For this reason we also, since the day we heard about it, have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all perseverance and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.”

Boy, what a prayer! This prayer that Paul prays over the Christians in Colossae is just so powerful and so full of hope. If you remember from Thursday’s devo, Paul wrote to these believers about the work of the Holy Spirit. Flip a page or two in your Bible and you’ll find the verse we studied then. But I love that this is a part of the opening of his letter to them- this prayer that so eloquently spells out what the sanctified life is to look like. Let’s take a closer look:

The first thing that stands out to me is that Paul prays that they would be “filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.” Does that list sound repetitive to you? It does to me! Knowledge, wisdom, and understanding… why all three?  

A few months back, I was studying Isaiah 11:2 which speaks about how the Holy Spirit would rest on Jesus and it defines the Spirit as “The Spirit of the Lord… the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength and the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.” I recognized that there were seven distinct aspects to the Spirit in this passage (Spirit of the Lord, wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, and fear of the Lord) and that stood out to me because the number 7 always signifies completeness and holiness in the Bible.  

I then dug in more and learned that in Revelations God speaks about the “Seven-fold Spirit of God” and I wondered at that. So, I started looking deeper. As I studied, I learned that the lamp stands of the tabernacle had seven branches to symbolize these seven attributes or truths about the Spirit of God- One centralized stem at the center that represented the Divinity of the Spirit (the Spirit of the Lord) and three branches that protruded from each side, making up the full “seven-fold” illustration.  

So, when Jesus came and the Spirit of the Lord descended on Him, He was the literal fulfillment of this symbolism. He was the personification of what it looked like to walk in all seven aspects of the Holy Spirit. And when Jesus told us that He would make us lamps to the world, His original hearers most likely would have understood the symbolism here too! Jesus is the ultimate lamp of God and in His power and through His Spirit, we too are called to be lamps that shine His attributes to the world!

There are so many more cool things to this that I could talk about for hours, but for the sake of today’s study, I want to shift our focus to three aspects- knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. As I studied the seven aspects, I got stuck here, thinking to myself, “This seems repetitive” and wondering why the original authors included three words that, in our modern language, could be considered synonyms of each other.  

As I studied, I learned some amazing things about the original words used for these three ideas. For the sake of time, let me sum them up really quickly: Wisdom is logical, understanding is practical, and knowledge is emotional and intimate. Wisdom is the ability to logically reason through what is good and bad. Basically, it is the ability to rightly use your head. Understanding is the ability to discern the right way to act and how to plan. Basically, it is the ability to rightly use your hands. And knowledge is the ability to perceive something on a deep, intimate level. In other words, knowledge is the ability to rightly use your heart.  

Isn’t that so cool?! When Paul is praying over them here, He is praying that the Spirit of God would work in them through sanctification to learn how to rightly use not just their hands in doing the outward acts of faith, but their heads and their hearts for the Kingdom of God as well! This is a wholistic sanctification- one that hits every part of who they are and results in them walking in a “manner worthy of the Lord” in all ways!

For too long of my Christian life, I kinda saw my faith like a Lunchable (if you grew up in the 90’s we basically lived on these!) Each item had its place, its specific compartment. The walls that separated them were high to keep everything where it belonged. Sure, my faith got a large section. I might have even said it was the largest section. But it still had a section, it stayed where it belonged and didn’t touch the other sections of my life. I loved Jesus, but I struggled to understand that Jesus was never meant to just fill a section of my life. He was never meant to be Lord of just one section of my life.

This way of looking at Christ caused a lot of problems as I entered teen-hood and early adulthood. I fell into the trap of acting one way on Sunday and with my “church friends” and then tucking that side of me away for the rest of the week, only to let it come out in the direst circumstances. I let my faith guide me on the big issues like being honest and not doing drugs. But in my everyday, day-to-day life, my faith ended up being more like a quiet elevator tune that played in the background, not really noticed. My faith governed my hands in a lot of ways, but it didn’t really govern my head or my heart fully.

And this got me into trouble in a lot of ways. Before I knew it, my head and my heart started leading me down paths that took me away from the “right things” I had always done. I was making choices and doing things that just didn’t line up with my faith. But because I had kept my faith in the background for so long, I wasn’t really sure that it even mattered. I was convinced of ideas and attitudes that I saw in the world around me. And the dissonance between my faith and the ways of the world was growing louder.

It wasn’t until I hit a wall that I finally realized I had to make a change. I remember crying out to God one day and telling Him that, though I wasn’t even sure if He was listening anymore, I needed Him and wanted to do things His way. He met me in that moment and set me on a path toward true, life-long sanctification- a sanctification that went deeper than surface level but got into all the nooks and crannies. He showed me what it meant to take down the dividers and let Him into every part of my life. Instead of a Lunchable, He showed me that He wanted to be like a smoothie, with Him in and through and touching everything.  

And, friends, let me tell you, as I have grown over the past 20 years since that day, I have begun to see that His love for me is far more reaching, far more filling, far more amazing than I once believed. As I have moved my faith out of the shadows and allowed it to be the very essence of who I am, I have found wholeness and a joy I cannot explain. The sanctification that God has brought in my life has been not just what to do (right from wrong) but how to think and how to feel. He has shown me that He is Lord of not only my hands, but my head and my heart too. And it is beautiful and wonderful and oh, so amazing!

Jesus,

I want You to be Lord of ALL of me- not just my hands (the things I do or do not do) but also my heart and my head. I want to let You out of the boxes I have put You in, break down the barriers I have put up, and let You touch and change every part of me. I trust You to be patient, kind, and loving. I trust You to do the work perfectly and in Your timing. I surrender to Your Lordship in my life- fully and completely.  

In the name of Jesus Christ,  

Amen