Serving In Prayer

Paul asks the church at Colosse to pray in three ways.

1) Steadfastly: “Continue, Paul says, in prayer.” This means be faithful in your discipline of prayer, be devoted, be consistent and do not give up. We are told in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 “Pray without ceasing.” Servants of the Lord don’t quit praying and they don’t give up on the people and needs that you are praying for.

2) Expectantly: Watch in prayer. To watch to be on the lookout, to be alert. This is applied in two ways. We pray with expectation looking for God to answer our prayers and we pray with your eyes open to the danger and opposition that always await the servant of God. This is how God’s people have always made it in this world. Back in Nehemiah 4:9. When Nehemiah and the people were rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, we made our prayer unto our God, and set a watch against them day and night, because of them.

Paul may have been thinking of what Jesus said to the disciples in Mark 14:38 Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak. It is by being consistent and watchful in our prays that the strength of our spirit can overcome the weakness of our flesh.  

3) Servants are also to pray, thankfully. “Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving.” In the previous chapter when Paul was telling the Colossian church how they should live their daily lives in the light of Jesus’ Preeminence, he told them in 3:15 And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful. We live thankful lives and we pray thankful prayers. We have been blessed so much by God that our lives should show our thanks and prayers should be filled with thanksgiving.

4) Paul also says, we are to pray: Specifically. He asks them to pray for him and for those with him, his evangelistic, missionary team. He does not ask to be free from the bonds that hold him, but instead, Colossians 4:3-4 …praying also for us, that God would open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in bonds: That I may make it (the mystery of Christ)  manifest (plainly seen), as I ought to speak.

Praying Is Serving

How faithful a servant you are can be measured by your prayer life. It is measured by by the yardstick of steadfastness, the calendar of consistency, the watch of alertness, the tracks of your thanksgiving and the checklist of specific requests.

Steadfast, watchful, thankful and specific prayers are the marks of a child of God who recognizes we have a Master in Heaven that we must serve.

Serving By Praying

Joe Campbell is a Facebook friend who I’ve never met in person, though I would dearly love to. He is a recently retired pastor and once a week he post this. “Prayed for all my Facebook friends tonight.” Sometimes it takes him two days to finish his list. I don’t know how many friends he has, but I know that when I see that post, I am very glad that I’m one of them.

When I was in Bible College, I first heard Brother Roy Dearmore preach. He was a missionary to South Africa and had been ambushed by Marxist rebels and almost killed. I don’t remember everything he said or what his sermon was about but I wrote down this quote in the flyleaf of my then brand new Thompson Chain Reference Bible, “Saying that we as Christians are reduced only to prayer is like telling a soldier that he is reduced only to an atomic bomb.” – James Dearmore

Oswald Chambers said it bluntly, “Prayer does not fit us for the greater works: Prayer is the greater work”