Only Jesus: Prayers for the Saints | Colossians 1:9-14
How is your prayer life? People all over the world pray. According to Gallup research, more Americans will pray each week than will exercise, drive a car, have sex, or even go to work. In an increasing post-Christian America, nearly half of the population still admits to praying daily, a number that dwarfs the nation’s church attendance. Today, around the world Muslims have spread out their rug, bow their foreheads to the ground and chanted the Qur’an in unison with others. Hasidic Jews in Jerusalem have written pleas to YHWH on small pieces of paper, rolled them up and wedged them into the Western Wall. Buddhists have meditatively emptied themselves, searching for enlighted self-forgetfulness. Even a staunch atheist in a hospital waiting room has buried his head in his hands and muttered a few desperate words to a God he doesn’t believe in. Everybody prayers. Prayer seems to be instinctive to us as humans because we want to connect with the transcendent. We can’t help it. Yet, for so many people, their prayer life is boring, tired, obligatory, and confusing. They don’t know how to pray or what to pray for. One of the best ways to learn to pray is to learn how others have done it.
One of the great prayer warriors of the Bible is Paul. Paul is writing from prison to a group of believers that he had never met and to a church that he did not start. He is writing them to address some of the cultural pressures that they were facing to drift away from Jesus. They were being tempted to add to Jesus or to leave Jesus all together. Paul’s primary objective is to show the supremacy of Christ overall and above all. He begins by introducing who He is and by reaffirming to them who they are in Christ. Then he opens with a prayer for them that reinforces the gospel joy rooted in Jesus. In Paul’s prayer, we have an example of both the persistence and the petitions that we should have in our personal prayer life.