HAVE YOU EVER prayed for God to reveal his will to you? That’s the language we sometimes use when we’re trying to make a big decision and are uncertain about what to do. In the best-case scenario, it’s an honest prayer that truly seeks to know whether there’s a specific course of action that would be more pleasing to God. Nothing wrong with that.

Too often, however, the desire to know what we call “God’s will” is based on assumptions that have more to do with individualistic modern-day values than Scripture. Think of it this way. The Bible is the story of God’s relationship to all of creation, including, of course, humanity. To oversimplify, the story moves from creation through the fall and into redemption, a redemption that began with the cross and will one day be complete when Jesus returns as king. As believers, we are brought into that story as characters who — by the grace of God! — get to participate in that work of redemption.

But we can get the narrative priority backwards. Instead of our being characters in God’s story of redemption, we make God into a saving character in our own story. To put it in the terms of the prosperity gospel, we come to believe that what God wants to do is bless us with “our best life now” — believing that if we just make the right choices, just do things the right way, we can have that blessing. In that way of thinking, wanting to know God’s will is like playing a theological game of Let’s Make a Deal. The big prize is behind one of three doors and we have to choose the right one. Choose the wrong one, and we get “zonked” — we go home a loser.

Thus, to pray to know God’s will can be like asking him to reveal which door has the prize. As far as I can tell, that’s not the gospel. Nor is that what Paul means when he prays for the Colossians to know God’s will. Here’s what he says:

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. (Col 1:9-12)

There’s a lot there, so we’ll take some time to unpack what Paul says. He begins by saying that he and Timothy haven’t stopped praying for the Colossians “for this reason.” For what reason? The phrase points backward to what he’s just said: his expression of gratitude to see how the gospel is bearing fruit among the Colossians, as demonstrated in their faith, hope, and especially their love. He knows that the Holy Spirit is already at work in the church, and therefore prays that the Colossians will continue to grow spiritually.

And what does that entail? Paul prays that God would fill the Colossians with “the knowledge of his will.” I don’t think he’s praying that God would reveal to each individual member of the church a specific path that will lead them to their best and most blessed life now. Rather, he’s praying that the Holy Spirit would give them the “wisdom and understanding” they need to see the big picture of God’s will for all of creation, as well as their part in that grand narrative of redemption.

The word “knowledge” may be important here. It’s impossible to do more than make educated guesses about what the challenges were in Colossae. There may have been some early version of a hybrid theology/philosophy broadly known as Gnosticism circulating among the Colossians. There were so many forms of Gnosticism in the ancient world that scholars debate whether the term itself is even useful. But in general, the “knowledge” valued by Gnostics was a kind of personal mystical insight into the divine. People needed spiritual enlightenment rather than to be saved by Jesus’ death on a cross, and different versions of Gnosticism held different views of Jesus himself.

It’s possible, then, that when Paul prays that the Colossians would know God’s will through the Holy Spirit, he’s pushing back against Gnostic tendencies that were already at work in the congregation, as if to say, I know you folks find esoteric and mystical knowledge attractive. Epaphras told me so. But that’s not the kind of knowledge you need. You need to know God’s will, and by that I mean the will of God for his people as can be seen in the whole story already revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures and preached to you by Epaphras.

It’s also possible, however, that the “hollow and deceptive philosophy” to which Paul refers later in the letter (Col 2:8) hadn’t really taken any definite form yet. People tend to hear what they want to hear, and ironically, it’s possible that Paul’s own words could be twisted into a form of Gnosticism by those who had a mind to do it. Indeed, many believe that Gnosticism began as a church heresy, a mashup of ideas from the gospel, Jewish mysticism, and other sources. Thus, people may have read Paul’s letter and said, See, see? Paul talks about the knowledge of God. That’s what I mean! Spirituality is all about special knowledge! That’s what Christianity is really all about!

But the knowledge of God’s will is not for one’s own private benefit. It’s not to raise individuals to a higher plane of spirituality. Rather, Paul prays that the Colossians would know God’s will “so that” such knowledge would shape the way they live: a life worthy of the Lord, a life that would please him in every way, a life of fruitfulness in good works. Whereas Gnostics tended to look down their theological noses at bodily existence, Paul wants to see the kind of spirituality that has a visible moral effect on how believers live in their bodies and in relationship to one another.

He wants us, in other words, not only to know God’s will, but in knowing that will, to know and live God’s way. Let’s take a look at that next.