The all-sufficient Christ enables us to live lives of prayer and wisdom
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.
The Word of God establishes true peace in believers’ hearts and moves them to live at peace with one another. Closely connected with the Word, and arising out of its command and promise, is yet another aspect of Christian living: believers’ prayer lives. In the Word of God, specifically the message of the gospel, the hand of God reaches down to sinful men. In prayer, the hand of man, encouraged and empowered by the Word, reaches upward to God.
If love is the firstfruit of faith, prayer is its heartbeat. Countless times throughout the Scriptures, the Lord urges believers to come to him in prayer. He wants us to bring before him all our wants and needs of body and soul, as well as those of our fellow believers. He wants us to pray even for our enemies. He wants us to pray to confess our sins and to praise and thank him for his goodness, and he promises to hear and answer every believing prayer.
With all that in mind, Paul simply says, “Devote yourselves to prayer.” As we pray, we Christians are to be watchful and thankful. We are to be alert to the needs that God wants us to bring to him and to be awake and sincere when we bring them. We are to be alert to the dangers and temptations all around us that threaten our faith and require our prayers. We are to be conscious of the blessings we have received from the Lord and be thankful for them.
The apostle Paul has a special request to make of the Colossians in regard to their prayers. He asks that they remember him, together with Timothy, Epaphras, and all those laboring together with him for the cause of the gospel. When he asks for the Colossians’ prayers, however, Paul does not ask for prayers for the benefit of his own person, not even prayers for his release from prison. Paul’s chief concern is for the cause of the gospel. So he asks the Colossians to pray that God might open a door for the gospel message and continue to bless the preaching of the gospel and its advancement in the world, and he asks them to pray that the Lord would continue to give him the wisdom and the courage to faithfully and effectively proclaim the gospel message.
If we assume, as many do, that Paul’s epistle to the Colossians was written before the epistle to the Philippians, Paul may well have been thinking here of his imminent appearance before the imperial court. What an unparalleled opportunity that court appearance would give the apostle to proclaim the good news of Christ before the highest officials of the empire. Obviously, the apostle must have been an effective speaker. Yet he asks his fellow believers to continue praying that his testimony to the gospel would be effective and easy for people to grasp.
When a good message is proclaimed in a bad way, its effect may be lost. Paul asks for the Colossians’ prayers that his human limitations and fears might not get in the way of a clear and powerful proclamation of the gospel to the visitors, both Jews and Gentiles, who came to him at Rome, to the Roman soldiers who guarded him, and to the Roman officials who would hear his case. Philippians 1:13 indicates that the prayers of the Christians on Paul’s behalf were favorably answered. In that passage Paul informs his readers that it has become clear throughout the city that he is not preaching some illegal or unpatriotic religion, as his Jewish enemies have charged. Through his clear and courageous testimony, many new converts, including some soldiers and government officials, had been won for Christ.
When we offer our prayers, our Lord does not want us to be thinking only of ourselves. He wants us to remember our government, our fellow believers, the members of our congregation, the sick and the dying, the erring, all those in need of special comfort and help. He also wants us to remember our pastors and teachers and the missionaries who proclaim the gospel for us throughout the world.
When was the last time you prayed for your pastor? Have you perhaps criticized him more recently than you have prayed for him? What a powerful aid for success a congregation has when more and more of its members pray, together with their pastor, that the Lord might enable him to grow in his understanding of the Word and in his ability to communicate that precious message from the pulpit and in the classroom, to young and old, to the troubled and the sick, to the dying and the bereaved.
Any number of missionaries have told us that they are convinced that it is only through the prayers of the Christians back home that they are blessed with the special strength they need to fulfill their often difficult and dangerous calling. Some of the most cherished encouragement this author has ever received in his personal ministry came from a kind and concerned “matriarch” of a large family in his congregation who, before the Lord took her to her eternal home, assured him frequently, “Pastor, our family is praying for you.” Pray for us, dear readers, that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ clearly, as we should.
The Colossians were to pray for the success of the gospel. Their conduct should also serve the gospel’s cause.