Private Prayer and Public Passion
From Colossians 4 – 1 Masters, give your bondservants what is just and fair, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.
Christian Graces
2 Continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving; 3 meanwhile praying also for us, that God would open to us a door for the word, to speak the [a]mystery of Christ, for which I am also in chains, 4 that I may make it manifest, as I ought to speak.
5 Walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, redeeming the time. 6 Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one.
Final Greetings
7 Tychicus, a beloved brother, faithful minister, and fellow servant in the Lord, will tell you all the news about me. 8 I am sending him to you for this very purpose, that [b]he may know your circumstances and comfort your hearts, 9 with Onesimus, a faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you. They will make known to you all things which are happening here.
10 Aristarchus my fellow prisoner greets you, with Mark the cousin of Barnabas (about whom you received instructions: if he comes to you, welcome him), 11 and Jesus who is called Justus. These are my only fellow workers for the kingdom of God who are of the circumcision; they have proved to be a comfort to me.
12 Epaphras, who is one of you, a bondservant of Christ, greets you, always laboring fervently for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and [c]complete in all the will of God.
I'm prone to the common demarcation that there are two types of people in the world. There are people born with the virtues I want, and then there are others which include me. I divided the world thusly with respect to focus and self-discipline. This week, the Lord opened my eyes and granted a slightly more subtle and grateful discernment.
I got to see those whose focus and discipline I admire practice it. One cheerfully and humbly left an area where her habits left her vulnerable to a sense of competing lesser demands in order to focus on the tasks she knew to be primary. Another put me off with perfect graciousness while she finished the task at hand before giving me her full attention. A third sat at my side in complete silence for what seemed like several calm minutes to consider a problem we both needed to attack.
Focus isn't born, it seems. It is made, or at least enhanced, by the humility to put habits which maximize it into place.
With my usual thirst for continuity, and perhaps some strands of connection my gracious reader can follow, I find the same connection between the flowering of another virtue and that habit which, by grace, is its less observed root system. As I scripturally justify desiring God's greater gifts, I want attractive, almost magnetic graciousness which seems to overflow into other people's relationships. Some have that charisma, I can mope, and others don't.
Colossians 4, though, doesn't divide life this way. As Spurgeon observes in Morning and Evening, "Prayer is the forerunner of mercy," so we can with the decoding of this passage begin to connect habit in private prayer with unction and enthusiasm in external relationships. In what comes down to us as the awkwardly divided beginning of Colossians 4, it launches with Paul's spillover from the previous chapter on relationships.
The tail of that discussion concerns the particular challenge of a grace-infused relationship between masters and servants, bosses and employees. No sooner, though, does Paul give this horizontal injunction than he retreats to a vertical indicative. He is a man of reflexive prayer, and reflective instruction about prayer.
In his inspired writing, he never seems more than a few steps from his prayer closet. Challenge. Bathe in prayer. Challenge. Bathe in prayer. Challenge. He only speaks as he ought to speak by the standards of Colossians 4:4 because of prayers like those mentioned in the previous two verses. A connective confession that even his words about prayer are themselves the fruit of prayers?
He doesn't give us a transcript of pleas for the right words and right heart for other people, but ChrisTiegreen might give us an apt summary we can carry both into the prayer closet and from there into the battle for integrated, mutually invigorating relationships. Begin to ask, Tiegreen upgrades our prayers in Feeling Like God, so that we ask to feel what God feels about a given person or situation. The phrase is perhaps modern, but that intercessory passion pulsates through Paul's regard for his fellow humans.
We shouldn't be surprised that such wholeness, such peace in his own skin and in the situations in which God places him has an impact on those immediately downstream from Paul's ministry. Tychicus is set in motion toward the believers to whom Paul is writing in part to find details from their lives for Paul to pray about. How often are our relationships dry with friction because our prayers of intercession are dry, general, and rote?
Want to come out of the prayer closet with something like Moses' glow of intercession apparent to others? Go in there with a list of specific concerns for the same brothers and sisters you might otherwise complain about. The idea that the Lord will give us an occasional Word of knowledge on how to pray specifically for other people when we don't bother to ask is pride by another name. It might soften the dynamics of potential conflict in a relationship if I ask the parties with whom I interact how to pray for them, but it WILL change me.
Look at Epaphras' business card that precedes him in Colossians 4:12. His greeting is sweet because it is but the bubbling of an underground stream of prayer for these people. Both his outward reading and his habit of prayer get from Paul's stylus. The apostle, the Saul who once muttered bitterly against the Church now knows from where good words and a gentle aspect toward men,. These, if genuine, are the aftereffect of prayer.
Before my words are pasted on the page, I can feel the objection seeping in that I nor my readers have time or energy for the sweeping intercession that must have dominated the life of the apostle Paul. Consider, then, the alternative. How much sweat, how much problem-solving, how much cleanup of the aftereffect of bitterness on the part of both parties will take place because, it seems, preemptive prayer did not?
We will spend our days taxing limited energy and time, and encountering opposition. How much the better to do so in the immediate Presence of Christ in prayer where all else is strangely dim?
Christian Graces
2 Continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving; 3 meanwhile praying also for us, that God would open to us a door for the word, to speak the [a]mystery of Christ, for which I am also in chains, 4 that I may make it manifest, as I ought to speak.
5 Walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, redeeming the time. 6 Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one.
Final Greetings
7 Tychicus, a beloved brother, faithful minister, and fellow servant in the Lord, will tell you all the news about me. 8 I am sending him to you for this very purpose, that [b]he may know your circumstances and comfort your hearts, 9 with Onesimus, a faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you. They will make known to you all things which are happening here.
10 Aristarchus my fellow prisoner greets you, with Mark the cousin of Barnabas (about whom you received instructions: if he comes to you, welcome him), 11 and Jesus who is called Justus. These are my only fellow workers for the kingdom of God who are of the circumcision; they have proved to be a comfort to me.
12 Epaphras, who is one of you, a bondservant of Christ, greets you, always laboring fervently for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and [c]complete in all the will of God.
I'm prone to the common demarcation that there are two types of people in the world. There are people born with the virtues I want, and then there are others which include me. I divided the world thusly with respect to focus and self-discipline. This week, the Lord opened my eyes and granted a slightly more subtle and grateful discernment.
I got to see those whose focus and discipline I admire practice it. One cheerfully and humbly left an area where her habits left her vulnerable to a sense of competing lesser demands in order to focus on the tasks she knew to be primary. Another put me off with perfect graciousness while she finished the task at hand before giving me her full attention. A third sat at my side in complete silence for what seemed like several calm minutes to consider a problem we both needed to attack.
Focus isn't born, it seems. It is made, or at least enhanced, by the humility to put habits which maximize it into place.
With my usual thirst for continuity, and perhaps some strands of connection my gracious reader can follow, I find the same connection between the flowering of another virtue and that habit which, by grace, is its less observed root system. As I scripturally justify desiring God's greater gifts, I want attractive, almost magnetic graciousness which seems to overflow into other people's relationships. Some have that charisma, I can mope, and others don't.
Colossians 4, though, doesn't divide life this way. As Spurgeon observes in Morning and Evening, "Prayer is the forerunner of mercy," so we can with the decoding of this passage begin to connect habit in private prayer with unction and enthusiasm in external relationships. In what comes down to us as the awkwardly divided beginning of Colossians 4, it launches with Paul's spillover from the previous chapter on relationships.
The tail of that discussion concerns the particular challenge of a grace-infused relationship between masters and servants, bosses and employees. No sooner, though, does Paul give this horizontal injunction than he retreats to a vertical indicative. He is a man of reflexive prayer, and reflective instruction about prayer.
In his inspired writing, he never seems more than a few steps from his prayer closet. Challenge. Bathe in prayer. Challenge. Bathe in prayer. Challenge. He only speaks as he ought to speak by the standards of Colossians 4:4 because of prayers like those mentioned in the previous two verses. A connective confession that even his words about prayer are themselves the fruit of prayers?
He doesn't give us a transcript of pleas for the right words and right heart for other people, but ChrisTiegreen might give us an apt summary we can carry both into the prayer closet and from there into the battle for integrated, mutually invigorating relationships. Begin to ask, Tiegreen upgrades our prayers in Feeling Like God, so that we ask to feel what God feels about a given person or situation. The phrase is perhaps modern, but that intercessory passion pulsates through Paul's regard for his fellow humans.
We shouldn't be surprised that such wholeness, such peace in his own skin and in the situations in which God places him has an impact on those immediately downstream from Paul's ministry. Tychicus is set in motion toward the believers to whom Paul is writing in part to find details from their lives for Paul to pray about. How often are our relationships dry with friction because our prayers of intercession are dry, general, and rote?
Want to come out of the prayer closet with something like Moses' glow of intercession apparent to others? Go in there with a list of specific concerns for the same brothers and sisters you might otherwise complain about. The idea that the Lord will give us an occasional Word of knowledge on how to pray specifically for other people when we don't bother to ask is pride by another name. It might soften the dynamics of potential conflict in a relationship if I ask the parties with whom I interact how to pray for them, but it WILL change me.
Look at Epaphras' business card that precedes him in Colossians 4:12. His greeting is sweet because it is but the bubbling of an underground stream of prayer for these people. Both his outward reading and his habit of prayer get from Paul's stylus. The apostle, the Saul who once muttered bitterly against the Church now knows from where good words and a gentle aspect toward men,. These, if genuine, are the aftereffect of prayer.
Before my words are pasted on the page, I can feel the objection seeping in that I nor my readers have time or energy for the sweeping intercession that must have dominated the life of the apostle Paul. Consider, then, the alternative. How much sweat, how much problem-solving, how much cleanup of the aftereffect of bitterness on the part of both parties will take place because, it seems, preemptive prayer did not?
We will spend our days taxing limited energy and time, and encountering opposition. How much the better to do so in the immediate Presence of Christ in prayer where all else is strangely dim?
Comments
Post a Comment