Scroll to 22:45 for beginning of sermon
Colossians 1:3-13
We’re going to read some Scripture, and this is part of Paul’s prayer for the Colossian believers, and we’re going to unpack that in a little bit.
But I’m just going to read the last five verses of his prayer. This is Colossians 1, 9-14. This is Paul writing to the believers at Colossae,
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, so that you might live a life worthy of the Lord, and please Him in every way, bearing fruit in good work and growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might, so that you may have great endurance and patience, 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, for He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness, and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins.
Well, we’re going to look at the book of Colossians. So, I love to get into book studies, and we introduced this last week.
And I’ll always ask a bunch of questions at the beginning of studying a book that kind of set the introduction and the background. And so, we looked at five of them last week. I’m going to go over that really quickly, and then we’re going to jump into this passage.
So, the first question we ask is, who wrote the book? And of course this is from the Apostle Paul, who wrote many of the letters in the New Testament, either to individuals or mostly to churches. What’s interesting about the book of Colossians is that Paul had never been there. There’s no record in the Bible that Paul visited Colossae, but one of his friends, converts by the name of Epaphras, came to know Christ, went back to his hometown of Colossae, and started a church.
So, Paul wrote the book, and he wrote it to the Colossian church that got established through Epaphras. And when was it written? That’s another question that we ask. And this was written about 61 A.D., and Paul wrote it from Rome.
He’s under house arrest. He’s awaiting trial. And Epaphras makes an almost 1,200-mile journey from Colossae to Rome to visit Paul.
Why did he make that long journey that would have taken him probably a couple of months? Because this is the purpose of the book. There was false teachers that came in and were teaching false doctrine and leading those believers astray. And so Epaphras is concerned about the church and the stability of the church, and so he makes a trip to Paul in Rome, and he visits him, and he tells Paul about what’s going on, and then Paul sends this letter back to the Colossian believers.
And then we also looked at the outline of the book. So, with that having said, we’re going to jump into the section here, Principles for Prayer from Paul. So, a couple weeks ago on our first message of the year for 2026, we had a message entitled, 525,600 minutes.
That’s how many minutes there are in a year. And the challenge was, how can we invest our time to make a difference with the 525,600 minutes that God gives us? And so, we came up with three Ps. We talked about being more intentional in prayer, how vital prayer is in our life.
We talked about parenting and really discipleship, how important it is to put God’s Word into the lives of the next generation, and that they’ll come to know Jesus and learn what it means to walk with Him. And then lastly, proselytizing, which is a fancy word for being intentional in sharing our faith. So, this morning, we’re going to come back to one of those challenges about prayer and look at three principles for prayer from Paul.
And so, here’s the first thing, a definition of prayer. It’s really, there’s many, but it’s pretty simple. Prayer is talking to God, and it’s His invitation to us to talk to Him.
And the good thing is, He’s there 24-7, never going to get a busy signal, don’t have to make an appointment. He never sleeps. He never slumbers.
He’s always there. And so, our spiritual life, our journey with Jesus involves communication. God speaks to us through His Word.
That’s 66 books of His message to us, and we speak to Him through prayer. So, prayer is simply talking to God. How do we learn to pray? I’m sure in Christian colleges and seminaries, there are classes you can take on prayer, but practically speaking, I look back on my life growing up in a pastor’s home, being in church every single Sunday of my life since I was two weeks old, I began to learn to pray by listening to other people pray.
So, I had the privilege of growing up in this wonderful church in Cleveland, Ohio, where my dad pastored and was there all the time, and I began to learn how to pray by kind of listening to other people pray growing up in the church. I’m sure there are books we can read on prayer, but we can also learn how to pray by studying the prayers in the Bible. The disciples asked Jesus to teach them one thing, not better evangelism techniques or how to have victory over sin, but the one question they said, will you teach us something? They said, will you teach us to pray? And so, we have in the Bible the Lord’s Prayer.
Some people call it the disciples’ prayer. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread. You know the prayer, and Jesus used that, and it’s okay to recite that prayer. He also used it as a model prayer, so we can learn how to pray by studying the Lord’s Prayer, but there are also great prayers in the Bible that we can study and learn from.
A lot of them in the Old Testament, the prayer of Elijah. Remember on Mount Carmel and there’s this big contest like who’s the true God, and it’s going to be the God who answers by fire, and it was one prophet of God, Elijah, versus 450 prophets of Baal, and there’s a great prayer that Elijah prays, and God answers that prayer and sends fire from heaven. There’s the prayer of Nehemiah when he was heartbroken about the condition of his hometown Jerusalem that had been ravished.
The walls had been torn down, and Nehemiah gives a great prayer in the book of Nehemiah. David has some great prayers of repentance, Psalm 32, Psalm 51. The prayer of King Solomon at the dedication of the temple.
Principles for Prayer from Paul
The prayer of Jonah from the belly of a fish. That’s an interesting prayer to study, but what we want to do is we want to look at another great prayer, and it’s Paul’s prayer for the Colossian believers here in Colossians chapter 1, and we’re going to look basically at three principles, truths, from Paul’s prayer that will help us in our prayer life. So that’s where we’re headed, and as I’ve heard my friend Dr. Lutzer say many, many times, he’s pastor emeritus of Moody Church, he says, my job is to speak and your job is to listen, and hopefully we finish at the same time.
i. Gratitude should be at the core of our prayer life
Here’s our first principle for prayer, is that gratitude or thankfulness should be at the core of our prayer life. Gratitude and thankfulness to God should be at the very core of our prayer life and of our worship. And we see that in Paul’s prayer, he kind of bookends his prayer by starting out with thanks and ending with thanks. And so, look at how he starts this prayer in verse three of Colossians 1, we always thank God.
So, he starts out with what? Gratitude and thankfulness. And how does he end his prayer? Well, toward the end in verse 12, giving joyful thanks to the Father. And so, Paul’s prayers are always characterized by gratitude and thankfulness.
And when you look at all of his letters in the New Testament, almost every one of them starts with gratitude and praise. And so, I’m just going to illustrate that, and I’ll just read a bunch of the beginnings of Paul’s prayers to the Roman believers, Romans 1:8. First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you. 1st Corinthians 1:4, I always thank God for you.
Ephesians 1:16, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. Philippians 1:3, I thank my God every time I remember you and all my prayers for you. As we mentioned in 1st Thessalonians 1:2, to the Thessalonian church, we always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in all of our prayers.
To Timothy, 2nd Timothy 1, I thank God whom I serve as day and night. I constantly remember you in my prayers. To Philemon, verse 4, I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers.
And so, you study the prayers of Paul, and he always starts with thankfulness and gratitude to God. So, there’s not only a pattern there when we look at the prayers of the Bible, but the Bible is also prescriptive in telling us to give thanks. In other words, there’s some commands, there’s some imperatives.
You read the book of Psalms, and you see this phrase over and over again, give thanks to God. Give thanks to God. And so, the writers of the Psalms are always imploring us, encouraging us to what? Give God praise and thanksgiving.
In fact, I looked it up, it’s there 74 times in the book of Psalms. It tells us give thanks to God. We see it in another one of Paul’s letters from prison.
The prison epistle, Colossians is a prison epistle, Philippians is written from prison, Philippians 4:6, do not be anxious about anything. We could preach a whole sermon on that this morning, can’t we? Because if you’re like me, you might have some things in your life that tend to keep you awake at night. Join the club, some worries, some concerns.
And what does Paul tell us here? It’s an imperative, again, don’t worry. Stop worrying. Somebody said worrying is like a rocking chair.
It gives us something to do, but it gets us nowhere. But then Paul tells us what to do. Instead of worrying, he says, in every situation, by prayer and petition, here it is, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.
1st Thessalonians 5, rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in everything. And so, there’s not just a pattern in the Bible that says we need to give thanks, it’s prescribed for us. We’re to give God thanks.
So, gratitude should be at the core of our prayer life. Now back to Colossians 1, what is Paul thankful for? What is he giving thanks for? And there’s really five truths that we’re going to look at that are the object or the reason for Paul’s gratitude. So let me read the text here again.
We always thank God, verse 3, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, here’s the first reason, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people, the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel. Did you pick up three key words there that are the three key words of our Christian faith? Paul says, now abides faith, hope, and love. Paul is thankful for the faith of the Colossian church, the love that they have, and the hope that they have in Jesus.
Faith, hope, and love, the foundational truths of the gospel. And that’s where he starts. And notice that he says, I’ve heard of your faith.
So, he hasn’t been there, he hasn’t physically been with these people, but he hears about their faith, hope, and love, and he’s grateful for the Colossian church and their faith, hope, and love. He’s also grateful for the expansion of the gospel, the expansion of the gospel. Verse 6, the gospel that has come to you in the same way the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace.
So, he says, I’m thankful for your faith, hope, and love. I’m also thankful that the gospel is spreading, that the gospel is spreading throughout the world. And we know that Paul’s ministry was an important part of that.
He took these three journeys. That’s one of the ways that the gospel spread. So, he’s thankful for the spread of the gospel.
If I were to ask you this morning, where in the world do you think the gospel is impacting and spreading the fastest? I don’t know what would be the answer to that question in your mind, but I’ll tell you where it is, and it’s in the continent of Africa. The gospel in the continent of Africa is far outpacing the growth of Christianity in any other place in the world. Let me just give you some statistics here.
Africa stands at the forefront of global Christian growth, now having more Christians than in North America. Nigeria ranks first in Christian growth. Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to see its Christian population nearly double in the next 30 years.
Some more statistics from, this is from the Christian Post article, November 2025. They’re looking at the definition of evangelical Christians. So, they’re studying evangelical Christians.
You see, when you take a survey and it asks if you’re a Christian, that is a very broad term, and there are many, many people, and this is what I talked to some of the middle schoolers at Clinton about, there are many, many people in our country today that call themselves Christian that aren’t Christians. They don’t know Jesus personally, but they’ll say they’re a Christian. And so perhaps the term evangelical Christian is a little more accurate.
Around 70% of evangelical Christians today live in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Describing evangelical churches in Africa as vibrant and quickly growing, nearly 70% of all Christian growth around the world is occurring in Africa. And so, when we get to heaven, there’s going to be a lot of people that look a lot different from us in heaven.
And Paul’s thanking God for the advance of the church worldwide, and today it is growing very, very quickly in Africa. Now one of the challenges of Christian growth in Africa is that most of the pastors that are pastoring these churches have very little education. 90% of them have never had the chance to take a course in theology or anything, and so that’s a great problem that Christian leaders are trying to bring training to those pastors in Africa to give them some theological foundation.
So, gratitude should be at the core of our prayer life. Paul’s thankful for the faith, hope, and love of the believers. He’s also thankful that the gospel is spreading throughout the world.
He gives another reason why he’s thankful, and it’s found in verse 13, toward the end of his prayer, for God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves. We need to remember what God’s done for us. We used to live in the kingdom of darkness, and now He’s brought us into the kingdom of light.
We used to be dead in our transgressions and sins, and God, through Jesus, has made us alive in Jesus Christ. If God did nothing other for you in your entire life other than rescue you from the kingdom of darkness, we should be eternally grateful to Him for what He’s done. So, Paul’s thankful for the rescue from Satan’s kingdom.
Then he goes on to give us a couple more reasons what he’s thankful for in verse 14, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. In whom we have redemption. Now the word redemption literally means to buy back.
It’s release on the payment of a ransom. That’s what redemption means. Here’s a poster that probably many of you have not seen before, but maybe you’ve heard about. This is from Charles Llindbergh, Jr. Let me give you the background of this. This is from a long time ago. Here’s the background story.
I don’t know if we can read the fine print there, but here’s the story. On March 1st, 1932, the 20-month-old son of aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne Lindbergh was kidnapped from their home in Hopewell, New Jersey. Imagine the horror of that, that your 20-month-old son is gone.
A ransom note was discovered by Charles on the windowsill of the nursery shortly after the child was reported as missing. The note demanded a ransom of $50,000 for the safe return of the child. In today’s economy, that’s about $900,000 equivalent.
So, they’re asking for $50,000 or you’re not getting your son back. Following the initial note, several additional notes were sent with demands increasing to $70,000. This was dubbed the crime of the century. The case ultimately led to the arrest of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, who was executed for the crime in 1936. The ransom was paid, but the child was never returned. Tragically, Charles Lindbergh Jr.’s body was found less than five miles from the Lindbergh home on May 12th, 1932.
A ransom, a ransom. And the Bible says that we were held under ransom. We were in the depths of slavery to sin and to the devil. And Jesus paid the ransom. The blood of Jesus that paid our sin debt makes us part of His kingdom. And so, Paul’s thankful for the faith, hope, and love of the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light that we’ve been redeemed.
We’ve been bought back through the blood of Jesus and our sins are forgiven, Romans 8:1. There’s no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus. When Jesus looks at us, when God looks at us positionally, He sees us through, when we put our faith in Christ, He sees us in Christ. And what has happened is the righteousness of Christ, His perfection gets credited to our account. Jesus sees us as forgiven. I will remember your sins no more. It doesn’t mean that He forgets them. I’ll never hold them against you again. And what’s amazing is that there’s no sin that’s beyond the grace and forgiveness of God. So, here’s our first point, is that we need to be thankful.
ii. Our prayer life should be consistent and persistent
It needs to be at the core of our prayer life and at the core of our worship. Here’s the second one, second truth from this passage. Our prayer life should be consistent and persistent. Our prayer life needs to be consistent and persistent. Look at verse 9. We read it in our scripture reading, for this reason, because all that God’s done for us since the day we heard about you. Now remember, Paul’s never met these people personally.
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. And he goes on to ask some more requests. And so, here’s our second truth that, and if you’re like me, sometimes prayer life is start, stop, start, stop, jump start. But the Bible says we need to be consistent and persistent in our prayer life. Paul challenged the Ephesian believers with these words, pray in the spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.
With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. And then Paul says, pray for me as well. So where can we start? Let’s pray for all of God’s people. Let’s pray for one another. Paul said, pray for me, your missionary. Pray for me, your pastor. Our prayer life should be consistent and persistent. Matthew chapter 7 says, keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking. In Luke chapter 11, after Dr. Luke records the Lord’s prayer in the first four verses of Luke 11, then Jesus tells a story about persistence in prayer.
Now just keep on asking and keep on seeking. Here’s the story that he told. Suppose you have a friend and you go to him at midnight. Now, unless it’s an absolute emergency, I’ll be in bed by 9:30. So, I mean, you could call me at midnight, but make it an emergency. So, a friend comes at midnight and he says, friend, lend me three loaves of bread.
A friend of mine on a journey has come to me and I have no food to offer him. So, he’s at his friend’s house at midnight. He says, I had some unexpected company and I don’t have any food to feed him, which was Mideastern hospitality. And so, could you lend me some bread? Can you lend me some food? And suppose the one inside says, don’t bother me. The doors already locked. Some of you can relate to this.
And my children and I are in bed. Remember that stage. Maybe some of you are still in it. I can’t get up and give you anything. Jesus says, I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity, the New Living Translation says, shameless persistence. In other words, they’re not leaving.
They just keep knocking at that door. He will surely get up and give you as much as you need. And then Jesus says, ask and it will be given you.
Keep seeking, keep asking, keep knocking. And so, the matter is that our prayer life needs to be consistent. Sometimes when we pray about something, and if you’re like me, you pray about something for a few weeks, maybe a couple months, and then it’s like, I guess God’s not going to answer that one, and so we give up. The Bible says, no, keep on praying, keep on seeking, and keep on knocking.
iii. Our prayer life should focus on the spiritual warfare and growth of others
Let’s look at our third point from Colossians chapter 1, our third truth that we can learn from Paul’s prayer, and it’s this, our prayer life should focus on the spiritual welfare and growth of other people. This should be the focus of our prayer life, it’s spiritual welfare and warfare, both would fit, but the spiritual welfare and spiritual growth of others. So, what’s Paul praying about here? We continually ask God to fill you with all the knowledge of His will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, 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, being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might, so that you might have great endurance and patience. So, when you study the prayers of Paul, they’re almost exclusively focused on other people coming to Christ and people growing in their spiritual walk.
Now, not that it’s wrong to pray for those that have other needs, it’s not wrong to pray for financial needs. God wants us to bring every one of our needs to Him. It’s not wrong to pray for people that are sick and have physical problems and need our prayers.
James tells us to do that. Let those that are sick call the elders of the church and have them come pray over you. Now, that’s biblical, but as we mentioned a number of months ago, our prayer life needs to be balanced, and sometimes our prayer life is just a long list of kind of organ recital of physical needs, and what we’re saying here is Paul’s focus was on the spiritual wealth and welfare and growth of others.
Paul’s 2 main requests…
1. To be filled with the knowledge of God’s will… so that
So, there’s two main requests here as we read this passage, and I think we have them on the screen. Here’s the first one that we read. His first main request for the Colossian believers is that they would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will.
So, I’m praying that your life would be filled with what God’s will is for your life, and if there’s one main question, especially young people, teenagers, college age, that they ask a lot of times, and all of us are wondering this, what’s God’s will for my life? I want to do God’s will, but I don’t know what it is. What is God’s will for my life? And here’s perhaps some guidance here. The more you know God, the more you know the scriptures, the more you will know God’s will for your life.
The more you know God, the more you know God’s word, which is where God’s will is revealed in many, many areas, the more you’ll know God’s will for your life. And so, the request is, I want you to know and be filled with God’s will for your life. Well, that request is not just for head knowledge then, it’s that for life transformation.
And so, he says, so that. So, God’s will for our life should lead us to these four things, and they’re found in verse 10, so that you might live a life worthy of the Lord. So, I want you to live a life that is worthy of the Lord.
If I were to paraphrase that, let’s say, Paul says, I want you to be a good advertisement for a Christian. I want you to be able to live a life that others would look at you and say, man, I’d like to model my life, my Christian walk after that person. And I never preach on Colossians chapter 1, verse 10, without bringing in my little wedding band here.
I haven’t worn it lately because I can’t get it over my knuckles. But 48 and a half years ago, Diane and I stood before a church family in Fort Wayne, Indiana. My dad was the pastor, and we exchanged wedding vows.
We were both 21 years old. But while we were dating, we picked a life verse that we could kind of implement as our verse and our prayer for our lives and our marriage. It’s actually engraved inside my wedding band.
And that life verse is Colossians 1:9, and 10. God, would you fill us with your will, the knowledge of what your plan is for our life, so that we will live a life that is worthy of you. There’s a second so that, so that we will please God in every way.
So, we’re looking, what, with our lives, to please God. How do you know how to please God? Again, it’s got to be from God’s Word. Paul writes in 2nd Corinthians 5:7, we make it our aim to please God, so that our lives will be worthy of Him, that we will please Him, that we will bear fruit in every good work.
So, we are not saved by good works, but the Bible very clearly says, Ephesians 2:10, we’re saved to do good works. And the apostle Paul’s prayer is that the church in Colossae will bear fruit in every good work. In other words, that we’ll be productive lives.
What does that fruit look like? There’s a number of things in the Bible that’s characterized by fruit. Number one is our character. Go to Galossions, I mean Galatians, Galossions?
I’m combining Colossians and Galatians. It’s Galatians 5:22, the fruit of the Spirit. What’s the character of our life? Love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, meekness, self-control.
That’s the fruit of the Spirit, of the Spirit working in our lives, but then it’s evidenced by our conduct. What else is fruit? Converts, leading people to Christ, continual praise to God. Hebrews talks about the fruit of our lips, praise to God, what we’re doing this morning, and singing songs of praise to Him.
2. To be strengthened with God’s power… so that
And the last, so that is growing in the knowledge of God. Well, the second main prayer request then that Paul asks, first of all, that you’ll know God’s will, revealed in God’s Word. Here’s the second one, strengthened with God’s power, strengthened with God’s power.
Do not try to live the Christian life in your own strength. That’s a formula for failure. So, what do we need every day? We need a dependence upon God and His strength, not self-sufficient, but God-dependency.
I love the hymn, I Need Thee, every hour I need thee. We need God in our life every day, and so we need His strength and His power in our lives. Strengthened with God’s power, so that, now here’s the results of this, strengthened with God’s power so that you have great endurance and patience.
So those are two words that are different words in the Greek. One of them has to do with patience during trying circumstances. The word is hupomoné, and when we get in crisis, when we get in difficult circumstances, if you’re like me, the first thing you ask God is like, can you get me out of here, please? God sometimes does that, but oftentimes He wants us to remain under that pressure and that trial because James tells us, what does trials work in our life? It works endurance, and endurance works patience, and it develops character and trust in God.
So, one of the words has to do, hupomoné, patience with circumstance. The other word is makrothumeó, and that has to do with patience with people. I know you don’t have any challenging people in your life, but some of us do, most of us do, and makrothumeó literally is a Greek word that makros means long, thumos is anger.
In other words, we need to have a long fuse, don’t we? We need to have our anger under control and be very, very, very patient with people. I’ve watched the ends of a couple NFL games during this big NFL weekend. I noticed the one fellow on the Buffalo Bills didn’t agree with a call that let the other team win, and he takes his helmet off, and he slams it down to the ground in front of the ref.
And then there was another fellow that takes his helmet, and he threw it against the wall down the runway. It could have bounced off and injured somebody. They were angry.
And I said, we need to have a long-term patience with circumstances and with people. And then what are the other results of this? Joyfulness and gratitude and giving joyful thanks to the Father who’s qualified you to share in the inheritance of His people in the kingdom of life. I like one author who kind of summarized this passage in terms of how to pray for other Christians.
This is from the Life Application Bible. It’s how to pray for other Christians right out of Colossians 1. There’s seven things. He says, be thankful for their faith and change lives.
Ask God to help them know His will. Ask God to give them spiritual wisdom and understanding. Ask God to help them live to honor and please Him.
Ask God to give them more knowledge of Himself. Ask God to give them strength for endurance and patience. Ask God to fill them with joy and thankfulness.
So, three prayer principles for us that we can learn from Paul is that gratitude needs to be at the core of our prayer life and of our worship, thanking God for all that He’s done, that He’s rescued us, that He’s redeemed us, that our prayer life needs to be consistent and persistent. I love what the late Dr. George Sweeting, who died in the last year or so, just a few months before his 100th birthday, and he used to say, the Christian life is a series of new beginnings. And I’ve had very many new beginnings and things that I’ve started and disciplines that I’ve let go by the wayside, and guess what? What are we going to do? Just say, well, I’ve tried that, that doesn’t work.
No, God wants us to what? Start again. And so, our prayer life needs to be consistent and persistent. And then thirdly, focus on the spiritual welfare and the growth of others.
We prayed for each of our kids, and I even do alliteration in my prayers, but here’s how I prayed from when they were young. Salvation, that they come to know Jesus. Sanctification, that they grow in their faith.
And then thirdly, service, that they understand God’s gift to them and how they can serve God with their life. And so, I trust those are helpful prayers and that that’ll challenge you in your prayer life.