Colossians 4:2-4: “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.” Today's episode talks to us about how important it is to pray. I talk about why we should be more specific in our prayers. I also explain a bit more about why we need to be watchful and thankful. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Be Specific In Your Prayers
Colossians 4:2-4: “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.”
This year I decided I was going to focus on one scripture verse a week during my morning prayer time. I asked my friends on Facebook to give me their favorite scriptures, and during the week that I focused on the scripture they gave me, I would pray for them in a special way. I was reviewing the verses I received this morning, and the one I chose for this week is John 1:5: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” I thought this would be a great verse for an episode, as I love reminding people that the enemy wants to keep us in the dark. However, if we bring his lies and tactics into the light, we see him for who he really is. I truly believe there is no darkness too dark for the light of Christ to break into. All we need to do is invite the light into the darkness. While I was thinking about this verse, I looked it up and found out I already did an episode on it. It was episode #568, titled “The Darkness Will Not Overtake You!”
After realizing that I had already used this verse, I moved on to the next verse someone gave me, which is the verse above. My friend Lela gave me this verse, which I think is perfect as she was such a great friend when we lived in England. She and her husband were some of the first people we met, and we got along right away. We hung out a lot on Friday nights as we had kids similar in age. We even went on vacations together. It was great! This verse talks about being thankful, and I am so very thankful for their friendship.
The verse above begins by saying, “Devote yourself to prayer, being watchful and thankful.” These three things are so important. Prayer is as simple as talking to God. You can do it formally, as in scripted prayers like the Our Father, or you can do it informally like you are having a conversation with your best friend. It doesn’t matter how you pray; it matters that you pray. That time you spend with the Lord is important. Whether it is 5 minutes or 5 hours, it doesn’t matter. Just spend time with Him.
After it says to devote yourself to prayer, it says to be watchful. I wasn’t sure what this meant, and I didn’t want to lead you astray, so I looked it up. I am glad I did, as this is something I talked about a few minutes ago, and yet it didn’t even occur to me when thinking about being watchful. We need to be watchful of the enemy. The devil is constantly trying to steal, kill, and destroy us. He doesn’t make a full-on frontal attack, though. He comes at us from all sides, and his attacks are usually masked with lies or with temptation. He temps us with things He knows we want, and he lies to us about things he knows we already questioning. In Matthew 26:41 it says, “Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” This is us. Our spirit is willing, but our flesh is weak. We fall for the enemy’s tricks more easily if we are not on the lookout for them.
Lastly, the first line says to be thankful. You would think this one would be easy. It isn’t. We often forget to be thankful when things are going well. When things are tough, we ask God to come in and fix them. Then, when He does, we often forget to say Thank You. Gratitude is something that can help us in many ways. If we have an attitude of gratitude, then we are more focused on the positive. We are looking for things that we can be grateful for, and so we naturally notice more good than bad. Our focus is important. Are we looking for all that is going wrong, or are we looking for all that is going right? What are three things you have to be thankful for this morning? I start off each day, well, most days, by writing 5 things I am grateful for. I tried to make them as specific as I could. For instance, instead of saying I am thankful for my boys, I write down I am thankful Sam made it home safely in the snow, I am thankful for the conversation I had with Ryan, I am thankful Noah got to see his friend he hasn’t seen in over a year. Do you see how specific I get? Now it’s your turn.
I didn’t want to just stop with this first verse, as I think the next two verses are important as well. They say, “And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.” This is important because it shows us something important to pray for that might now have occurred to us. Did you ever think of praying for God to open a door for you to proclaim the mystery of Christ? It’s interesting to me the things others pray for that didn’t even occur to me. In this verse, St. Paul is in prison for proclaiming the Word of God, and yet He is asking for others to ask the Lord to open a door for him to keep proclaiming the Word of the Lord. I never thought of praying for that before. I do want to proclaim the Word of God. I want to help the whole world hear about God’s love and forgiveness. Yet, I never thought to pray specifically for God to open a door for that message.
This is why, when I read that part of the verse this morning, I wanted to share it with you. I wanted each one of you to know that it is possible to pray for the exact thing you want. I learned this about praying for our children as well. Yes, it is important to pray for our children, but are we praying specifically for what we would like? I read a book called “The Power of a Praying Parent.” It is a book full of specific prayers for our children. There are many versions. The other one I read was called “The Power of a Praying Wife.” These books taught me the importance of being specific in my prayers. They taught me to pray for all the things I want and not just leave them to chance or assume God knows what I want. He does know, but He also likes it when we ask.
You can pray for your children to get a good teacher, you can pray for them to have good, Godly friends, and you can pray for their future spouse or their future careers. These things may seem so obvious to you, and yet I never really thought of it before. Tony and I sat down last January, and we thought about where we wanted the kids to be by the end of the year. We thought about what things were important to us, not for the next 10 years, but what we would like to see from the boys in this one year, and then we wrote a specific prayer for those things. I am sad to say we didn’t continue to say it together for very long, but even writing it and praying it together for those few days/weeks made a huge difference. I think almost every single one of the things we prayed for came true.
We often say I guess all we can do is pray. When we say this, we are taking for granted how powerful prayer is. We are limiting it and treating it like a last resort. Our prayers are powerful. More powerful than we will ever know. I know I told this story before, but I will tell it again since it shows how powerful our prayers are. There was a man jogging by an ambulance, and a woman was being taken out of her house. He wanted to help but wasn’t a medical professional, so he kept jogging but decided he would say one Hail Mary prayer while continuing to jog. A few weeks later, he happened to be jogging by the same house, and the woman was outside. She called him, and when they talked, she told him that he had saved her life. She explained when she got to the hospital she saw the face of Jesus. He told her that she was going to die but that the prayer of this man, whose face Jesus had on the palm of His hand, had saved her. It was the face of the man who jogged by her. If one Hail Mary can save this woman’s life, think of all the amazing things that can happen when you dare to ask specifically for what you want. “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you to help us remember to pray and to be watchful. Lord, help us be grateful for all the big and small things you have done for us. Lord, help us learn how to pray more specifically for what we need or even what we want. We know you love us and want to give us even more than we desire. We ask that you help keep our hearts pure and only ask for good things. We love you, Lord, and we ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, if you would like to sign up for mentoring, you can go to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com, or you can click here. We meet on Tuesday nights on Zoom at 8 PM EST. If you are local and would be interested in an in-person mentoring group, please reach out and let me know. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord is: “My children, it is my Spirit of hope, love, and joy that is falling upon you. Let it sprinkle everyone that you meet. I am your God be not afraid to spread my joy. Be not afraid to spread my hope. It is all that I give that is worthy. Be aware that you will meet difficulties but I am always there with you. Take my hand, Take hold of it. I will not let you go. I am all that you need to succeed, for I am your God.”