DAILY ENCOURAGEMENT THURSDAY – What God Wants For His People Today.

Sin comes when we take a perfectly natural desire or longing or ambition and try desperately to fulfill 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 .

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, - Col 1:9.

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

C.S. Lewis gave us the following insight: Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

All over the world today we see the opposite to what God wants, people who want to fulfill ‘their’ own ‘want and purpose’ for ‘their’ ministries. Those want’s and purposes, are often very 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, national recognition of 'their' ministries, and telling the people to shout 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 concerns of God, but merely human concerns."- Mark 8:33.

What God wants for them is very different from ‘theirs.’... What the wicked dread will overtake them; what the righteous desire will be granted. - Prov 10:24. God's Desire for His people is what Paul prayed for…

To be filled with the knowledge of His will…

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, - Col 1:9.

Walter Knight told of an old Scottish woman who went from home to home across the countryside selling thread, buttons, and shoestrings. When she came to an unmarked crossroad, she would toss a stick into the air and go in the direction the stick pointed when it landed.

One day, however, she was seen tossing the stick up several times. "Why do you toss the stick more than once?" someone asked. "Because," replied the woman, "it keeps pointing to the left, and I want to take the road on the right." She then dutifully kept throwing the stick into the air until it pointed the way she wanted to go!

Paul knew that the knowledge of God’s will would only come through remaining in His word, and being in fellowship with Him...

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 reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. - Eph 1:9-10.

This kind of knowledge results in spiritual wisdom and understanding, which transforms our hearts and lives! Hallelujah! It’s what we need, and that is what GOD WANTS FOR US TODAY!

Loving Father, I know that your want 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 by the power of the Holy Spirit, and that I may bring glory to your name! Amen.

Be encouraged.
GBYAY