#2 How Should I Act?
 

A Twelve-Lane Highway
 

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.
(Colossians 1:9)
 

    A knowledge of God's will is one thing no believer can do without. Paul was convinced that his Colossian friends had to have it.
    We must have it, too. When we are filled with that knowledge, spiritual wisdom and understanding are the natural overflow.
    Paul is not saying that he wants each of the Colossians to know intellectually what God's will is. You have to start there, but you've got to go much further than that. You have to act on what you know.
    But even that is not enough. After you've discovered God's will and have done it, you must come to delight in it. When you do, you'll sense new direction. There'll be a purposefulness about your life - you'll discover what God wants you to be.
    I don= t mean that you'll know all the minute details of God's will for your life. I'm not so sure God is concerned about all the minute details. I worry when people talk about God's will as if it were a high wire, easy to topple off if you're not careful to keep your balance.
    God's will isn't a high wire. God's will is a 12-lane highway. He's got you and me going in a certain direction, and the varieties of possibility are boundless.
    To be filled with the knowledge of God's will doesn't mean you've got to know absolutely everything about everything, that you must know what God wants you to do at every moment in every circumstance. That's not it.
    On the other hand, Paul does want us to understand that God has a plan for our lives, a good, acceptable, and perfect plan. We discover what it is in general terms from Scripture. When we do what it requires of us, increasingly we'll delight in it.
    As a result, we gain spiritual wisdom - not street smarts, but spiritual wisdom and understand, which inform us of the spiritual realities in our lives. We're in tune with heaven, we're in step with the Spirit. Therein, says Paul, is fullness of life.
    How do you know what God's will is for your life?
 

Father, today I pray that you would help me know the general direction you want me to go, Amen.
 

~Stuart Briscoe~