The reason we’re following this series on the prayers of St Paul is first because if we’re going to pray to God, then it’s good to know something about the God we’re praying to. You could say that the way we pray shows the way we think about God. If your view of God is of someone a bit like Santa Claus then your prayers will most probably contain lots of requests for things you want. If your view of God is of a strict authoritarian then your prayers may contain lots of repentance and self-deprecation. So the more we understand the nature of God the better our prayer life will be. But secondly, if we want to improve our prayer life then what better way to do it than to examine the prayers of the godly people of Scripture. Of Moses as he argued with God about whether God would go with him to lead the people of Israel. Of David whose prayers were so often songs of praise. Of Solomon as he praised God at the dedication of the Temple. Of Nehemiah as he prayed for forgiveness for his people or as he called to God to help him as he stood before King Artaxerxes. And of course, as we’re doing this month, we can learn from the prayers of St Paul, how to pray for one another, how to pray for the church.
Paul’s prayer for the Colossians has one major difference from most of his other prayers as well as a couple of similarities.
1. Praying for strangers
The difference is that he prays here for Christians he’s never met. In the prayer we looked at last week, to the Thessalonians, he knew the people he was praying for well. He’d spent some time with them, he’d experienced the sort of opposition they were up against. But here he’s praying for a church that was started by one of his disciples, by Epaphras. This’d be similar to us praying for the people the Peters have told us about in the church in Valdivia, or Concepción, or those the Prentices have mentioned in the theological college in Namibia. He doesn’t know them personally, but he is praying for them. In other places he writes to those he considers his own sons and daughters in the Lord. Here he’s praying for his spiritual grandchildren
Again, here’s an important corrective for us. A test of our own prayer life. How much time do we spend praying for our own circle of friends and family and how much do we pray for those in the wider church, for those we’ve never met.
I occasionally talk to people about their giving and I’m always disappointed when I hear someone say that their priority, as far as their money is concerned, is to give it to their grandchildren or their nephews and nieces rather than giving their money to support the church or some Christian ministry. Disappointed not for the church but for them. The problem is that when you give to your own flesh and blood you’re basically giving to yourself. It’s basically a self-centred activity. And the same goes with praying. If we’re only ever praying about our own family, our own set of friends, our own ministry situation even, then our prayers are tending to be self-centred, parochial in the literal sense of the word, aren’t they?
Now that doesn’t mean that we should broaden our prayers to the point that they become meaningless. I’m not suggesting that we pray the sort of prayer that says "God bless everyone". But it is good to pray for those people we hear about through the missionary letters we get, or in the news reports we read or see on television, so our vision is enlarged, our horizons expanded, our ministry of prayer increased.
2. Persistent Prayer
One of the things that pops up in Paul’s references to prayer time and time again is this phrase: "we have not ceased praying for you." Now that doesn’t mean that he never sleeps, or that he goes into some sort of mystic trance, where he’s in constant communion with God. No, what it means is that he prays consistently and persistently for them. Since he’s heard from Epaphras about their faith and love he’s had them on his regular, and no doubt extensive, prayer list.
It’s interesting, isn’t it, that there are some things that we need to pray about over and over again. There are some things that need to be prayed for specifically and urgently. They’re the sorts of things that might be passed around the prayer chain. But there are other matters that require a long term view, or that never go off the agenda. For example, it’s good to give thanks to God before beginning each meal simply as an acknowledgment of our dependence on him for our daily bread. We should always be praying for opportunities to serve him, to share our faith with others. And we should always be praying for the things we see in these prayers of Paul.
You see prayer is the way God has arranged for us to receive his many blessings. He wants us to ask. He delights to give his children good gifts. And when those blessings are related to ongoing needs then we need to ask for them constantly.
3. Perceptive Prayer
Thirdly, Paul’s prayers are built on what he’s observed already. As we saw last week, he gives thanks for their growth in maturity and then prays that that growth might continue. Here he says: "For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you." Now we didn’t read the first section where he gives thanks for them, but let’s look at it now. (Col 1:3-6 NRSV) "In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 4for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel 6that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God."
He’s heard of their faith in Christ Jesus, of the love they have for all the saints and of the way the gospel is bearing fruit in their lives. And that’s what he bases his prayers on.
Again, it’s interesting to see that when we pray it isn’t always praying for some situation of need. The sort of prayer we so often find ourselves praying are those emergency prayers: prayers for some particular need or crisis. But here we find Paul praying for the ongoing growth of these Christians, praying into a situation of success rather than crisis. His prayer reflects a general attitude to growth in maturity. That is that we can never rest on our laurels. We can never have enough growth, enough maturity. In fact I’d suggest it’s a truism that the more we grow in maturity as a Christian, the more we’ll be aware of our need to grow more, the more we’ll be longing to become more Christ-like. So whenever he sees Christians growing in their faith, he gives thanks to God then he prays that their growth might continue.
So let’s look at what it is he prays for here.
The Prayer
A. That they be filled with the knowledge of God’s will
He says: "we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding." What does it mean to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will? Does it mean knowing who you should marry, or go out with? Does it mean knowing what job to apply for, or which house or which new car to buy, or church to go to? Or does it mean more than that? Again we run the danger of self-centredness when we begin to think like that don’t we? Not that we shouldn’t be seeking God’s will when we have to make those sorts of decisions, but to think that that’s all that knowing the will of God might comprise is very limited isn’t it?
When the psalmist says "Teach me your way, O LORD, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies (Ps 27:11)", or when he says: "Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths. 5Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long" (Ps 25:4-5), what is he thinking of? Perhaps Ps 86:11 makes it clearer: "Teach me your way, O LORD, that I may walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart to revere your name." When the Bible talks about knowing the will of God or God’s ways it’s, almost without exception, talking about knowing the sort of behaviour, the sort of lifestyle that pleases God, that God would have his people follow. Now that’s not unrelated to the sorts of questions I just mentioned. If you want to know whether you should marry someone, first ask yourself whether they’re the sort of person who will help you to live a life pleasing to God. That’ll probably rule out anyone who doesn’t share your faith in Jesus Christ, won’t it? It narrows down the field a bit, but then you did want to know whether God might want you to do it, didn’t you? Similarly if you’re trying to work out whether to join a new church ask yourself whether the new church will help you in your Christian walk. If you’re thinking of leaving a church ask whether your leaving will help or hinder the work of the gospel in the place you’re leaving. Ask whether you’re doing it for self-centred reasons or because God has been leading you to minister somewhere else.
You see, the prayer that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will isn’t just a prayer for more knowledge. Rather, it’s a prayer that you may know how to do God’s will. It’s tied to the notion of wisdom and the notion of wisdom in the Bible is almost always to do with knowing how to do something, how to live, how to please God in what you say and do.
Now at this point a little background might help. Paul writes to the Colossians because they’re in danger of being led astray by false teachers; people who are suggesting "spiritual" ways of getting closer to God or of becoming more holy. They’re trying to introduce some of the old Jewish customs of fasting and religious festivals, they’re promoting asceticism, angel worship, the need to be initiated into hidden knowledge. His answer to these false teachers is to pray that the believers might be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. Only then will they be able to see through this false teaching.
Can I suggest that that prayer is something that remains totally relevant to our present day. There are so many false teachers around. I had a conversation with someone who’d say they were a Christian, just this week, about how the Dead Sea scrolls show that the gospel records may be falsified versions of the truth. There are so many church leaders who’d like to lower the moral standards set by God’s word so it’d be easier to convince people to become Christians. The idea of absolutes of moral and ethical behaviour is gone from our culture today.
If we’re to fight these influences we need God to fill us with the knowledge of his will, of his way of living. We need the wisdom and understanding of his Spirit filling us and teaching us.
B. That they might be utterly pleasing to God.
The corollary of his first petition is that their lives might bear the fruit of the knowledge of God’s will. He prays that they "may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him." Notice that he isn’t praying that they’ll be able to keep the commandments or live lives that are morally upright, though I’m sure those would be part of his desire for them. No, what he prays for is much more personal than that isn’t it? Much more relational. He prays that they might live lives that are pleasing to the Lord. It’s bit like the school teacher who says to the year 9 boy "would you do that if your mother was here?" There’s something significantly different about keeping a rule and pleasing someone you love, isn’t there? Or between breaking a law and disappointing someone you love. When I trained as a counsellor with Lifeline, one of the questions we were taught to ask someone who was threatening suicide was "Who do you think might find you?" Or "How will your parents or children feel when they discover you’ve killed yourself?" You see, that puts their plans into a relational framework. It reminds them that they have people who love them and care for them.
That’s what Paul does here. He reminds us that it’s the Lord we’re pleasing or disappointing when we act in certain ways. We live in relationship to Jesus Christ and our actions affect that relationship. So he suggests what sort of behaviour might constitute a life pleasing to the Lord. First that they bear fruit in good works. Ephesians 2 points out that though we’re saved by grace, God has created us to do good works. What’s more God has prepared good works in advance for us to do. Each of us will have different things to do, depending on the gifts God has given us, but we all have things God has ready for us to do.
Secondly they’re to grow in the knowledge of God. It pleases God to see us growing in our knowledge of him. Here he returns to his first petition. But how do we grow in that knowledge? First and foremost by reading his word. By studying what God is like, what he desires of us, what he’s made known in his word. Then we learn by doing. We learn by experience as we follow his teachings as we do the things he tells us and discover that it actually works.
C. That they might be made strong
Not only do they need to understand God’s will, they also need to be strong enough to stand against those who oppose that will. They need the sort of stamina that keeps you going for the long haul. That’s why he prays that God would strengthen them with his power. But they also need the sort of stamina that maintains a positive attitude, a joy in serving God, even when the going gets tough.
D. That they might have joy and thankfulness
So he prays that they might endure "while joyfully 12giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light." Again, the knowledge of God’s will means that we’ll understand not just how we should live, but what God has in mind for the end of the world. We’ll have a clear and certain knowledge of our place in God’s kingdom. And so whatever suffering we might have to endure, whatever opposition we meet, however people might ridicule or seek to hurt us, we’ll remain confident in the power of God to overcome and to bring his plans to completion.
I hope you’ve seen that central to this prayer is the knowledge of the will of God. It’s both the thing that will guide our living and the thing that’ll assure us of our final destiny. But remember, it’s primarily a means to an end. It’s the means by which we can do what is pleasing to God. It’s the means by which we can remain strong, remain joyful even in the midst of struggle and hardship.
For more sermons from thissource go to http://home.vicnet.net.au/~sttheos
