The Pursuit of Happiness Daily Devotional -7

PHILIPPIANS 1:9-11 | ⁹ And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight ¹⁰ to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, ¹¹ having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

Paul’s prayer for his friends has three elements. First, that their love will be knowing and wise. Emotional attachments need the depth of true understanding and wise perception. Head and heart together produce solid bonds.

Second, he asks that their love produce moral discernment. In a world where things appear grey and blurry, he asks that they will be able to sift good from evil. When does loyalty to a cause, person, or country become blind? When does courage become recklessness, or freedom turn into license, or an innocent pleasure become a vise-like obsession? Pure and blameless are priestly words. He longs for the Philippians to be transformed into the holy people God wants them to become.

Finally, he hopes their lives will be fruitful. The word here is righteous and it can refer to God’s own faithfulness to membership in God’s family achieved through His forgiveness, or to the behavior that results from our connection to Him and His goodness. Even our progress in faith and love is meant to glorify Him! 

What do you pray for your friends and family?

Tags: prayer, family, bonds