There’s an expression I’ve heard that I’ve picked up, one that is definitely true.

“Tone” matters. The “tone” of how we say things really does matter. It’s not just what we say, but how we say it.

Testing this is fairly simple. “Thanks a lot!” conveys something very different than (sarcastically) “Thanks a lot!”

If you come home from a concert and say, (hip voice) “The place was on fire, man” it’s very different than coming home from a concert and saying (fearful and yelling) “The place was on fire, man!!”

The hard thing with a letter is, you don’t get any tone.

Sometimes we can misinterpret Paul’s letters, because we read it with a tone that wasn’t intended.

We’re looking closely at Paul’s letter to the Colossians, and it’s possible you hear the passage we’re looking at today might with the wrong tone. Maybe you hear Paul’s words as nagging, as simply trying to get people to behave and be nice people. Maybe you hear Paul’s words as if we can never do enough for God, as if we can never quite do enough good things that would make us worthy of the Lord.

My hope is to change the tone of how you hear this letter, if that’s the case.

Paul prays that we will live worthy of God and will please God in every way.

Some might take that negatively: he just wants us to be good people and live up to God’s standards. But it’s so much more. It’s so much more than, “Just toe the line, behave yourself so God will be happy.”

We’re being given the opportunity to re-orient our lives.

All of us are trying to please somebody. For some of us, we’re just trying to please ourselves; others are still living to please moms or dads or grandparents or a teacher from long ago who really cared about us. We’re living in a way to please someone, and Paul wants us to re-orient and recognize the good news.

The good news is there is no better life than one that is pleasing to God. There’s no better life than living in a way that pleases the one who made us, than living in a way that joins with what God is doing in the world right now, today!

Can you hear the positive part of this? “I’m praying for you to really understand and be wise about what God has for your lives. I’m doing it because I want your lives to be different, so that you’ll make the basic orientation of your life pleasing God, first and foremost.”

A few weeks ago, I got the chance to play golf at the brand new golf course here in Newberg.

On one of the holes, I hit an absolutely monster drive. I hit it a mile! The problem was, I hit it a mile to the right, completely in the other fairway.

When I got to where my ball was, a hill and some trees blocked my view toward the hole. But I was sure I had kept a good eye on where we were supposed to go. I pulled out the right club, and hit a really beautiful shot, right exactly where I was aiming.

As I walked up the hill and through the trees, though, I realized that my aim was completely off. I’d sent the ball 35 yards in the wrong direction, and put it in a sand trap to boot.

It would have been great to have someone come along before I hit that second shot, and say, “Hey! You’re headed the wrong direction! Your goal is way off. Hit it that way, and you’ll be much happier!”

Paul’s trying to get us change our aim.

He wants us to re-orient ourselves, take a look at where we’re aiming.

Who are you living for? Who are you trying to please? Not, who should you please; not, who do you want to please. Who do your actions and goals show that you are living to please? My guess is that most of us, if we examine carefully, can find places where we need to re-orient.

My parents bought us this GPS for Christmas.

It reads signals from satellites, and can pinpoint your location within about 10 feet. We added this street map program to it, and I can enter in an address, and it will calculate a step by step map to get there.

It warns me when it’s time to turn, beeps to get my attention when I’ve arrived at the intersection, and takes us right to the place we’re going. It’s really, really amazing!

A couple of times, sometimes on purpose and sometimes by accident, we’ve missed the turn it told us to take. Whenever it reads your position, and shows you that you’re off track, it recalculates. It figures out a new route from exactly where you are to where you want to go.

Paul’s prayer comes with the confidence that we can always recalculate the direction of our lives if we get off track.

“We have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will, through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.”

This is a revolutionary prayer. Jews, like Paul was, would have consistently said that God’s will is found in the Jewish Torah, in the law. To find what God wants, the Jews said, you read the Torah.

But Paul is praying for something so much better, so much more powerful. Paul prays for God himself to fill us with knowledge through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

In fact, it could well be translated “all the wisdom and understanding God’s Spirit can bring.”

God promises us the presence of his Holy Spirit to show us what he wants in our lives, his Holy Spirit with the ability to, on the fly like the GPS, recalculate the orientation and direction of our lives to aim us where we ought to be going.

So, step one is asking God’s help for a re-orientation of the aim of our life.

Then, Paul goes on to name what a life pleasing to God looks like.

It will bear fruit in every kind of good work. We’ll keep producing and bearing fruit, season after season. It’s an organic, rather than mechanical picture. We see the life of Christ come in through our roots and bud out and develop into all kinds of good fruit. We’ll come back to this rooted picture later in Colossians.

A life pleasing to God will be constantly growing in the knowledge of God. Not just facts. Not just head knowledge. Growing in intimately understanding God.

A life pleasing to God is not something we manufacture on our own, that we produce by putting our nose to the grindstone with drudgery. We are being strengthened, with all power, all of God’s power and might…strengthened to have patience, to stick it out, to not give up.

That implies that there will be seasons where the fruit bearing isn’t very obviously apparent; otherwise, why would we need patience? Why would we need to have endurance and keep at it and stick it out?

We live in a world that Jesus, as a revolutionary, is slowly but surely moving toward how he wants it to be. It will happen completely, but it hasn’t yet. We get to be part of the transformation, but we will need all of God’s continual strengthening power to keep at it and not give up.

And all the while, a life pleasing to God will joyfully remember and give thanks for what God has already done in our lives.

Maybe the best part of this section begins in verse 12.

Paul uses some powerful images and words to remind us of what God has already done in the lives of those who choose to follow Jesus. Some things are absolutely and completely different AFTER we choose to follow Jesus.

We’re given an inheritance, a good reward, just like every good person you can ever think of would deserve. The saints, the good ones…we’ve got their inheritance!

He’s rescued us from the dominion of darkness. He’s removed our blindness, taken us away from being ruled by things that hurt us, and he’s brought us into Jesus’ kingdom.

Jesus, taught a lot about the kingdom of God; it’s something that is in some ways here, now, already able to be experienced. Yet in other ways, it’s still to come. This world is still obviously longing to be made right.

But Paul goes right ahead listing for us all these things, listing them with a confidence that they are true!

The wrong things that used to rule or dominate our lives (not just bad actions…our wrong desires, the horrible things done to us, our harmful habits and thinking patterns, all those things with negative power over us)…those things that dominated and ruled our lives have had their power broken!

We’ve been rescued from that, and brought into the new kingdom of Jesus, the new way of doing things that is brought about by Jesus, the one whom God loves.

Old pains, old wrongs, are forgiven and wiped away; we’ve been redeemed, cashed in, bought back by Jesus.

That is amazing news! This is what Paul prays that the Colossians will understand and live for themselves; not understand what the words mean, but LIVE IN THEIR POWER!

Could God help you experience the depth and power of this in a deeper way?

I doubt ANYONE could say no to that! Re-orienting our lives to please God, making every effort not just to know what God says, but knowing God and joining what God is doing in the world, experiencing for ourselves being rescued and freed from the past darkness in our lives and living in Jesus’ way of doing things.

Our lives are meant to be significant! We’re invited into this joyful kingdom where Jesus the revolutionary is slowly but surely changing the world.

What better way to spend our lives, than pleasing God in this way?

What greater adventure or meaning could we find, than the adventure of joining Jesus as he re-makes all of the world and all of creation into what God intended for us in the first place?

This is something I can gladly give my life to…not just a belief system, not just a comfortable, consistent group of people to be with on Sunday morning.

This is the way to a fulfilling life…to center my life on pleasing God, not myself or others. To experience the power and strength of God to give me patience through my slow changes and the slow changes of the world around me. To joyfully thank God for what he’s doing in my life and around the world, breaking the dark and evil powers in our lives and buying us back…rescuing us…re-claiming us into his way of doing things, his kingdom, his mission in the world!

Friends, this is for you, too!

This is our adventure, our mission, our place. This is what we long for, the meaning we strive for. This is our freedom, our ticket out, our way to make a difference.

This is it! To live our lives in order to please God. To join Jesus Christ in his rule, his mission, his kingdom in the world.

Will you accept it and take it for your own, if you never have? If you’ve already made that decision to follow Jesus, will you, as C.S. Lewis said, come further up and further in?

When we do…it’s then that we see what God can do and is doing in our lives. It’s then that we live a life of thanks, joyful thanks for all that God has given!