I hope you don’t leave this prayer series having just learned a few new facts about prayer: the difference between praying occasionally and making prayer an occasion; that a heart examined by God through prayer is a heart that’s useful to God; how prayer and predestination work together; that there’s a difference between struggling TO pray and struggling IN prayer, and that to get to where you effectively struggle IN prayer for yourself and others, the struggle TO pray must be overcome through discipline and persistence, etc. I hope series benefits you, but I don’t want it to just impact your praying!
It’s wrong for Christians to categorize our lives into spiritual and non-spiritual activities. The Christian faith isn’t a purely intellectual faith—a cerebral spirituality divorced from our dealings in and with the world around us. Jesus, the apostles, and the Old Testament saints instead show us a spirituality fully infused into all the nooks and crannies of daily life. Yes, we gather with the Lord’s people on the Lord’s day for preaching and singing. Yes, we should pray privately in our own homes every day. But what we do or don’t do in secret or on Sunday morning should never be seen as entirely separate from or unconcerned with what we do at any other time or among any other group of people. They’re connected!
So today we’ll wrap up this prayer series by focusing on the healthy marriage of the Christian’s inner and outer, spiritual and social, divine and daily pursuits into one life of gospel faithfulness. Here’s Paul’s main point in these verses, and the thought with which I want to conclude this prayer series: Unless we’re steadfast in prayer, we’ll be stagnant in witness.
Inner (vv. 2-4)
I recently saw a blood centrifuge working. As the machine spins, heavier red blood cells radiate to the outside while lighter weight plasma gets pushed to the inside and separated. By nature humans are centrifugal beings; whatever’s on the inside eventually makes its way to the outside. But, because we’re made by God in God’s image with a capacity for God and godliness, until God fills that inmost part of us with His Spirit, the stuff that spins to the outside will be whatever we ourselves try to cram in there. Cain crammed his heart with bitterness toward God and jealousy toward his brother, Abel. What spun to the outside? Murder. Zacchaeus was a wee little tax collector with a great big greed problem before Jesus saved him and God filled him with His generous and giving Holy Spirit.
I say all this because Paul puts it in this order. Of the passage’s two big commands, “Continue steadfastly in prayer” comes before “Walk with wisdom toward outsiders.” By this Paul is saying that our ability to walk with wisdom toward outsiders—toward unbelievers, non-Christians, anti-Christians—is directly linked to and dependent on continuing steadfastly in prayer. So, if we’re going to understand what it means to walk with wisdom toward outsiders, we first need to know what Paul means by “Continue steadfastly in prayer.”
Continue Steadfastly in Prayer. What does Paul mean by this phrase? He means keep going, persevere, persist, don’t give up, don’t quit… Instead of “Continue steadfastly in prayer,” some translations say, “Devote yourselves to prayer.” I like the word “devote.” When we devote ourselves to something we voluntarily ‘de-vote’—we give up our right to ‘vote’ on certain things. Americans (at least for now) have the right to vote. But if we’re ever de-voted we’ll simply have to receive and do whatever is imposed upon us by the powers that be. That’s not a happy prospect, because those powers will likely not be benevolent, gracious or kind! But Christians serve a higher King, one who is benevolence, graciousness, and kindness personified, the King of Kings! And when we devote ourselves to prayer, it’s because, by faith, through the inner-working of the Holy Spirit, we’re already de-voted to King Jesus—we’ve gladly surrendered to His supreme reign and rule in our lives and said, “Thy will—not my will—be done!”
But it’s not automatic—we’re not robots! When we come to faith in Jesus we don’t become strictly spiritual beings and cease to be fleshly beings; we’re creatures of spirit and flesh. This is why Paul urges these believers to continue steadfastly in prayer. If failing to continue steadfastly in prayer is impossible for Christians, this is a pointless reminder. We struggle spiritually to devote ourselves to prayer because our flesh tries to get us to de-vote ourselves to obeying its demands, not God’s. And this is a problem because we misunderstand the nature of ‘continual, steadfast’ or ‘devoted’ prayer. Paul isn’t just talking about maintaining a sweet hour of private prayer or regular times of formal, vocalized prayer with the church. He’s talking about a life of fervent, unbroken, constant prayer.
But I thought you said a couple weeks ago it’s not humanly possible to pray constantly: we have to sleep and do other things. True. We do have to sleep. We have to perform technical tasks at work that require intense focus. We have to go to class and listen to teachers. We have to keep doctor’s appointments. We have to make phone calls, have business conversations and all sorts of other human-to-human interactions. That’s why we need to prioritize a time of formal, vocal prayer as a central occasion in our daily lives. But this doesn’t mean we have to shut off prayer the rest of the day. We’ve all been in situations where the task or topic at hand wasn’t our primary concern. It’s called being preoccupied. When we clock-in but only give a half-effort, or when we smile and nod but aren’t really listening to the other person because we’re too busy thinking about a totally unrelated matter, that’s inappropriate preoccupation. It’s rude at best, and unethical at worst. Appropriate preoccupation, however, is when we remain purposefully conscious of God and of His purposes and priorities while engaging in our work or while interacting with others made in His image.
Paul says in 3:17, “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” This isn’t some super-spirituality for monks and nuns only. Constant prayer is biblical spirituality! The Bible is written in your language, isn’t it? So everything in it is for you! I don’t care how long you’ve been a Christian you can experience ongoing, unbroken (or at least seldom-broken) communion and conversation with God. He made you. He knows you’re easily distracted. He knows the limits of your focus. Do you really think your gracious and loving heavenly Father is going to be angry about occasional interruptions in your conversation? He doesn’t fold His arms and go quiet when you return to Him after a distraction. He doesn’t pout. He’s not needy for us; He’s near to us, and He can get our attention whenever He wants.
Being Watchful in It with Thanksgiving. This is why Paul’s second exhortation regarding the inner life of continual, steadfast prayer is to, “[be] watchful in it with thanksgiving.” Paul’s instruction here echoes his introduction in 1:3, “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you…” Paul doesn’t preach what he doesn’t practice. He and his companions are thankful men—they’re thankful to God for what they hear He’s done and is doing in the Colossian church. Paul is watchful, spiritually alert and attuned, always thankful for proof of God’s grace, patience, and kindness being poured out on people, and he wants and expects the Colossians to be likewise watchful and thankful as they pray continually.
How watchfully alert and thankful are you in conversation with God? As you look across this room and see a brother or sister in distress, do you merely pity them, or do you pray for them, thanking God for what He has done, is doing and will do in their lives? If it makes it any less daunting, words aren’t required right away. Paul gives this beautiful promise in Romans 8:26-27: he says, “The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.”
When we see other Christians in need, when we see non-Christians hurting, when we’re drying the dishes at night and see on the news images of sickness, strife and suffering all over the world—when we feel the initial urge of compassionate concern, if we’re in a state of continual, steadfast, watchful conversation with God, then before we even know how we’re supposed to reach out to help physically, we will have already reached up for help prayerfully. And most often the leading utterance of our prayers will not be well-worded, well-formed paragraphs of petition but rather simple and sympathetic groans: Mmmm… Ohhh, Lord… Hmmm… something like that.
I’m not saying to get lazy and just start groaning to God; He still wants us to pray with words and sentences. But, if Paul’s words in Romans are true (and they are), then we need to realize that more is being said (and prayed) in those deeply stirred groans of compassion than can be said in an hour of eloquent praying. Why? Because those groans are the Holy Spirit’s groans! And here’s the best part: because they’re the Holy Spirit’s groans—and the Holy Spirit is God—they align perfectly with God’s will. You see, more than us expressing to God how we feel, those groans are God’s way of showing us internally and instantly how He feels—and thus how we ought to feel—about something or someone. And once the Holy Spirit teaches us how to rightly feel, then we’ll know how to rightly pray. And for that reason we ought all the more to pray watchfully and thankfully!
Pray Also for Us… Groaning is an appropriate prayer language! Don’t wait to talk to God until you have the perfect prayer all thought out. But, again, God still wants us to pray with specificity too. This is why Paul’s last inner appeal to continual, steadfast, watchful, thankful prayer is a personal one. He says in vv. 3-4, “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.”
Christians disciplined in continual, steadfast, watchful, thankful prayer will more readily see and engage in what God is doing in their immediate sphere of influence. But these Christians also realize that God is using other Christians to share the saving gospel of Christ in places they themselves will never visit with people they themselves will never meet in this life, and continual, steadfast, watchful, thankful prayer is their primary God-appointed means of taking part in that glorious global gospel work.
Don’t just pray for missionary safety. Remember, Paul saw in his prison doors an open door—that’s the crazy-cool thing about the power of our God and gospel. That’s the crazy-cool thing about the power of prayer! So pray continually for open doors! Pray steadfastly for open mouths to advance the good news. Pray watchfully that our brothers and sisters out there in the global church may make the gospel clear by avoiding the snares of sin. And pray thankfully for the harvest of souls that God promises they’ll reap if they don’t give up!