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Certain moments in life stay with you. Sometimes you have no idea why. Even the people around you may not take notice or remember, but the moment shapes your thinking in a way that you wouldn’t have expected. This happened during syllabus day in my first semester of seminary.

The professor asked us to turn to the prayer at the beginning of the syllabus. He then proceeded to tells us that he would read this as our class prayer every day until the semester was over. He said he knew what he wanted for the class this year, so there was no reason to pray anything different. Some might have chalked this up to lifeless ritual, but this simple act spoke to me about the importance of intentionality when talking to God.

Focusing your prayer pushes you deeper in your relationship with God.

This intentionality is something the Apostle Paul and my seminary professor had in common. They both understood the effectiveness of intentional prayer. One of the longest prayers that the Apostle Paul prays for the people he pastors is found at the beginning of his Letter to the Colossians.

In verse 9 it says that he prayed this prayer continually for them.

We often worry about our prayer life becoming stagnant. We don’t want to get stuck in a spiritual rut. However, focusing your prayer life only pushes you deeper in your relationship with God, and the Apostle Paul understood that there is a particular power in repeated petitions.

Paul’s Prayer

“And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding…” (Colossians 1:9 ESV)

Paul starts by asking that they would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will. What Paul has in mind is not a just special direction for one’s life (as we often use the phrase “God’s will”). Paul wants the Colossian church to have a deep and abiding understanding of the outworking of God’s plan of redemption through Christ, and all that he means for the world and the role the Colossian church in it. This request sees beyond an individual cry, to a desire to understand God’s plan to advance the Kingdom of God.

Paul prays that they would see beyond themselves and grasp the scale and scope of what they are participants in.

And the manifestation of this knowledge is “all spiritual wisdom and understanding…” what does that mean?

Your Prayer

This should be your prayer too.

God doesn’t want to work around us. He wants to work through us to impact the world around us. But this starts with grasping the immensity of His will.

God doesn’t want to work around us. He wants to work through us to impact the world around us.

This is where Paul begins, and this starting point leads him to pray for very specific things to take place in the lives of the Colossian believers. Here is what he prayed for them, and this is a great place to begin in praying over your life through the rest of this year.

1. A Life of Worth

So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him (Colossians 1:10a ESV)

The issue here is not your status in Christ. If you are Christian, then you have been made worthy through Christ. You stand in Him complete—because of what has been done for you.

What Paul is praying for is that every aspect of what they do, what they entertain in their hearts and minds, what they gravitate toward would align with their identity in Christ; that how they live would reflect who they are.

learn what is pleasing to the Lord. (Ephesians 5:10b NET)

Then, Paul continues to unpack, in prayer, what this lifestyle looks like. Notice, he once again doesn’t take it for granted or assume that this is just going to happen. Growth in godliness never happens by mistake; you have to pursue it in prayer.

2. A Fruitful Life

fruit in every good work (Colossians 1:10b ESV)

Notice it’s not selectively fruitful. It’s holistically productive. He says, “every good work.” His prayer is that the full spectrum of what is good would populate their lives. There wouldn’t be anything good that would be absent from the output of their existence.

Growth in godliness never happens by mistake; you have to pursue it in prayer.

Pray that when people look at your life, no matter where they look they see fruit.

3. A Life of Continuous Growth

increasing in the knowledge of God; (Colossians 1:10a ESV)

Paul prays that they would grow, but he has something specific in mind. The New Living Translation says, “you will grow as you learn to know God better and better.” One again, Paul doesn’t assume this. Growth is his continual prayer for this church and these people, so it should be yours as well.

4. A Life of Endurance

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

As a dad, I embrace this one whole-heartedly. “God, give me endurance and patience!” Paul wants them strong so that they can patiently endure and it would be filled with joy. This is faith that goes the distance. This is faith that encounters the inevitable storms of life without wavering.

When this prayer is answered, the reality of the gospel you have communicated with words will powerfully play out on the screen of your life.

5. A Life of Thanksgiving

giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Colossians 1:12–14 ESV)

This is not merely an impassioned plea for general thankfulness, though that should be part of our lives, the Apostle Paul has something far more specific in mind that he is asking God to do in their hearts. He is asking for an ongoing and ever-increasing awe of redemption.

If your salvation doesn’t cause your jaw to hit the floor in the way that it once did, perhaps what you aren’t regularly asking God to give you an astounding gratitude for what has been done for you. This is a prayer God loves to answer.

Having a life of worth, fruitfulness, growth, endurance, and thanksgiving do not happen in an instant. They have to be breathed to life in intentional continual prayer. Don’t make the mistake of walking through 2017 without writing down what you want God to do in your life because what you pray through the year will determine who you are at the end of the year.