Hope Church LV Sermons
I Am Praying For You :: Colossians 1:9
I want to begin this morning by asking you a question. It's not a deep question, but it's one I want you to think about this morning. What are the most important words you have ever heard another person say? Think about your family. Think about our city. Think about our nation. Think about the world. What are the most important words that you've ever heard another person say? That's one small step per man. One giant leap per man. Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. And so my fellow Americans ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. I have a dream, but my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of our skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. How many of you would agree that those are important words? Absolutely, those are major words throughout history. And those are words that we have heard over and over again in movies and in speeches and news articles and campaign ads. Those are significant life-changing words. But this morning, I want to share with you five words that I believe are the most significant and important words you can ever share with another person. Now, these are words that we use all the time. These are words that we use in verbal conversations, that we use in text messages, in emails, in note cards. These are words you've probably said some time over the last week and potentially. These are words you've even said since you've been on campus today. Five words, I am praying for you. I believe that those five words, when spoken from a genuine heart, now not when we say it trying to be polite or politically correct or just trying to close a conversation, but when you and I honestly and sincerely tell another person that we are praying for them, those are the most important words you can ever say. As a church family, we are studying verse by verse through the New Testament book of Colossians. And this weekend, we are starting a two-part series called "I Am Praying for You." As you study the New Testament, you quickly discover that Jesus placed incredible priority and significance on His followers being people of prayer. He even went as far in Matthew chapter 21 when He was talking about the temple, the place where believers would gather to worship and hear teaching. He said, "I want my house to be known as a house of prayer, not a house of preaching, not a house of singing, not a house of programs, but as a house of prayer." And I'm so excited about the next two weeks for us as a church because I think it's healthy for us to recalibrate and recognize once again just how vital prayer is in the life of a believer. As well as how important it is that we pray for each other. I'll be honest with you, as I studied this week, I was very convicted. Maybe your story is the same as mine, but there's a lot of days and weeks in my life where I don't view prayer, talk about prayer, or even pray to the level that Jesus desires for me to, or that He modeled for us in the New Testament. And in Colossians chapter 1 verse 9, the Apostle Paul is really bearing his soul. He's sharing his heart about what he specifically prays for the believers at Colossae. So if you have your Bible this morning, would you turn with me to Colossians chapter 1? And we're going to unpack one verse this morning. It's going to be up on the screen for you this morning if you don't have a Bible. But I want to highlight before we read the verse, the first three words, verse 9 begins with these words for this reason. Now that's a transitional phrase. The Apostle Paul is saying, "In light of what I just talked about, in light of what I just said, I'm about to make another point." Well, what did the Apostle Paul just share? Well, I hope you were able to be here last weekend or to go online this week. Pastor Tom did a phenomenal job at unpacking verses three through eight. And in essence, here's what we learned last weekend. That the gospel changes lives. We learned that the gospel makes a difference, that the gospel brings life and anywhere that we see a changed life, you can draw a line from that changed life back to the gospel. Paul had gotten a phenomenal report about the gospel bearing fruit among the believers there in Colossae. And so he says, "For that reason," now let's look at verse nine. He says, "For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding." To unpack this verse this morning, here's what I want to do. I want to ask and answer three very, very simple questions. So if you're taking notes this morning, I want to encourage you to write these down, but here's our first question, very, very simple. What is prayer? We're going to talk specifically about prayer this weekend and next weekend. It's important that we are all drawing from the same foundation and that we have a clear context of what prayer is. In its simplest form, prayer is simply communication with God. Prayer is communion with God. It is God and his children having a conversation. The Bible teaches us in Hebrews 4 that we can approach the throne of grace with boldness because of the sacrifice and the grace of Jesus. You and I have access to God through prayer. Now it's important that we understand that prayer is a two-way conversation. There are many people who think about prayer and they think that it is us taking our laundry list of needs to God and him being obligated to do whatever we say. That's incorrect. There is a role in prayer in which you and I go to God and we share with him. Sometimes that looks like adoration, sometimes that's praise, sometimes that's thanksgiving, sometimes that's petitions or requests. But there is also an aspect of prayer in which you and I are not talking. We're listening to what God is saying to us. Prayer is a two-way conversation between God and his children. In verse 9, the Apostle Paul says that he has not stopped doing two things. He says, "I have not ceased to pray and to ask." To unpack those two phrases, I want to give you two defining components of prayer. Here's the first one. "I am to live with an awareness of God." As believers, we are to live with an awareness of God. The first phrase he uses is to pray. And this word "pray" here is a general word for prayer, meaning any reverent address that is directed to God. The emphasis of the phrase is constant communication with God. We learn from the Apostle Paul that he viewed everything in his life in relation to God. He says to these believers that Colossa, he says, "When I got good news, it moved me to pray for you. When I got bad news, it moved me to pray for you anything I heard about what was taking place there in Colossa, it moved me to communicate with God on your behalf." And as Jesus followers, we are to live with an awareness of God's presence that is with us and God's activity all around us. And it should move us to pray. We are to live our lives aware that he's at work all around us, that he is in us, and we are to be sensitive to his activity that is taking place. And I believe when that happens, it will move us to pray. Listen, in the life of a believer, you cannot underestimate the value of you and I being people who pray. You see, when we pray, we acknowledge our dependence on God. One of our values here at Hope is God's dependence. We believe that apart from Him, we can do nothing, but through Him, we can do all things. And when we take serious this opportunity to pray, we're acknowledging that we need God. Look at this quote by John Piper on the screen, "Prayer is the translation into a thousand different words of a single sentence. Apart from me, you can do nothing." He goes on to say, "Oh, how we need to wake up to how much nothing we spend our time doing. Apart from prayer, all our scurrying about, all our talking, all our study. It amounts to nothing. For most of us, the voice of self-reliance is ten times louder than the bell that tolls for the hours of prayer. The voice cries out, "You must open the mail. You must make the call. You must prepare for the board meeting." With the bell toll softly, without me, you can do nothing. Prayer is an expression that you and I are desperate for God. And I believe for every believer in the room, you would agree that in moments of desperation, we automatically begin to pray. There may be weeks and months where we don't talk to God at all, but all of a sudden when there's a crisis, when something happens, we become prayer warriors. We would all agree with that. But here's where we may disagree. We may disagree on what qualifies as a desperate situation. You see, for most of us, we think that what controls us being desperate or not is the circumstances of life. We would say that if I lose my job, or there's a tragic death in my family, or I get bad news at the doctor, then the circumstances of life have caused me to be in a desperate situation. I want you to listen to this statement. The circumstances of life are not what cause us to be desperate. The reality of who we are as sinful people before a holy God is what makes us desperate. You see, before we ever took our first breath or made our first decision, we were born under an evil nature, separated from the things of God, hopeless and helpless apart from Jesus Christ. We were desperate from our first moment on planet Earth. As you talk to a lot of people, you hear them say a lot of different things about prayer. People will say, "Well, pastor, I'm just too busy to pray." I mean, I'm up in the morning early and I'm working all day into the late night. I'm just too busy to pray, but people who understand that we are desperate just because we're human, sinful people before a holy God, people who understand that, they would say something different. They would not say, "I'm too busy to pray." They would say, "I'm too busy not to pray." Let me give you a life application statement, very simple. Desperate people pray, prideful people don't. When Travis is full of desperation and I recognize that before a holy God, I am helpless. That drives me to pray. But when I am full of pride, guess what? I don't care about prayer, the same thing is true of you. Desperate people pray, prideful people don't. You show me a church or an individual that does not value prayer. I will show you a church or an individual that is full of pride. May we be a church here in the city of Las Vegas that recognizes our desperate need for our Heavenly Father and expresses that through valuing the opportunity we have to communicate with our God. We cannot underestimate the importance of prayer in the life of a believer because also when we pray, here's what else it does, it expresses our desire to share in God's activity. Only on in my Christian journey I thought that prayer was intended to change God's mind. That through my words and phrasing, my passion that somehow I was attempting to change what God's plan was to adjust it to what I want. That's wrong. Listen, prayer is not designed to change anything about God. Prayer is designed to change us. It's not as much that during a time of prayer we're trying to get God to listen as it is we're trying to get ourselves in a right mindset and hard attitude so that we will actually listen to Him. Henry Blackaby said this, "Prayer is not designed to change God. It is designed to change us." Prayer is not calling God into bless our activities. Rather, prayer takes us into God's presence, shows us His will and prepares us to obey. As we live with an awareness of God, it will make us sensitive to His presence and what He's doing around us, and it should move us towards constant communication with Him. That's one major component of prayer. Here's a second component of prayer. Not only am I to live with an awareness of God, I am to live with an awareness of others. The second phrase He uses in verse 9 is to ask. He says, "I've not ceased to pray and I've not ceased to ask." The word ask means to request or to beg. Paul is saying, "Listen, I've been praying. I've been requesting. I've been begging and pleading before our heavenly Father on your behalf." Paul is introducing here something that is called intercessory prayer. Now you may or may not understand that phrase, but intercessory prayer in its simplest form is this, prayer on behalf of others. That's what intercessory prayer is. You and I going before God, communicating with God on behalf of other people, but we cannot effectively pray for others unless we're aware of what they need. Listen, I am as bad as anybody to be so busy and so focused on the task at hand that I miss the people all around me who are in need. And who God has placed around me, yes, so I can love them, yes, so I can spend time with them, but also so that I can pray for them. The whole thrust of this passage that we're unpacking this weekend and next weekend is laying out for us how you and I can pray for one another, understanding there's no situation, there's no personality, and there is no need that we cannot take before our heavenly Father. We must live with an awareness of God, His presence and His activity, but we also must have an awareness that there are people around us who are in need and if we will stop long enough to see them, to listen to them, God wants to use us to pray for them. John MacArthur said this, "The two elements of praying without ceasing came together in Paul's prayer life. His love for God led him to seek unbroken communion with him. His love for people drove him to unceasing prayer on their behalf." I hope that gives you some context this morning as we talk about prayer this weekend and next weekend. Those are just some simple principles to help us understand what prayer is. There's a second question for us to talk through and wrestle with this morning. How am I to pray for others? How are you and I to pray for other people? Well, typically, when we pray for others, we pray for help, we pray for encouragement, we pray for emotional or physical healing, we pray for safety, we pray for God's blessing, we pray for restored relationships, we pray for boldness to witness to other people, and all those are great things to pray, but they're not the greatest thing that we can pray for someone else. In the second half of verse 9, Paul shares with us the greatest thing we can pray for another believer and want to warn you what he's going to share with us is not more resources. What he's going to share with us is not to pray for a more comfortable lifestyle or a bigger ministry platform. I want to give you a two-part statement that I think really unpacks what Paul is sharing with us in the second part of verse 9. Here's part one of the statement, "The greatest thing I can pray for another Christian is that they will know the heart of God." The greatest thing that you and I can go before God and intercede for someone else, the greatest thing we can lay before him is that our brothers and sisters in Christ would know the heart of God. Paul goes on to say in verse 9, "He says that they may be filled with the knowledge of His will." Now, that sounds wonderful, but what does it mean? Well, there's two phrases here. The first one is filled with. It means to be controlled by. It means to be consumed by, we see this word used in other places in Scripture. The Bible says people were filled with sorrow or they were filled with anger. It's the same idea of being controlled by something. The next phrase he says is the knowledge of His will. He's meaning a deep, full knowledge of who God is and what His purposes are in the world. You see, when he refers here to God's will, he's not intending to communicate God's plan on an individual level. He's not speaking about the specific details of your life or my life. He's not talking about where we live, where we go to school, or where we work. No, he's speaking from a much, much larger scope. The desire of Paul's prayer is that the believers at Colossae would be consumed with knowing God and what He's about, and that their pursuit of Him, their longing to know Him, would so control their life, that they would be filled to overflow and it would spill out into their every day life. The greatest thing you and I can pray for another believer is that they would know the heart of God. Several years ago, we were doing a verse by verse study through another one of Paul's letters. It's called the Book of Philippians. In Philippians chapter three, Paul is really sharing his story. He's given his testimony and we drew a life-changing perspective out of that chapter that I want us to look at and kind of think about again this morning. I want to put it on the screen, but here it is. Knowing Jesus is the ultimate pursuit of my life. For Jesus' follower, the thing that we desire, that we aim at more than anything else, is to be knowing Jesus. Let me ask you this morning, as you lay that principle over your life, based on how you spend your time, your energy, your resources. Could you say knowing Jesus is the ultimate pursuit of your life? I want to read you the section of Scripture where Paul really captures this and I want you to listen for how Paul shares the consuming passion of his life. It's in Philippians chapter three, starting in verse seven, he says this, "But whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ. The righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith," and I love this, he says, "that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of the suffering be conformed to His death in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead." In those words, you clearly hear the consuming passion of Paul's life. More than fame, more than education, more than resources, more than comfort, Paul's consuming passion was knowing Jesus and what he's interceding on behalf of these believers at Colossae, what he's praying for them is that the consuming passion of his life would be the consuming passion of their life, that they would know the heart of God. Typically, when I'm in just different conversations that's a meeting or that's here at church or maybe just with my small group, a lot of times when people ask me to pray for them, here's some of the things they ask me to pray, they ask me to pray for wisdom, direction for their life, for peace, for humility, for strength, for God's blessing, for God to use them. Listen, all those are great things, but here's the reality, most of the things that we ask other people to pray about for us are a byproduct of us walking in an intimate love relationship with Jesus. You see, when we're walking in an intimate love relationship with Jesus, His wisdom will fulfill our lives. When we're walking in intimacy with God, we have the peace of God in our heart. When we're walking with Jesus, His life in us will produce humility, it will produce grace, it will produce strength, it will produce blessing, all of those things come as a byproduct of us walking in intimacy with God, here's the problem. For most people, me included, we want to know God's will for us more than we want to know God. And we see it by what we pray about, you pray about what you care about, how often do we spend as individual believers pleading before our heavenly Father that we can know His heart, that we can be controlled and consumed with a passion to know Him and what His eternal purposes are in the world. If I'm speaking for me, I'm extremely convicted because those moments are often few and far between. I want to put a passage of Scripture on the screen that's really it's a famous passage of Scripture, especially the first verse. It's from Jeremiah chapter 29, it's what the Bible says. "For I know the plans that I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope, then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will listen to you," in verse 13, "you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart." Here's an essence what that passage is telling us. God is saying, "Listen, I know my plan for your life and it's a good plan. And when you pursue me, I'm available and you're going to know me. And when you know me, then you will know my will for your life." You see, the problem is all of us love to quote verse 11. We love to put verse 11 up on our wall or on our screensaver, but you will not experience verse 11 unless you apply verse 13, which says, "You must seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." Listen, may we be a church that has to pray for one another more than we're praying that we would know God's will, we need to be praying that we would know God and that we would know His heart and His eternal purposes in the world. Can I tell you how every prayer request should start? It should start by saying, "Please pray that first and foremost, I will know the heart of God." Because when you know His heart, it changes what you ask for. It changes what you stress out about. It changes what you value. It changes what you love. It changes the way you spend your resources. Now listen, I'm not saying to stop praying about the other stuff. As Pastor Vant said, "Shar and I leave in the morning to go on a five-week sabbatical." And listen, as we're away, I want you to pray that we have a good time. I want you to pray that we're refreshed, that we enjoy the beach, that it's a blast, but more than that, if you only have time to pray one thing for my family, I want you to pray that in our time away, we would know the heart of God. More than anything else, that's the greatest thing that one believer can pray for another. I'm going to give you part two of this statement, and it's equally as important as the first part. The greatest thing I can pray for another Christian is that they will know the heart of God through the Word of God. The primary way that we are able to gain clarity into God's heart is through His Word. Paul goes on, he says, that they may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And this was major for the believers at Colossae, because you see, one of their enemies was false teachers. Teachers who sounded smooth, who sounded genuine, but who were preaching a false gospel. They were teaching that, yes, Jesus is good for starters, but there is other knowledge that you need in order to be right with God. And so Paul prays some very specific things at the end of this verse, because he knows what those believers are dealing with. The first thing he prays for them is spiritual wisdom. Well, what is that? Well, spiritual wisdom is the ability to collect and organize principles from Scripture. It's the ability for you and I to take this book and to process through it and pull out principles on our own. Throughout the Bible, we see references to physical growth in order to help us understand spiritual growth. We'll see references in scriptures that says, as babes desire milk or to put aside childless wage. Well, why is that? Because all of us understand physical growth. We know the process is that a baby goes through to become a child, a child to a teenager, a teenager to an adult. We know there are things that babies cannot do for themselves, that they are dependent on their parents to eat, to bathe, to be clothed. But by the time they're a teenager, hopefully they can do those things on their own. So here's what Paul's saying. Paul's saying, listen, I'm praying that you are to a place now in your spiritual journey that you can feed yourself, that you can take the Word of God and you can look at it and you can organize and collect principles out of the Scriptures. What a great thing to pray for other Christians, that we would be able to feed ourselves on the Word of God. And I know it's a struggle. I know, I know the tendency, even in my heart, some weeks when I say, you know what? Rather than taking this book and digging in it for myself, I'm just going to, I'm going to meditate on what we talked about on Sunday, or I'm going to think about a quote I heard on SOS radio, or I'm just going to listen to another sermon on the podcast. Listen to this statement, "If you have limited your spiritual growth to what God is saying to other people, you've missed the essence of the relationship." And Paul knew that. Paul knew the tendency for believers to want to do whatever is easiest, but he says, no, I'm praying spiritual wisdom for you, that you can sit down with the Word of God and you can extract principles and organize them for yourself, that you can feast on this book. He prayed for spiritual wisdom, but secondly, he prayed for spiritual understanding. He prayed for spiritual understanding. What is that? Well, that is application of those principles to everyday life. It's the application of what we pull out of the Word of God into our everyday life. Listen, there is no substitute in your life for the Word of God. It is the source of truth, it's God's love letter, it's the primary means through which we know his heart, but it's not just intended for us to memorize and know the facts. We have to take what is in this book and apply it to our lives and prayerfully be transformed. You see, a relationship with God is not just about information, it's not just about collecting knowledge. Listen, as our pastoral team is, we pray for our church, we don't just pray that you would memorize the sermons. We don't just pray that you would memorize the conversation and be engaged in small group. No, we pray that the words of this book would be applied to your life and bring about transformation. That's what we pray for you. And that's what Paul's praying for these believers, spiritual wisdom and spiritual understanding. The greatest thing that you and I can pray for another Christian is that they would know the heart of God through the Word of God. Amen. Let me give you a third question quickly as we finish this morning. What is my attitude when praying for others? We're talking these two weeks about interceding for other people. Well, what is our attitude to be as we pray? Why want you to drop down to verse 12 and Pastor Vance is going to unpack this more next weekend, but I just want to read it this morning. Verse 12 says, "Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light." You read that verse and you hear joy and expectancy from the Apostle Paul. You get a sense that he understands he's taking these requests to the God of heaven who can do anything and who can change anybody. He is viewing these saints not for where they are at that moment, but for who they are in Christ. And as you and I pray, as we intercede on behalf of others, we are to do so with a sense of joy and expectancy, understanding that we are taking these requests to the God of heaven, to the King of kings, and to the Lord of lords, and that the source we're tapping into is not a source like our resources or our ability or our wisdom. It's the God of heaven. A.C. Dixon said this. He says, "When we depend on organizations, we get what organizations can do. When we depend on education, we get what education can do. When we depend on man, we get what man can do. But when we depend on prayer, we get what God can do." As a church, we don't need the best effort of our pastors. We don't need the best effort of the people who call hope their home. Through prayer, we have an opportunity to tap into what only God can do. The five most important words you can ever say to another person are, "I am praying for you." [BLANK_AUDIO]