A Model Prayer

Well, one who knew how to make blessing out of trial was certainly the Apostle Paul. We're looking at the book of Colossians on Sunday nights and I invite your attention to Colossians chapter 1. Paul knew what it was like to be in prison and yet being in prison never stopped him from ministering. There were times when he was in prison he decided to witness to the jailer. There were times when he was in prison when he decided to write letters of thanks to churches and there were times in prison when he decided to write other letters of encouragement and challenge and correction to churches and to individuals. One of those letters is the book to the Colossians. We've been looking at the introduction to that book and we have seen that Paul thanked God for the Colossians in verses 3 through 8 when we were last in this book. We saw that Paul prayed for them and as he prayed for them he thanked God for their faith, hope and love. That trio of characteristics that Paul was often commending churches for or asking God that churches would observe and exhibit in their lives. But he thanked God for the Colossians. To verse 9 of chapter 1 he is still talking about his prayer for them and what that prayer involves and really what we find here in these verses is a model prayer. Paul's prayers and his epistles are very interesting. They are quite unlike many of our prayers which are often just Christ for help or requests for the physical needs of other people and certainly those are legitimate requests. But often our prayers go no further than that. One of the great studies of the New Testament is to study the prayers of the Apostle Paul and see what he prayed for. There is a sense in which this is a model prayer for how we should pray for others that our prayers for others should go just beyond helping them in trial or difficulty or physical need but also some real spiritual depth to this prayer and that's the way we ought to pray for others. There is a sense in which this is a model prayer in that it exhibits what God wants for each of us, what God expects of us in our lives and what His desire, what His heart is for us as His children. So this would be a good prayer to pray for ourselves and ask that God would enable us to fulfill the qualities found in this prayer. As Paul prays for the Colossians, he pathras has given him their pastor, has given him a good report of the church and he thanks God for them in verses 3 through 8. Then he says in verse 9, for this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. In this prayer which goes on through verse 14, Paul has two major requests that he prays for the Colossian church to request we would do well to pray for ourselves and others that we pray for. The first request is prayer for clear direction and that's what we just read in verse 9. He says since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying and we are asking God to fill you with the knowledge of His will. Now man thirsts for knowledge. There is a great thirst for knowledge. It is a thirst for knowledge which calls man to explore the solar system. Try to find out what was on the moon. Expand our knowledge of those planets and our moon around us. That was because of our thirst for knowledge. It was because of man's thirst for knowledge that he explored the intricacies and mysteries of the atom and learned how to, in a sense, control to manipulate the atomic world. It's because of man's thirst for knowledge that we've had breakthroughs in medicine, breakthroughs in technology. And those are all good things. I believe God intends us to exhibit and exercise that thirst for knowledge and seek out what He has built into His creation. Verse 25, verse 2 says, it is the glory of God to conceal a matter. It is the glory of kings to search out a matter. That's a wonderful verse. I love the balance of that verse. It's almost like God is purposely playing hide and seek with us. When He created the universe, He hid a bunch of stuff. And He said, now it's your responsibility to find it, to search it out. And it is man's thirst for knowledge which causes him to make discoveries of things that God has built into His universe and His wonderful creative power in His imagination, what God has put into this universe and man discovers it. And man applods himself when He discovers it. And really, we ought to applaud the creator who put it there in the first place and enabled man to exercise the knowledge to be able to do that. But it is man's thirst for knowledge that is a wonderful expression of God-given ability and kind of likeness to the image of our creator, really. But the greatest knowledge we can ever seek for is the knowledge of God's will. And that's what Paul prays for. He's praying for the Colossians that they will be filled with the knowledge of His will. Now, certainly, the knowledge of God's will is very difficult and sometimes mysterious endeavor, isn't it? One of the greatest questions we have in the Christian life is how do we determine the will of God? What is the will of God? And all of us have gone through periods of our lives where we've struggled with understanding what the will of God is for us. I recall back 25 years ago when I was pastoring in North Carolina in 1980, actually this was the summer of 1979 when I was asked by a church in Florida to come down and preach for them there. I wanted to explore the possibility of whether or not it would be advisable for us to come be their pastor. And so I agreed to go down for a weekend and I really began praying about the Lord's will. And I'm no different than anybody else. You know, I'm looking for signs and things to drop out of the heavens and figure out what is God's will in this. And I remember reading a verse in Acts. I don't even remember what verse it was, but it was some verse about Paul being told to go into this city and stay there. I think it was Corinth or maybe Ephesus and stay there. And I just took that as from the Lord. That's a sign. You know, I'm pastoring in rural North Carolina. There's not a city anywhere close to us. I'm being asked to consider Winter Haven, Florida, which not a huge city, but compared to where I was with big city. And so I thought this is the Lord's sign. This is His will. It's right for me to go. So we got to Florida and we were staying in a family's home. They were gone when we got there and they'd left us instructions as to where to get the key and get in. We're sitting there and we're just sitting there talking and all of a sudden one of those violent Florida thunderstorms came up. And if you've spent much time in Florida, you know that they can be pretty rowdy at times and the lightning is crashing all around and trees are falling over the highway and all of a sudden a lightning flash came through the television set and a lightning bolt I'm not kidding you at all came halfway across the room. We're sitting there on the couch watching all this happen. And now I'm trying to figure out what does that tell me about the will of God? Is that Satan trying to scare me off? Is that God telling me don't you dare come down here? I'll kill you. Is that God saying come down here and you'll see great miraculous works of power? I'm not sure what it was and I still haven't figured it out to this day. But a lot of times trying to read circumstances and figure out God's will from reading all this stuff is a dangerous way to go about figuring out God's will. In fact I really don't think that's what Paul's talking about here when he talks about the knowledge of his will. He describes for us a little bit more about what he's talking about. Look at it again in verse 9. He's asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will. Here it is through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. There's a sense in which he's saying that the knowledge of God's will comes through this spiritual wisdom and understanding. That's how you know what the will of God is. Well what is spiritual wisdom and understanding? What wisdom is the ability to apply knowledge to real life to be able to know what to do? That's wisdom. Spiritual wisdom is the ability to apply what knowledge we have from God's word to situations in life to be able to figure out what we should do. That's spiritual wisdom. And then the word understanding is a word which means literally to be able to have the insight to distinguish truth from error. Now where do we get that kind of insight? Certainly it's not ours naturally. We get insight to detect truth from error from a knowledge of God's word. So really what Paul is talking about here is being able to take God's word and apply it to situations so that we know how to live. That's God's will. Being able to take God's word and distinguish truth from error so that we know God's will. So really determining God's will at least in this context is the ability to take scripture and apply it to life and be able to make wise decisions. Now I think really God's will is much more simple than sometimes we try to make it by reading all the signs as to what He wants us to do. I think God wants us to take from His word the principles of how to live the Christian life and that's living in His moral will. I think He wants us to take His word and understand truth from error and accept truth and follow truth and shun error that's living in His will. And then when you have to make decisions about whether or not to go to Florida or whether or not to do this or buy this car or buy this house or whatever, if you are living according to the principles of His word and distinguishing truth from error, God will open the right doors, close the right doors, providentially by His hand, lead you to wherever He wants you to be and to do whatever He wants you to do. It's not a matter of trying to figure it out ahead of time. It's a matter of saying, Lord, I just want to make sure I understand Your word and I'm living according to the principles of Your word. I'm living by spiritual wisdom and understanding. If I'm doing that, then I have the only knowledge of Your will you really want me to have. You'll take care of the rest. You'll put me in the right place. You know, if we're seeking God and living for Him, the Bible says He gives us the desires of our heart. If we commit our ways to Him, He'll make our ways prosperous, Psalm 37. So God can take care of the wind, the wind, the howl. If we just take care of making sure that our hearts are seeking His word, we have spiritual wisdom and understanding. That is the will of God. And so God prayed for or Paul prayed for the Colossians to have clear direction, that direction consisting in being able to understand God's word and live by it, and distinguish truth from error. Let God take care of the rest. That's the knowledge of His will that Paul wants us to have. But there's another request that Paul has for this Colossian church and is a good one for us as well. Not only clear direction, but a godly life. Paul prays for this church to live a godly life. Look at verse 10. And we pray this in order of that. That's a very important little phrase. He's praying for them to know the will of God in order of that they may live a godly life. The purpose of knowing God's will is for you to live a godly life. Not necessarily for you to find out which house to buy or where to go, but the purpose is to live a godly life. If you're living a godly life, God will take care of the details. He'll put you where he wants you and all that. But the purpose is in order that you may live, and here's the way he describes godly life. A life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way. Now stop right there. This is the description of a godly life. Those two statements in verse 10 describe for us a godly life. Paul says, I want you to live a life that is worthy of the Lord. Now he does not say worthy of salvation. None of us can live a life that merits or earns or gains salvation. It's not worthy of salvation. It's worthy of the Lord. What does that mean? It means to live the kind of lifestyle that is appropriate. That is suitable for those who claim the name of the Lord. In other words, if you claim to be a Christian, if you claim to know Christ, then live a life that is suitable, that is fitting, that is worthy of that name, that is worthy of the Lord, that demonstrates that you are appropriately living as God wants you to live. That people can say like they did of the early believers, these people are Christ ones. They are Christians. They follow Jesus Christ. They are known by living like Jesus lived. Now that's what it means to live a life worthy of the Lord, that we carry His name and we live in such a way that supports the fact that we carry His name. That's a godly life. The second thing Paul says about a godly life is not only that we live a life worthy of the Lord, but that we may please Him in every way. Our greatest aim in the Christian life ought to be to be pleasing to the Lord. It's not really a proper aim to try to please ourselves. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5, knowing the love of the Lord, we do not seek to please ourselves. So the proper goal in aim in life is not to please ourselves, but a lot of us live for that don't we? It's some degree I guess in our lives, all of us at some point, some way we do that. We live to please ourselves. Paul says the only legitimate way for a Christian to live is to live to please the Lord. It's not legitimate to please ourselves. It's not a legitimate goal or motive to try to please others either. Our goal should be to please the Lord in all that we do. The main question in our mind as we live our lives is, is this pleasing to God? Now all of us know what it's like or at least some of you here tonight know what it's like. If you're a real people, people please are kind to person. Say that five times real quick. If you're that kind of person, you know what it's like to have the pressure on yourself and stress of making sure that everybody is pleased with what you're doing. That is a terrible way to live. The Bible says it is not our goal to please others. Certainly we should make it our goal to have a good testimony before others, but not please others. Not to get their approval. Our goal is to be pleasing to God. So everything we do, everything we think say whatever, it should be our goal to say, Lord is this pleasing to you. Now sometimes if we're pleasing to God, we're not going to be pleasing to others. And there will be others that do not agree with or approve of what we're doing simply because we are pleasing to the Lord. It's much more important to have his smile upon our lives than it is to have the approval of others. So that's how Paul describes a godly life, living a life that's worthy of the Lord and pleasing to him. And then if you'll notice, he not only gives us a description, but he gives us four characteristics of this godly life. Now if you're given to marking your Bible, you might want to mark several words in the next few verses. If you're not comfortable with marking your Bible, just scoot over and mark your neighbor's Bible with these words. But there are four important words here that give us characteristics of this godly life. And they all end with I-N-G. Look at verse 10. Right after he says, may please him in every way. Then he says, bearing fruit, then notice just a little further than growing. Verse 11, being strengthened and verse 12, giving thanks. Those four words describe for us what it means, what the characteristics of our lives will be like if we're living a godly life. So let's just look at each of them briefly. First of all, we will be fruitful. He says there in verse 10, we pray this in order that we live a life worthy of the Lord. May please him in every way. Bearing fruit in every good work. Bearing fruit in every good work simply means that we express our lives and live our lives in ways that demonstrate Christ likeness. Fruit in the Christian life can mean a couple of things. Sometimes it can mean as we bear fruit that we're seeing others come to Christ. But most often in the New Testament when fruit bearing is talked about, it's talking about developing qualities of character. When we bear fruit, it is the life of Jesus Christ who said he was divine flowing through the branches who are Christians and bearing fruit, giving evidence of life. And the evidence of life showing that we truly are God's children is in the character that begins to grow in us that makes us more like the Lord Jesus. A good example of this kind of fruit is in Galatians chapter 5, you know, the fruit of the Spirit. Look at these verses on the screen. But the fruit of the Spirit is, and here's a great set of qualities that we need to be praying. God will develop in us as we bear fruit for him. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Now there's a sermon in each one of those words, and I'm not going to preach those nine sermons tonight. But there's a great study there about the character qualities that God wants us to develop. That's what it means to bear fruit. Now when we pray for each other and when we pray for our church, one of the great things to pray is that we would live a godly life that is demonstrated in fruit bearing, that is demonstrated in the kind of character qualities that will cause us to look to this world and to other believers a lot like Jesus Christ. Those nine qualities will certainly do that. So one of the characteristics is fruitfulness. The second characteristic is growing. Spiritual growth. He says, growing in the knowledge of God, we should never want to stop learning. We should never stop learning. As Christians, we never come to a point in our lives when we say, all right, I've got it now. I've reached the level of always wanted to reach of my knowledge of the Bible or my knowledge of the Lord. I can coast on into eternity from here on. No, we should never, never feel that way. You know the amazing thing about this book, I was talking with someone about this Saturday morning. The amazing thing about this book, the Bible, is that you never reach a point where you feel like you know everything that's in here. You can always learn more. So we should always be growing in our knowledge of the Lord. And as we bear fruit, we will be growing in our knowledge of the Lord. Another interesting contrast between a tree and chaff that we didn't talk about this morning is a tree continues to grow in bear fruit. Chaff has no fruit whatsoever. You see God wants us to be like that tree that continually bears fruit and continues to grow after bearing fruit. There's never enough fruit. We grow some more. Bear more fruit. Grow some more, bear more fruit. Continually growing in our knowledge of the Word, our knowledge of Christ and in our likeness to Him. The third characteristic of a godly life is strength. You see it there in verse 11, being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, being strengthened with all power. Notice that's the abundant supply of this strength. We are strong, not just with a little bit of power, we are strong with all power according to His glorious might. That's the reservoir that we draw from. You see the potential for the strength that we need to live the Christian life is absolutely unlimited. Every one of us in this room has come to a point or many times, maybe in our lives where we said, I just don't have the strength for this. I just do not have the strength for another day or another task like this or another week, I just don't have the strength. And that's a true statement. But you see in the Christian life we are not drawing from an inward reservoir of strength. We're drawing from a reservoir of strength that is His power. According to His glorious power it says, that's the reservoir we draw from and that's an unlimited source of strength. Have you not discovered? I'm sure you have. Have you not discovered that there are times when you feel absolutely without any strength and you ask God, Lord, I need you, I need your strength and your help and your power for this task or this day or this appointment. And God gives it and you realize almost in miraculous ways that didn't come from me. That came from somewhere else. That came from the Lord. You see that's living and being strengthened with all power. According to His glorious might and power. But there's a reason why we need that kind of power. In fact Paul gives us two reasons. Not only the abundant supply but why it's needed. Look at the end of verse 11. So that you may have great endurance and patience. Now here's why we need this kind of strength, this kind of power. We need endurance and patience. Now endurance has to do with things, patience has to do with people. Endurance has to do with the ability to bear up to be strong in the midst of trial and difficulty. That's endurance. Endurance means to bear up under it, be able to continue on in spite of it. That's endurance and that always has to do with the trials and difficulties and circumstances of life that come our way. We need strength for those, don't we? Because a life can wear us out. Life can get us down and circumstances can defeat us if we're not drawing on God's strength. But it is his strength that gives us the endurance to press on through difficult circumstances. But we also need his strength to be able to have patience. Patience is a quality that is always needed for people. Patience is the ability to remain calm when we're ill treated. When things do not go as we would like for them to do. Patience is the ability not to retaliate when something has gone wrong on part of another person toward you. That's patience. Someone was telling me just before the service tonight about an exercise in patience that they experienced this week. I won't reveal who you are, but it was an interesting story about someone treating them wrongly as they were actually going into a store. A person got upset evidently to have a bad day and got upset about something and just took it out on this person. And the patience that this person displayed was a good example of the kind of thing I'm talking about. Being able to suffer ill treatment without any retaliation, without striking back, without getting even, without giving a person a dose of their own medicine, that's patience. God wants us to exhibit that kind of patience. But then the fourth quality or characteristic of a godly life is thankfulness. You see it there at the end of verse 11, and joyfully, verse 12, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. You say, well, I just don't feel like there's anything to be thankful for today. Well, look at what Paul says. This will never change. Here's always a good place to start with thanksgiving. We can be thankful for our salvation. Now, if you have no other good circumstances in life that you feel like you can be thankful for, you can always be thankful for this. And you can be thankful, I believe, in the terms that Paul has given us. Look at what God has done for us in salvation in verse 12. He has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. He's qualified us to share in an inheritance, a heavenly inheritance. Now, we don't qualify ourselves. He has qualified us. He has put us in His family which immediately qualifies us for the inheritance. We have the inheritance because of His gracious gift of being placed in His family. He qualifies us. We don't qualify ourselves by our own works or goodness. He qualifies us. And then He says, because I've qualified you, I've given you an inheritance. And that inheritance is waiting in heaven. Many, many years ago, an older lady was dying in a poor house. And a doctor who was ministering to her noticed that she was so joyful and singing songs of praise to the Lord all the time. And he asked her, how can you do that? Look at where you are. And she said, the reason I can do that is because I know where I'm going. I'm trading in a poor house for a mansion. And we have an inheritance, my friend, in heaven. No matter what our circumstances are here, we know the hope that awaits us, the inheritance that we have is far greater and better than we could ever imagine. Heaven is so much better than we could ever imagine. That's the inheritance we have. And notice how this was accomplished for us. Paul goes on to describe three things that God did for us to accomplish this qualification for the inheritance for us. Verse 13 and 14. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the sunny loves in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Three things that God did for us to qualify us for that inheritance. This is the way He saved us. First of all, there's a rescue. He rescued us out of one kingdom, put us in another. We were in the kingdom of darkness. As we saw this morning, we were wicked, guilty, and sinned. And he rescued us, some of the greatest stories, the most thrilling stories of all time, are stories of great rescues, military rescues where troops risk their lives behind enemy lines to rescue captives, POWs or whatever. Those are some thrilling stories. The greatest of them all is that Jesus Christ invaded enemy territory, gave his life on the cross to rescue us out of the kingdom of darkness that we were in. The kingdom of Satan himself, who had held us as the writer of Hebrews says, in the fear, the bondage of the fear of death, all of our lives. And he rescued us. He formed a miraculous rescue, took us out of the enemy territory and placed us in his own kingdom. Yes, there is a form of God's kingdom even now. And we're in it. He's placed us in that kingdom, his family. So there was a rescue. Then there was a redemption. Verse 14, in whom we have redemption. redemption means that Jesus Christ bought us with a price. The price being his own blood. And he bought us out of that slavery that we were in to Satan. Slavery to our own sinful desires and lusts. And the slavery to Satan, slavery to ourselves. He bought us out of that. He paid the price, took us out of the slave market, made us his own children, gave us the freedom to serve him and live for him. So there's a rescue, there's a redemption. And then there's a remission. A remission of sins, a forgiveness of sins, a cancelling of sins is what it means. Aren't you glad that in your record book in heaven, as God looks at you, all your sin has been canceled. And the righteousness of Jesus Christ is what he sees on that record book. My favorite Christian artist through the years, you don't hear him as much now as you used to, is Wayne Watson. Wayne Watson had a song back in the late 80s called Rose Colored Glasses. He talks about how God sees us through rose colored glasses. Glasses stained with the blood of Christ. And because of the blood of Christ, the way God sees us now is not as sinners. Our sins have been remitted, forgiven, paid for, canceled. And now he sees us through the blood of his son as righteous, redeemed, rescued from the kingdom of Satan. Now that's something to be thankful for. No matter what you're going through, you can always be thankful for your salvation. For the inheritance you have and how it was won for you by the death of Jesus Christ. Paul prayed that kind of prayer for the Colossians. What a great prayer that is. Now I'm all for praying for broken arms and broken toes. I'm all for praying for that kind of thing. But you know there's a depth in this kind of prayer that sometimes we miss when we pray for other people, right? Or when we pray for ourselves or our church. It'd be a great thing to learn how to pray like this, wouldn't it? To be able to pray for clear direction. To be able to pray for godly living, the kind of godly living that exhibits these characteristics, fruitfulness, growth, strength, spiritually, thankfulness constantly for the great gifts, gods, givinous and salvation. What a wonderful prayer list that is. That's the way Paul prayed for the Colossians. May we pray that way for each other. Would you join me in prayer right now? Father, it would be very fitting for us to pray tonight that we would be filled with all of your knowledge in spiritual wisdom and understanding. That we would live a life that is worthy of you and that pleases you. And that bears fruit that continues growing, that exhibits your spiritual strength, and that is always thankful for what you've done for us. We ask for that for our church, for our lives, for each other. It's in the precious name of our Savior, we pray it. Amen.