Prayer for Growth

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Well, I started learning to cook several years ago when I was probably in junior high or high school. And I know other men have laughed at me over the years for that, But I thought, if I can’t find anybody to put up with all of this, I’m not going to starve to death. Okay?

So that’s an important thing to be able to do. So I started learning. And it was slow going at first. There were a lot of bumps in the road to get where I was able to cook.

And I especially learned with baking something. I mean, cooking. The way I cook, it stresses Charla out.

I tell her, you know, Southerners don’t measure. I saw this online and I use it all the time. I told her, Southerners don’t measure things.

We shake the seasonings until the spirits of our ancestors say, that’s enough, child. I get in there, I start throwing stuff. She’ll want to make beans and say, I need you to do it.

Well, can’t you do it? I don’t know what you put in there. Put in some garlic.

How much? Some garlic. It’s not that hard.

Just put in some garlic. Put in some of all these things. But with baking, you have to have certain ingredients and you’ve got to have them in the right proportions where it’s a mess.

I learned that the hard way. Baking soda and baking powder are not interchangeable. Bad things.

Bad things happen. I remember one time trying to make a meringue and it wanted cream of tartar. I used some other kind of cream that was like a liquid cream.

It didn’t work. It didn’t work. When something tells you to separate a couple of eggs, you don’t then reunite them in the dish.

They stay separate. okay, you learn that there are ingredients that need to be included. The right ingredients have to go in there or it’s just going to be a mess.

To leave out an ingredient can be disastrous. And our spiritual growth is a lot like that in that it requires certain ingredients as well, and it won’t work without those ingredients. We’re going to continue our look tonight through the book of Colossians as Paul outlines one of the ingredients that is key to our spiritual growth.

And so we’re going to be in 1st Colossians. It’s been a long afternoon. I guess it is technically 1st Colossians.

If your Bible has a 2nd Colossians, take it back for a refund. Colossians chapter 1. We’re going to be in Colossians chapter 1 tonight, starting in verse 9.

And when you find that with me, if you’d stand as we read from God’s Word together, if you’re able to, Colossians chapter 1, verse 9, and we’re going to read through verse 12 tonight. It says, of the inheritance of the saints in the light. And you may be seated.

Now, he starts out there in verse 9 by saying, for this reason, since the day we heard it, he’s hearkening back to something we’ve already looked at. And what he’s talking about there is what we saw in verses 1 through 8 last week, if you were here with us. In the previous passage, we read how Paul expressed his thankfulness to God for the growth that he had already seen in the people in Colossae.

And he spent some time talking to them about it. As a matter of fact, tonight we’ll overlap some with what we looked at last week. You may say he sounds like he’s repeating.

Maybe not. Maybe you’ve slept since then and it’s all going to be brand new to you. But it overlaps a little bit.

And I used to feel bad about things like that when I feel like I’m saying the same thing week after week. And then I have to remind myself, I don’t have to tell my kids things just once and it sticks. I have to tell them over and over and over.

And God sometimes has to tell me over and over and over for it to stick. So we’re all in the same boat together. But we looked at the fruit that the gospel bears in our lives.

As Jesus comes into our life and He changes us, as we embrace this message of salvation that He provided on the cross, changes begin to take place. And Paul was looking at what was taking place in the church at Colossae, and he was giving thanks for it. And so he says, for that reason, for the reason of the change that’s already taking place, we don’t stop praying for you because we see what God is doing and we pray for it to continue.

He said, we have not ceased to pray for you since the day we heard it, since the day we heard what God was doing. And in this passage, he tells us how he is continuing to pray for that spiritual growth. He has thanked God for what has already happened.

He’s thankful to God for what has already happened, but he’s also looking forward in expectation for what God’s going to do. And we don’t need to take that as an ungrateful thing. You know, thank you for what you did.

Now what are you about to do for me? Because this is something God wants to do for us. You know, it’s no more ungrateful than being thankful for all the meals.

Going back to the meal analogy, for all the things my wife has cooked in the past, but being really excited about what she’s going to cook in the future. Right? And this is something God wants to do for us.

This is something God wants to bless us with, is spiritual growth. It’s His design for us. Somebody in Sunday school this morning, I believe it was, read the verse from Romans 8, that whom He did foreknow, He did also predestine to be conformed to the image of His Son.

And some people take that verse to mean that some people are preordained for salvation, some are preordained for damnation. What I understand that passage to mean is that it was God’s plan of salvation and spiritual growth that was foreordained. That it was God’s plan from before the foundation of the world that if we were in Christ, we were going to grow to be more like Christ. That’s His plan for us.

That’s His design for us. That’s the point of all of this, is for us to grow spiritually. And so even as He gives thanks for the spiritual growth that has already taken place, He continues to ask God for more.

And by writing this, by writing this section of the passage, this is really kind of a bridge between the spiritual growth issue and him talking about the preeminence of Christ, which is a really exciting part of the chapter for me. But it’s sort of a bridge between the two. He’s demonstrating the importance of prayer in a Christian spiritual growth as we’re growing to become more like Christ, who he raises up in the next few verses.

And all of this leads us to need to understand that prayer is a key ingredient in our spiritual growth. Prayer is a key ingredient in our spiritual growth. There are other ingredients.

There are other things. There are other disciplines. You need to study God’s Word.

You need to share the Gospel. You need to. .

. I mean, there are all sorts of things that contribute to our spiritual growth, but prayer is key. Prayer is an ingredient you can’t leave out.

The cake will not rise, okay, if you leave out this ingredient. Prayer is key to our spiritual growth. That’s why He puts so much emphasis on it, not just in the verses that we’re looking at tonight, but in the verses we’ve already looked at where he talks about praying and giving thanks to God for what he’s already done.

Everything about their spiritual growth, Paul was on it and he was praying about it. So this is so important. And we can get so busy in our lives that we forget to pray.

Has that ever happened to you? I will admit that it has happened to me. As a matter of fact, I’ve told people in the past I put my daily prayer time on my to-do list on my phone.

Well, you shouldn’t have to do that. You shouldn’t make God just another thing you check off on the list. Listen, if it’s not on my to-do list, it does not get done. It’s not my way of saying, God, you’re just another thing to check off on the list. It’s my way of making it a priority.

But I have to make it a priority because like so many of the things of God, if we are not intentional, the world will suck away our time and our focus to where it does not happen. It is so easy not to pray. And then we can let an hour go by.

We can let a day go by. We can let several days go by. And they turn into weeks.

And we wonder why we’re not growing spiritually. We wonder why we don’t feel any closer to God. We wonder why we’re not progressing in being the people that God has called us to be.

And it’s because we’re neglecting this key ingredient. We’re neglecting this prayer that obviously Paul thought was so important because he says, we have not stopped. We have not ceased to pray for you since we heard what God was doing.

And trying to grow spiritually without prayer is a helpless endeavor. It just is. You need to get God involved in it because it’s his work.

I love how a lot of times when I meet with the deacons for prayer, Brother Bill will say, let’s get God involved in it. Let’s get the Holy Spirit involved in this. Actually, I’ve heard you say it not just at the meetings with the deacons.

Let’s get the Holy Spirit involved. There are some things you just cannot do without getting God involved. And trying to grow spiritually is one of them.

We can’t do it. Trying to grow on our own is we’re trying to get ourselves somewhere we’re not. And how do you get yourself there when you’ve never been there?

So prayer is a key ingredient in our spiritual growth. And part of that means we need to pray for our spiritual growth and we need to pray about our spiritual growth. There is that aspect of it.

that we need to be praying some of the things that we’re going to talk about in just a moment that Paul prayed for for them. We do need to pray for our spiritual growth and just ask God to work in us, to ask God to change us, to ask God to make us who He wants us to be. But also just the mere fact of praying works toward our spiritual growth.

If we look at spiritual growth as growing closer to God and being more like Jesus, prayer goes a long way. Even if we’re not specifically praying for our spiritual growth, prayer goes a long way toward making that happen. Like we discussed this a little bit in Sunday school this morning too, that if you want to grow closer to God, if you want to build that relationship, talk with Him.

My wife and I talk constantly. When we’re at the house, we talk constantly. My phone rings a dozen times a day.

There was one day last week, I answered the phone when Charla called. I was in the office. I answered the phone when she called.

I didn’t say hello. I said, we don’t talk this much when I’m at home. But we talk constantly.

We always have. Our first date was eight hours long and we did not stop talking the whole time. I knew she would put up with me.

But you know what? We grow closer by doing that. Friday, driving to and from Ada without children, we got to talk all stinking day.

And we got to talk about deeper things that we don’t normally get to discuss because there are always little ears running around. Little feet with little ears on them. And that’s how you grow closer to somebody.

Communicating. If you want to grow closer to God, communicating with Him is a start. Because not only are you pouring out your heart to God, but oftentimes in those moments of prayer, God begins to change your heart as well.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been in the middle of prayer asking God to change a circumstance, and He’s ended up changing my heart about the circumstance. It’s not the outcome I would have wanted, but it’s what He had in mind, and it works out best. If spiritual growth is about us becoming more like Jesus and it’s about us growing closer to God, that can’t happen unless God does it. If the end result that we have in mind, if what we’re shooting for is what Brother Jeff sang about, being a little less like me and a little more like him, we did not plan that by the way, but if that is the end goal here, we cannot do that unless God does it.

For me to grow myself spiritually to where I need to be, I’d have to already be there. And I’m not, so I can’t. It’s a paradox.

Think about it too long, it’ll make your head hurt. It’s the work of God. It can’t happen unless God does it.

And so for us, the main work is in prayer. The main work is in seeking God. He has to do the heavy lifting.

In spiritual growth, He has to do the heavy lifting. He has to do the hard work of changing me into something presentable. Of changing me into something that He can use.

Of something that He desires to use. For us, the work is prayer. seeking to be in line with what he wants.

And so for the Colossians, Paul prayed for four things in particular. Now, these are not the only areas of spiritual growth. These are probably not the only areas where they needed to grow, but these are the areas that he outlines here, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

And the way I’ve kind of divided them up verse by verse, but he prayed for wisdom in verse 9. He wanted them to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding. He wanted them, he was praying that they might understand God’s will.

Because in order for us to do God’s will, we need to know what it is He wants us to do. That’s why I’ve said for many years, we make these questions about, well, what is the will of God? We make them seem so much more mysterious than they really ought to be.

And questions about, who should I marry? Who should I date? Where should I go to college?

A lot of these big life decisions. We seek the will of God as though we are looking for a sign or there’s a magic formula that’s going to give it to us. Listen, if it’s God’s will for us to do it, He wants us to do it.

And so He wants us to know what it is. He’ll tell us if we’ll just ask Him and wait for Him to show us. And so Paul was praying that they would know the will of God, that they would understand it, that they would have the wisdom to put it into practice.

And who among us does not need to grow in wisdom spiritually? His wisdom goes a little step beyond knowledge. He wants them to know the will of God.

But if you’ve ever met somebody with knowledge, with a lot of knowledge and a whole lot of no wisdom, it’s a dangerous combination. Knowledge is knowing stuff. Wisdom is knowing how to use the stuff we know.

And so he prayed for them for wisdom. We all need to grow in wisdom and understanding of God’s will. He prayed for them, second of all, holiness in verse 10, that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.

So he prayed not only for them to know what God’s will was and how to navigate God’s will, but he prayed for them to actually go and do it. Because sometimes we know the right thing to do, but doing it is a different story, right? My kids are usually very clear on what they want me to do too.

They’re very clear on what I want them to do, not so clear on whether or not they want to do it. We know usually pretty clearly what the law is. Take the speed limits, for example.

Whether we want to do it or not is a different story. And we can know what God’s will is and still not be particularly inclined to put it into practice. As I talked about this morning with Elijah, sometimes it’s easier just to say no, Lord.

Or at least we think so in the short term. It’s easier to say no, Lord, I’d rather not do that and look for an excuse. But holiness is about taking what we know of God’s will and actually doing it.

He said, I’m not just praying for you to have an understanding of God’s will. I’m praying that on that basis, you will walk worthy. Now, we understand as believers that we really are not worthy.

We have all fallen short of God’s standard of absolute holiness. What he’s talking about here, though, is sinners who have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus, where God looks at us and He chooses to remember our sins no more, and He declares us righteous and says, now go and do your best as the Holy Spirit empowers you to do it to actually act like it. We know that we are not worthy of God’s love, and it’s not talking about being worthy of His love or His acceptance, it’s talking about being worthy of the calling of being a Christian.

Be worthy of being called by the name. I remember I used to tell her this anymore because she’s married now and her last name is Campbell. But I used to tell her as I would drop her off at high school because I graduated.

As I went off to college, she started high school. I just came out of here. People know my name.

It means something. I’d tell her when I’d drop her off at school, you’re a Byrns, act like it. Which if you’d said that to somebody a few generations ago, it would have meant something completely different.

You’re a Byrns, act like it. I tell my kids that from time to time. You’re a burns.

Act like it. This is God telling us, you’re my child. Act like it.

Now, we’re not His children because we deserve it, because we deserve to be. But He’s taken care of that, and He’s declared us righteous, and He’s declared us His children. And now Paul is praying that we will have the wherewithal to go and try to act like it.

In verse 11, he prays for them strength. He prays that they would be strengthened with all might according to His glorious power. Not theirs.

Not their ability to do the right thing. not their ability to get things done, but His glorious power for all patience and long-suffering with joy. You’ve heard it said, don’t pray for patience, but you can pray for other people for patience because that’s what He did.

Be careful about who you do that to, though. But He was praying for their ability to persevere in God’s service that they might be able to keep going. You ever get to the point where you just think, I can’t go on another day.

I’m not talking about suicidal thoughts. I’m just saying, you get to the end of the day and you think that was really hard. I don’t think I can get up and do that again tomorrow.

And yet somehow we get up and we go on. I think that’s the grace of God giving us the strength to make it through another day. And sometimes even in our Christian walk, it can be hard to do that.

I don’t think I can serve in this area another day. I don’t think I can show love to that person one more day. I don’t think I could.

. . You fill in the blank with whatever God’s telling you to do.

I don’t think I can do it one more day. He prays for them to have the strength to persevere and keep going. He encourages them to press on and for God to give them the strength and God to give them the patience.

Not only that long-suffering with joy, for God to give them the capacity to fall so in love with being obedient to Him and fall so in love with Him that even the suffering feels like a joy because we get to go through it with Him. And so He prays for them to be strengthened. And in verse 12, He prays for thankfulness for them.

He prays that they would be giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. Praise that they might come to a place where they are able to acknowledge with gratefulness the work that God is doing in them. Be thankful for what God is doing in them.

A lot of times our ideas of thankfulness are wrapped up in our circumstances. I like that verse from Thessalonians that says, In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. It does not say, for everything give thanks.

There are some circumstances and situations that we’re not thankful for. and probably shouldn’t be thankful for. And in our right minds, we’ll never be thankful for.

But in those circumstances, we can be thankful. In those circumstances, we can always find a reason to praise God and to thank Him. And He outlines for them in verse 12 what the biggest of those reasons are.

Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. The Father has taken us who are sinners, who are separated from Him, who are not worthy. And over here is the inheritance of the saints.

That means forgiveness. That means eternal life in heaven. That means a relationship with Him.

All the things that you are entitled to as a saint of God. And He has qualified us to be partakers in that. We receive all of that, not because we deserve it, not because we’ve earned it, not because we are in any way qualified, but because He looked at us and out of His goodness, out of His kindness, He sent Jesus to bear the responsibility for our sins and to impart His righteousness into our account so that He could declare us righteous and He has qualified us.

We talked about this a little bit Wednesday night that He doesn’t call qualified people, He qualifies the people He has called. Well, He doesn’t call qualified people, righteous people, to be His saints and to be partakers of that inheritance. He has qualified us.

He has made us who were unqualified to be qualified to be His people. And so He’s praying for them that they might be able to get to a place in life where they are thankful for the work that He’s doing in them. And He outlines the most important reason we have to be thankful.

I don’t care what circumstances are going on in your life. I don’t care what reason in my life I have to grumble. There is always a reason to give thanks because God has given us what we do not deserve and never could deserve because He has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints.

He did that. And so whatever else may be going wrong, I can be thankful for the work of God in my life. The change that He’s made not only in this life, but in eternity as well.

And when we pray for these things, guys, we are praying for things. When we ask for Him to make us wise, when we ask for Him to make us holy, when we ask for Him to give us strength, when we ask for Him to to make us thankful. We are asking Him to do things that He has already told us it is His will to do.

Something that He already desires for us. And He has promised us time after time after time in His Word that those are the kinds of prayers, those are the kinds of requests that He will answer and that He will grant. So many of the things that Jesus taught about prayer have been misinterpreted as blanket promises.

Ask anything and I’ll give it to you. That’s not what it says. And so people say, well, I’ll pray for a Mercedes or a brand new truck, the big one.

And I’m drawing a blank on the make and model. But, you know, I’ll pray for a big house. I’ll pray for a million dollars.

And then God doesn’t answer and they say, well, there’s something wrong with God. It’s not all true. He never promised to do all that.

He said, if you ask anything according to my will, prayer is not about bending God to our will. Prayer is about getting ourselves in line with His will. And when we ask the things that He has already said He wants to do, we don’t have to wonder if He’ll do it.

He will. And so when we pray these kinds of things, when we ask for these kinds of things, He’s promised that those are prayers that will be granted. Now, it may come in His timing.

You might say, well, I didn’t wake up the most thankful person in the world today. Are you a little more like Him and a little less like you? He didn’t promise that He’d do all of this overnight.

It’s called growth. It takes time that He’ll grant it. If we aren’t growing in these areas, if we aren’t growing in the areas that God already said that He wants us to grow in, if we’re not growing in these areas that He already said He wants for us, a big part of the problem is probably a lack of asking.

As Jesus said, you have not because you ask not. And all of us as believers are on a journey to live for Jesus Christ, to be more like Him, to bring Him glory, because He died for us. And there’s no amount of glory we could give Him that He doesn’t deserve.

But when it comes to growing to be more like Him, we can only do it to the degree that God wants us to. And so we should be praying without ceasing for ourselves and for each other in these areas. I shouldn’t say to the degree that God wants us to.

We can only do it in so far as God makes it happen. So instead of beating our heads against the rock saying, why isn’t this happening? We should be talking to God about it and saying, would you grow me in this area?

Would you grow my faith? Would you make me a more joyful person? Would you make me thankful?

Would you give me wisdom? Father, help me to walk in a holy way in this unholy world. Ask him for these things.

Be praying without ceasing for ourselves and for each other in these areas. We can’t leave out the element of praying these things for each other because that’s what he’s doing here. I have no doubt Paul prayed these things for himself, but here he says, I’m praying these things for you.

I’m praying that God will do these things for you. And if you know where to start. You think that sounds good.

Praying for that sounds good. But you don’t know where to start. Tell you what, just pick one person in the church.

Maybe somebody in your family. Maybe somebody in your Sunday school class. Somebody that sits near you in the pew.

Maybe somebody you work in an area of ministry with. Maybe somebody you don’t particularly like. But pick somebody in the church and begin asking God to grant these things to them as you pray these things for yourself.

We should be lifting each other up even as we pray for ourselves that God would grant us these things that He already said He wants to give us. He didn’t give us a blanket promise that He’d ever give us millions and millions of dollars. But we do have the promise that when we ask things that He’s already said He wants for us, that He’ll do it.

And so my question to you tonight, and where I’m going to end this pretty abruptly, my question to you tonight is why in the world are we not asking him? He’s promised it. He said he wants it for us.

We know it’s what we need, so why in the world are we not asking him for it?