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Paul was a man of prayer. In Colossians 1:3 he said he’s praying always for the Colossians. In 1:9 he says, “We have not ceased to pray for you.” And now, after describing the new life that is ours in Christ in chapter 3, Paul calls us to be praying people.
Colossians 4:2-4, Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving; 3 praying at the same time for us as well, that God will open up to us a door for the word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been imprisoned; 4 that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak.
Martin Luther said, “As it is the business of tailors to make cloths and of cobblers to mend shoes, so it is the business of Christians to pray.” John Owen described prayer as “the vital breath of our spiritual life to God.” We see many heads around us bowed, but not in prayer. You’re at a light and look over to the car beside you and their head is bowed. You’re thinking, “Hey, that person is praying,” but no, they’re on their phone. If we prayed as much as we used our phones, we’d be a lot stronger spiritually.
There is one sure thing about prayer. While Twitter and Facebook and even TikTok are canceling people and groups who don’t agree with their radical agendas, you can be sure that God will never cancel you from His prayer platform established by Christ and available at all times.
So let’s talk about your prayer life. If there is one spiritual discipline in which we all come up short, it’s consistent praying. Regardless of all the encouragements in God’s Word to pray, most of us lack in praying as we should. Jesus said, “Men ought always to pray, and not to lose heart.” Over and over we’re exhorted to pray without ceasing. We need to be encouraged by these simple but compelling words from Paul about prayer.
Be devoted to prayer – “Devote yourselves to prayer” (v. 2a).
Devoted is a strong word. It means dogged determination, steadfastly attentive to, holding fast and not letting go. If you are devoted to a sport, you spend time thinking about it, reading about it, watching it, going out and playing it. To be devoted to prayer means you give unrelenting care to it. I love the description of Eleazar, the son of Dodo, one of David’s mighty men. 2 Samuel 23:10, “He arose and struck the Philistines until his hand was weary and clung to the sword.” That’s devotion. Never quitting. Holding on to prayer even when weary. Clinging to prayer. Determined you are not going to let Satan beat you away from your times of prayer.
George Mueller, the man of faith and founder of ten orphanages in Spurgeon’s day, said, “The great fault of the children of God is, they do not continue in prayer; they do not go on praying; they do not persevere. If they desire anything for God’s glory, they should pray until they get it.”
Prayer time may not always be for a large amount of time. There’s a time for flare prayers. Nehemiah heard that his people back in Jerusalem were distressed and the walls were being destroyed. He prayed about it to God in Nehemiah 1. As he thought about his distressed people back in Jerusalem, the king noticed Nehemiah’s sad face and asked, “What’s wrong? What would you request?” Immediately Nehemiah prayed to the God of heaven and then answered the king, “May I return to Judah and rebuild the city?” That’s a flare prayer. He prayed to the God of heaven and answered the king. If you are going in to talk to someone about something really important, you might want to spend good time in prayer before the meeting and then fire off a few flare prayers as you walk into the meeting and as you continue the discussion. That’s what I do many Sundays as I’m waiting to preach: “Lord, help me!”
Devoted to prayer means taking time to pray. Daniel prayed three specific times a day, and when his enemies tried to nail him for praying, guess what? He kept right on praying. Not unlike Pastor Coates in Canada who, when released, kept right on preaching! Now they’ve put two layers of chain link fence around the church to keep them from meeting. You can believe lots of prayer is going before God for Pastor Coates and his family and church.
Be devoted to prayer. In Acts 10:7 one of Cornelius’ soldiers was “in constant attendance.” That’s the same word as “devoted.” He was right there, ready to go. That’s what it means to be devoted to prayer. Always right there, ready to go, praising and petitioning God. How’s your prayer life? The early church was devoted to prayer in Acts 2. In Acts 6 the apostles said, “We must devote ourselves to prayer and the Word of God.”
Be devoted to prayer. This is the most common word for prayer. It includes praise and worshipping God, meditating on what God’s Word says about God or what God has done. It’s asking for your needs to be met and casting your concerns on Him. You can pray kneeling, standing, sitting, walking, driving (with your eyes open). You can pray by yourself, with others, in your small group, with a friend, and when we gather as a church to pray. Be devoted to prayer.
God has given us many promises that He is listening to us. It’s amazing that His ears are open to our prayers. He is able to answer our prayers according to His good will. He is our infinite, eternal, unchanging, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God who loves His children and urges us to come to Him like children, asking, seeking, and knocking. James Boice said one reason we fail to pray is that we think we can manage on our own, that we don’t need God’s help. I can tell you, I need Him. You need Him. We’re like King Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles 20. When the enemy presses in and you don’t know what to do, call out to God like Jehoshaphat, “Our eyes are on you!” God gave him a great victory that day.
Be alert in prayer – “keeping alert in it” (vs. 2b).
Remember those guys nodding off while Christ was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane? He had asked them to keep watch with Him. Then Jesus came back and found them sleeping. Here’s what He said in Matthew 26:41 “Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
The word “be alert” is the source of the name “Gregory.” Wake up. How often have you determined to spend some time in prayer and suddenly you are so sleepy! Prayer is not easy for us sinners. Our imagination can run all over the place. But like a good soldier, be on the alert! Prayer is a battle, a struggle, warfare. We live in enemy territory and prayer is one of God’s chief means to keep us on guard to fight temptation.
“But I run out of things to pray for pretty quickly.” That’s where meditation comes in. Don Whitney says the way to keep your prayer life healthy and not saying the same things over and over is to pray Scripture. Open the Psalms and use those words to talk to Him. The Puritans talked about the importance of reading the Word and then meditating on the Word to feed your prayer life. You can also use prayer helps like The Valley of Vision, a small book of Puritan prayers.
“But what is the point of praying? God is sovereign so what difference does my praying make?” Let’s start with “because God tells us to pray.” Obeying Him would be enough. But prayer is also a way to worship and praise God. Psalm 145:1, “I will extol you my God O King.” Prayer brings God’s power into your heart to resist sin and temptation. Pray for God to open your eyes to see wonderful things in God’s Word. Pray for endurance to handle hard times. God may have let those hard times come to help you see your need of Him. Pray for God to kindle that spiritual fire in your heart. If you lack wisdom, ask God and He’ll give it to you as long as your goal is for His glory. Our church children are singing, “Why worry, when you can pray?” Philippians 4:6 says, “Don’t worry about anything; pray about everything.”
Be thankful throughout your prayers – “with an attitude of thanksgiving” (2c).
A Christian who believes in the sovereignty of God (what other kind of Christian is there?) must be a person filled with the attitude of gratitude. Thanksgiving isn’t a separate item in the prayer list but an attitude that should saturate all our praying. To fail to give thanks is to act like a godless idolater. Romans 1:21 says, “Even though they knew God, they didn’t honor Him as God, or give thanks.”
Five times in this short epistle of Colossians Paul calls us to give thanks.
Col. 1:12 – Joyously giving thanks to the Father for our salvation.
Col. 2:6 – Walk in Christ, overflowing with thanksgiving.
Col. 3:15 – You were called in one body, and be thankful.
Col. 3:17 – Do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.
Col. 4:2 – Keep alert in prayer with thanksgiving.
Remember those grumblers out in the wilderness? God said, “How long shall I put up with this evil congregation who are grumbling against Me?” You won’t be grumbling when you’re giving thanks. This verse says the default attitude of a growing, healthy believer is thankfulness. Why?
- You know your God loves you and holds you in the hollow of His hand. You are totally blessed in Christ; all the wealth of eternity is yours in Christ Jesus! Don’t you pity unbelievers? They have no heavenly Father who watches over them, who cares for them with an everlasting love, who protects them with His sovereign power. They have no God of grace and glory to delight and rejoice in. They have no Lord and King to rule them and direct their steps and guide them. There will be no welcoming hand to receive them into heaven when they die. We should pity and grieve for lost people.
- Your God is sovereign over your life and will never allow anything to come to you but what is for His glory and your good (Romans 8:28). Stonewall Jackson, a well-known general in the American Civil War, loved Christ. He believed in God’s sovereignty and spent lots of time in prayer. At one point he wrote to his wife, “I am so thankful to our ever-kind heavenly Father. He continually showers blessings on me.” He knew God was in control of his life.
- Your God is powerful and has all the resources you will ever need to live in the fullness of His joy. He doesn’t always answer your prayers the way you would like. Paul asked Him to remove that thorn three times. Christ said, “No, but My grace is sufficient for you; My power is made perfect in your weakness.” God uses thorns to help you grow and become more like Christ.
- The greatest reason to be thankful all the time is because God has shown you mercy and grace when you really deserve His judgment and wrath. How patient God is with our sin and rebellion. He has no reason to put up with us except for His mercy and patience. He sent His Son to bear the wrath we deserve and provided His perfect righteousness imputed to our account. He sent His Spirit to open our eyes to see our lost condition and gives us the gift of faith to trust in Him. He sent someone to share the gospel with us and to point us to Christ as our only hope of forgiveness and eternal life. It was by His grace that any of us believed. Surely our prayers should be saturated with gratitude.
Be gospel-focused in your prayers.
Colossians 4:3-4, praying at the same time for us as well, that God will open up to us a door for the word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been imprisoned; 4 that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak.
We ought to pray about everything, from our daily bread to dealing with sinful habits to the sick and needy and for peace in our land. But Paul sharpens the focus of our praying here to the gospel. In 2 Thessalonians 3:1 Paul asked them “to pray for us, that the word of the Lord will run and be glorified.” In Ephesians 6:19-20 he asked for the same thing: “that he would open his mouth in boldness and make the mystery of the gospel known.” He’s in prison and would appreciate release, but the most important issue is the gospel.
We know that the work of the gospel is not a human matter. Paul asks them to pray “that God may open a door for our message.” If there’s a door for the word to be effective, it is God’s work. We depend on God to speak forth the mystery of the gospel of Christ. Paul was concerned that the gospel be crystal clear, with no falseness to it. So pray for each other, for our teachers, our missionaries, our students, for all those giving out the gospel, that we won’t trim off parts that people don’t like or soften it to make it more appealing. Pray we won’t modify or adapt to the cultural issues of our day.
Our prayers must be gospel-focused. The gospel is a mystery that is unfolded in the Scriptures. Paul said “I’m not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God to save all who believe.” You’d think Paul wouldn’t need prayer to keep the gospel clear. But the gospel is constantly under attack, just like it is today. World philosophies line up at the doors of the church to bring in false teaching and replace the truth of the gospel. Biblical prayer keeps us alert and true.
The mystery of Christ includes all the great truths of salvation. We are talking about God Almighty sending His Son to become a human being, the unique God-Man on earth walking in the land of Palestine, perfect in every way, without sin, crucified according to the Father’s plan, propitiating or satisfying the wrath of God we sinners deserved, fulfilling every requirement of divine justice for the offences of those God would save: our sins on Him; His righteousness imputed to us. He was buried and raised again, seen by men, ascended as the God-Man into the heavens, and is now seated at the Father’s right hand as our Representative, our High Priest to make intercession for us.
The mystery of Christ includes salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, based on the Scriptures alone. Paul says, “Pray that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak.” Give the gospel in a crystal clear way. Don’t smudge it, cover it, or altar it in any way. The gospel message is the power of God to save all who believe. It is the one and only message that brings sinners to God.
This is why we need to keep our praying gospel-focused. Pray that our church always keeps the gospel free of all worldly, cultural weeds. Pray that we will preach the gospel clearly, accurately, strongly and persuasively, trusting God to do the heart work of regenerating lost people and building up His people. Paul knew very well that no matter how knowledgeable or persuasive his speech, his preaching alone would never save anyone unless God’s sovereign mercy blessed the Word and opened hearts to receive it. Some sow, others water, but God gives the increase (1 Corinthians 3:6).
Your prayer life is a crucial spiritual discipline. Be devoted to prayer, stay alert in prayer, and saturate your prayers with thanksgiving. Pray that we would all give out the gospel simply and clearly and that it would be glorified through us. Pray that God would open doors for witnessing opportunities. Keep sowing and watering, trusting God to give the increase.