ands always imply promises.

"_Unto all pleasing._" Bishop Moule beautifully renders this phrase: "Unto
every anticipation of His will" (Colossian Studies). "Teach me to do the
thing that pleaseth Thee" (P. B. version). What a glorious ideal! We are
so to walk as to please Him in everything. Not only doing what we are
told, but anticipating His commands by living in such close touch with Him
that we instinctively know the thing that will please Him. These words
sound a depth of the spiritual life with which comparatively few are
familiar; and yet here they are, facing us definitely, with their call to
realise that which God has placed before us.

The specific details of this worthy walk are next brought before us in
four pregnant phrases:

"_Being fruitful in every good work._" Notice every word of this sentence.
Our life is to be characterised by good works, and in each and every one
of these we are to be fruitful, manifesting the ripeness, and, if it may
be so put, the beauty and lusciousness associated with fruit. Mark, too,
that it is "fruitful _in_ every good work," that is, in the process of
doing the work, and not merely as the result or outcome of it. The very
work itself is intended to be fruitful apart from particular results.
There may be very few results of our service for God, but the service
itself may and should be fruitful.

"_Increasing in the knowledge of God._" Notice the difference between the
knowledge of His will and the knowledge of Himself. "That I may know
_Him_" (Phil. iii. 10); "They might know _Thee_" (John xvii. 3); "Ye have
known _Him_" (1 John ii. 13). The knowledge of His will will lead us to
the knowledge of Himself, and beyond this it is impossible to go.

"_Strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, unto all
patience and longsuffering with joyfulness._" The Apostle's thought pours
itself out in rich abundance in these words. It seems as though he could
not adequately express the possibilities and characteristics of the
Christian life about which he prays. They are to be "strengthened," and
not only so, but "with all might." The principle or standard of it is
"according to His glorious power," and the end of it is "unto all patience
and longsuffering with joyfulness." The man of the world might see in this
phrase an anticlimax, when it is said that the end of strength is
patience and longsuffering; and yet Christianity finds its ideal in energy
expressed in charac