Powerful Daily Prayers
A Pastor told his congregation at the end of their service one day that if any of them needed prayer to come forward to the front of the altar and he would pray over them.
Well, one guy named Jack gets out of his seat and comes down front and waits in line until it’s his turn. When he gets to the front of the line, the pastor asks,
“Jack, what would you like for me to pray about for you today?”
Jack said, “Pastor, I need you to pray for my hearing.”
The pastor puts one finger in Jack’s ear and places the other hand on top of Jack’s head, and he begins to pray.
After a few minutes, the pastor removed his hands, stands back, and asks Jack,
“Jack, how is your hearing now?”
Jack says, “I don’t know pastor, it’s not until next Wednesday.”
Sometimes, when it comes to prayer, we need to be very specific when sharing prayer requests!
No, but seriously, when it comes to prayer, many of us have a difficult time finding the right words and wonder if we should be doing it a certain way to please the Lord. We would love to pray powerful prayers on a daily basis but just don’t know how.
Well, one of the things that can really help us out in our prayer life is to look at what other people prayed in the Bible. Especially in the New Testament.
See, many of the prayers offered in the Old Testament were prayed under a completely different covenant. A covenant between God and Israel. A covenant that was conditional upon them holding up the terms of the agreement of that covenant.
But we are under a new covenant now. An unconditional covenant that is not limited to Israel. God has promised to fulfill the covenant Himself, which He did through Jesus. In this covenant, we simply receive based on what Jesus accomplished for us.
This changes the way we pray. It makes it possible to pray powerful daily prayers.
Let’s look at the apostle Paul’s prayer for the church at Colossae in Colossians 1:9-14.
9 For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, 10 so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, 12 and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. 13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
One of the things we see right off the bat by reading all the way through it, is that this is a prayer based on Jesus’ finished work on the cross, and that he is praying this over those who have put their faith in Jesus for salvation.
He says, “For He has rescued (past tense) us from the dominion of darkness.”
This is where all of us were before the cross. Trapped in our sin. In bondage to the power of sin and death in us. We were spiritually dead.
But through the cross, Jesus has rescued us from that dominion and sphere of influence, and Paul says that now we have been “brought into the kingdom of the Son he loves.”
Did you know that you were already in God’s Kingdom? Some of you thought that’s where you would go when you die, but Paul says you’ve already been brought into that Kingdom.
Paul will even say this chapter 3:1-3
“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”
So, Jesus is sitting at the right hand of the Father in heaven right now, but Paul says that “You’ve been raised with Christ and your life is not hidden with Christ in God.”
So not only is Jesus sitting at the right hand of God, but you are too. You have been raised with Him spiritually and are in union with Him. You’ve been rescued from the dominion of darkness and brought into the kingdom of the Son he loves (1:13).
So, keep this image in your mind as we go back & look at Paul’s prayer. In verse 9, Paul says,
“We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives”
Now, when you and I see the word “will” like this and think about “God’s will,” you and I tend to think about God’s direction for our lives. But that is not what Paul is talking about.
Listen to what Douglas Moo says in The Pillar New Testament Commentary on Colossians (pg. 93),
What Paul has in mind is not some particular or special direction for one’s life (as we often use the phrase “God’s will”), but a deep and abiding understanding of the revelation of Christ and all that he means for the universe and for the Colossians.
See, Paul often wrote out a prayer for the church he was writing to and in that prayer would be the things he was going to teach them more about in the letter as it went on.
Well, if you’ve ever read the book of Colossians, you know that what Paul goes on to talk about. Christ! The mystery of the gospel, which is Christ in them, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27).
So the first thing Paul prays in this prayer is that God would fill them with this knowledge of his will which is Christ in them and through them. Notice that Paul prays that God would fill them with this knowledge. This is something the Spirit must reveal. He reveals truth.
Paul goes on in verse 10 and says that he is praying for this to happen, “so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way.”
Paul knows that you can’t please the Lord through striving and effort. That’s religion. So, they (and we) must understand the gospel truth of Christ in us and through us to live a life that is pleasing to Him.
Paul now goes on to list 4 things that go with living a life worthy of the Lord and that please Him in every way.
“bearing fruit in every good work” (Col. 1:10)
Whose job is it to produce the fruit? Not ours! We are in a vine/branch relationship with Jesus (John 15). He is the vine and we are the branches, and it is the vines’ job to produce the fruit and the branches job to bear the fruit.
So simply making yourself available for Jesus to produce fruit through you is pleasing to the Lord because it is His activity through you. That activity speaks of Him, not you, and that brings Him glory.
The second thing Paul says is consistent with living a life worthy of the Lord is
“growing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:10)
Whose job is it to reveal the knowledge of God? It’s God’s job! Remember what Paul said in v. 9? “We ask God to fill you with knowledge…understanding that the Spirit gives.”
When we are open to the Spirit revealing His truths and growing us in the knowledge of God, that pleases Him. Why? Because He is at work in us to grow our understanding of who He is and who we are in Christ. Once again, it’s His activity. It speaks of Him, brings Him glory.
The third thing Paul says is consistent with living a life worthy of the Lord is
“being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience”
Notice once again, we are not the ones doing the strengthening. We are being strengthened by the power of Christ in us and through us which will give us endurance and patience.
And once again, this pleases Him because it is His power at work in us, not our own.
And finally, in verse 12, Paul says,
“and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light.”
Our response to what God has done to establish us in His Kingdom and work all this activity through us is simply to give thanks. To thank Him for what He has done and is doing in and through Christ in us.
So, as we see what Paul prayed for the believers at Colossae, it impacts the way we pray. This is a powerful daily prayer.
We pray that “God will fill us with the knowledge of his will, which is Christ in us and through us.”
We pray and ask God to produce fruit through us.
We ask Him to grow us by revealing more knowledge about God and who we are in Christ.
We pray for Him to strengthen us with His power and that it will be at work in us and through us to endure for a lifetime.
And when we pray, we thank Him for rescuing us from the dominion of darkness, for bringing us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, and for working in us and through us to His glory.
This is the kind of prayer that pleases the Lord and releases His power in us. One where we are thankful and resting in His finished work for us, and one where we are praying for and available for His activity to be at work in us and through us.
