PRAYER
Colossians 4:1-6 (NIV)
Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.
Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone
1 The purpose of prayer
“Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should”.
Colossians 4:2-4 (NIV)
Introduction
Imagine for a moment a minister is invited to a family’s home for Sunday Tea. Before anyone says grace, the children start to eat. The embarrassed mother gives them a quick reprimand, while the children stare at her in confusion. The minister then says grace in the strained silence.
The mother explains, “We don’t always say grace before meals”.
Now to the minister this is fairly obvious, but he keeps quiet because he knows that there is another line to the script. The mother says, “We just take it for granted that God knows how grateful we are!”.
2 Why should we pray?
God knows how grateful we are! That was the logic at the dinner table. The trouble with this kind of attitude is that it does not just appear at the dinner table. – It leaves the table and wanders all over the house – and then the issue becomes, Why pray at all? God knows all that we need! We may even quote our Lord when He said that God knows all that we need before we even ask Him.
But the Lord Jesus’ conclusion was – “Therefore, do pray”.
F B Speakman in his book, Love is something you do, reasons in the same way, “What if God refuses to read His children’s mail unless it is addressed to Him?”
When we pray, we pray so that we can communicate with our Lord. Prayer is an opportunity to share with our Father the most deeply felt needs of our lives. We should take every opportunity to express to God our gratitude and praise and the joy we feel in Him and the precious gift of salvation.
Paul elaborated on the purpose of prayer here in Colossians 4:24
3 The purpose of Prayer is seen in the manner of prayer (v. 2).
a). We are to pray with perseverance. Prayer is not to be a spasmodic outburst in a moment of emergency, but persistent calling on god for his guidance and blessing.
b) We are to pray with watchfulness. This word literally means to be wakeful, to be alert when we pray. Prayer should never be reserved solely for times of crises. We should pray before the crisis comes so that we have the spiritual resources we need to meet the testing time. Napoleon said that battles are not won on the battlefield; rather, they are won at the conference table in the planning meetings before the battle has ever begun.
c) We are to pray with gratitude. We need to be thankful for what the Lord has done. Each moment of our lives is a blessing. The apostle Paul stated that in whatever situation he found himself he would praise the Lord.
3 The purpose of prayer is seen in the object of prayer
(vv.3-4).
a) We are to pray that God will give us an open door of service. Remember that Paul was in prison when he wrote this letter to the Colossians. He could have prayed for many things while he was in prison – release, the favourable outcome of the trial, comfort, rest – bit Paul prayed that God would give him an opportunity to minister.
b) We are to pray that God will help us to take advantage of our opportunity for service. To pray for the open door, an opportunity for service is just half the prayer. We are to pray also for the courage and ability to take advantage of the opportunity that is there. Paul wanted the Colossians to pray that he might be able to “proclaim the mystery of Christ.” This should be our prayer too.
Recap:
This is the purpose of Prayer:
We pray that we might commune with God with persistence, watchfulness, and thankfulness in order to have opportunities to witness for Christ and the strength to take those opportunites.
WITNESS
1 A witness to the world Colossians 4:5-6 (NIV)
“Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone”
1. The correct response to the World.
Professing Christians live a life of faith in God and obedient response to the Holy Spirit; we live in a world that is often hostile to Christ, or worse still, indifferent to Christ.
Our response to the world us is crucial to our Christian walk and our witness for Christ. Too often Christians make the response of identification with the world. We so closely identify ourselves with the world, by our words, by our actions, by our in-actions at times, that our lives can hardly be distinguished from non-Christians.
Another response that Christians sometimes make is withdrawal from the world. They try to shut out entirely the world around them and live in their own little, private, well-protected world.
Neither of these is the correct response. The correct response is for Christians to be responsible witnesses to the world. We live in the world. We make our living in the world. We associate with the people of the world. Therefore we should give a responsible witness of our faith to the world. Our faith should be the guiding principle for our lives. Our encounter with God in worship gives us strength and power for daily living. Our character, growing out of our relationship of faith in God, gives silent but eloquent witness of the meaning of faith and salvation. Through our the way that we live our lives we are, if you will, “salespeople” for salvation.
Someone once said that “faith lives or dies not by what goes on in churches, but by what, as a result of the churches, goes on outside of them”.
That is what the apostle Paul meant by verse 5 and 6. He urged them, “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders”, meaning those who are outside the Christian fellowship. He had both an offensive and defensive purpose in mind.
The defensive purpose. The defensive purpose was to protect the good name of the Christian community.
The offensive purpose. The offensive purpose was to go after outsiders and bring them into Christian fellowship and to faith in Christ. This is still our witness to the World.
2 Our witness to the world involves our time in the world.
a. We should use our time well. We are told to redeem the time, which means literally “to buy up the time.”
b. We should use our time to witness.
We must take every opportunity to witness. J A Broadus said that, “Opportunity is like a fleet horse that pauses for one moment by our side. If we fail to mount the horse in that moment, we can hear the clatter of its hooves down the corridors of time.
3 Our witness to the world involves our walk in the world.
a. We should walk with wisdom in our witness.
Paul’s instructions in Colossians 4:5-6 may be a gentle warning about the methods of witness. We must use wisdom and discretion in presenting the claims of Christ to those that do not know Him.
b. We should walk with wisdom in our practices.
The kind of life we live before the world is encompassed in the word walk. As we walk in the world we must ensure that our walk is consistent with our talk.
4 Our witness to the world involves our talk to the world.
a. Our talk should be full of grace.
As our conduct is marked by grace so our speech should be marked by grace. Grace implies kindness, good will and tact. This is the kind of talk that witnesses for Christ – kind, courteous, tactful, not loud, coarse or rude.
b. Our talk should be well seasoned.
This kind of talk has the ring of reality about it. There is a story of a Hindu woman who was converted and became a Christian. She suffered a lot of persecution from her husband. A missionary asked the woman what she did when her husband became angry with her, she replied that she cooked his food better. When he complained, she swept the floor cleaner. When he spoke unkindly, she answered him mildly. She tried to show him that when she became a Christian she became a better wife and mother.
c. Our talk should be directed to individuals. As we “answer everyone”, we can be sure that we will talk to individuals. Stock answers and memorised replies may not be enough. We should meet each occasion with answers tailored to the person with whom we are talking.
Conclusion
Paul’s instructions to the Colossians are important for us today. We have in this letter many great truths and we have just scratched the surface looking at the purpose of Prayer and the challenge to take the initiative in witnessing for Christ.
Lets ask the Lord that He would enable us to commune with Him with persistence, watchfulness, and thankfulness.
We also need to pray that we might have opportunities to witness for Christ and the strength to take those opportunites.
I trust that we will each be willing to accept the challenge!
