Praying God Big Prayers!

Colossians 1:9-11, “For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy;” 

This is the prayer that Paul prays for the new believers in Colossae, a Roman city full of gods and temples, including the worship of the emperor himself. Paul's prayer in Colossians 1:9-11 shows the kind of growth in maturity that he longs to see in all of us who have believed the gospel.

It’s easy to slip into a preoccupation with our own, usually serious, but basically personal and small praying for help, health, and happiness for ourselves and those we know and love. But we need to ask Father to open the eyes of our hearts so that we see time in the light of eternity, and our present privileges and obligations in the light of our past election and future perfection. When we begin to share Paul’s perspective, we will then begin to pray his type of prayers, and be moved to also share his praise. For doctrine should lead to doxology as well as to duty. When we start praying “God Big Prayers” like these that Paul prayed in his prison epistles, life will become worship, and we will bless God constantly for having blessed us so richly in Christ, and pray fervently for God to bring in “the fullness of the times” so that “He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth - in Him.” 

A “God Big Prayer” contains numerous aspects and Paul lists at least three of them in his prayer in Colossians 1:9-11

1. Paul Prays for Them to Know God's Story

" For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; (v. 9).

Until recently my understanding of praying to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will meant asking Father what he wanted me to do in my life. But Chris Wright opened my eyes to see that Paul’s prayer that believers will know "the will of God," does not mean God's guidance in his readers' personal lives. He means the same as that great explanatory text in his parallel letter to the churches in Ephesus: "the mystery of his [God's] will .. .to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ" (Eph. 1:9-10). And that this is the whole mission of God, the ultimate goal of the whole biblical story.

This is the story that stretches from creation to new creation. And Paul wants them to know that purposeful plan of God thoroughly and profoundly from the Scriptures, with the help of the Holy Spirit.

In his commentary on Ephesians, Bishop N.T. Wright reminds us of the imperativeness of living out of the “Big Glory Story of God” and not just focusing on our own little personal stories: “The opening of this letter is a celebration of the larger story within which every single Christian story – every story of individual conversion, faith, spiritual life, obedience and hope – is set. Only by understanding and celebrating the larger story can we hope to understand everything that’s going on in our own smaller stories, and so observe God at work in and through our own lives.

“Our salvation in Christ is a vital stage, but only a stage, on the way to the much larger purpose of God. God’s plan is for the whole cosmos, the entire universe; his choosing and calling of us, and his shaping and directing of us in the Messiah, are somehow connected with that larger intention. How this works out we shall see a little later. But the point is that we aren’t chosen for our own sake, but for the sake of what God wants to accomplish through us. This alerts us to the other hidden story which Paul is telling all through this great prayer. It is the story of the Exodus from Egypt. God chose Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to be the bearers of his promised salvation for the world – the rescue of the whole cosmos, humankind especially, from the sin and death that had come about through human rebellion. When Paul says that God chose us ‘in Christ’ – the ‘us’ here being the whole company of Christians, Jews and Gentiles alike – he is saying that those who believe in Jesus are now part of the fulfilment of that ancient purpose. But the story, of course, doesn’t stop there. In verses 7–10 Paul tells the story of the cross of Jesus in such a way that we can hear, underneath it, the ancient Jewish story of Passover. Passover was the night when the angel of death came through the land of Egypt, and the blood of the lamb sprinkled on the doorposts rescued the Israelites from the judgment that would otherwise have fallen on them. The word often used for that moment was ‘redemption’ or ‘deliverance’: it was the time when God went to Egypt and ‘bought’ for himself the people that had been enslaved there. Now, again in fulfilment of the old story, the true ‘redemption’ has occurred. Forgiveness of sins is the real ‘deliverance’ from the real slave master. And it’s been accomplished through the sacrificial blood of Jesus.

“Telling the story like this – the story of Jesus the Messiah, and the meaning of his death, told in such a way as to bring out the fact that it’s the fulfilment of the Exodus story – is a classic Jewish way of celebrating the goodness of God. Worship, for Christians, will almost always involve telling the story of what God has done in and through Jesus. From the beginning, such storytelling built on the stories of God’s earlier actions on Israel’s behalf. The prayer will now conclude by moving forwards from the Christian version of the Exodus to the Christian version of the promised land.”

2. Paul Prays for Them to Live by God's Standards.

Verse 10 gives the result or purpose of Paul's prayer in verse 9: "that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;” This is the practical implication. There is a life to be lived as well as truth to be believed and teaching to be understood. The "will of God" that the new believers in Colosse now understand through Paul's teaching of the whole scriptural narrative, with its climax in Christ and its completion in the new creation, must now shape their thinking, choices, relationships, words and attitudes, behavior and habits, family, home and work - the whole of life, in short. They must "live a life worthy" of all that God has done and said and planned in the biblical gospel. We are summoned to live a life that is consistent with the revelation of Scripture, pleasing the God who is the Author, Producer, and Director of the story we are in. As we play our part in the great unfolding drama of Scripture, we need to be worthy actors on the stage. In order to live in this manner we need to pray the third part of Paul’s prayer:

3. Paul Prays for Them to Prove by Experience God's Strength.

Colossians 1:11, "being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy;"

Walking worthy of the Lord is now clarified or expanded in yet one more way: alongside fruitbearing and growing, we now get “being empowered.” If the former actions are the visible manifestations of a worthy walk, we now meet the source for that holy and loving life. Paul’s wording rhetorically intensifies God’s supplying power: the operative word is “empowering” or “being strengthened” Paul has in mind the presence of God’s Spirit. The the power the Colossians need to live a life worthy of the Lord comes from the Glorious One, the God of the gospel, in the Person of the indwelling, infilling presence of the Holy Spirit. The intended direction of God’s empowering and mighty strengthening is unto “great endurance and patience." Christian living is made possible only by the power of the resurrection and the gift of the Spirit.

So, it is not self-effort, but God’s energy that empowers us. Cols.1:11 reads, in effect: “With all power being empowered according to the might of His glory.” Paul used two different Greek words for God’s energy: dunamis, which means “inherent power”; and kratos, which means “manifested power,” power that is put forth in action. The grace of our Christian lives is but a result of God’s power at work in our lives. Spiritual growth and maturity can come only as we yield to God’s power and permit Him to work in us.

O Lord, enlarge our vision. Help us to get on our hearts what You have on Yours. Open our eyes to see our prayers as partnering with You to see Your name hallowed, Your will done, and Your kingdom come, so that people from every ethnicity and country and all things in the cosmos will become as they are in heaven! And all of that so that the Lamb of God has the reward of His sufferings