Message Information
- Key Scriptures: Colossians 4:2-6, NASB
- Series: Sent for the Sake of the Gospel (2026), no. 5
- Date: Sunday, June 28, 2026 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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Looking for an Open Door
I came into possession of a second-hand filing cabinet a while back, and this week I was cleaning it up and getting it ready to take into the house and use. I realized it had not come with a key, and that bothered me. There’s no way to lock it or unlock it without a key, so it’s not like I’m in danger of getting locked out. I don’t really have anything to go in there that needs to be locked up. But it bothers me because it’s made to have a key, so it should have a key.
So I was doing research online about what to do and where to get a spare key. I think I found one, by the way. But did you know you can find all kinds of articles online about how to pick a lock? That seems like the kind of thing that should not just be public information.
I ended up going down a rabbit hole, reading some articles on how to pick locks. It’s not something I’m going to try. I still don’t understand half of what I read. But going down this rabbit hole of articles, I came across a whole group of articles teaching you the proper way to kick down a door.
And once again, I thought this should not just be out there. I’m not saying the government should censor it. I’m not talking First Amendment things here. I’m saying it seems like a bad idea to teach people online how to kick down doors. But there are several techniques, and they explain how to do them properly. Some of them have illustrations and drawings, and all of these ways to kick in a door sound like you could hurt yourself real bad, and they’re probably illegal. So I wouldn’t recommend doing any of them.
I walked away after looking at some of these articles and thought, “They really will just put anything on the internet.” I hope to never be in a situation where I feel the need to kick down a door.
I think that sometimes, when it comes to sharing the gospel, we feel like we’re going to be put in a position where we have to kick down a door to share the gospel with somebody. And most of us are not kick-down-the-door kind of people.
Years ago, I did street evangelism in downtown Oklahoma City with a man who has gone on to be with the Lord, whose name was Bro. Parker. He was one of the boldest men I’ve ever met. But when you’re a Marine and a truck driver, you can be bold in ways that somebody like me can’t. He was a giant brick wall of a man who would just confront people: “Hey, tough guys need Jesus too.” And I’m thinking, “You’re going to get us shot.”
But he was fantastic at kicking down doors to share the gospel. Most of us are not door kickers. Most of us are looking for an open door. And that’s okay, because we serve a God who opens doors for us to share the gospel.
As we look at Colossians 4, the Apostle Paul talks about the open door and the desire for an open door. I get the sense that Paul could be a door kicker himself at times, but even he said we want doors to be opened for the sharing of the gospel.
This morning, I want us to look at this idea of doors being opened. I want us to think about not having to kick down doors, but seeking doors that God has opened. Maybe that takes some of the pressure off of us, so that we don’t think we have to kick down doors and drag people to the gospel kicking and screaming. In Colossians 4, Paul tells the church at Colossae what it’s going to take and what we do once we find the door open.
Here is what he says, starting in verse 2:
Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving; praying at the same time for us as well, that God will open up to us a door for the word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been imprisoned; that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak. Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity. Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person.
In this passage, Paul is concerned with the spread of the gospel. He’s concerned with how the gospel is going to be spread both in Colossae, where the people he’s writing to are, and in Rome, where he is.
It occurred to me, too, the irony—or maybe Paul intended it as humor—of talking about praying for an open door to share the gospel. He’s under house arrest when he writes this. He’s not praying for an open door for himself to escape. He’s praying for open doors to share the gospel, even as the doors for him are closed to go out into the wider world.
But he’s concerned with the spread of the gospel, and he describes how they should pursue open doors for the spread of the gospel and what to do when those doors open.
Remembering the Gospel We Share
I know we talk about the gospel frequently, but there may be somebody hearing it for the first time. Or sometimes the explanation makes sense for the first time. Many of us heard the gospel multiple times before it made sense to us.
As we’re going to talk about the spread of the gospel and wanting open doors for the gospel, it’s a good idea to refresh our memory on what the gospel is. So if you’re saying, “I have an idea what the gospel is, but I’m not sure if I can express it or articulate it,” the gospel is this: the gospel is the message, the good news, of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, and the free offer of salvation that He gives us as a result.
That’s what Paul outlined in 1 Corinthians 15, that Christ died for our sins. It wasn’t just an accident of history that He died. It wasn’t just something random that happened to Him. Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. He died as the payment for our sins, just as the prophets had foretold. He was buried and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures and was seen by many witnesses.
It’s the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus that gives us hope. And it’s what Paul outlined in Ephesians 2 about this free offer of salvation. He says, “For by grace are you saved by faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.”
It’s the idea that because Jesus Christ died to pay for our sins as the Scripture said He would, and because He rose again to prove it, you and I can have forgiveness and eternal life as a free gift of God if we will simply believe that Jesus is who He said He was, that He did what He said He did, and that He died as the payment for our sins. That’s the gospel.
Do you have to walk through both of those Scriptures? Do you have to walk through that exact presentation with somebody every time you share the gospel? No. But the gospel at its simplest is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus and the free offer of forgiveness that we have as a result. That’s the gospel. If you hit those points, you’ve shared the gospel.
And we want to have an open door as we share that message. That’s what Paul talks about here in Colossians 4. He begins with a command to us that we are supposed to prepare ourselves prayerfully.
Prepare Prayerfully
We prepare prayerfully. He starts off in verse 2: “Devote yourselves to prayer.” As a matter of fact, this word he uses, “devote,” tells us that this is something we are supposed to persevere in.
Many of us struggle with the idea of persevering in prayer. When we see a need or when we see something wrong, we have no problem going to God about it. But fifteen minutes later, we forget. Or when God doesn’t answer the way we expect Him to the first time we pray for it, we drop that and move on to something else.
But Paul is telling us to persevere in prayer, to keep going, to devote ourselves to prayer, to pray like it’s our job—because it is. If we want open doors to share the gospel with somebody, we keep praying for it.
I knew a woman in the first church I pastored who had been praying for her husband’s salvation for fifty years. Every Wednesday night prayer meeting, she would bring up her husband’s name: “Pray for Charlie. Pray that Charlie will get saved.” That woman did not let up for over fifty years.
When I left that church, she was still praying. And I never heard what happened with Charlie. But I know that woman prayed until the day she died that he would come to know Christ. That is what perseverance looks like.
Does God always answer prayers the way we think He ought to? No. We work for Him, not the other way around. But that’s the kind of thing He’s called us to do. Not to pray once, “God, would You open doors for me?” and then cut Him out of the equation and go do things.
Because the moment we stop persevering in prayer for the open door and just go try to do things, we are trying to do things in our own power and treating it as though it’s not the work of God that is calling sinners to repentance. What we end up doing at that point, when we are no longer devoting ourselves to prayer for the open door, is we start being tempted to kick doors in.
I was never as aggressive as the man I talked about earlier. But there was a long period of my life where I thought if I could just come up with the right argument and the right presentation, the right combination of words was out there somewhere that would convince everybody.
The audacity I had, thinking that in 2,000 years of Christian history nobody had figured it out, but I could. Then I was confronted from the Scriptures with the realization that God has a role in saving people.
You wouldn’t think that would be such a big realization, but I had to come to realize that it was not on me to drag people to the cross. It was not on me to kick down all the doors. It was on me to pray for God to open doors and then go toward the doors He had opened.
So if we wonder, “Why do I not have opportunities to share the gospel? Why is nobody ever receptive when I try to share the gospel? That person in my family, or that friend, or that neighbor I love dearly and want to come to Christ—why is it that every time I share the gospel, they become more and more disengaged from what I’m sharing?” We have got to persevere in prayer. We’ve got to prepare prayerfully.
Paul says, “keeping alert in it.” Prayer is not just something we do periodically. We have to keep alert in it as we persevere. We shouldn’t grow weary or lazy in it. We’ve probably all at times been guilty of becoming lazy in our prayer lives. Notice what I said: we all. I’m not saying you. I’m saying we. I’m guilty.
But when I see Paul say, “keep alert in it,” I can’t help but think of the disciples the night before Jesus was crucified. He kept telling them, “We need to watch and pray for just a little bit.” Three times He went back to them and found them doing what? Sleeping.
I can sympathize with the disciples. They were tired. It had been a stressful time. I’m not sure I could stay up all night and pray. But Jesus pointed out, “All I asked you to do was sit here and watch and pray for a little bit.”
It’s not such a big ask that He gives us to say, “Won’t you keep praying? Don’t grow idle. Don’t grow tired. Don’t grow weary. Keep praying.”
We keep alert and persist in prayer because we can do nothing without God. Certainly nothing that matters. Nothing that’s worth doing. You and I can’t make people come to Christ. You and I can’t make people understand the gospel.
I’ve talked to people before, and part of what convinced me that the approach of trying to come up with the exact right combination of words was failing was that the harder I worked at it, it didn’t seem to make any difference. There were still people I talked to where I thought, “Do you not understand the English language? I can’t be any clearer with this.”
Have you ever talked to somebody about the gospel, or anything else, and it just felt like you were having two completely different conversations? Almost like they were determined not to understand. Sometimes with children, you can have a conversation and feel like they are determined not to understand. I was probably that child at times. My mother is sitting there.
People can hear the gospel, and no matter how clear we make it, it may not make sense if God is not opening their eyes, if the Holy Spirit is not at work there. Don’t hear what I’m not saying. I still believe whosoever will may come. This is not saying that God only wants some people to be saved. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe the Bible teaches that.
But at the same time, the Holy Spirit has to be working in somebody’s heart for them to understand the gospel. You and I can’t make them do it. And so we are constant in prayer, asking God for open doors, because He’s the only one who can open them.
Pray with Thanksgiving and for One Another
Paul says to do all of this in verse 2 “with an attitude of thanksgiving.” This reminds us that we are supposed to pay attention to how God is already working around us and be thankful.
I love the story from Luke about the ten lepers who were healed and only one came back to say thank you to Jesus. That is one of the stories I remember very vividly hearing in my childhood, and it has always stuck with me. How many times will we ask God to do something, and He does it, and we just move on as though we were entitled to whatever He did?
That’s probably not the way we would put it. If I were to ask, “Are you entitled to God’s blessings?” we would say no, that it’s His grace and His goodness. But sometimes we pray for Him to do things, and then when He does them, we forget to acknowledge, “You made that happen. You did that.”
Does God need our thanks? No. But to be where we need to be spiritually, we need to be thanking Him. We need to give Him thanks more than He needs to receive our thanks.
We pay attention to how God is already at work, how He’s already answering prayers, how He’s already drawing people, how He’s already giving open doors, how He’s already preparing us to walk through those open doors. We recognize what He’s doing, and we are thankful. We approach Him with an attitude of thanksgiving.
Then Paul says in verse 3, “praying at the same time for us as well.” This is huge, because as we’re talking about open doors, many times we will read a passage like this and think about praying for open doors for ourselves. We’ll think about the person we’re trying to engage with the gospel. We’ll think about that loved one who is lost, and we’ll pray, “Give me an open door. God, help me to share the gospel. Prepare their hearts.” And all of that is great. We should be doing that.
At the same time, we’re supposed to pray for our brothers and sisters who stand shoulder to shoulder with us in the trenches. It’s not enough for me to pray for an open door for me. I should be praying for an open door for Lee, and for Winnie, and for Rebecca, and for Larry. I should be praying for open doors for others around me.
We should be sharing with one another who it is we’re praying for, who it is we are endeavoring to share the gospel with, and we should be joining one another. We should be linking arms in prayer for those people. We should be supporting and encouraging each other.
We already do this with things like material needs and sickness. When we know somebody in our body is not feeling well, we are quick to put them on the prayer list, and well we should. When somebody in our body has a material need, we are quick to pray for it and quick to jump in and help, as well we should.
We ought to be at least as involved in lifting one another up in fulfilling the Great Commission. How is it that we can pray for you? Who is it you’re trying to share with? What door is it you’re seeking God to open? How can we partner together to strengthen one another’s work?
The same things Paul tells them to pray for themselves, he says to pray for us at the same time as well. “Pray that God will open up a door for us for the word,” he says in verse 3. Pray for that open door. Pray for people to be receptive to the gospel, “so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ.” Pray that we will keep the focus on Christ as we go.
We should be praying for one another as we go throughout the week: “Help whoever it is make Christ the focus.” Because how many of us have come out of church on Sunday morning or Sunday night with the thought, “This week, I’m going to tell somebody about Jesus. I’m going to focus on being on mission”? Then we get to Monday morning and that calendar or that to-do list hits. Or maybe we get a call or a text message, and suddenly the calendar and the to-do list go out the window. The priorities shift, and it becomes about something other than the mission.
We’ve all been in that boat. It happens to me far more often than I’m comfortable admitting. We should be lifting one another up, that we would make Jesus the mission as we go through the week. We should pray to keep Christ at the focus, “so that we may speak the mystery of Christ.”
Paul says in verse 3, “for which I have been imprisoned.” They were to pray that Paul would use the opportunities he had been given. Sometimes, for me, one little thing goes wrong or even unexpected in life, and the mission takes a back seat.
Folks, Paul was imprisoned. Paul was under house arrest. He was facing trial and a possible death sentence. And I love his attitude in this. I’d like to say I’m there. I’m not. But I want to get there someday. I think we all want to get there someday, to have this attitude of the Apostle Paul: “If they let me out, I get to go tell more people about Jesus. If they keep me in prison, great—captive audience. They’re the captives. They’ve got to stay here and watch me while I tell them about Jesus. If they kill me, I get to go be with Jesus.”
That is a mission-focused perspective. The things I look at as inconveniences and unexpected occurrences are really the way God is working to open doors to share the gospel in places I didn’t expect.
And so we should be praying for ourselves and praying for others, as Paul asked for prayer, that he would speak the mystery for which he had been imprisoned, and that we would look for those opportunities and be aware of them when they’re presented. We should be praying for one another that we would be aware of what God’s doing and take hold of the opportunities when He presents them.
Pray for Clear Gospel Words
Paul says in verse 4, “that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak.” We should be praying for ourselves and one another that we will have the words to share the gospel clearly.
That is usually the most common objection when we talk about sharing the gospel with people: “I don’t know what I’d say,” or, “What if they ask a question that I can’t answer?” There are going to be times when you don’t know what to say. In my experience, those are the moments when the Holy Spirit takes over.
And don’t worry about them asking a question. “What if they ask a question I can’t answer?” They will. There’s no shame in saying, “I’m not sure, but I’ll find out and I’ll get back to you.” Then bring it right back around to the gospel.
They don’t need to know where Cain’s wife came from to understand the gospel. They don’t need to know how all the animals fit on the ark to understand the gospel. They don’t need to understand whether we’re going to know our spouses in heaven to understand the gospel.
I’m not saying those are unimportant questions, but there’s no shame in saying, “I’m not sure, but I’ll look into it. But here’s what Jesus did for you.” So we pray that God will give us the words to share.
In this passage, some of you may be looking at the clock thinking, “He’s still on point one.” That is by design. In this passage where Paul is talking about the open door, he spends more time and more space talking about prayer than the other two things combined. Incidentally, so will we, because we’re following the text through here.
Paul spends more time and more space talking about prayer than the other admonitions combined, and it’s for good reason. Prayer is what empowers all of this. Prayer is the thing that we can’t spread the gospel without. We can say words, and we can talk to people, but we cannot fulfill the Great Commission without being fueled by prayer.
I think one of the reasons we see so few opportunities—or I should say notice so few opportunities until afterward, when we’re kicking ourselves and saying, “I should have been more aware”—or the reason we feel like it’s such a struggle to formulate the right words, or the reason we are so fearful, is primarily because we are not praying as pointedly and as regularly as we ought to be for the open door.
There’s a gentleman the kids and I listen to on the radio who frequently uses the phrase, “You can’t rise above your own worldview.” What he means by that is he talks about people who are in the news, both public people and private people, who do stupid things—and yes, some things are stupid—or they do criminal things. We look and say, “How could somebody do X, Y, and Z?” And he says, “Look at their worldview. Look at the worldview that shaped them in their decision-making, and I will explain to you why.”
First of all, if you come from a worldview that says there is not a God you’re accountable to, it makes it a lot easier to do things you wouldn’t want to be accountable to God for. And so he says, “You can’t rise above your own worldview.”
I’ve thought about that phrase a lot this week, because for our purposes, I think it could be said that we can’t rise above our own prayer life. In our fulfillment of the Great Commission, we cannot rise above our own prayer life. I think that’s why Paul spends so much time talking about the importance of prayer in our preparation.
Our walk is never going to rise above our own prayer life. Our ability to keep Christ in focus, our ability to walk in an obedient way that brings glory to Him, our ability to do all the things He has called us to do will never rise above our own prayer life. If we want to do better at those things, we need to prepare in prayer for it. If you struggle with sin, pray about it. And persevere in prayer about it.
Our witness will never rise above our prayer life. If we want our witness to be effective, if we want our witness to be Spirit-led, we need to be persevering in prayer about it.
Proceed Wisely
Then Paul tells us in verses 5 and 6 what to do once we have the open door. We’ve prepared prayerfully. Then there comes a time when we have prayed and prepared, and we step out into our mission field.
It may be that when you step out of this building today, you have stepped into your mission field. It may be that when you step out your front door in the morning, you enter your mission field. It may be for some of you that when you open your eyes and step out of bed, your mission field is right there in your own house.
There comes a time when we’ve prayed and prepared, we step into our mission field, and we begin to put into practice what we’ve prayed for. Scripture sends us out with another admonition: proceed wisely.
Paul says in verse 5, “Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders.” That could mean a lot of things. Are we supposed to be strategic? Are we supposed to have a plan? If that’s it, I’m out, because I’m not great at planning. Besides which, when I plan something, God usually has other ideas. I’m probably not alone in that.
“Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders.” What that means is that we recognize that at any moment, the way we walk and the way we live could reflect on the gospel in somebody’s eyes.
There’s an ancient Christian writer named Chrysostom who was writing about this passage and told his readers, “Give them no handle against you,” meaning nothing to grab hold of you with. In other words, don’t give them any ammunition to use against the gospel by the way you live. We’re supposed to be wise. Give them no handle against Christ.
I hate it. I absolutely hate it when I see news reports about somebody connected with church or ministry in one way or another who has done something illegal, and in some cases something heinously illegal. I hate, first of all, that it happens. But I also hate when the comments begin to roll in: “It’s always who you suspect.” “It’s the usual suspects.”
What we do when we don’t live wisely is we give the world ammunition to use against Christ and against the gospel. Is Jesus causing people to sin? Absolutely not. But it’s His reputation that gets tarnished.
That’s why Paul tells us to conduct ourselves with wisdom toward outsiders. Because it’s not our reputation that’s on the line; it’s His. It’s not our message that gets rejected because of the way we live; it’s His.
Give them no handle against Christ. In evangelism, in sharing the gospel, it is so important to be wise in how you approach people and how you live.
Years ago—twenty-plus years ago, twenty-five years ago—I went through Evangelism Explosion training when we were at First Southern in Del City. We would go out and knock doors, and they would teach us a presentation that I don’t necessarily use anymore, but I use parts of it. It’s a good tool for sharing the gospel.
But I remember them going almost overboard in the training about certain things you do and don’t do when you arrive at somebody’s house. You don’t walk through their grass. You don’t talk on the way to or from your car. I remember thinking, “That’s crazy.”
But they talked about how people might overhear you laughing and think you’re making fun of them or their home as you’re walking up. And I thought, “Okay, I never would have thought of that.” And some people can become irate if you walk through their grass. I’ve never had pretty enough grass to care, but some people care deeply.
You don’t want to give them an unnecessary offense. Am I telling you that we should be scared to death to live? No. But I am telling you that as we conduct ourselves out in the world, we proceed wisely by thinking about the mission first.
Are the things I’m doing pointing people to Jesus or driving them away? You and I are going to mess up. It’s going to happen. But we don’t want to mess up because we didn’t care and we were sloppy.
Is the way we are living day to day pointing people to Jesus or driving them away? This is about living like we’re constantly on mission. The focus is not just on not causing offense. It’s on making the most of every opportunity. The way we live ought to help us make the most of every opportunity to share Christ.
And it’s about living like we’re constantly on mission. You hear that and think, “How am I supposed to do that? I have to be so focused all the time.” You and I can’t do that. That’s why we go back to point one: we’ve prepared prayerfully. Because He can empower that. He can give us wisdom that, honestly, I just don’t have, and most of us don’t have.
We want to walk in such a way that we don’t knock a door closed that He has opened for us.
Proclaim Graciously
As we walk through that door, verse 6 tells us to proclaim graciously. We’re to speak graciously. We’re supposed to be kind in our approach to people and gracious. We’re also supposed to speak grace.
It’s not just about being nice to people, although that is important. It’s about telling them a message of God’s grace. Because we’re not inviting them to us. We’re not trying to win people to us—“Like me.” We’re trying to win people to Christ.
We want to be gracious so we get out of the way of that message. But ultimately, the message is God’s grace, that God has made a way for them to be forgiven and for them to be saved. God has made a way for them to be right with Him and have peace with Him.
So we are to speak grace. Paul says our speech should be with grace, “as though seasoned with salt.” Salt in the Bible is something that was used to purify and preserve, but it was also something that made you crave more.
The way we live, the way we speak, and the way we show the grace of Christ as well as tell the grace of Christ should make people long for the grace of Christ. Paul says, “so that you will know how you should respond to each person.”
We’ll approach different people differently because everybody’s different. For example, some people are very feelings-oriented, and you talk about the love of Christ. Some people are very facts-driven, and they may want to know about Jesus fulfilling prophecy, and they may want to know about the resurrection and the evidence for the resurrection. We’re going to approach people differently.
But if we’re focused on speaking with grace seasoned with salt, we will know how we ought to respond to each person. The main thing is looking for an open door to share that message and then doing everything within our power to take advantage of that open door once it’s there.
Once it’s there, we don’t want to get in the way of the message because of the way we live. We want to speak in ways that represent Christ, and we want to live in ways that represent Christ. All of that is possible because we’ve prepared in prayer.
Because we take to people words of life that will change their life here on earth and change their eternity. They no longer have to be separated from a holy God, but they can know Him relationally. They can have peace with Him. They can experience eternal life with Him, all because of what Jesus did.
Every day when we step out into our mission field, that should be our focus. And it can be if we rely on Him to help us.