12.09.07
Colossians (3): If you love me, this is what to pray for me - Colossians 1:9-12
Last time I was up north, I noticed that there had been a very strong wind which had blown down many trees in the forest behind where my parent’s house is. My parents have a wood burning stove, so when I went up the forest to get some wood for them and I saw these huge trees lying on the ground, my eyes lit up because in each tree, there is probably a month’s fuel for the fire. The problem was one of transport – how could I get these huge trees down from the forest into our back garden so I could use the chain saw to cut them up. I realised that it was impossible.
When I read this passage in Colossians 1:9-12, it made me think about the problem of transporting the wood from the forest to the back garden. The problem here is this – in vs. 2 the apostle Paul has blessed the Colossian Christians with the grace and peace of God the Father, and in vs. 3-8 the apostle has talked about the Gospel, about love, hope and faith; about bearing fruit and growing. And these are great things – amazing things – but how do they become mine. They are like huge trees lying in the forest, but unless I can get them into my back garden, I can’t use them. It’s the problem of spiritual transport. How do I make all these wonderful things which God has for me, these amazing blessings, how can I make them mine? And furthermore, when I am thinking of other Christians, those whom I love, what can I do such that these marvellous gifts of God become theirs too? The problem is one of spiritual transport. But Paul gives us the answer in vs. 9-12 – and it consists in prayer. It is through prayer that all God’s blessings filter down to us, and through our prayers for our fellow believers that God’s blessings filters down to them. And so, if we want to be blessed ourselves, and if we want to bless our fellow Christians – if we love them – then we will pray for them.
In these verses, Paul gives us a template upon which to base our ‘spiritual-transport’ prayers. He gives us three broad elements to consider when we are praying for God’s blessings – God’s grace, mercy and peace – to flow down upon those we love in the Lord Jesus Christ. First, if you love me, keep praying for me; secondly, if you love me pray for more than my physical needs and then lastly, if you love me, pray for … where I want to examine those areas we should be mentioning in our prayers for others. Before I begin, I make no apologies for leaning upon Don Carson’s excellent comments on this prayer in his masterpiece book “A Call to Spiritual Reformation”. If you don’t have it, get it.
[A] If you love me, keep praying for me
It should go without saying that, as Christians, believing as we do in prayer, and loving our fellow Christians, that we should pray for them. And yet, we work for them, we move fridges for them, we talk to them, but do we pray for them? Paul was praying for these Christians in Colossae even though, according to what he says in vs. 8, in all probability he had never met any of them, but merely heard of them. But such was his love for other Christians, that he did not hesitate to pray for them – even before he met them, he was praying for them. But what formed the pattern of his prayers on their behalf? Or in other words, how did he pray for them?
There are two answers given to that question in vs. 9 – the first is that he prayed for them regularly and the second is that he prayed for them despite the thanks he had already given for them – despite the good times in their Christian lives, they were not the finished articles and they still needed his prayers.
1. Pray for me regularly – Paul says that since the day he heard about them, ‘we have not stopped praying for you’. Now this does not mean that he was praying about them 24/7, nor does it mean that he was praying for them to the exclusion of the other Christian churches in the world at the time – it simply means, that in his, and in his little groups, regular devotional times, they remembered to pray for the Christians in the church at Colossae. In Romans 1:10 Paul uses the phrase ‘my prayers’, almost certainly meaning that Paul set aside a regular portion of his day for prayer, and that for the rest of the day, he was in the spirit of prayer. Paul had a regular time for prayer, in which his prayers ranged over the whole known world of the day – for churches in Italy and Palestine and for Christians in Greece and Turkey. His prayers were wide ranging, expansive and went so far further than most of ours. He had committed himself to pray for these Christians in his regular devotions – and no doubt, for years afterwards, he kept on praying for them. The things he was praying for them, the needs he was asking God to meet, weren’t things that went away – they transcended the mere prayer lists we often run through – they were things the people needed whether they were babes in Christ or mature Christians. And so he didn’t stop after a week, or a month – he kept on praying for them. What about us – are we faithful and regular in our prayer for others? Do we keep on praying for them for days, weeks, months and even years?
2. Pray for me despite the good times – the first few words in vs. 9 give us a further insight into the depth of Paul’s prayers for other Christians – for this reason. And what reason is that? After all, in the verses prior to this, Paul has been giving thanks to God for their faith, hope and love and for the progress of the Gospel among them. Surely, now that they have started displaying such fruitfulness, they no longer have need of prayer? That’s sometimes what we think – someone is backslidden in their faith and wandering from the truth and we pray for them to come back, but once God has answered our prayers and brought the person back, we stop praying for them – after all, we think they have no needs anymore. But that’s not the way Paul thought – just because the Christians in the Church at Colossae have begun to be fruitful does not stop him praying for more. The Christians there are displaying some fruitfulness in the Gospel, but Paul is praying for more. And that’s a warning for us at this present time in St. V’s. The Lord has been good to us and there are signs that He is working in our congregation to bring souls to Himself and to build others up in the faith – but should we therefore stop praying for more? Of course not – now is the very time to press home the advantage in prayer and to keep on pleading with God for more. We pray to Him for more people to come to know Jesus, and for more maturity amongst Gods’ people. There were days, a couple of years ago, when the congregation was going through difficult times, and we got together both as leaders and as members specifically to pray that God would hold us together. But now that we are seeing conversions and growth, is there any less need for us to pray? The Christians in Colossae were growing in their faith and Paul prays for more growth; the Church in St. Vincent Street is growing and Christians are growing in their faith, let’s pray for even more growth.
[B] If you love me, pray for more than my physical needs
It is right and proper to pray for specific needs and specific situations in both our lives and in the lives of our fellow Christians, but there is a danger with only praying about circumstances and specific temporal needs, namely that we ignore wider spiritual issues. Sometimes Paul himself asks for prayer for specific situations, but more than often, he asks for prayer for his own spiritual life and for the opportunities the Holy Spirit gives him to spread the Gospel. And the same is true in Paul’s own prayers for other Christians – no doubt there were times when he prayed for their specific needs, but in his regular prayer times, their wider spiritual needs dominated. And of course, this links into what we said before about praying regularly for others – not just when they are in obvious need, but also when there is no clearly defined need.
Some of the older folk sometimes raise an objection to us praying through lists at the prayer meeting – now don’t mistake me, there is a place for praying for specific things and the prayer meeting is ideal for that – but is there not also time for praying when we get together for the wider spiritual needs of those for whom we pray. We pray for someone who is sick to get well, but do we pray for their spiritual lives and their ongoing development as Christians – or do we only pray when there is a clear physical need? We believe, don’t we, that the greatest need any human being can have is to be at peace with God – to know God and to love God. That’s a greater need than physical healing or material satisfaction. And so if we have the best interests of those we love at heart, we will pray for them to be more at peace with God and not just for their physical and emotional needs.
[C] If you love me…
What is the content of Paul’s prayer for the Christians at Colossae? We have already seen that we must keep praying for those we love, and we must pray for their spiritual needs and not just their physical needs. But what should we pray for them? I’m not saying that we should Paul’s exact words in prayer, though I want to encourage praying using the Bible, but we should see these words from vs. 9b-12 as a template for our own prayers. Paul prays 2 things for those he loves, and if we are to pray for those we love, we must pray these things too:
1. … that I may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will – the whole idea of the will of God is often a matter of great confusion and discussion among Christians. We are confused and seeing God’s will over a career, over a potential partner, over a life decision. Is Paul praying that the Christians in Colossae may know whether to become fishermen or bakers, whether to marry Maggie or Jean or whether to live in a 2 bed semi or a 3 bed apartment? No – that is not what the will of God is in this context. God’s will works at two levels. One level is his secret will – the things God has in store for us in our careers and in our lives – the paths we go down in life – like the choice of what course to do at University. But God most often never directly tells us what this will is – because it’s His secret will – rather He gives us the Bible, fellow Christians to bounce ideas off, and sanctified common sense to help us make those decisions. The other level is His revealed will – that is what God wants us to do from day to day and year to year. God has told us how He wants us to live – and Paul is praying that the Christians in Colossae would be filled with that revealed will. And where is that will to be found? In the Bible – He reveals to us what He wants us to do and who He wants us to be in His Word the Bible.
And so here Paul is praying that the Christians in Colossae would become so familiar with the commands of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the Bible that they would be able to live, as Paul says, in spiritual wisdom and understanding. In 1 Thessalonians 4:3 he says, “it is God’s will that you should be sanctified – that you should abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you should learn to control his own body” and so on. You see, God’s will concerns our moral, ethical and spiritual behaviour day to day. And in a sense, what Paul is saying here in Colossians 1 is not just that Christians would know God’s will intellectually, but that they may actually do God’s will. Knowing is one thing, doing is showing you really know.
But notice, Paul talks about spiritual wisdom and understanding – if you remember, the problem in the Church in Colossae was that false teachers were claiming that there were only a precious few who could attain to such wisdom – it was a secret will only open to the spiritual elite. And furthermore, that if the Christians wanted to be truly wise, they should listen carefully to these false teachers. Again, we are seeing that in our world – where the secret knowledge of dogmatic atheism is being trumpeted from the rooftops as being the cure-all of humanity. ‘Get rid of Christianity’ people say, ‘and we will be truly wise’. But Paul says that true wisdom is no secret province of intellectuals and professors – it is available to all through prayer and the Scriptures – and before you think it’s a wise thing to follow Dawkins and his disciples – that you will find true wisdom there – listen to the Apostle – true wisdom is only found in Christ and in Him alone.
So pray these things for those you love – pray that they would be filled with the knowledge of the will of God in all spiritual understanding – that they would dig deep roots down into the Bible and the sap of the Holy Spirit’s presence in them would cause them to grow and mature.
2. … that I may walk worthy of the Lord – when we are praying, isn’t it true that our motivation often is to try and get God to do what we want Him to – to fit in with our agendas? We want something, and so we pray for it – we don’t really care whether God wants it for us – we want Him to get in tune with us. But prayer is not about getting God to fit into our thinking, but bringing our thinking into line with His. It is getting the strength to live a life worthy of being called a Christian. It is getting the wisdom to know the answer, from the Word and God, being filled, after all, with the knowledge of His will, in every situation to the question, “what would Jesus want me to do here, how would He want me to speak and to behave?” See how thinking and praying in that way would transform our lives – it would clarify for us how to behave in our workplaces, in our leisure times – it would help us to know what kind of people we should be friendly with and what kind of things we should be doing. After all, surely if we claim to love Jesus, we should want to please Him in our lives. And if you want to know how to please Jesus and walk worthy of His name, you need to know what He wants – you need to be filled with the knowledge of His will.
But what does a life worthy of the Lord and pleasing to the Lord Jesus Christ look like? Paul tells us in the remainder of these verses:
a. Being Fruitful in Every Good Work – we have been saved for a reason, Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:10 that ‘we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which He has prepared for us in advance to do.’ A Christian life devoid of fruitfulness is no Christian life at all – the Christian, by the power of the Holy Spirit, should be producing love, joy, peace, patience, self control and so on. Are we praying for each other, not just that we would be wise Christians, but also that we would be fruitful Christians? After all, the gardener sows seed in order to produce fruit. A fruitful Christian is a faithful Christian – talk is cheap, it is in the doing that the real fruit comes forth.
b. Increasing in your Knowledge of God – one of the great things about having kids is being able to teach them how to do things – for example how to play golf and football. Now usually when you teach them anything, what you have to do is to take it in stages – you teach them something quite simple, and once they’ve got the hang of it, you teach them something a bit more complicated until they know more and are better than you are. That’s what Paul is saying here – God teaches you something and you get the hang of it, and then He teaches you something else – it’s a constant progression in the increase of our knowledge of Him. We know and do, and then God shows us more. Are we praying for that in our fellow Christians – that having known and doing, they may know more?
c. Being Strengthened for Endurance and Patience – another way of saying this is that we pray for others to have stamina in their Christian lives – to keep going despite the persecution they face, despite the circumstances which crowd in upon them – to keep loving, to keep joyful and to keep faithful to God. The Lord Jesus Himself had great stamina as He got through life and made His way to the cross – if we want to be like Him and to please Him, we need to have stamina too – not to give up at the first obstacle, but to keep going even when we feel like stopping. But such stamina is not a human achievement – it’s not something you can train yourself to be – it is a gift of God. It is ‘being enabled according to the might of His glory.’ When we pray for those we love in the Lord, we need to pray that God would grant them His strength so that they may have stamina in their faiths.
d. Giving thanks to the Father – thankfulness should be a defining mark of the Christian believer. The Christian who isn’t thankful to God doesn’t understand what God has done for him. Thankfulness, gratitude and joy in the Lord is a beautiful and wonderful attribute to see in another, and it is a serene and desireable thing to see in yourself. Grumpiness and complaining is an anathema to all God is and has done for us. After all, what do we have to complain about – God has ‘qualified you to participate in the inheritance of the saints in light’! The Christian who gets that, understands that and lives a life of joyful gratitude to God in view of that, is a beautiful and attractive person. And we pray that those we love may be thankful.
To walk worthy of the Lord means to be fruitful, increase in our knowledge of God, have spiritual stamina and to be thankful. And the path to such Christ pleasing behaviour lies in being filled with the knowledge and wisdom of God, and that through the Word of God. All these blessings are there for us to transport down in prayer to our loved ones and Christian friends. But do we love them enough to pray in this daring, regular and thoughtful way for them?
But for those of you who aren’t Christians, be comforted in knowing that we are praying for you – that God would send down His Spirit into your hearts to wake you up to your need of Jesus Christ – in Him, and in Him alone can you share in the inheritance of the saints in light. We want you to be there and we love you enough to pray regularly for God to pour down His blessings upon you. But maybe He is doing that right now and you know your need of Christ – if you do, do not harden your hearts, but respond in obedience and love – invite the Lord Jesus Christ to be Lord and Master of your Heart. AMEN