DAILY ENCOURAGEMENT - MONDAY: God's Desire For His People Today

Sin comes when we take a perfectly natural desire or longing or ambition and try desperately to fulfil it without God. Not only is it sin, it is a perverse distortion of the image of the Creator in us. All these good things, and all our security, are rightly found only and completely in him. - - Augustine
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For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; Col 1:9 (KJV)

Paul’s wrote to the Colossians to instruct them in the ways of God, he desired for them that they would be filled with the knowledge of God's will, and what Paul desired, is also what God desires for his people today!

All over the world today we see the opposite to what God desires, people who want to fulfil their own desire and goals for ‘their’ ministries. Those goals and desires are often much different from God's.

These people desire ‘huge’ finances for their ‘work’, large numbers attending ‘their’ churches held in ‘glamorous’ buildings. Even a private plane and national recognition of 'their' ministries, and telling the people to desire and demand these things from God… But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. "Get behind me, Satan!" he said. "You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men." -- Mark 8:33

God's desires are very different from ‘theirs.’... The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him: but the desire of the righteous shall be granted. -- Prov 10:24. God's Desire for His people is what Paul prayed;

To be filled with the knowledge of His will…
For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; -- Col 1:9.

Paul knew that the knowledge of God’s will, would only come through prayer and remaining in His word and in fellowship with Him... And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment, to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. -- Eph 1:9-10. This kind of knowledge results in spiritual wisdom and understanding, which transforms our hearts and lives!

Loving Father, I know that your desire for me is that I be filled with the knowledge of your will. I ask for this in the wonderful name of Jesus, my Lord and Saviour, in order that my heart and my life may be transformed, and that I may bring glory to your name! Amen