My Prayer For You

Colossians 1:9-14 “Pastor, would you pray for me.”  I have cancer.  I’m struggling in my marriage.  I’ve got this big decision to make and I don’t know which way to go.  My child is on the wrong track.  “Pastor, would you pray for me.” 

I’m always glad to do that.  In fact, I’m blessed to be able to share your joys and sorrows and struggle.  I want you to have every good gift that God bestows upon his children in this life and so I am happy to take these things to the Lord in prayer, confident that God will always answer for your good.

But my prayers for you don’t end there because there is much more to our existence than just being healthy, wealthy, and wise.  My job as your pastor is to help you have a life with God—in this world and in the world to come.

And so my prayers for you do not stop at material blessings—but also include spiritual blessings.  I pray that you would have a knowledge of God and his will so that you would live holy lives here on earth.  I pray that God would give you his strength so that you could face the challenges of life with faith and joy.  And I pray that you would be filled with thanksgiving to God for his gift of salvation.  The Bible says:

We have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,

God is Your heavenly Father.  Jesus has saved you at the cost of his own life.  The Holy Spirit has been working in your life from the very beginning to make you God’s child.  No one knows you better or loves you more than God.  And the Lord has a will for your life—every part of your life—and that will is not hidden.  It is plainly revealed in his Word.

As your pastor I am thankful to God that you know and believe that Jesus is your Lord and Savior.  There is no substitute for that.  There is no life with God without that.  But God wants you to know what that means—not as some intellectual agreement with the truth and not as merely some dogma that we say correctly in the creeds.  But he wants you to have a living, heartfelt knowledge of his will for you.

There is one way to come to that knowledge and that is through the Word of God.  That is why I pray for you to be faithful in church and bible class attendance—that you would hear the Word of God read and preached on and taught. 

God has a will for how you order your priorities and how you deal with money and how you manage your family and unless you hear and study his word you will not know be able to live the holy life that God expects of those he has redeemed.  The Bible says that we are to grow in our knowledge of his will so that we can:

walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.

That is a high calling indeed—to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord.  Just think of that!  Our lives are to be lived in such a way that all of the care and concern and time and love that God has lavished upon us has been worthwhile to him. 

We have been saved for a purpose—so that we can live lives that are pleasing to him.  We see that so clearly in our Old Testament lesson.  Again and again God says:  I am the Lord—the God of your salvation—and so this is how you are to live.  And as we walk in a manner worthy of the Lord and as we do good works—our knowledge of God himself will grow.

This is something that Christians are confused about.  We can learn about God’s will from the Bible ( and that is the first step) but a knowledge of God himself—filled with spiritual wisdom and understanding-- comes as we step out in faith and begin to actually live out what the Bible says.  That takes courage and conviction and so I pray that God would give you the strength to do so.  My pray for you is that you:

…be strengthened with all power, according to God’s glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy,

Throughout these verses we hear the high calling of our Christian life—that we are to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord—that we are to live our lives in such a way that they are fully pleasing to God—that we are to bear the fruit of good works and patiently endure all things.

None of us naturally have the strength or resolve or faith to do any of these things.  And yet the Lord calls us to do them.

Is this high calling an act of cruelty on God’s part, seeing that we have no strength in ourselves to do it?  No!  Rather, it is an invitation to be strengthened by the Lord—to have his glorious might active in our lives—rather than relying on our own strength.  Let me give you an example.

Paul struggled with something he called “a thorn in his flesh”.  We don’t know what that was but it was a real sign of his own frailty and he prayed earnestly for it to be removed.  But God wanted him to have strength far greater than his own and so the thorn remained but along with it Paul was given God’s strength.  God told him:  “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”.

That power that is perfected in our weakness—that power that strengthens us for the high calling of the Christian life is the Gospel—the Good News of Jesus.  The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. 

The world thinks of power only in terms of earthly strength and might and so has little regard for the power of the Gospel.  But it is only the Good News of Jesus Christ that has the power to deliver us from the dominion of darkness and transfer us to the kingdom of God.  It is only the Good News of Jesus that has the power to change enemies of God into his children.  It is only the Good News of Jesus Christ that has the power to defeat death and the devil.

The Gospel is the power of God that strengthens us for the Christian life and we receive it over and over when we hear the story of salvation in the sermon and receive Holy Communion and when we are forgiven of our sins in the absolution. 

We need every bit of God’s strength that we can possibly receive, every time we have an opportunity to receive it, so that we can patiently endure the challenges we face as Christian people because we now that many will fall away and it is only those who endure unto the end who will be saved.

As your pastor I want you to come to church on Sunday because I know that this is the place that God has appointed where you can receive the strength you need to face the challenges of living as a Christian.  And those challenges are many.

We live in a world that scorns our values.  The devil prowls around like a roaring lion.  Our own flesh wages war against the new people we are in Christ. 

In our own strength we are hopelessly outgunned in the spiritual battle that we must wage and win throughout our lives if we are to finally enter into heaven.  That is why the Lord has generously promised to empower us through the Gospel so that we can not only endure—BUT ALSO A LIFE OF JOY.

God does not want our life with him to be drudgery and disappointment—Jesus came to give us life and give it to the full—and yet there are struggles and setbacks. 

The key to joyful Christian living is the promise that we are God’s own children, forgiven of our sins, and part of his family—no matter what we face-no matter how often we fall—God loves us.  Strengthened by this Good News we can live a Christian life that is joyful and thankful.  And so I pray that you would:

give thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered you from the domain of darkness and transferred you to the kingdom of his beloved Son,  in whom you have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

I’ve met a number of people who are bitter.  Their life has not worked out like they planned.  They feel like they’ve missed out on some things that mattered.  No matter what is going on in their life—even if it is a blessing—it’s just not quite good enough—not the right timing, etc.  There is no joy because there is no thankfulness.

I can’t think of anything worse for a Christian than to lose the capacity for thankfulness.  And so the question is:  in this life where there are struggles and setbacks—where things don’t always go as planned—how can we retain our thankfulness and joy? 

The secret to thankfulness and joy is what we have set our hearts on and where we have fixed our hopes.  If the object of your life- is this life- you will finally be disappointed because even a life that is blessed materially will end and then eternity.  Jesus said that it is the worst kind of trade to gain the world in this life if we lose our souls for eternal life. 

Of course we know that there are plenty of people sitting in pews that try to have it both ways—people that are really focused on this life thinking of their faith as an insurance policy for eternity.  But this is not really faith and there is no joy or thankfulness for them because it is impossible to love God and mammon.

The only cure for this is to refocus our lives on what truly matters—what will never disappoint—and that is the gift of salvation.  God has rescued us from the devil at the cost of his Son’s life.  He has made us members of his family by the power of the Holy Spirit.  He has forgiven all our sins.  A life of thanksgiving comes from the joy of our salvation—God’s promise that we are his children who have an eternal home waiting for us.

Knowledge of God’s will.  Strength for the journey.  A life of thanksgiving.  This is my prayer for you.  Amen.