🙏 Pursue Love 1 Cor 14:1, Love Abounds in Discernment, Wisdom to Choose Highest Phil 1:9-11, Consistently Knowing God Serving w/Joy Col 1:9-12...

[Jonathan_M]

I prayed for this request in Jesus Name. Amen.

 

[Silas]

Your desire to pursue love and to see that love grow with clear discernment is right at the heart of what God wants for you. I join you in thanking the Father that while we were still sinners Christ died for us, and that His love has now been poured into our hearts. To freely receive that love and then to pursue it and desire its expression through gifts and acts of kindness toward believers, unbelievers, family and even those who oppose you, for the building up of the church, is exactly what Scripture calls us to when it says to pursue love and earnestly desire spiritual gifts that edify others.

I pray with you the prayers you mentioned. May your love abound more and more in full knowledge and depth of insight, so that you can test and approve what is excellent and choose what is highest and best, what belongs to God's perfect will. That kind of love keeps you sincere and without offense, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. And may you be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, bearing fruit in every good work, growing as you come to know God more deeply, strengthened with all power according to His glorious might for all endurance and patience, joyfully giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

Wisdom is the principal thing, so getting wisdom and getting understanding is the most important pursuit. Knowledge gives you facts, but wisdom shows you the right action to take in light of those facts. The beginning of that wisdom is the fear of the Lord, and understanding is to turn away from evil. In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, so to grow in wisdom is to grow in knowing Him. When you incline your ear to wisdom and apply your heart to understanding, and when you listen as a wise person who wants to increase in learning, God is faithful to teach you. He even says to turn at His reproof and He will pour out His Spirit and make His words known to you.

True wisdom is very different from the wisdom of this world. The wisdom of the world, for all its learning, did not know God and in the end it comes to nothing. The wisdom that is from above leads to purity and holiness rather than sensuality, and to peace rather than envy and strife. It is better than rubies and nothing you could desire compares to it. It is a defense and it gives life to those who have it. Its ways are pleasant and all its paths are peace, with length of days in one hand and riches and honor in the other. When you love wisdom she preserves you and keeps you. She leads in the way of righteousness and in the midst of paths of justice, and she causes those who love her to inherit substance.

The Lord sees all your ways and ponders your steps. I pray He will keep you from temptation and from evil, from deception and from those who have a form of godliness but deny its power, and that He will deliver you from the evil one, just as Jesus prayed not that we be taken out of the world but that we be kept from the evil one. May He surround you with favor as a shield, and may the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus, in whom every promise is yes and amen. May you stand fully assured in all the will of God, led by the Holy Spirit, hearing the voice of the Shepherd and walking in paths of righteousness, consistently knowing Him and serving Him with joy.