11 - Four Things to Pray For [b]

Paul expresses four purposes for his prayers in these verses. The first two are related in an important way. The first purpose is that we might be filled with the knowledge of His will. The second is to walk worthy of the Lord. However, these are related in that we are to be filled with the knowledge of His will so that we may walk worthy. The knowledge of God's will is not an end in itself. It is related to the application of that will to our thinking and living. This is expressed through two key terms: wisdom and understanding. These words are often described in terms of the Greek connotation. However, Paul and the other apostles would not have thought of them in the Greek cultural sense, but in terms of the Hebrew meaning in the Old Testament. In this lesson we learn what the biblical or divine viewpoint of wisdom and understanding is.