Rabbi Schneider - Discover God's Plan For You
You see the scripture tells us that if we pray anything according to His will we know that we have the things that we've asked for. And when we pray the prayers that the apostles prayed we know that we're praying according to His will, because they're recorded in scripture and the scripture is, beloved, the revealed and recorded will of God. Men that were moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. I've reviewed all this. I encourage you again, go ahead and get this series. I'm not gonna take the time to review all the foundational concepts right now, because I really did that significantly last week and in some of the previous episodes.
I just want to continue today where I left off last week in this great prayer of faith that the Apostle Paul prayed in Colossians chapter one. I'm gonna pick up now in verse number ten where I left off. Let's hear what Paul prays. He's praying here, "So that you will walk", he said, "In a manner worthy of the Lord". So I want you to understand, Paul just got done praying that God would fill us with wisdom and understanding concerning His will in all spiritual things. Paul wants us to walk, listen now, with understanding, because when we have understanding we can walk according to God's will.
So Paul prays, "I pray that you would be filled with the wisdom and understanding in the knowledge of His will", in verse number nine. And now he tells us the reason why he's praying then, verse ten. "So that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord to please Him in all respects". We should hear this, listen, I know that we have many things that we desire and some of the prayers that we all pray are selfish, right? We pray for a husband, or for a wife, for a job, or for a house. We pray about many, many things and there's nothing wrong with this. We should cast all our cares upon Him. But you know there's something that's deeper than praying for things that we just want and that is that the deepest thing that we should be praying is that we would fulfill, hear me now, God's dream for our lives. That God created us for a purpose.
You see God has something in mind that He's wanting from us. He has something in mind when it speaks of, when He thinks of our lives. God wants you and I to fulfill a specific assignment. He wants you and I to be relating to Him in a certain way. He wants to use you and I in a very specific way to affect other people. So Paul says that "The reason I'm praying for you to be filled with all spiritual wisdom and insight is so that", Paul says, "you would walk in a manner worthy of the Lord in order to please Him in all ways". Look with me again verse ten, "So that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects: bearing fruit in every good work".
So we need to understand that when Jesus taught us to pray in the book of Matthew. He said, "Pray in this way". He said, "Our Father that art in heaven, hallowed be thy name". And what we mean there, the Hebrew word there for hallowed, it's not just speaking beloved of a specific name. It's basically speaking of God's reputation. So when Jesus teaches us to pray, "Our Father that art in heaven, hallowed be thy name", what Jesus is actually saying there is may Your reputation be great. May the fame of Your reputation spread. May Your name, Your reputation be glorified on the earth. And so Jesus says, "Our Father that art in heaven hallowed by they name". May Your name be made great. May Your fame spread. May the glorious recognition of who You are spread over creation. So Jesus says, "Our Father that art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come".
Notice that Jesus isn't first teaching us to pray for our own needs, but Jesus' first concern is that God would be glorified, that His kingdom would increase and that His will would be done. "Our Father that art in heaven, hallowed be thy name", listen, "thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven". Now listen beloved, this is how Jesus taught us to pray. Think about the difference between what Jesus said and what Paul is saying here, "That we would be filled with all spiritual wisdom and understanding in order that", listen now, "we would walk in a manner worthy of our calling to please Him in all ways".
Think now about the difference between what Jesus and Paul are communicating, where they are making first God's purposes, God's kingdom, pleasing Him, accomplishing His work. Think about that and compare that to most of the prayers that perhaps you or I pray, or the majority of those that call themselves Christians pray. You see the majority of the prayers that many, many Christians pray are not about God being pleased. They're not about hallowing His name. They're not about fulfilling His perfect will. But the majority of prayers that so many of us pray are selfish prayers, they're about asking God what we want for in our lives. In other words, it's not about God's kingdom, it's about "Lord give me a new house. Lord I want that new car. Lord give me that wife, give me that husband, open up their"...
See what I mean? It's about our desires, rather than putting Him first. And if you and I want to enter in to the depths of eternal life, we've got to submit to God's word and recognize that what we've been doing, the path that we've been on, the way that we've been following, it's wrong, because we're keeping ourselves at the center of the universe rather than dying to self to make God the center of our universe. See when we say, that Jesus is Lord, remember the Bible says, "He that believes in their heart that God raised Jesus from the dead and confesses with their mouth that Jesus is Lord will be saved".
We don't understand that it's more than a simple confession, "Jesus is Lord". When we confess Jesus is Lord, what we're confessing is that He's the Lord of our life. And Jesus said, "Unless we pick up our cross, deny our self and follow Him we can't be His disciples". You see Yeshua said, "He that loses his life for My sake shall find it". You see we're following the same Jesus that said, "Father not My will, but Thy will be done". We're examining today beloved ones, Apostolic prayers. Why? So that we can submit our lives to the Lord, so that we can pray for ourselves those things that will produce fruit in our life that will empower us by the Spirit and by the word and transform us. And what we see here as we examine this prayer of Paul's in the book of Colossians, is that we need to shift our prayers, the words that are flowing from our heart and our mouth, to make God's kingdom first, pleasing Him first, rather than first putting our own needs in front of everything.
So let's continue on. Paul prays here. I'm gonna begin in verse nine and we're just gonna keep reading through to kind of sum up and then continue on. Hear the word of God. "For this reason also since the day we heard of it we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask you might be filed with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord". This is the reason why Paul's first ambition, "I want you to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. To please him". It's first of all about pleasing Him. How can I please you today Father God? As we wake up in the morning, "Father God how can I complete Your will for me today"?
You see Jesus said that His food was to complete the will that the Father gave Him, to do the work of God. See we need to make it first about God's purpose. We've died to ourselves to make it first about Him. This is the type of life that is the straight and narrow way that leads to a life that Jesus spoke of. He said, "So that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please him in all respects". Hear this one now, "Bearing fruit", Paul's praying. "That you would bear fruit in every good work". So Jesus, He said to the disciples, including you and I. He said, "My desire for you", hear me, "is that you would bear fruit and it would remain". I love what Jesus said. He said, "You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you that you would bear fruit and that your fruit would remain".
We've been chosen out of this world to know God, to love Him and to bear fruit for Him. So we need to be praying beloved that we would bear fruit for the kingdom. How do we bear fruit? In two ways. Number one, that we grow in our manifestation of Christ-likeness. That we become more and more like Jesus. You see we are being conformed, that is our destiny. We've been chosen to be conformed to the image of Christ, to Yeshua HaMashiach. So the first way we bear fruit is by becoming more and more like Jesus and growing in the fruits of the Spirit.
The second way, hear me, we bear fruit, hear me, is by extending and expanding God's kingdom on the earth by touching other people's lives and affecting others for the kingdom. We're causing God's name to be hallowed. We're causing His reputation to grow. When men see us they see our good works and they look up and give praise to Father in heaven. When we're touching people with the love of God, when we're sharing the good news of the kingdom with people, when we're doing good works, acts of mercy and love in Jesus' name, when we're being the salt of the earth and the light of the world,where we're affecting the environment wherever we go beloved, then we're walking in a manner worthy of our calling. And we're pleasing Him, because we're walking according to His will.
I hope you're hearing me right now when I say to you our lives are not our own. This is serious business. Either Jesus is real, or He's not. Either He died for you and I, or He didn't. Either He purchased us with His own blood, or He did not. Either we no longer live for ourselves and live for Him, or the whole thing's a fairy tale. We've been purchased with the price and we no longer belong to ourselves, we belong to Him that died and rose in our behalf. And so Paul prays, "I pray that you will be filled with all spiritual wisdom and understanding in the knowledge of him that you will walk in a manner worthy of your calling, pleasing him; and bearing fruit in every good work".
Don't you see we belong to Jesus? That our lives are not our own. That we're here for His purposes. That we're not our own, that we're here beloved, for His glory. That daily we're dying to our self to follow Him, to love Him, to submit our heart to Him, our emotions, our thoughts, in order to do His will. Paul continues on here in this prayer. He says, "That you would bear fruit in every good work". And here he says, "Increasing in the knowledge of God". Let's continue on, verse eleven. And then he prays that we would be, "Strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for the attaining of a steadfastness and patience and joyously giving thanks to the father".
Let's take that apart for a second. And again, I want you to understand, beloved, this is kingdom stuff. Paul said, "The kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven is not eating and drinking. But the kingdom of God is righteousness and peace in the Holy Spirit". We're talking about receiving the fullness of the Spirit here. We're talking about receiving the word and the Spirit and the word are one. I believe this is one of the reasons that Jesus told us to fast, so we could separate ourselves from the delusion of materialism so that we could focus on His word. The things of the kingdom that really bear fruit, Jesus said, "Don't seek the things on the earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal". He said, "But set your heart on the things that are above. For where your treasure is there your heart will also be". We are being directed right now to seek those things that mean something.
Let's continue on. Paul says, "I pray that you would be strengthened with all power". Listen, does God want you strong? Yes, because the same power that raised Yeshua from the dead is your inheritance now. This is why the scripture says, "Let the weak say I am strong". Why can the weak say, "I am strong"? Because even though we may be weak in the flesh, we have been given through Jesus, strength. So the Bible says, "Let the weak say I am strong". Sure we can bring our weakness to the Lord. We're all weak in the flesh. God actually puts us in positions of weakness, so that we can learn how to draw resurrection of life and power from the Spirit. But the truth is that we are strengthened by the Holy Spirit and God's purpose is that by the power of the Holy Spirit we'll walk in His strength.
So I'm speaking to you right now. If you're feeling weak today, I want you in humility and dependency on Jesus say, "I am strong". "Let the weak say I am strong". God's will is for you to be strong and when Jesus gave His life for you and shed His life for you, included in what He did for you there, that flows from Him now to you, is His divine strength. "Let the weak say", beloved, "I am strong". Paul prays that we would be strengthened, in verse eleven, "with all power according to his glorious might".
What is His glorious might? How does scripture define His glorious might? Beloved scripture defines His glorious might, because the might that is being affected in our lives, the might that is affecting our lives is the same might that raised Jesus from the dead. The might that is working towards you, the might that is in you through the Spirit of the living God, through the Spirit of Elohim. We call it in Hebrew the Ruach HaKodesh. The Spirit that is in you is the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead. Your more than a conqueror.
So Paul prays that we would be strengthened by His glorious might. Not just a little bit of might, we're not just a little bit strong. We're more than conquerors, that neither height or depth, things past, things present, things to come, nor any created thing can separate us from the love of God. Beloved, we are conquerors. We have a victors mentality. We've been raised with Jesus and are seated with Him there in the heavenly places. "Let the weak say I am strong".
Beloved, God loves you and I today. He wants us to take a hold of the glorious promises in His word. He wants us not to focus on eating, drinking, boyfriends, girlfriends, new cars, new clothes, all those things. Those are all secondary. Those are the icing on the cake, but Jesus said, "Seek first the kingdom of God and all these other things will be added unto you".
Will you join me in uniting your heart with Jesus, to focus on in our prayer life those things that really matter? Beloved I love you today. Jesus' heart is crying out for us. He wants us to forsake the things of the world, to stop seeking after vanities. Will you join me in focusing on His word and praying for ourselves. I want you to pray for yourself the same prayers that the apostles prayed for you and as you do your life is gonna be radically transformed and you're gonna go from strength to strength and from glory to glory. I love you today. In Jesus name.