Essentials for Prayer

--- Welcome to week eight of Finding Stability, which is our women's Bible study through the book of Colossians. This is our final week, and we're gonna cover in chapter four, verses two to 18. There are three notable sections in this week's lesson, and I'm gonna approach it this way. The first section is talking to God. The second section is talking to people who need God. And the final section is fulfilling our ministry that we've been given. Obviously, in the first section, talking to God, we're talking about prayer in this. And I love spending time in the Word. You know, you've read Colossians before, probably. You've read other passages before. But we slow down, and we write out these words. And for me, this first verse, verse two, was so impactful this week. This was a big change in my prayer life. Maybe you're like me, that your prayer life, over the course of the time that you've been in Christ, has been all the way over the spectrum, from I have forgotten to pray at all this week, to I am really invested in prayer, and I'm very disciplined, don't we? We just, we don't stay in one place. We kind of go a little bit back and forth. And so this is such good inspiration to bring us to that point on the spectrum, where we are once again devoted to prayer. And that's the impact that it had on me. I don't know if you've noticed, as you've been writing out your scriptures, and if you have followed the color markings that I suggested, did you notice that the last three weeks, all you needed was your pink pencil? Everything that you've been underlining is in pink. And that's because those are the actions that we should take. And so the purple pencils have described our position in Christ, we are in Christ, we are in him, we are the body of Christ. The blue has shown the changes that we experienced. We have been transferred, reconciled, forgiven. The green underlines have described the benefits that we have in Christ, wisdom, understanding, power, stable, steadfast. And then the pink underlines show us the actions that we should take because of the purple and blue and the green. And that's Paul's progression in all of his letters when he writes a letter. He first establishes our position in Christ as believers. He highlights the changes that we have experienced and then the benefits that we have. And then he always moves on to how then shall we live? What should we do and how should we do it? And those have been the pink things. What I wanna do is I'm gonna start by moving back to chapter three, verse 17. I'll put it on the screen for you and we're gonna read this verse because I feel like it's such a great segue.

All right, when we studied that verse last week, what followed that verse then was an entire paragraph of relational experiences of how we should do those things. Husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants. But if we could take all of those examples of relationships and just swipe them aside, then we're left with verse 17, which segues right into our first verse. So I'm gonna read 317 again.

And four, two,

And it's just that one verse that we're gonna start with. I'm also gonna show it to you in the NASB version because it has a few phrases that I would like to use. So look at how the NASB renders this. Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving. So in either translation, we see three key elements here. Devoted, alert, and thankful. And I wanna work through those three elements that we see. The first one is devoted. Devote yourselves to prayer. Continue steadfastly. Prayer can be exciting and prayer can be rewarding, but is prayer easy? Sometimes the easiest thing about prayer is quitting. But sometimes prayer feels to us like a budget or an exercise program. You start an exercise program and initially you're inspired, you're empowered. It's like, yes, we are gonna go, we are gonna do this. But then pretty soon the routine sets in and you realize that it's going to require a habit. It's going to require you to continue in that steadfastly. And we realize that it's gonna require some discipline. We know better about when we start things. We know not to expect amazing results, okay? When we start an exercise program, somehow though we think by next Monday I'm gonna be ready for the 10K. Or we start a budget in October and we think, I am gonna save enough for Hawaii at spring break. Or when we start to pray, when we come back into this realm of praying, we think, we expect that our patience will lengthen by a mile, our temper will evaporate and all of our lovelands will get saved by Tuesday. We do, we expect immediate results. And sometimes we're disappointed when we don't get those immediate results. But it should remind us, this isn't just starting and seeing something immediately, this is a lifestyle of praying. This is a lifestyle and that's why we lean on these words that Paul used here, continue steadfastly. I love that. Some parts of our Christian life flourish best with discipline and habit. The determination of our mind and our will. But prayer also brings us some benefits. And I wanted to share some of those things that we benefit from. We spend time interceding, we ask that the Lord would do things, that's good, we should. But we also benefit in ways that are beyond our intercession. For example, I thought of when we are devoted to prayer, we realize that we are not as self-sufficient as we thought we were when we weren't devoted to prayer. That we need, we cultivate a sense of dependency on the Lord. When we're devoted to prayer, it reminds us to set our minds on things above. And that is what is required in order for us to fulfill all those pink things that we underlined. And when we're devoted to prayer, we begin to hear ourselves say things that might need adjustments. Have you ever been thinking through something and then you start sharing it with a friend and you say, well, I think this and this. And as the words come out of your mouth, you go, that's dumb, that's not gonna work at all. But until you gave voice to it, you didn't realize that the same thing happens in prayer. When we hear what we're saying, it helps us to adjust our attitude just a little bit. So devoted to prayer. The second point we see here is keeping alert or being watchful. Our minds love to wander when we pray. Our mind is rarely inclined to spiritual work. We need to train it towards spiritual work. Anyway, that has been my experience, is that it requires a training. But I'm not alone, I know I'm not alone, because I see in the scriptures that even the disciples struggled with this. In a minute, I'm gonna show you from Matthew 26, when Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, and he had asked Peter and John, would they please pray with him? And then he comes back and he finds them sleeping and he says to Peter, look at this in verse 40.

That word watch there is the same Greek word that Paul is using here. Be watchful in it, be alert in it. And Jesus said here,

Isn't that the truth? Isn't that what we experience? That resonates with me. Of course my spirit wants to pray, but this flesh, my mind, and all of this, it is so weak and maybe the falling asleep thing is something that you can relate to, but for me it's the wandering thoughts. I can wander through Albertsons and think, what is it that I'm supposed to be buying here? And then I go home and I start praying and all of a sudden the whole list downloads. Like my mind thinks about all kinds of things I'm not supposed to be thinking about when I intend to pray. I've learned some tips from Elizabeths in my life. I have special Elizabeths. One is Elizabeth Elliott that I've read and listened to a lot of her work. And I know she always said, of course, this was back in the day before any devices where we could speak into. But she said, I never go to prayer that I don't have a notebook there to capture those wandering thoughts. Sometimes it's just like tomato soup. That's what I was supposed to get. Sometimes it's things that the Lord speaks to us that we need to attend to. Or my friend, I need to connect with her and find out how she's doing. So a tip that I learned from her is pray with a notebook. Get those thoughts out of the way to go back to the discipline of prayer and capture those wandering thoughts. From Elizabeth George, the other Elizabeth in my life, I remember one time her talking about when she was trying to cultivate this habit of prayer. And it was so hard to find the time and the discipline. There was always something to be done. And she would say, I just got a kitchen timer. And I sat down at the kitchen table and I set it for five minutes. It's like, I will pray right now for five minutes. And she did. And initially, doesn't that sound so unspiritual? Like, we think we should be inspired to pray. But I loved that idea of just do it. Just set the timer. This is how you bring your mind and your will into agreement. So the third thing that we see here, boy, I got to get moving or we are never going to. We're on the first verse still, is with thanksgiving. We are to pray continually with thanksgiving. Cultivate contentment. Contentment with God, contentment with my life, contentment with what God has chosen for my life. We covered this two weeks ago, cultivating contentment and telling God in prayer that you are thankful for what he has given in your life, for what he has assigned in your life, for what he has allowed in your life, what he might give in your life, what he might assign, what he might allow, and saying, Lord, it's your choice. These things are your choice. I am thankful for your choices. A handful of years ago at retreat, I remember part of what we did was we went through Habakkuk. And that changed my prayer life significantly. Just one phrase that I pulled out of there, it's not in the scripture, but it was my summary of the book of Habakkuk. And that is to pray for things in my life, things that are on my heart, Lord, in your time and in your way. If we can pray and just be, that's a level of thankfulness. Like, Lord, I am thankful for however you're going to resolve this in your time and your way. So that's where our pink underlines become relevant to us. Am I devoted to prayer? Am I alert in prayer? And am I thankful in prayer? In order to say yes to those things, we got to start with the confidence that God even hears our prayers. So I want to show you this scripture, 1 John 5, 14. This is from the NIV.

Because some of us have gotten distracted from a routine of prayer. And some of us have lost heart in praying for something or someone. We've just quit. And maybe we've become discouraged because we expected God to answer in our time and our way. And we need to go back and say, Lord, your time and your way. All right, let's go to verse 3. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison. That I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak. We're still in our first section, which is talking to God. But this is a great segue, because Paul is requesting prayer from them to help him talk to God, or talk to people who need God, to open the door for the word. Now, the first thing we think about here is you would think that Paul would ask for prayer to change his circumstances. Of all the things he might say, if they came to Paul like we do to one another, how can I be praying for you? We would expect that he would say, well, would you pray that enough people will come visit me and bring me the things that I need? Or would you pray that I get out of here and get back to the work that the Lord has called me to? But no, he says, pray for me to have the right words, to say the right things, to talk to the people, for an open door for ministry. The second thing about this is we think to ourselves, well, Paul, you're the professional. You're the apostle. Do you really need me to pray for you to do what God's called me to do, or what God's called you to do? And so I love this idea that he asked for prayer from this baby Christian church to do his work. And it reminds me that not a one of us ever outgrow our need to be dependent on the Lord. We always need God to strengthen us, equip us to do what he's called us to do. I'm sure that prison was not Paul's preference. And maybe you don't prefer some aspects of your life either, because we all have a prison-ish thing going on in our minds. Maybe it's our health. We say, well, if only my health was better. If only I had more energy. If only I could drive at night or whatever. Or maybe it's our job. Maybe your job feels like a prison. And if someone asked you, how can I pray, you would never think to yourself, well, pray that I would really, there would be an open door for ministry in my job. Your temptation would be, yeah, pray that I get out of this job. I want a different job, right? And maybe for some, it's a home life that either feels, it's not, but it feels restrictive. It feels dysfunctional. And you think, if only I could be done with this situation or get out of this situation. So we all have something in our life that feels restrictive. But this inspires me to not focus on that, but yet to pray that we will minister through that. That's what the apostle was asking for. So when someone says, how can I pray for you? Well, to be able to influence people positively for the Lord with the gospel in the midst of my current circumstances. That is a good way to pray. So now this leads us to the second category, which is talking to people who need God. Look at verse 5. Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. So first, Paul asked for prayer that his ministry would be effective, and then he wants their ministry to be effective, to walk in wisdom toward outsiders. This is the first time in this book that Paul has mentioned anyone outside of Christ. Many times you've underlined in Christ, right? That believers, born again believers are in Christ, but this word outsiders literally means outside of Christ. So it's not a derogatory term. It's like, oh, you're an outsider. It's just the way it is. Either you're in Christ or you're out of Christ. And so that's what outsiders means here. For us, for those who are inside Christ, we have kingdom benefits that sometimes we forget about. All the things that you underlined that are benefits, like understanding the things of the Lord, the Holy Spirit bringing understanding. That's not the case with outsiders. And I wanna show you what Paul wrote to the Corinthians. Look at 1 Corinthians 2, 14.

This is why we need wisdom as we relate to outsiders. Because they don't accept the things of the Spirit yet. And so it requires wisdom. It's a great mistake for us to expect people that are not in Christ to conform themselves to the image of Christ. Now, let me just say about that. We live in organized societies with laws, rules, don't steal cars, don't murder people, don't do these things. And we expect that even the natural person is able to bring some level of restraint and some level of conformity to those laws. And we can, to a certain degree, but look. Look at how it doesn't always work that great. There's a lot of problems with it. But anyway, the point of this verse is that as we live with outsiders and as we speak with outsiders, Paul gave us three concepts to keep in view, wisdom, urgency, and grace. So let's look at those. First we need wisdom. How we relate to people. I'm going to switch from calling them outsiders to non-Christians for a minute, okay? How we relate to non-Christians. How we have a feel for the moment. How we understand what is an opportunity and what is not an opportunity. That is important. And Jesus said, don't throw your pearls before swine. And so, you know, before the pandemic, I used to fly just a little bit, a couple of times a year and go do a women's retreat and I always loved those opportunities. Like who's going to sit next to me? And not everything is an opportunity. You know, somebody plops down, they open the book and it's like, well, okay, that's that. But then, but, but the wisdom tells you just listen and watch. And one gal, one time I was flying to Portland and she was right next to me, asked just a few questions and here she was flying home because she had visited her sister who was dying of cancer. Now that's an opportunity. Because we're thinking about eternity now. When you're surrounded with someone who is dying. So that feel, that wisdom to know what is and what isn't. And we need to ask God for discernment on how to deal with non-Christians. The second thing is make the best use of time. And this is what I say about urgency, because remember, we've often said non-Christians don't read their Bibles, non-Christians read us. And so we need to make the best use of time, again, have the wisdom there. And there's a lot, when we're talking about making the best use of time, there's all kinds of things that the Holy Spirit might show us about that. I'm just going to tell you what he showed me this week as I was rolling this over. And that was how available is my time? You know, it's so common, somebody will say, well, how have you been? Oh, busy, been busy. And we are, sometimes we are over busy and we have our schedule just packed, jam packed full of things to do. And I wonder how available we are in the midst of that busy schedule with good things. But I think sometimes that this is one of the enemy's playgrounds in our life. Let's just keep her spinning, spinning, spinning, and she won't be available for anybody or anything because she'll be so busy. And so I'm going to switch this week, you can come and ask me, how have you been? And I'm going to try to say, available. And I'll just watch the person's face and I'll go, what is she talking about? But that's my heart. Like I don't want to immediately respond and say, oh, I'm just busy. My schedule's jam packed full. I mean, in my heart, I want to be available. That's making the best use of time for me in this moment. And then grace, words that are gracious. And I want to show you Psalm 19, 14, because I always think of this.

The words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart. Whatever my heart thinks about tends to come out to the outside. And so we need to seek help and ask the Lord to be filling the words of our mouth with gracious words. Grace instead of complaining. Grace instead of cynicism. Unless someone asks you for your account and your mother's maiden name, then it's okay. You can be cynical about that. But grace instead of politics. Gracious words, gracious words. And Paul says, seasoned with salt. I love salty food. I probably eat too much salty food, but I love a really nice salty slice of pepperoni pizza with a tall glass of LaCroix to go with it. It's just such a great companion. Because the salt gives me a thirst, right? And you know the saying, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You know that. But if you give a little salt, it goes a long way. And not only will make a horse thirsty, it makes people thirsty. So to me, that's a way of thinking about gracious words, seasoned with salt. Do I leave a conversation making someone a little thirsty for what I have? A little thirsty to know the Lord? This inspired me. So okay, let's move to the final category, fulfilling your ministry. Paul closes many of his letters with personal greetings, information, thank yous. These final verses remind us that the kingdom of God does not advance on the brilliance or the courage of one man, but God works with an army of people who love him to make himself known. And we're introduced here to some of those army people. This is not just the Apostle Paul. Here's the backup army. Verse seven, Tychicus, who carried this letter back to Colossae. Tychicus will tell you all about my activities. He is a beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord. I have sent him to you for this very purpose that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts. And with him, Onesimus, our faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you. They will tell you of everything that has taken place. Now I want you to note those words, how Tychicus was described. Beloved brother, faithful minister, fellow servant. I would love someone to describe me that way. Those are very tender words. And Onesimus too, using those same faithful and beloved brother. Now the interesting thing about Onesimus is that he actually was from Colossae. He was a runaway slave. He ran away from his master Philemon, probably stole from him, ended up in Rome, ran into the apostle Paul, got saved, became born again, became an insider, was in Christ. And so now Paul, in his brilliance, is writing a letter to the Colossians, give it to Tychicus, send it home to the church. Writing a letter to Philemon, giving it to Onesimus, his master, telling Onesimus, go back. And this letter to Philemon says, okay, receive this guy back. He's a brother now. He's in Christ. I'll take care of anything that, if he owes you a debt, I'll take care of it, which basically means I don't want to hear about it, right? That's the way I see it anyway. But I love that even Onesimus, whose name is useful, is described in that same way. Verse 10, Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, greets you and Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, concerning whom you have received instructions. If he comes to you, welcome him. And Jesus, who is called Justice, these are the only men of the circumcision among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God, and they have been a comfort to me. Verse 12, Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that they may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God. We talked about him very much earlier in our study, for I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and Hierapolis. Verse 14, Luke, the beloved physician, greets you, as does Demas. Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea and to Nympha and the church in her house. And then finally, Paul addresses again the entire church in Colossae in verse 16. And see when this letter has been read among you. Have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans, and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea. Now, that letter may indeed have been lost to us. We might not have it. Or it is possible that that actually is the letter to the Ephesians, which is directed called the letter to the Laodiceans right here. Either way, because Ephesians was written about the same time as Colossians. But it's verse 17 that I want to get to. And say to Archippus, or Archippus, see that you fulfill the ministry that you have received in the Lord. And so Paul calls him out by name of all the people, says, see that you fulfill the ministry. This is what I want us to take to heart as we wrap up this whole study. learned in Colossians, because we fully understand who we are in Christ. We understand the changes that he has made in our lives. We understand the benefits that we receive. We underlined all the pink things. And the Lord would say to each one of us, now, see that you fulfill the ministry that you've been given by the Lord. Each one of us can write our name in there. This is how we practice what we receive, fulfilling that ministry. In the last verses, Paul says, I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. He said, remember my chains, grace be to you. And so we have a mental image of Paul taking the pen and with his own hand writing these very last verses might have been painful. He might have even had, you know, difficulty in moving his hand in that way. He might have been writing slowly. He might have been writing in large letters like he said he did to the Galatians. But he says here, remember my chains. And what I love about that is the reminder, the inspiration. Paul just told us, I will say, fulfill the ministry to which you've been called. And the next thing he says, remember my chains. I'm fulfilling my ministry in my chains. So whatever chains, whatever prisons you have, whatever things you don't feel like you have or you can get rid of or whatever, in order to do what God has called you to do, Paul says, remember, I'm doing it. Sometimes that helps. Sometimes that goes a long way with me. It's like, if I can see you do it, you show me the example. I'm going to follow that example. So I love that. We need to remember Paul's chains. I'm just going to end with a very short little poem. It's almost sounds like a 1950s-ish poem that kind of ties this together and it goes like this. We each write a gospel, a chapter a day, by deeds, looks and likes, the things that we say. Our actions declare if we're passive or true, what is the gospel according to you? Father, we thank you for this entire study and Lord, this inspiration at the end about how, what we do, what we say, how we are to say it, how we are to do it. And Lord, this last week has broadened our perspective beyond those relationships you had mentioned last week and now to just everyone, particularly to outsiders. And so Lord, would you help us be mindful of those around us that are not yet in Christ? And Lord, knowing that you desire all people to be saved and that we're part of this army. It's not just the brilliance of one man who is going to bring the gospel to them, but it takes all of us, Lord, and the things that we do each day. Lord, we need you. You know how weak we are. You know how, well, you know how much we need you. And so we ask you as we conclude this lesson, Lord, that you would fill us with your spirit, that you would give us everything that we need and bring these reminders to our mind, Lord, when we need them, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. ---