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Philippians 1.9, 10 (NIV)
And this is my prayer: that your love may
abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able
to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ.
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| Our love and compassion grow along with our faith when we come before God on behalf of others.* |
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Can you imagine belonging to a small group or Bible
fellowship class with Paul? At prayer request time, while we’re all praying for
Uncle Joe’s surgery or someone’s nephew’s job search, Paul decides for himself
just what his prayers on our behalf will be.
I have wondered about the sequence of events in Paul’s
prayer. Is he implying that we gain knowledge and wisdom as we grow in love? Or
is he telling us that if we are to grow in love, we must seek knowledge and
insight? Or is it a step-by-step progression: from love to knowledge to
insight? I’m sure there are experts who could break this down in the original
language and clear up my questions. But I don’t need a degree in ancient
languages to know that what Paul wants is for us to grow – more loving, more
knowledgeable, and wiser.
In
our Christian walk, our choices are not always between good and evil. Wrong is
never right but at times it seems our choices are between bad and worse. Other
times, we’re faced with more than one good choice. We need to be able to
“discern what is best” so that we can make the best choice, not to be
determined by how we feel or what we want. You see, it doesn’t really matter in
what order the process comes about as long as we start in the right place. If
we start by surrendering our will to his, the Holy Spirit will be in charge of
getting us to the pure and blameless stage.
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| Merely stuffing Bible information into our brains does not make us wise.* |
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