Praying with Paul
How to Pray with Power
Colossians 1:9-14
This particular prayer by the Apostle Paul contains 138 words in the New King James Version, 132 in KJV and 143 in the New International Version. In the New Living Translation, it is 171 words and in the Amplified Bible, a whopping 223 words.
And unlike the English versions, in the Greek, lik several others of Paul’s prayers, , it is one long sentence filled with participles, infinitives, and clauses that seem to pile on top of each other.
Needless to say, Paul packed a lot into these six verses. If you read it out loud, the whole prayer takes about a 45 seconds to read but it is dense dense with spiritual truth.
I want to make sure we don’t get lost in the details and miss the main point. So let me give you a simple outline of the prayer. It begins with
1. The Request
Colossians 1:9
Paul has only one basic request in mind and you find it in verse 9. The basic request is for the objects of this prayer to be “filled with the knowledge of God’s will”. That little phrase is the heart and soul of this prayer. Paul is praying that the Colossians will know the will of God for their lives. He is asking God to give them wisdom and spiritual insight so that they will know God’s will.
That’s a very practical prayer, if you think about it. Almost everyone who is serious about serving the Lord and knowing His blessing on their life thinks about the will of God at one time or another.
We tend to apply the phrase to the major decisions of life: where to go to college, the search for the right job, the decision about getting married, which church to attend, buying a new home, a job offer that may take us to a distant state, going to the mission field, investing our money, having children, and so on.
Those are all legitimate applications of the will of God, but Paul seems to have something bigger and deeper and broader in mind when he uses the phrase. I think the key is the word “fill.” In its basic form, the word means to be filled to overflowing. It can also mean “engulfed” or “overwhelmed” by something. It has the idea of “fully possess” or “control” or ‘become the dominating influence.”
If a person is frightened, we say he is “filled with fear.” If he speaks harshly, we say he is “filled with anger.” If he is generous to all he meets, he is “filled with kindness.” So what does that concept mean in this verse?
If you are filled with the knowledge of God’s will, then you will want what God wants for your life at every moment and every turn. That is a very challenging standard.
Oftentimes we pray “Your will be done” without ever thinking about what those words really mean.
Generally, we mean something like, “O Lord, show me your will so I can see if it fits into my plans.” But that’s a prayer God will never answer because he does not offer his will for you to consider it, as if it were an invitation to have lunch next Thursday if you happen to be free and if you don’t get a better offer. To truly say “Your will be done in my life” means something like this:
“Lord, let your will be done in me whatever it costs, whatever it takes, wherever it leads. Let your will be done even if it means that my will is not done. Let your plans go forward even if it means changing my plans.”
That is the very essence of what Jesus said when He taught His disciples to pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” In this little bit of earth that makes up me, let your will be done regardless of the cost or what I want or think is right. At all costs, your will be done!
Now to pray that, implies this huge spiritual truth that is built on some assumptions. First if I pray for God’s will to be done in my life assumes God has a will or desire for my life.
It also assumes I have a will for my life. And when I pray “Your will be done”, I am asking that His will take precedence over my will because only one will can be done at a time.
Either God calls the shots or I call the shots. Either He is in control or I am in control. It’s not easy to pray like that because it means giving up control of your own life. But you aren’t really in control anyway. It only seems that way.
Now some of the rub with doing God’s will is we’ve become convinced doing God’s will is like doing Algebra homework. Somewhere along the line, Satan decided to convince people God was out to destroy the excitement and fun in life. Therefore to do God’s will is necessary but it will ruin your life.
But nothing could be farther from the truth. And if you don’t believe me, then I dare you to try this simple experiment. Try letting the Lord be in charge of your life. Just let Him take over all the details amd you just relax for a while.
Learn to live your life with His will being done and see if life isn’t better that way. And don’t mishear me. I’m not saying all the problems will vanish and there won’t be some hard times and difficult decisions. But get up every day and ask God to fill your day with the knowledge of His will and determine that God’s will be done that day.
It’s hard to pray that prayer because it means giving up control of your life. But that doesn’t mean your life will go out of control. It just means that your life is surrendered to God’s control.
This is the heart of the prayer—that we might be filled to overflowing with the knowledge of God’s will so that we want what God wants for us and we do what he wants us to do.
2. The Purpose
Colossians 1:10
Second, Paul has only one purpose in mind.
This purpose is the result of being filled with the knowledge of his will. And this purpose is not possible without coming to the place where we say, “Your will be done—nothing more, nothing less, nothing.”
Listen to how it is expressed in
Verse 10a
Note the word “worthy.” It comes from a root that means “heaviness” or “weightiness.” Sometimes in evaluating certain people who don’t measure up to our expectations, we call them “lightweights.” A “lightweight” person is someone whose contribution in life is trifling and doesn’t amount to much.
All of us, if we are honest, think about our own value and our own worth from time to time. Since we aren’t going to live forever, we want to know that our time on planet earth has mattered, that we didn’t squander our opportunities, that we made a difference to someone, somewhere, somehow.
And each one of us has personal failings, cracks in the soul, hidden fissures of sin and failure and doubt and compromise that we alone know about. We may put up a good front and even smile on Sunday morning, but deep inside we know that we are far from what we want to be.
Sometimes those feelings of self-doubt may overwhelm us to the point where we wonder why we should even bother to get out of bed in the morning. But here we are called to something very exciting: to walk worthy of the Lord and to hear him say, “My child, I am pleased with you in every way.”
It should be noted that this doesn’t happen automatically, and here we must think carefully about what we believe. In Christ we have been fully accepted by God and adopted into his family. We have been blessed with every spiritual blessing already. There is a sense in which God is pleased with us already because we are united by faith in his Son, and he is fully pleased with Jesus.
In a related way, a parent will listen to a child play the trumpet and miss 10 out of 11 notes. Everyone else winces but Dad will beam and say, “That’s my boy!” We all understand that sort of family pride. But there is another sort of pride that comes when a son or daughter, through hard work and years of dedication, accomplishes some great goal and brings honor to the family name. That’s what Paul has in mind here. It means to live so that God is pleased with us.
Rick Husband was the commander of the space shuttle Columbia that disintegrated over Texas a few years ago. Everyone who knew him knew he was a Christian. Before the shuttle took off on January 16, Rick stopped the crew and prayed for them. NASA workers commented that they had never before seen a commander pray with his crew.
At T minus 2 minutes before liftoff, a NASA controller commented that it was a perfect day for launch and Rick replied, “The Lord has given us a beautiful day.” Before the flight, he left a recorded devotional video for each of his two children for each of the 17 days he would be gone. That was 34 videos that he recorded so his children would not miss the daily devotions they had with their dad.
In a video made for his home church in Houston, he explained the values of his life: “If I ended up at the end of my life having been an astronaut, but having sacrificed my family along the way or living my life in a way that didn’t glorify God, then I would look back on it with great regret.
Having become an astronaut would not really have mattered all that much. And I finally came to realize that what really meant the most to me was to try and live my life the way God wanted me to and to try and be a good husband to Evelyn and to be a good father to my children.”
After the shuttle disaster, his pastor in Houston visited with Evelyn Husband. She showed the pastor documents Rick had to sign in case something tragic happened on the mission and he did not return home. The documents contained personal messages to his family members. At the bottom of the documents, Husband wrote a special note to his pastor that said, “Tell them about Jesus. He means everything to me.”
Rick Husband has gone to heaven, but while he was on the earth, he lived a life worthy of the Lord. No doubt he has heard these words, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of the Lord.”
When I read that, I asked myself, “What is the secret of a man like Rick Husband? Where does this sort of faith come from?” I think I know the answer. Years ago he yielded control of his life to Jesus Christ. Everything else that happened to him flowed from that one great decision. Somewhere along the way, he told the Lord, “I want to do your will.
If it means being an astronaut, that’s what I’ll do. If it means going up in space and not coming home to my family, I am willing to do what you call me to do.”
I don’t know if he said it in those words, but that was the commitment of his heart. You don’t make the kind of impact he made without that kind of commitment. Rick Husband is gone but he left behind a shining legacy. If we want to leave behind that kind of testimony, we must first truly say, “O Lord, your will be done in my life. No strings, no conditions, no special deals. I give you my life to do with it as you will.”
When we want what God wants, when we surrender our will and our agenda, when his purposes become our purposes, then our lives will be dramatically changed, and we will find purpose and meaning in everything that happens to us. Life becomes an adventure with God every day. When that happens, our lives become joyful, visibly different, and eternally significant. And God is pleased with us.
3. The Results
Colossians 1:10b-14
The remainder of the prayer involves four results that follow from walking worthy of God and pleasing him in everything.
First, we will have a life that bears fruit (v. 10b).
Second, we will have a life that grows in the knowledge of God (v. 10c).
Third, we will have a life that endures in hard times (v. 11).
Fourth, we will have a life that gives thanks continually (v. 12-14).
If you stand back and look at it, this is an amazing way to live. A life filled with good works, an ever-growing knowledge of God, the ability to endure hard times with joy, and a thankful spirit for all that God has done for you.
So here is the prayer. Paul prays that we might be filled up to overflowing with the knowledge of God’s will. That means yielding our agenda to his control so that his purposes become our purposes. When that happens, our lives are radically changed from the inside out. We set out to please the Lord in everything.
Suddenly, we become difference-makers in the world (like Rick Husband). We’re involved in God’s agenda, which means we’re doing more than just taking up space until we die. Life now has purpose and meaning. We have a reason to get out of bed in the morning because we’re linked with God in his Kingdom work on the earth.
And all of this is because of Jesus Christ. He gave us an inheritance so we know we have a great future. He took us out of the darkness so now we can see things clearly. He made us citizens of his Kingdom so now we have everything we need. He redeemed us by his blood so we know our sins are forgiven.
A few years back, author John Eldredge wrote a book called “Wild at Heart”. It’s a book about the author’s search to discover the true purpose for a man’s life. Toward the end of the book, he relates that while rummaging through a bookstore, his life was changed by two sentences in a book he happened to pick.
Those two sentences were so insightful that he didn’t read another word. “I sat the volume down without turning another page and walked out of that bookstore to find a life worth living.”
That is a fascinating expression: a life worth living. It sounds a lot like the prayer of Paul in Colossians 1.
This is what the book said: “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
What is it that makes you come alive? It is right here that Paul’s prayer hits us right between the eyes. For too long we have thought the will of God was tragic and boring, one of those thing you have to do it but you don’t have to like it. How wrong we are!
To be filled with God’s will means that we are finally free to come alive. To be filled with God’s will means we are finally free to serve Him. To be filled with God’s will means we are free from the slavery of doing what the world expects. To be filled with God’s will means we are free to risk everything for the sake of Christ and his Kingdom.
If you ever decide to seek God’s will, your life may be many things, but it won’t be boring. The man was right. The world needs people who have come alive. I would simply add that the world needs people who have come alive through the knowledge of God’s will. And that’s a perfect description of the people who pray this prayer.
Let’s pray. Amen.
