The God Who Hears: 7 Days in Paul's Prayers From PrisonSample

Day 6: The Hyphen

When walking through a cemetery, you see dates of the deceased's birth and death, but what’s between those two dates is rarely noticed—a short horizontal line called a hyphen.

Those hyphens represent individuals’ entire lives. Their time on earth—whether long or short, happy or tragic, good or bad, glorious or shameful—is there. That’s the real story of anyone’s life.

As you read these words, traveling along that hyphen between your birth and your death, ask yourself this question: Does that hyphen represent God’s will or mine? You can choose what your hyphen represents - living out the will of this world or the will of the God who created it.

As we dive deeper into how Paul prayed for the church in Colossae, we find the linchpin that holds all the rest of his prayer together. He wrote, “We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will” (Colossians 1:9).

In the New Testament, to be filled means to be “controlled by.” If you’re filled with alcohol, you’ll be controlled by its effects. If you’re filled with hunger, you’ll be controlled by your appetite. If you’re filled with anger, you’ll be controlled by your temper. To be filled with the knowledge of God’s will is to be controlled by his will.

Understand that the will of God Paul’s talking about is not about questions like Is it God’s will for me to take this job? Is it God’s will for me to move to that city? or Is it God’s will for me to marry this person? John Piper teaches about the two wills of God: his sovereign will—“his control of all things”—and his will of command—“the will of God we can disobey and fail to do.”* Here, Paul is talking about God’s sovereign will.

As a pastor, I don’t think I’ve been asked any question more than How can I know the will of God for my life? Usually, the people asking want to know their will about specific life choices. After all, “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).

First, I affirm this truth: God wants us to know his will for us. He doesn’t play cat-and-mouse or hide-and-seek or ask us to guess what’s behind door number three. God is more eager for us to know his will for our lives than we are to find it! He’s eager for us to understand his will and then to go do it.

Here’s something to remember: You will never know the will of God that you don’t yet know until you are willing to obey the will of God that you do know. Think about it. Why would God reveal to you his will that you don’t know if you are not going to obey his will that you do know?

King David wrote, “Teach me to do your will” (Psalm 143:10). He didn’t say, “Lord, help me find your will.” He said, “Lord, teach me to do your will.” So that’s the beginning. If you’re struggling with finding the will of God for your life, ask yourself if you’re obeying the will of God you already know. If you aren’t, take a good hard at your Christian walk. But if you are, feel free to seek God’s will you don’t yet know, no matter what that might be. It just has to be all about God’s will, not yours.

How do we seek his will? Pray. Read God’s Word.

Remember, every day lived between birth and death is all about that hyphen. For Christians, it’s about living according to God’s will rather than according to the will of the world. The world’s will steer you wrong; God’s will never will. Proverbs 3:5-6 should be embraced for this very reason. It says, “In all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”

God, fill me with the knowledge of your will and the strength and desire to obey your will already revealed to me through prayer and your Word. Only then will I’ll be ready to receive knowledge of your will I don’t yet know. In Jesus’ name, amen.

*John Piper, “What Is the Will of God and How Do We Know It?” Desiring God, August 22, 2004, https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/what-is-the-will-of-god-and-how-do-we-know-it.