will become clones of Jesus in our human appearance. Rather, we will be like Jesus in what and whom He loves and will speak, act and think the way Jesus does. In our salvation, we have been declared righteous based on the righteousness of Christ but we are not yet righteous in our being. But by God’s grace, we are being made righteous so that we might be like Christ and be with Christ forever. As opposed to the American rugged individualism, where everyone wants to be his own man, Christians want to be like the God-Man, Jesus Christ. Therefore, Paul’s prayer involves praying for these believers to submit to the will of God. Each of us lives according to what we think will make us happy. We constantly make choices to submit ourselves to our passions in one manner or another. In Christ, God has given us new affections that we might look to Him for our happiness. However, we still have a sinful nature that wars within us, that wants to enslave us to the passions of the flesh. Therefore, when Paul is praying “God’s will be done” for these believers, he is praying that these believers would die to sin and live to Christ. He is praying that they would submit themselves to the law of God so that they might live holy and pure lives, pleasing to Christ. The greatest example to us of submitting to the will of God is Jesus Himself, the One whom we are being conformed to. Jesus regularly stated that He had come to do the will of the Father and, on the night He was betrayed, He prayed earnestly that He could avoid the cup of God’s wrath for sin that was God’s will for Him. However, He never demanded that He get His way, instead, saying, “Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). If Jesus was willing to submit Himself to the Father’s will to point of suffering God’s wrath for sin, shouldn’t we then be willing to submit ourselves to God’s will that we die to sin so that we will not suffer God’s wrath? Jesus has gone before us, submitting Himself to the Father’s will and so we follow Him in submission. Being conformed to the image of Jesus necessarily means learning to submit like Jesus did. So, as we pray “Your will be done” for one another, we are praying that we would be like Jesus and submit ourselves to the revealed will of God that we might do His will.

Paul further explains what he means by “a manner worthy of the Lord” by stating that the one who walks in such a way is “fully pleasing to [Jesus]”. To be fully pleasing means to be fully perfect in our affections, our thoughts, our speech and our conduct. However, the focus here is on the fact that how we “walk” is a reflection on the Lord Jesus Himself. We are to conduct ourselves in such a manner that we do not bring shame on the name of Jesus. We are Christ’s ambassadors, as Paul tells us in 2 Cor. 5:20, and are, therefore, His representatives in this world. If the US ambassador to Turkey were to become drunk, obnoxious and break Turkish law, it would be to President Bush’s and to the United States’ shame. The shame would be on both the person who committed the acts and on the person being represented. Therefore, the ambassador’s behavior is constrained not just by what people will think of him or her, but also by what others will think of our president and our country. Paul is praying for these Christians to act in such a way that they will not bring shame upon the God they now serve. They live among a people who do not know this God and their actions say something to this people about the God they serve. The God they serve is not a shameful, wicked God but the One True God who is holy and perfect, and, therefore, their behavior should correspond to the perfection of their Lord. We need to have this understanding as well. Therefore, as we pray for one another, we should be praying that God would help us remember whose we are that we might be encouraged in every situation to be “fully pleasing” to Jesus. When we pray for one another “your will be done”, we are praying that we would behave in such a manner that we would not bring shame on the Lord.

Paul goes on to pray regarding four ways of walking in a manner worthy of the Lord. However, these four ways are not exhaustive of how these Christians should live. First, knowing that God has created good works for us to walk in (Eph. 2:10), Paul prays that these Christians would bear fruit in every good work. Paul picks up on the language Jesus uses, such as that found in John 15:16:

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

Every Christian should see an increase in fruit consistent with repentance and faith. This fruit will range from dying to sinful pleasures, i.e. dying in what we love, what we think about and what we do, to acts of hospitality and compassion towards others. Later, in Colossians 3, Paul lists what the Christian should be dying to, putting aside and then putting on. Growth in any of these items is a fruit produced by the Holy Spirit in our lives and is part of our sanctification. I have found it extremely helpful to pray Colossians 3:5-17 for my small group, my family and for myself. I know that the fruit described there is what God wants for Christians. Therefore, I can confidently pray that God’s will would be done in the lives of believers because I have His word to base my prayer on. When we pray “your will be done”, we are praying for the fruit of obedience in each other’s lives

Paul continues on in verse 10 to pray for another aspect of being fully pleasing to Jesus: “increasing in the knowledge of God”. The Holy Spirit, who has made Christ glorious to the believers, helps these believers by filling them with the knowledge of God’s will and helping them to obey what they have received. In obedience, the believer then finds that the following promise is true: “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!” (Ps. 34:8) Paul is praying that in their obedience, the Christians in Colossae would find God and His will to be an even greater delight. It is much like the man who falls in love with a woman and who then changes what he does so he can spend more time with her out of his delight in her. The more he does what she likes, the more he gets to know her and the more he gets to know here, the more he falls in love with her. And the cycle continues. The beauty of our relationship with Christ is that God’s excellencies are inexhaustible, meaning we will never reach an end to our delight in Him. Therefore, when we pray “your will be done”, we are praying, that in doing God’s will, we would discover in greater and deeper ways the love and excellencies of Christ.

Finally, Paul then prays in verses 11 and 12 for God’s power to strengthen these believers that they might have endurance and patience, and that they might give thanks. In his book A Call to Spiritual Reformation, D. A. Carson makes an interesting point about this petition. He notes that Paul is praying for God to work in these believers according to His glorious might, which is the same power He exerted when He raised Jesus from the dead (2:12). And this power of God is not for a miracle in their lives but for endurance and patience. God’s will for the Christian is to endure this world of suffering and the opposition to Christ with patience (1 Pet. 2:20). The endurance and patience that God wants us to have is the kind of endurance and patience that only He can provide. It is an endurance and patience in walking in a manner worthy of the Lord, despite the suffering and the opposition. And it is an endurance and patience accompanied by joy. Different translations put the word “joy” with either “patience” or with “giving thanks”. However, in each of these translations, the Christian is to have joy while patiently enduring this world as they do God’s will. Our joy comes from the same work for which we are to give thanks, that is, the Father’s work of qualifying the believer to “share in the inheritance of the saints in light.” God is fully pleased when His people do His will while patiently enduring this world with joyful thanksgiving because they are in God’s kingdom and will be with Jesus forever (Acts 26:18 & John 17:24). Therefore, Paul prays for these believers that God might strengthen them to this end. As we all know, our lives are no different. There is much that we need to endure and be patient with, including our fight for faith and against unbelief. Our struggle with sin is a lifelong battle and the opposition to Christ is real. We will not make it to the end unless God gives us, by His great power, endurance and patience. Therefore, we find yet another extremely practical prayer. As we pray “your will be done” for each other, we are praying that God would strengthen us by His great power that we might do His will with endurance, patience and joyful thanksgiving so that we might be fully pleased to Him.

Jesus teaches us to pray “Your will be done” so that Christians will

• pray for one another unceasingly,
• love the will of God,
• do the will of God.

The Lord’s Prayer  

Benediction from 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.