9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,
This is a challenging and good prayer for me. I think my tendencies towards efficiency and productivity distract me from truly loving people. Perhaps what I am subconsciously believing makes me try to have knowledge and wisdom of how to run my life that allows me to love. I am trying to get things done so I have time for the important things, or so that I have time for many people and many things. But am I really being loving towards people in the way I live by time and efficiency? Certainly i need priorities. But that's where this prayer and this verse speaks to having love grow in knowledge.
5 Pray ask God to reveal his truth
God as I can clearly tell I don't have a good grasp on this truth. Please teach me not only to understand but more so I pray that you would teach my heart to feel and understand this reality of love abounding in knowledge and depth of insight. Teach me to love as you loved. Teach me to dictate my plans and strategies and drive for efficiency on love and not let love only be part of how I live.
6 Emphasize parts or words as different focuses in the text.
It just sticks out to me so much that this is Paul's prayer. Paul gives those he leads and the Philippians many commands and instructions but this is a prayer to God for them. It is God who has the power to work this in their hearts and lives. But also Paul wants the philippians to know he is praying this over them, that somehow this might impact them some way simply to know he is praying that, or maybe for them to pray for that and to desire that as well, maybe for them to look for how God is changing their hearts to love with knowledge and depth of insight.
7 Context
This fits right along with what Paul said earlier in chapter 1: 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
The philippians more than most seem to have a special place in Paul's heart and they seem to really have been living for Christ and partnering in the gospel and following Christ in such a way as to bring Paul joy.
8 Cross references
1 Corinthians 13:2
2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
This is such an intense contrast of the centrality of love to real life and meaning in Christ.
Ephesians 3
14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family[a] in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your heartsthrough faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
The start of the kind of love we are talking about is the incredibly awesome love of Christ. Surely when we truly know this crazy love and if we are following Jesus seeking to become like him then our love will be radical and central. In some ways wasn't love the central reality of Christ's life and death and resurrection. That God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son. What crazy love is this that God loves us though we were sinners. And now we who have been reconciled to God through faith in Christ we also can say as 1 John 3:1 says- See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
John 13:34-35
34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
But what does it mean to have love abounding in knowledge?
1 Corinthians 8
Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that “We all possess knowledge.” But knowledge puffs up while love builds up.
- it is love with knowledge not knowledge with love
1 Corinthians 13:8New International Version (NIV)
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
Love is eternal
Really I can't just come to understand it. I need to pray and really ask God to fill my love more and more with knowledge and depth of insight. God I desire more love. I want my life to be like Christ's to be defined by love. To be a mission of love for the world and for people to come to know you and to really take hold of the eternal life to know you and dwell in your house forever. God I need love with wisdom to know how to interact with people, how to understand work relationships and to have wisdom about who to really connect with and how to share Christ in those friendships.
God do your work in me and my heart!
Amen
9 What truth is the Spirit speaking to me to help me understand and apply this to my life.
10 Praise God!
11 Live it out!
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