Praying to Grow Spiritually

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Transcript:

Good evening. Good to see you all here this evening. We’re going to be in the book of Colossians tonight.

We’re going to look at a few verses and talk about praying so that we can grow spiritually. We’ve been talking for quite some time about reasons to pray, again, not to convince you that it’s important. I’m sure that especially being people who are in church on Sunday night, you understand that prayer is important, But even understanding that it’s important, sometimes we think, well, I ought to pray, but I don’t know what to pray about.

And I start praying and feel like I just pour my heart out to God and I have nothing left to say and it’s been five minutes. And how are we supposed to pray without ceasing when we don’t know what to pray for? And so the intent of this has been to give us some ideas of reasons why we ought to pray and things we ought to pray for.

And tonight we’re going to look at this idea of growing spiritually. And Paul prayed for the church at Colossae that they would grow spiritually. Colossians is kind of an interesting book.

I think of it, you know, there are some books that deal more with practical things, how you’re supposed to live your life as a Christian. I think of books like James that give you practical advice. And then there are some books that I look at and think they’re kind of technical, theological type books.

That would be like Hebrews. And Colossians is one that I think of along those lines. Because you read through chapter 1 and you get into some theology really quick.

And the reason for that is because Paul was writing to the church at Colossae to correct some problems that they had. Now, he evidently would pass through Colossae at some point on one of his missionary journeys, but was not the one who started this church. So I don’t know if he knew the people in this church personally or not, but because of a connection through a friend of his who was the one who started the church, and he heard about the things that were going on in Colossae, and loved the church, and knew their problems, and felt compelled to write and correct some things that were going on.

They were dealing with all sorts of heretical ideas. They were dealing with Gnosticism. I can’t remember if I’ve talked to you all about Gnosticism or not in the past, but it was this idea that there’s some kind of secret knowledge out there in the universe, that God may have spoken through the Old Testament scriptures, and there are people today who consider themselves Gnostics, and they’ll say God may have spoken through the Bible, but there’s a deeper hidden meaning that only a few are privileged to.

The word gnosis, G-N-O-S-I-S in Greek means knowledge, and that’s where they get the word Gnostic from, that they were party to some kind of secret knowledge. And so things just weren’t as clear as they should be, and one of the things that they said, you know, you’ll understand when you get to that point was the true nature of the universe. They said that matter, the physical universe was evil and the spirit universe was good.

And so they said one of the outgrowths of that was this idea that Jesus Christ couldn’t possibly have come in the flesh because if he was good, then he had to be all spirit. If he was sinless, he had to be all spirit and no matter. Well, of course, that has bad implications for those of us who believe that By shedding his blood, he purchased our forgiveness for sins.

If he didn’t have a physical body, he couldn’t shed his blood because he didn’t have blood to shed. And that’s why the apostle John talked about if any man confesses not that Christ has come in the flesh, the same is the spirit of Antichrist. John had no use for that. Paul was writing to the church at Colossae to correct some things.

That’s why in chapter 1, he begins to talk about Jesus and talks about the deliverance in verse 13 that we have through Jesus, talks about the redemption through his blood in verse 14, and calls him the image of the invisible God in verse 15. I think that’s one of my favorite verses in all of Scripture. You know, a lot of religions, you have images and icons and statues that you bow down to in place of whatever God you’re worshiping.

We don’t need those things because Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God. And the Bible says that no man has seen God at any time, meaning the Father, but Jesus Christ has declared him to us. We’ve seen our God because Jesus Christ is God in the human flesh.

And on top of this, they were adopting not only these weird Gnostic ideas about Jesus and who he was and who he wasn’t, they were adopting these weird festival ideas and you have to eat this, you have to drink this, you have to recognize certain moons and feasts. And Paul just didn’t have time for any of this. And he wrote the book of Colossians to correct some things that were being taught and to encourage some of the ones in the church at Colossae who hadn’t gone along with these weird ideas because he wanted the church to grow spiritually.

He wanted the people to grow spiritually. It wasn’t just to put them in their place. It was to benefit them, to straighten them out so that they could go on in the right direction.

And so he tells them, he starts the book not by telling them, hey, you’re wrong, here’s all the places you’re wrong, and you need to knock it off or I’m going to come straighten you out. He starts in a very gentle way and tells them that he’s praying for them for these reasons and tells them some of the things that he’s praying for, and that’s what we’re going to look at tonight. Starting in verse 3, it says, We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you.

Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love which you have to all saints, for the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of truth of the gospel. And when he’s talking about being thankful for their faith, he’s not just talking to everybody no matter what they had faith in. If he’s writing to correct ideas that were such that if, you know what, if you believe you’re getting into heaven because of secret knowledge and Jesus couldn’t possibly have died, he couldn’t possibly have shed his blood, you know what, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say according to everything I know about the Bible, you’re not getting into heaven.

That kind of theology. We have to believe that Jesus Christ shed his blood and died for our sins. That is the way, that is the means God set up by which we get into heaven.

And so he’s not writing to everybody whatever views they held and saying, oh, we’re so thankful for the faith you have. Faith is only as good as its object. I can have the strongest faith in the world and put it in myself, and it’s misplaced faith.

It’s worthless. My faith is only as valuable as its object, meaning if I’m putting my faith in something other than God, my faith is worthless. If I’m putting my faith in something other than God’s word, my faith is worthless.

So when he says he’s thankful for their faith, he gives thanks to God and the Father of Jesus Christ, praying for them always. Since he heard of their faith, it’s their faith in Christ Jesus. He is writing specifically here to the people in Colossae who had not given into these crazy ideas so that he could encourage them and admonish those others who had bought into false ideas.

Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, evidently those who were remaining in the faith in Colossae, the word of their faith had spread far and wide because they were strong. We come to church, ladies and gentlemen, because we’re supposed to, for one, because God says not to forsake the assembling together of yourselves. But we come together for other reasons, too.

We come together to worship together. A big reason is to be strengthened and encouraged by one another and by the teaching of God’s word. Now, we may have theological conflict with the world outside, and we may come in here and say, I’ve been talking to my neighbor about Jesus, and you’ll never guess what they believe, or my children.

And we come together and we expect, there are going to be some things we disagree about. And I know just from talking to some in this church, there are some minor issues where we disagree, and that’s okay. But when it comes to the majors, we should be in agreement, and this should be a place where we come together and strengthen one another.

And they didn’t have that necessarily because they went into their church in Colossae, and I don’t necessarily mean a physical building, but they gathered together in their local assembly, and there were all sorts of people teaching all sorts of crazy things. And yet there was this remnant within the church who had stayed true to the faith, and it sounds like it was almost legendary that word spread around to the other. The word got back to Paul all the way in Rome.

Colossae was in Greece, and Rome is in what’s now Italy. Word had gotten back to Paul about these people’s steadfast faith, and he admired them for it, and also commended them for the love that they had to all the saints. And they could have sat around and griped about what’s going on in their church.

They could have sat around and griped about what’s going on in their community. But these people continued steadfast in their faith, and continued to love and serve other people as God had called them to do, regardless of what anybody else had done. He says, For the hope that is laid up for you in heaven, he’s thankful not only for the growth and the faith that they had, but he’s thankful for what God had done for them and for the hope that they had in heaven through the gospel.

Where have ye heard before in the word of truth of the gospel? He says, Which has come unto you, verse 6, as it is in all the world, and bringeth forth fruit as it doth also in you since the day ye heard of it, and knew the grace of God in truth. And so he’s referring now to this gospel that had been preached, and the gospel being, as Paul defines it, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, was buried and rose again the third day according to the scriptures.

That’s directly out of 1 Corinthians chapter 15. And while the Bible kind of elaborates on what the gospel is, those are the tent poles of the story that you’ve got to know and understand and believe, otherwise it’s not the gospel. Jesus died.

He died. He died for our sins because a Savior was needed, and we could not die for our own sins. And then He rose again, proving that He had the power to forgive sins.

And then based on that, we trust in Him and ask His forgiveness. But if we don’t understand that He died, why He died, and that He rose again to prove that His death was sufficient for that, then it’s not the gospel. And so he’s referring back to this gospel that they heard through him and said, it’s come to you as it has to all the world.

By this time, the gospel was spreading like wildfire. It’s amazing. When the world leaves us alone, think about this sometime.

When the world leaves us alone as Christians and lets us live in peace and prosperity and happiness and do our own thing, we get sort of caught up in our everyday life and forget about things. But when the world begins to push back on us, for a lot of Christians, I know, there are some who call themselves Christians when persecution comes, they cut and run. The New Testament talks about that too.

But we see it time and time again all over the world today and going back to their day, that when there was persecution, those who were truly Christians, a lot of times it strengthened their resolve. And the harder the world fought, whether it was society, whether it was the government, the harder the world fought to stamp out Christianity, the more it just took off. And at this point, he says the gospel has spread to the whole world.

Well, to the known world it had, it had spread like wildfire across the Roman Empire. And we know from history also that, I mean, we had Christian missionaries that, tradition says that the Apostle Thomas reached India in his lifetime and preached there. And evidently when the Portuguese, now I won’t say that they were of the same belief system as we were and everything necessarily, but evidently in the 14 and 1500s when the Portuguese got to India, they found that there were already communities of Christians living in India.

And they supposedly had descended from the Apostle Thomas. But to the known world at this point, and to the world beyond what they knew, the gospel was spreading. It doesn’t mean to every continent, every country by then, by that point, but to everywhere they knew and could think of, the gospel was going forward.

And he said it was bringing forth fruit. Everywhere the gospel was preached, it was bringing forth fruit, as it doth also in you since the day you heard of it. And he reminds them the gospel brought forth fruit in you.

And it can be discouraging. I’ll be honest to you as a pastor. I have never pastored a church that really had more than 80 people in attendance.

Most of the time it’s been smaller than that. First church I pastored was smaller than this one. And it can be discouraging sometimes.

You go in on a Sunday night and there are six people. We have more than six people here tonight. We’re good.

There were times I’d go in at Peniel and there would be four of us. That’s discouraging. You go in on Sunday mornings and you’ve got 10.

And I remember days in Fayetteville when we’d have bad weather or it’d be in the summer and everybody’s on vacation and we’d be down in the 50s and I’d think, you know, what are we doing here? Nobody’s coming. Not to say y’all are nobody.

But it can be discouraging because you go into ministry and you have these high hopes that we can go preach the gospel just everybody’s going to get saved and God’s going to do amazing things. And it doesn’t always work that way. The fruit is not always fast growing.

As anybody who’s raised a garden knows, the fruit doesn’t always come immediately. But I say this, whether you’re a pastor or you’re ministering in your family, you’re ministering in your neighborhood, there’s that person you’re praying for that you’ve been praying for for 10 years, the fruit doesn’t always appear immediately. But wherever the gospel is planted, there is fruit.

That doesn’t mean necessarily in every life because there are people that we pray for for decades and they never get saved. But wherever the gospel is faithfully proclaimed, God is at work and the gospel will bring forth fruit. I can tell you there have been people that I’ve talked to repeatedly and prayed and prayed and prayed and shared the gospel with them and preached the gospel from the pulpit aiming at them.

And nothing ever happened, but meanwhile someone over here says, I’ve got to talk to you after church, and ends up trusting Christ as their Savior. We may not see the fruit immediately, but the gospel always brings forth fruit. And so we plod along and we press forward, and he says that this gospel that brought forth fruit in you, you know what, it feels like it’s getting harder and harder to share the gospel with people, and harder and harder to see anything happen because our society is growing so cold-hearted, And yet it does not take any more grace from God.

It does not take any more power of the Holy Spirit to save somebody today as when God saved that little five-year-old me 23 years ago. I know, you know exactly how old I am. It doesn’t take any more grace for God to save anybody today.

It doesn’t take any more power of the Holy Spirit for God to save anybody today as it did for Him to save you. And so the same gospel that brought forth fruit in them, that changed their hearts, that changed their lives, he said is still going forth, is still bringing forth fruit in you and among you because you know what? The fruit of the gospel doesn’t stop just with your salvation.

God continues to work in us as a result of the gospel. Now, when we’re saved, we are saved as wherever we’re going to get. When we trust Christ, we are saved as wherever we’re going to get.

But the gospel still continues to bring forth fruit in us as God changes us and makes us more like him, conforms us to the image of his son, I believe it says in Romans. And brings forth fruit as it doth also in you. That word doth means doth, as it continues to bring forth in you.

God continued to work in them and change them. The fruit of the gospel is not just changed eternities, but the continuing presence of changed lives. And every day that we grow closer to what God wants us to be, the gospel is still bearing fruit.

Since the day you heard of it and knew the grace of God in truth. As you learned also of Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is for you a faithful minister of Christ, who also declared unto us your love in the Spirit. So it was Epaphras who was a friend of Paul’s, who was also with Paul during his house arrest in Rome apparently, who had started the church at Colossae and told Paul the problems that they were having, but also told Paul about the wonderful people and the faith that they had.

And he says in verse 9, For this cause we also since the day we heard it do not cease to pray for you. Ever since we heard of you, we have not stopped praying for you. and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of his will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding.

So he says, since the day we heard of you and heard what was going on, we have not stopped praying for you. We have not stopped desiring that you would not just have some knowledge, but that you would be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. That you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.

strengthened with all might according to his glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness, giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, who have delivered us from the power of darkness and have translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son, in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. And I’d love to spend more time just on about verses 9 through 14 at some other point, because it’s a great passage. But he lists all these things and says, this is what I want for you so much.

I want you to grow spiritually. I want you not just to understand God’s will. I want you to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will.

I want you to have all wisdom and spiritual understanding. I want you to walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing. Meaning I want you to live a life that pleases God in everything you do.

I want every work you set your hand to that God gives you to do, I want it to be fruitful. I want you to increase not just in knowledge, but in knowledge of God every day. I want you to know him better.

I want you to be strengthened with all might. I want you to be strengthened to such a point that nobody can touch you spiritually here. According to his glorious power, unto patience, all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness.

You want to talk about something that’s difficult to do and that only comes from God. This patience and this longsuffering, this willingness to put up with whatever the world throws at us and to be joyful in the process. He said, I want that for you because there’s going to come a time when your suffering starts to get you down, and if God has not endowed you with patience and long-suffering and joyfulness, you’re going to give up and you’re going to walk away from what God created you to do.

And he said, I want you to have this patience and long-suffering so that you can press on, giving thanks to God because he made us fit to be partakers. That word meet means fit.

you know what we were not fit for any of this we we did not deserve any of this we don’t deserve even to be God’s servants I love the story of the prodigal son and you know what he didn’t he didn’t deserve for his father to take him back even as a servant that’s what he was going back to ask we don’t deserve even to be servants in the father’s household and yet he has brought us in and just because of his goodness he has made us fit not only to be servants but to be partakers of the He’s brought us in and made us fit to be His sons and daughters, who’s delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son, picked us up from one place, picked us up out of the kingdom of sin and death and hell, and dropped us down in the kingdom of His Son. We’re completely in a different place now because of this redemption. And He says, I want these things for you.

Not the redemption, not the being plucked out of hell and put into heaven, because they already had that because of their faith in Christ. But all the other things that he lists in verses 9 through 11, he says, I want those things for you so badly. I want you to grow to be everything God intends you to be from now until the day he takes you home. I want that for you.

And so Paul’s manner of going about that wasn’t, okay, we need to have a class. I need to teach you everything you need to do. Nothing wrong with teaching and training.

I’m a big believer that we should be training and discipling people nothing wrong with that but Paul says Paul does not say here so I need to do something so it’s up to me or even I want that for you so much hope you get it have a nice day you’re on your own what’s he do? what’s his response because he wants that for the people at Colossae he prays about it he goes directly to the one who is able to provide those things and says would you grow them spiritually and not just every now and then he thinks about it. I love when people tell me, when you think about it, would you pray for me, and such and such.

And I’ve said it too, and it’s because I have a real, I don’t ever want to impose on anybody. I feel bad imposing on people. I was thinking just yesterday, back over the years I’ve spent as a pastor, and one thing I would change and will change in the future, if God will give me the grace to do so is, you know, I’m not always the first one to rush in and come by somebody’s house or, you know, impose myself on their life.

And people sometimes take it as, well, he doesn’t care. No, I just don’t want to bother anybody. But I’ve said myself, if you think about it, would you pray for me sometime this week?

And I understand the, I understand the reasoning. Somebody asked me that this weekend. If you think about it, would you pray for me this weekend?

Well, sure I will. You know, it didn’t bother me a bit. We don’t want to imposed, but it wasn’t that kind of thing.

Oh, I just happened to think about the church at Colossae, so I’m going to pray for them. Paul says, I have not stopped praying for you every day, because this was on Paul’s heart and mind, that this is what he wanted for this church, was for them to grow spiritually. You know what, it’s something that we should pray for one another in the local church.

God, would you help Brother Shank? God, would you help Marian? God, would you help?

We should be praying for each other for spiritual growth every day. And you know what? I believe that even though this passage is about him praying it for somebody else, I believe we can pray it for ourselves and we ought to.

There are some things in this passage, and I’m going to try to finish up here very quickly, but there are some things in this passage that God wants us to ask for for ourselves and other people as we pray to grow spiritually. Instead of just sitting around stunted and saying, well, I don’t feel like I’m going anywhere spiritually, why didn’t God do something about it? Talk to God and ask Him to grow you.

God desires for us to grow spiritually. You know what? As much as Paul desired every one of these things, God desired them more.

And the Bible says every good and perfect gift comes from above. I would include these things in it. Now, when we start praying, God, would you do these things?

The fruit is not going to grow immediately. I mean, the fruit is not going to be full-sized immediately. But we continue to ask God for what we need.

We continue to ask God to grow us spiritually and we continue to seek him and I believe he will continue to grow us as we’re able to handle it. God knows what we can, how much we can take in at a time. God knows how many lessons we can learn at a time and make them stick.

But first of all, God can show us his will and how to apply it in our lives. And that just very simply comes from verse 9 where he says that he had prayed and desired that they would be filled with the knowledge of his will, of God’s will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. I’ve said to you, I know a few times, that God’s will is not meant to be kind of like this Gnostic idea.

It’s some secret knowledge for the initiated. And God says, I have this will that I want you to do, but you’ve got to figure it out for yourself. I’m not telling.

That’s not how God operates. Now, sometimes it will take a little bit of prayer and a little bit of digging in God’s Word for us to find His will. But you know what?

I don’t believe that God makes His will impossible to discern because if it’s God’s will, that means he wants us to do it. And if he wants us to do it, I don’t tell my children, there’s something you need to do, and if you don’t do it, you’re getting spanking, but I’m not telling what it is. If I want my children to do something, I tell them what it is.

You pick up that airplane out of the floor. You put all of those cars, stop getting the newspapers out and scattering all over that. I tell my children what I want them to do.

If God has a will, I’ve been amazed for years, I think I’ve told you, working both being a teenager and college student and working with both groups, the links that people will go to. Well, how will I know God’s will for who I’m supposed to marry, or where I’m supposed to go to school, or what I’m supposed to major in? And some of the ideas people come up with, well, I ran into so-and-so, and they were wearing an OSU shirt, so maybe that was a sign from God.

Oh, my goodness. I don’t think God meant this to be so difficult for us to find His will, because if it’s His will, He wants us to do it. And so He tells us.

And so Paul just simply prays, I want you to know to have a knowledge of God’s will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. I want you to be filled with the knowledge of his will. You know what?

We need to pray that God will show us his will and how to apply it to our lives. And then we need to continue searching in the knowledge that as we search, he’s going to reveal it to us. God can show us his will and how to apply it to our lives.

Second of all, God can enable us to live in a way that is pleasing to him. He says in verse 10 that you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing. You mean to please God in everything?

Well, you know what? I know, unfortunately, that God does not make us perfect on this side of eternity. I sure wish he did.

Because I’ve said many times, there’s no worse feeling, at least as far as I’m concerned, there’s no worse feeling in the world than realizing I just disappointed God. What did I just do? And usually, you know, it’s something you’ve done or something you’ve said.

I can’t get those words back in my mouth. Why did I say that? Why did I do that?

Because I want God to be proud of me as his child. I want God to be proud of me. And that feeling, I just did the opposite.

You know, I really wish that God made us perfect on this side of eternity. But it doesn’t work that way. And yet he can endow us, he can enable us with the ability to live lives that are pleasing to him.

Is he going to make us sinless? No. Now, he’ll look on us and choose to see us as sinless because of the righteousness of Christ. It’s not that God is confused or tricked.

It’s not that we’re putting on a mask and tricking God. God chooses to look on us and see the righteousness of Christ. God doesn’t make us sinless, but hopefully as we’re following him and as we’re giving in to the spirit instead of the flesh, and as we’re praying for him to grow us, to want to do the things that please him, he’ll help us to be better than we were yesterday and hopefully not as good as we are tomorrow. Again, not because we’re so good, but because he’s so good and gives the ability to follow him.

Guys, if we want to please God, and I know we have those times where the flesh flares up and we think, no, I don’t care. I want to do this. This sounds like more fun.

We all have those moments, But if overall we want to please God with our lives, why do we not pray and ask Him to help us to grow in the people who please Him? He’s got all the ability we need. Third of all, God can equip us to be more fruitful in our service to Him.

God, I just plod along and I just keep working and I feel like I don’t accomplish anything for You. You know what? God desires us to be fruitful in every good work.

Fruitful in every good work. It doesn’t mean that everything we set our hands to, It’s not like King Midas where everything we’re going to touch is going to turn to gold. And that suddenly we’re going to be millionaires and successful in every business endeavor.

And that’s not what it’s talking about. But when we serve him, and like I’ve told you, working in that little church in Bethany, thinking, we’ve got four people here. What am I supposed to do?

You know what? Do what God sent you here to do and preach the word and worship. And we just plod along and try to do what God’s told us to do and feel like we’re not getting anywhere.

God, why am I not accomplishing anything? Well, it’s because we are trying to accomplish something for God. God doesn’t need us to accomplish anything for Him.

That changed my life when I realized that, that God does not need us. God chooses to use us and to work in and through us. And whatever happens, whatever growth there is, whatever success there is, is because God did it through us.

You know what? God can equip us to be more fruitful in our service to Him. I love the message that was preached a few years ago by a friend of mine who’s a missionary, one of our missionaries in Canada, was preaching at a missions conference and preached on a passage from the book of Psalms about the 

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