Colossians 4:2-6
2 Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.3 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.4 Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.5 Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity.6 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.
Colossians 4:2-6 HOW DO WE REMAIN DEVOTED TO PRAYER? Springford Baptist Church: August 21, 2022.
How has prayer changed your life?
The time and energy that people give to the pursuit of being physically fit is meant to result in change and to be noticeable.
Likewise with prayer!
Some of you may feel that at your age it’s too late to change your level of physical fitness. Pretty much, “It is what it is.”
Actually, we can continue to make choices and to include activities in each day that will strengthen our bodies and lead to better health.
Likewise with prayer! Even if prayer is something you feel you don’t really understand or have much experience with, it is not too late to invite God to show you the life changing benefits of prayer.
This morning, I want us to consider how prayer can change our lives and deepen our relationship with God and our understanding of God. How can prayer make us more spiritually fit? In our desire to understand, HOW DOES KNOWING GOD CHANGE OUR LIVES? we have been working our way through the New Testament Book of Colossians, during these summer months. Today we reach the end of that book and the end of our summer sermon series. As Paul is concluding his thoughts in this letter to the Colossians, he emphasizes the importance, the essential nature of prayer for Christian believers.
Prayer does require discipline. Paul writes here (vs. 2) “Devote yourselves to prayer…” Is there a time each day that you are committed to spend in prayer?
Many are in the habit of praying before meals and at bedtime.
Being devoted to prayer requires more than this.
We do make time for what we consider important. So how important do we consider prayer and how much time are we willing to devote to prayer?
Our devotion to prayer reflects our devotion to God.
As we pray, we will discover the closeness of God in such a way that we will want to pray more.
When we are praying, God can show us things we need to know because we are in an attitude of openness to Him!
This next part of verse 2 instructs us to be watchful and thankful in prayer. What do you think this means? If we are watchful in prayer, we are alert. We are actively looking for what God wants to show us and how He may want to change our outlook. This connects with being thankful. How so?
When we pray, it is not wise to assume how God will answer our prayers. God will respond to our prayers, but not necessarily the way that we expect.
Being watchful is anticipating and expecting that God will answer and looking for those answers so that we can thank Him.
Don’t all of us have examples of God not answering our prayers in the way we had hoped, but in the answers that do come finding reason to thank Him?
What is your personal example of this?
When we are thanking God, we are recognizing that God has met with us in our prayers and in the outcome.
vs. 3 “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.” Prayer is not just to be self-centred, although certainly we should pray for ourselves and our immediate concerns. But prayer is this great opportunity to lift up others, to care beyond ourselves, to see God bring answers in someone else’s life because we were praying.
We should not hesitate to ask others to pray for us.
Here Paul is requesting prayer that God will open a door for them to proclaim the gospel message. This is not selfish. This prayer shows a deep concern beyond himself. As Paul writes this, he is under house arrest in Rome. However, Paul is not focusing on his own confining circumstances, but on the possibilities of what God can do through Him.
Isn’t that a good example of how we could pray and ask others to pray? This is another aspect of remaining devoted in prayer. Our prayers can be for the possibilities of what God can do no matter what is happening to us.
vs.4 “Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.” When we read our Bibles, we can see that Paul did have a gift for clear expression and explanation. He was able to express very complicated theological truth in ways that people could grasp and understand. Why then does he ask the people at Colossae to pray that He will proclaim the mystery of Christ clearly? He does not presume upon his natural abilities. He knows that God must be at work in every situation in order for it to succeed. Paul could try his best to proclaim God’s truth clearly, but unless God is working as a result of persistent prayer to open people’s hearts and minds to Jesus Christ, the clarity won’t be there.
Aren’t you grateful that we have this resource of prayer? As we are seeing the way that God keeps on moving through our prayers, our lives are changed and we want to welcome more and more of what God can do!
vs. 5 “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders(those who have not yet met Jesus); make the most of every opportunity.”
The only way we can be sure to make the most of every opportunity is to be praying and to let God arrange and carry out what He intends through us.
When we see these things happen as a result of our prayers (in other words not just our lives changing, but the lives of others changing because we have been praying),we will be motivated. We will want to pray more and to be even more devoted to prayer!
vs. 6 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. Can’t we all recognize how essential prayer will be if our conversations are to be always full of grace, well seasoned so that we will know how to answer everyone.
There can be ideal opportunities in our conversations to see God at work as a result of our prayers. We will know that acting alone we could not know what to say or how to handle various challenging situations, but when we pray and allow God to take over, we can watch for what happens.
We cannot expect to be spiritually fit without God’s Word and we cannot expect to be spiritually fit without prayer! God continues to have significant plans for what can happen as we His people are praying! We can pray for each other consistently that we will be devoted to prayer being watchful and thankful.
When our lives are devoted to prayer, we will become more and more devoted to God. We will know God more and our knowing God will result in our lives being changed!