Paul's Powerful Prayer Series

Introduction:

A. One night a father was walking past his 5 year old daughter’s room when he proudly noticed she was on her knees in prayer.

1. When he paused to listen, he heard her repeat this prayer several times: “abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.”

2. When she was finished praying, her dad asked her why she had prayed the alphabet and she replied: “God is really smart, and when I don’t know what to pray about, I just say the alphabet and He figures it out for me.”

3. There is some truth to that, but God prefers that we pray more specifically than that when we can.

B. Here’s a great poem about prayer that someone wrote years ago:

I said a prayer for you today and know God must heave heard.

I felt the answer in my heart, although He spoke no word.

I didn’t ask for wealth or fame (I knew you wouldn’t mind)

I asked Him to send treasures of a far more lasting kind.

I asked that He’d be near you at the start of each new day.

To grant you health and blessings and friends to share your way.

I asked for happiness for you in all things great and small.

But it was for His loving care, I prayed the most of all.

C. Is that the kind of prayer that you might pray for your family and friends?

1. But how might you pray for people you don’t know personally?

D. In today’s section of Colossians that we will be examining, Paul prayed for the Colossians.

1. Most of Paul’s letters begin with a prayer for the recipients of the letter.

2. Sometimes Paul knew the recipients of the letter very well, other times, like in the case of the Colossians, he only knew them through someone named Epaphras.

3. Unusually in Paul’s prayer we discover the reason that he is writing to them and the unique needs that his letter will address.

4. Paul was aware of the challenges threatening the church at Colossae and so he prayed for a number of things that they needed to face that challenge.

5. But as we look at his prayer for them, I think we will conclude that these are things that all of us need to have prayed for us as well.

6. Let’s look again at Paul’s powerful prayer: 9 For this reason also, since the day we heard this, we haven’t stopped praying for you. We are asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, 10 so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, so that you may have great endurance and patience, joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the saints’ inheritance in the light. 13 He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. 14 In him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Col. 1:9-14)

7. Let’s explore the three main things that Paul prayed for the Colossians.

I. Paul Prayed for Their Spiritual Intelligence

A. In verse 9, Paul prayed: We are asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.

1. As we have been discussing so far in this sermon series, the false teachers promised the Colossians that if they followed them and their teachings, they would be “in the know.”

2. The false teachers were likely using “buzz words” like: knowledge, wisdom and understanding, so Paul employed the same words.

3. Satan loves to deceive and so he borrows from the Christian vocabulary and twists them and takes them in different directions.

B. I think a key word in verse 9 is the word “filled.”

1. Paul prays for them to be “filled with knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.”

2. Paul used the word “filled” six or seven times in the letter, so it must have been another of the false teachers “buzz words.”

3. The idea of being “filled” or “complete” carried the idea of being fully equipped.

a. It was a word often used of a ship that was ready for voyage, filled with everything needed for the trip.

4. When used in the New Testament, the word “filled” also means to “be controlled by.”

a. When we are filled with anger, then we are controlled by anger.

b. When we are filled with the Spirit, then we are controlled by the Spirit (Eph. 5:18).

5. Paul prays that they will be filled with knowledge of God’s will so that they will be controlled by the knowledge of God’s will.