HORIZON WIDENING PRAYER, 1: PRAYING WITH PAUL

This week is Prayer Week at Alder Road. I love gathering with the church to pray, but know that often people feel unenthusiastic or nervous about coming along. This isn’t always bad attitude – sometimes it is simply because people do not know how to pray.

The Apostle Paul’s prayer for the Colossians (Colossians 1:3-14) gives us a number of principles as to how we should pray together.

1. Pray with vision
Paul never prays insipid prayers. Prayer is engaging with God, so we need to scale our prayers up, rather than down. We need to get a vision of what prayer can accomplish and of the God to whom we pray. We should not just pray limp “Bless you” prayers. Instead we pray big prayers to a big God!

2. Pray in the Spirit
It is the Spirit who enables us to pray with knowledge, wisdom and understanding; and to pray fruitfully, strongly, powerfully, enduringly, joyfully and thankfully. Romans 8:26-27 makes it clear that even when we do not know how to pray in our own language the Spirit is able to pray through us, and touch the heart of God.

3. Pray boldly
Inhibition kills prayer meetings! As Christians we have freedom! Paul prayed big, bold prayers and we need to learn to do likewise.

4. Pray with faith & love
When people first become Christians they often find it easy to pray and worship – their faith is strong and they feel love for their new brothers and sisters in Christ – but once that first flush of relationship is over it often gets harder. To overcome this we need to develop our own devotional life – it is hard to come and pray with others if your own soul isn’t “longing for the courts of the Lord” (Ps. 84:2).

5. Pray with people who pray
The Colossians learnt the gospel from Epaphras and we can guess he also taught them to pray. I have learnt most about praying by praying with people who pray! If you want to pray get close to people who are passionate about God, avoid the cynics and the moaners.

6. Pray with the word
The content of our faith and prayer is important. Paul says that the Colossians have “heard the word” and are “filled with knowledge.” It is hard to pray without the word. Using the Bible as we pray helps feed worship and prayer. It helps us focus. It inspires contributions and stirs faith.

7. Pray with the body
Paul writes about the Colossians “love for the saints” and how they are “sharing an inheritance with the saints.” We never pray on our own! Even when we are on our own our prayers join with the prayers of countless other believers, and there is nothing better than being with other believers to pray and worship. Because we are part of a body, when we come to pray together we should all come with a sense of responsibility and an expectation that we will participate in praying.

8. Pray with your head
Paul writes that he want the Colossians to “increase in your knowledge of God.” This means we should use our minds when we pray. We don’t just bleat like sheep! As our minds are renewed (Romans 12:2) we are able to pray with increased concentration, and intelligence, and better hear what God is saying to us.

9. Pray as a forgiven sinner
Paul writes: “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” This should lead us to pray with gratitude and wonder at what God has done in us and for us.



Application Questions

• Is your experience of church prayer meetings positive or negative? Why is this?
• What is your prayer rhythm – when and how do you best pray?
• In what ways do you need your “prayer horizons” widened?
• Do you know people whose prayer life inspires you? How an you learn from them?
• Are you using the Bible to help you pray? How can you better make use of the word to give you words?
• What is your experience of praying in the Spirit?