Hopelessly Devoted To You Series

Above All: Colossians 4:2-6

Pastor Jefferson M. Williams

Chenoa Baptist Church

08-14-2022

Hopelessly Devoted to You

On Tuesday, we lost another one of my childhood artist. Olivia Newton John lost her battle with breast cancer at the age of 71.

She was a four time Grammy award winning singer with five number one hits and was even knighted by the Queen. But most of us first met her as Sandy in the movie Grease.

One of those songs has been stuck in my head this week as I prepared this sermon. She sat on the steps and sang:

"I know I'm just a fool who's willing / To sit around and wait for you / But baby, can't you see there's nothing else for me to do? /

I'm hopelessly devoted to you.”

Sandy was hopeless in love with her new bad boy crush Danny, played by John Travolta. She was devoted, committed, ALL IN - it gave her chills that were multiplying.

Paul is going to move from instructions on how the Colossian believers were to live individually, corporately as a church, and in the households to how they focus outwardly on the unsaved people around them.

Turn with me to Colossians 4.

Living on a Prayer

Prayer is part of every major religion. Muslims pray toward Mecca. Jewish people pray at the Wailing Wall. For Buddhist, prayer is the act of emptying the mind.

But just like the disciples, many of us still feel inadequate in the area of prayer.

Richard Halverson lists four reasons that we shy away from prayer:

1. Unbelief – we simply doubt that God is listening or that He cares

2. Indifference – if God already knows, then why pray?

3. Priorities – we are too caught up in this world.

4. It’s difficult – pray is hard work and takes discipline. Maxine’s mom and stepdad would pray all night. I have trouble praying for 20 mins!

Dr. Adrian Rogers wrote this:

“The greatest problem we face is not unanswered prayer but unoffered prayer. Tragically, many of our prayers are so vague that if God were to answer them, we wouldn’t even know it.”

Let me go back to number two - if God already knows, then why pray?

One of my favorite books on prayer is “If God Already Knows, Why Pray?” by Dr. Doug Kelly, my systematical theology professor in seminary.

I think that is the question that a lot of people have. If God already know what we are going to ask before we ask it, what good is it for me to tell Him something He already knows?

Scripture says that God knows us before we are born (Psalm 139:15-16), knows every hair on our head (Luke 12:7), and knows our thoughts before we think them (Psalm 139:2).

We don’t pray in order to inform God of any new information. We pray as children to a Father. Prayer keeps our hearts in touch with God. Prayer changes us and aligns us with His will. And God has conditioned our receiving things from Him through prayer. Prayer is the expression of our total dependence on God for everything.

We can trust that God hears us (Psalm 16). We can rely on the Holy Spirit to help us pray when we are at a loss for words (Romans 8:26).

The writer of Hebrews encourages us to:

“…approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16)

Let me make one caveat. If you are not a Christian, then you can have no confidence that God hears your prayers. Because our sins separate us from God, in our unredeemed state, we have no right to approach Him. But at the cross, our sins were paid for and the righteousness of Christ was applied to our account. He not only opened the door to the Throne room for you but He is praying for you, right now!

“He [Jesus] is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.” (Hebrews 7:25)

Robert Murray McCheyne wrote:

“If I could hear Jesus praying in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no distance. He is praying for me.”

In seminary, I had to study the Westminster Shorter Catechism.

What is prayer?

“Prayer is the offering up of our desires unto God, for things agreeable to His will, in the name of Christ, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgment of His mercies.”

Paul’s Prayer

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives…