English Standard Version
There are lots of ways to pray for people. We often pray for health and for healing. We pray for comfort in difficult times, and for consolation in seasons of mourning. We have prayers of gratitude for our blessings and prayers of blessing upon new ventures and relationships.
Here, Paul uses an interesting phrase -- they have not ceased to pray for the Colossians to be filled with the knowledge of God's will, with the idea being that knowledge of God's will would make them live in ways that are pleasing to God.
The prayers aren't to change God's will or to change the situations in the lives of individual Colossians -- it's to understand the will of God in their present lives. Paul is praying in such a way that people understand the scope of God's work, which spans farther than our eyes and hearts can grasp. I think we all have moments in which something our hearts long for the scope of eternity, but often we're trapped in the here and now, and we can't see much farther. How much easier would we be able to deal with suffering if we fully grasped the scope of eternity? How much less frustration might there be in our lives if we fully understand the good intentions that God has for us, and the desire of God to deliver us and redeem us, so that we might enjoy the ultimate glory of the Kingdom of God. Having an understanding that God's will is to save you and enjoy you forever would help you deal with setbacks in life, and it would keep things in perspective so that we could better understand how to rejoice and give thanks even in difficult seasons. To understand the will of God is to understand the heart of God that carried Jesus to the cross -- a heart that beats to save God's beloved creations. You are precious in God's sight and worthy of saving, and to grasp the fullness of that -- to really grasp that, in the depths of our souls, changes us, because once we realize how fully God intends to save and deliver us, we deal with every aspect of life through a different lens, one colored by grace and gratitude.
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