How to Pray for Others
Sermon Transcript
0:00:14.0
Well, prayer is a mystery to a lot of people. It’s a mystery even to Christian people. I think that’s why probably one of the bestselling categories of Christian books, especially of a “how to” genre, are books on prayer. Because most people are looking for the holy grail of prayer. How do I pray? What words do I use? How do I know that my prayers are being heard by God? And will God even answer my prayers? These are some of the common questions that I receive as a pastor.
0:00:53.7
Case in point was one of our Something Good Radio listeners, who recently reached out to me. Apparently I was talking about prayer in some sermon that we were broadcasting. And he challenged me. He says, “You know, you didn’t go far enough. I need to know exactly what to pray, the exact words to pray.” And we had a good conversation on email. And I pointed him to the Lord’s Prayer, you know, that prayer recorded in Matthew 6. It’s the disciple’s prayer, the model prayer, the “our Father, who art in heaven” prayer. I also pointed him to the prayers of the apostle Paul. And you read the New Testament, and when you read through letters like Galatians and Philippians and Ephesians and, yes, even Colossians as we’re going through now, you find the apostle Paul praying for those to whom he was writing. And his intercessory prayer example—a big word for saying how he prayed for other people—rises to the surface, and we learn a lot from it.
0:01:58.5
I’ve titled this morning’s message “How to Pray for Others.” And we’ve come to verse 9, and we’ll go through verse 14 this morning of Colossians 1. You follow along as I read. Paul writes, “And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 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.”
0:03:02.2
Now, that’s a mouthful. Whether you read it in the original Greek language or in the English language, that’s a lot. And Paul packs a lot of theology and a lot of thoughts even into sharing with the Colossians how he prayed for them. Paul did not know the people of Colossae personally. He didn’t plant this church. He never visited. We said last week that he’s writing from prison, probably prompted by a student of his who sat in his theological school in Ephesus when Paul was there for three years. Epaphras is his name. We run into him a couple of times here in the letter to the Colossians. Epaphras is probably the guy who went to Colossae and to nearby cities like Laodicea and Hierapolis and planted some churches there. And he came to the apostle Paul and said, “Hey, we have some troubles going on in Colossae, some false teachers have crept into the church.” Paul had never met them. He had never met them personally, but that did not stop him from praying for them specifically. And we have the specifics of his heartfelt prayer. His heart that was full of concern for them. We have the text of it here. He tells them how he prayed for them. Have you asked somebody this week to pray for you? Did they tell you how they prayed for you? Or did somebody come to you this week and say, “Will you pray for me?” And maybe you were at a loss for words. You didn’t know how to pray for them. Maybe you just said, “Lord, be with them.” You know, that kind of prayer. “Lord, be with all the missionaries.” He’s already promised His presence. We don’t have to pray that He’s with them, right? “Lord, help them.” These vague prayers that we offer. Paul prays very specifically for the Colossians, and may we learn from it.
0:04:48.3
Let me suggest a few ways that he prayed. He says in verse 1 there that he prayed ceaselessly for them, day and night. This wasn’t just a one off kind of prayer, you know, check the box, “I prayed for you,” and he moves on to something else. No, he says, “From the day we heard,” he says, “we have not ceased to pray for you.” One of the keys to answered prayer is persistence, ceaselessness. Paul says in another one of his letters, “Pray without ceasing.” Always be in an attitude of prayer and in conversation with God. And the highest form of prayer, of course, is intercessory prayer, when we pray for other people. He always had them near to his heart, near to his mind, and near to his conversation with God. He prayed ceaselessly for them and for four things.
0:05:46.8
First, for their knowledge of the will of God. By the way, the prayer that we’re going to look at here, it doesn’t sound like most prayer meetings I go to at a church. I don’t mean that in a critical way. But a lot of times I go to a prayer meeting at a church, and I hear a lot of praying for body aches and pains. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Medical needs are very legitimate requests in prayer. But I’m just pointing out that the content of Paul’s prayer on behalf of others is much different than what I hear in most prayer meetings. He first prayed that they would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will.
0:06:28.4
Look at it again in verse 9. “And so from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will.” Do you know the will of God? How do we know the will of God? You’ve heard me say before, to know the will of God get into the Word of God. If you think you are headed toward the will of God and what you’re doing is the will of God but it contradicts the Word of God, then it’s not the will of God. The Word of God and the will of God will always be in harmony with one another. And the best way to the will of God, to be filled with the knowledge of the will of God is to read the Word of God and to fill your heart and your mind with it.
0:07:11.9
Last week when we started our study, though, of the book of Colossians, I mentioned something called the Colossian heresy. One of the reasons Paul was writing this letter was because he learned that false teachers had crept into the church in Colossae. We don’t know exactly what the Colossian heresy was. We reverse engineer the epistle a bit to figure that out. But I think there’s a hint right here in the first thing he prayed for. He prayed for them to be filled with the knowledge, the epignosis, of the will of God. Some people believe that something called Gnosticism began to creep into the early church as early as mid-1st century, even though scholars will tell us that the false teaching of the Gnostics was a 2nd century kind of thing. Gnosticism or the Gnostics get their name from a Greek word gnoses, which means knowledge. And the Gnostics prided themselves, literally prided themselves on their deeper knowledge of the will of God, their deeper and high knowledge. Knowledge to which the Gnostic says only the spiritual elite could attain to. And it was a convenient way of kind of keeping them—you know, their followers and their listeners—under their spiritual authority, to keep dangling after “there’s a higher authority, there’s a higher knowledge, there’s a deeper knowledge.” In our day and age, the cults are masterful at this. They’re very secretive in their teachings, and they always speak of a deeper knowledge or a highest knowledge to attain to. And they draw people in and keep them under their spiritual authority that way.
0:08:54.1
I think what Paul is doing, even in his use of the word epignoses—which was an amped up version of the word gnoses—he was kind of saying, “Listen, Colossians, the knowledge of the will of God is something that everyday believers like you and me can attain to. God is not trying to hide His knowledge. He’s not playing hide and seek with us. He has made His knowledge very available and in plain sight. You want to know the will of God? You want to have the knowledge of the will of God? Then just get into the Word of God. In fact, I’m going to pray for you every day ceaselessly, that your knowledge of the will of God would be increasing every day.” And he kind of takes a little shot at the Gnostics that way and kind of knocks them down to size. He said, “I prayed for your knowledge of the will of God to be increasing every day.”
0:09:58.4
It kind of reminds us of what Jesus taught the disciples. He said pray, “Your kingdom come; Your will be done.” All of our praying, anytime we pray, we should always be bending our will to God’s will, not the other way around. You say, “Well, I don’t understand this prayer thing. I prayed for this, but I just never get any response, God.” Well, maybe you’re trying to bend God’s will to your will. It doesn’t work that way. It’s our job to align our hearts and our requests to the will of God. And every time we pray according to the will of God, which we learn from the Word of God, guess what? It gets the response of God. Even Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane didn’t try to bend the Father’s will to His. He prayed, “Not My will, but Thine be done.” The holy grail of prayer, the secret to prayer is to align our requests to the will of God.
0:11:03.2
And so Paul says, “I am praying, and I am praying ceaselessly that you will have a knowledge of the will of God.” But he didn’t stop there. He went on. And he says, “I’m praying every day. I’m praying ceaselessly that you will not only have a knowledge of the will of God, but that your application of the will of God will be in your everyday life.” Read on there. He says, “Asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will.” And then he adds, “In all spiritual wisdom and understanding.” What is wisdom? Wisdom is the skillful application of truth to everyday life. And he says, “I not only want you to have knowledge, but don’t just have knowledge.” Why? Because knowledge puffs up. That’s the problem with the Gnostics. They had knowledge. They thought they had a deeper knowledge, a more elite knowledge. It made them prideful. They were puffed up because of that. And besides, their knowledge never went into spiritual wisdom and understanding, which was the application of knowledge to everyday life.
0:12:12.5
My friend, Dr. Steve Farrar, years ago wrote a book called Point Man. And it was at the height of the men’s movement here in America and the Promise Keepers movement and all that. And it was a book targeted toward men, but the application is for men and women. And in his book there he talked about two unhealthy spiritual conditions. One he called spiritual anorexia. He said a spiritual anorexic is somebody who has an aversion to ingesting spiritual food into his life by the reading of God’s Word. He doesn’t take in the bread of life every day by reading the Word of God. A spiritual anorexic may have simply an aversion to reading itself. “No, I’m not much of a reader.” And yet God gave us a book, didn’t He? He communicates through this book, and He expects us to read it. And this is our spiritual food. But a spiritual anorexic isn’t eating spiritual food on a regular enough basis.
0:13:11.7
And then he went a little bit further, and he talked about a spiritual bulimic. This is somebody who has, maybe not an aversion to ingesting food, but an aversion to digesting the spiritual food. He doesn’t apply it to everyday life. And we need to be careful here, because Paul is not just talking about ingesting knowledge and the knowledge of the will of God and eating ourselves fat and bloated up with spiritual knowledge but never digesting it in the way that we’re applying it with all spiritual wisdom and understanding, living it out in our everyday life.
0:13:50.3
Let me illustrate it in another way. Suppose you were an elite athlete. And your dream was to play in the NFL. You had a specialized position, and you worked hard at that. You finally got drafted into the NFL, and you’re living your dream. And you show up for training camp, but you spend all of your time in the locker room watching game films and watching films of other players in the NFL who play your specialized position. You’ve learned everything you need to learn about playing that position at an elite level in the NFL. I mean, you are a master at it. But you never leave the locker room and go out to the practice field, let alone play in a game. Oh, you have knowledge of how to play that position, but you never put it into practice.
0:14:40.7
And a lot of Christians I know are like that. They’re like that athlete. Full of the knowledge of the will of God because, oh, you’ve heard enough sermons. You’ve been to enough Bible studies. You’ve memorized scripture. You’ve hidden it in the heart. You’ve got it on post-it notes. You’ve got it on bumper stickers. You’ve got it on your cell phone. Everywhere you go, the knowledge of the will of God. But an honest assessment of your life is you’re not putting it into practice. You’re not living it out with spiritual wisdom and application and understanding in everyday life. Paul prayed for that. He says, “When I pray for you, I get your body aches and pains. I understand you’ve got a little ingrown toenail on your toe and you need God to help you with that. No, when I pray that you’ll have the knowledge of the will of God in such a way that you live it out in all spiritual wisdom and understanding and application in your life.” What a prayer.
0:15:43.7
But he doesn’t stop there. He goes on a little bit further. And he says, “I pray ceaselessly,” for their life to please God and to bear spiritual fruit. Let’s read on in verse 10. He says, “So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.” He says, “I pray that your life would please God.” He says it this way, “That you would walk in a manner worthy of the Lord.”
0:16:37.3
You know, the Christian life is a walk, isn’t it? I remember growing up in a church, and my youth leaders and other people might come in a conversation and say, “How’s your walk?” Because to be a Christian is to walk with Jesus and to walk like Jesus. And you go through the New Testament, and you find several references to how we walk. A little bit later in Colossians Paul is going to say, “As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.” But here he talks about how, “I pray that your walk…that you would walk in a manner, that you would live out this thing called the Christian life in a manner that is worthy of the Lord.” What does it mean to be worthy of the Lord? He defines it. “Fully pleasing to him.”
0:17:28.0
Now, you and I have a choice to make. We can either live our lives pleasing ourselves, or we can please the Lord. And the world and the culture around us will applaud us every time we do something that’s all about us. “Oh, I did this. It’s all about me today. I did this for me to please myself.” The culture will eat that up, even though Jesus said, “If you want to be one of My disciples, deny yourself. Don’t indulge yourself. Don’t please yourself. Deny yourself. Take up your cross daily and follow Me.” And if you're going to please anybody, if you’re going to walk in a way, live your life in a way that intentionally pleases anybody, make sure it pleases the Lord. What pleases the Lord? Paul says it- when we bear spiritual fruit. The second time he’s come back to this notion of fruit-bearing in his letter to the Colossians just here in the first chapter.
0:18:34.9
And when he mentioned fruit-bearing, a life that bears spiritual fruit, I think of at least two things. First is Galatians 5, where in verse 16 Paul says, “Walk,”—there’s our word again—“walk by the Spirit.” Live by the Spirit, keep in step with the Spirit. It’s all synonymous terms. But he says, “Walk (0:19:00.1) by the Spirit and you will not fulfill the deeds of the flesh.” Because the world, the flesh, and the devil are working against us. The world, the flesh, and the devil are bidding us to please ourselves. But Paul says to the Galatians, “Walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the deeds of the flesh. And if you walk in the Spirit,” a little bit further down he says, “here is the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.” These are nine Christ-like characteristics. It’s character quality. It’s the shaping of who we are from the inside out, that when we walk in a manner that is pleasing to the Lord, when we walk in step with the Spirit—saying yes to the Spirit and no to the world, the flesh, and the devil—the Spirit of God takes responsibility to produce a kind of fruit in our life that pleases (0:20:00.1) God. And it’s the fruit of godly character.
0:20:05.7
The other thing it reminds me of is John 15. We don’t have time to go there, but Jesus declared, “I am the true vine, and you are the branches. Abide in me, and let my words abide in you.” And He says, “Those who bear much fruit glorify my Father.” And all I’m simply saying is the content of Paul’s prayer when he prayed for somebody else, he prayed for them to have the knowledge of the will of God. But not just knowledge, but the skills to then apply that knowledge into everyday life. And then he says, “As you live out this thing called the Christian life, I pray that your walk would be so pleasing to God that you would walk worthy, that you would bear spiritual fruit that pleases God and gives glory to Him.”
0:20:50.8
He’s not done. He goes on further. I love this last part. He prays for their strength to endure difficult days and prickly people with joy. I love that. I love to say prickly people. Say that with me- prickly people. We’re going to come back to some prickly people in a moment. But here is how Paul says it in verse 11. “May you being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy.” The first part of that verse suggests that the strength and the power that we have to endure during difficult days and prickly people, the limits of it is not our own strength. We’re talking about the mighty, glorious strength of the Lord. You and I will always face limits on our endurance, but the Lord never has any limits there.
0:21:56.9
And then circle the words “endurance” and “patience.” These are two really awesome words in the Greek language that we find in the New Testament. The word translated “endurance” is the Greek word hupomone. Say that with me. Hupomone. You get an A+ in Greek this morning. Hupomone speaks of the strength to bear up under difficult circumstances. Anybody facing difficult circumstances this morning? Come on now. Anybody facing difficult circumstances this morning? Absolutely. I mean, we live in a fallen world. There are difficult circumstances and difficult days that we all experience. And Paul says, “I’m praying that God will give you unlimited strength.” Unlimited because the strength and the power to endure these difficult days comes from Him. But then he also mentions the word “patience.” And there are two words in the Greek language that could be translated “patience.” This word is makrothumia. Try that one. Say it with me. Makrothumia. Ah, another good A+ in Greek this morning. Makrothumiaspeaks of patience not necessarily with circumstances, but with people. With prickly people. Difficult days, prickly people. It all adds up to, “Lord, I need some strength to endure here.” You got any prickly people in your life? Turn to the person…no, don’t do that. But some people are like porcupines, aren’t they? Just prickly, prickly, prickly. They poke you here and prick you there, and sometimes intentionally to get a rise out of us. Sometimes to harm us. There are prickly people.
0:23:59.1
The apostle Paul spoke of some prickly people in his life in his second letter to Timothy 4. And I love how Paul calls people out. He says, “Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm.” You ever read that verse in the Bible and wonder who Alexander was? I don’t know who he was, but I’ve met Alexander’s distant cousins. They’re still walking this earth. Prickly people. “Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm,” Paul says. He warns Timothy about Alexander.
0:24:40.9
We’ve all had difficult days. We’ve all had prickly people. And Paul understands this. This is life. I mean, he is writing from a Roman prison, of all difficult circumstances. And he understands the need for the strength to endure difficult days and prickly people with joy, he says. Are you kidding me? He drops joy into his prayer here? Sure. Because joy is part of the fruit of the Spirit, right? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness…joy is different than happiness. You know this, but let’s review. Happiness has to do with what’s happening. It’s circumstantially based. But joy transcends the circumstances. You can be facing difficult days, prickly people, and still be full of joy. In fact, don’t let your difficult days and your prickly people steal your joy. They’re the biggest joy-stealers in the world, but don’t let them steal your joy. Why? Because you have knowledge of the will of God, and you are putting that knowledge into practice through spiritual wisdom and understanding. And you are living a life…you are committed to walking in a way that is worthy of the Lord and pleasing to Him, bearing spiritual fruit. And when the difficult days come and the prickly people come—and they will—you refuse to let them steal your joy. You’re going to endure those times with great joy. What a prayer this is. What an incredible, incredible prayer this is.
0:26:25.7
Paul goes on to talk about giving thanks. He says, “I pray this for you day and night. I pray ceaselessly for you.” And then he goes on in verse 12, and he says, “Giving thanks to the Father.” Thanksgiving should never be far from our prayer life. Praying people are thankful people. And a prayer of thanksgiving is always a healthy thing for the soul. “Giving thanks to the Father.” And he goes on to say, “Who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 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.” Don’t you love how Paul just piles on the theology there? That’s very practice stuff.
0:27:18.9
Now, let me break it down for you. He’s thankful, primarily, for two things. First, he says, because God “qualified you.” Look at that back in verse 12. “Giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.” What does it mean for God to qualify us? Well, you’re either qualified or disqualified, right? Have you ever interviewed for a job? And you dressed up your resume, put all of your experience and your education and all of that down on your resume. You walked into that interview, and they looked at you and said, “I’m sorry. You’re not qualified for the job.” It really deflates you, doesn’t it, to not be qualified.
0:28:13.6
Well, Paul gave thanks to the Father because the Father qualified the Colossians to do what? “To share in the inheritance of the saints in light.” I’ll come to that in a moment. But the point is that God qualified them. He fitted them for service. And what you need to understand is that to come into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, you’re not qualified. And neither am I. If I walk in God’s presence with my moral resume, what it says is I’m a sinner who needs a savior. Disqualified. I’m not qualified based on my best moral resume to walk into the presence of a righteous God and say, “I belong here.” He going say, “Disqualified,” every time. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” “The wages of sin is death.” Disqualified. But I can exchange my moral resume—and you can, too—with Jesus Christ’s resume, who is always qualified. He died on the cross for your sins. He lived a perfect life. He perfectly fulfilled the law, meaning He never broke a commandment. He is the perfect, sinless Son of God who paid the penalty for your sins and for my sins, and makes us qualified. Qualified to share in an eternal inheritance. Do you know you have an inheritance coming that you can’t even calculate?
0:29:53.0
And we are sharing in the inheritance along with a group of people known as the saints in light. Do you know that as a believer in Jesus Christ, the word “saint” applies to you? I know you’re looking to the person to your left and right and thinking, “Well, you don’t look much like a saint. I live with you. I know you’re not much of a saint.” But it’s God who qualifies us as saints. Because I lay aside my moral resume, and I pick up Jesus Christ’s. And I’m always qualified when I walk in with His resume. The “saints in light” is a term, a Jewish idiom, that speaks of lovers of truth and morality. We are among those who love the truth, starting with the person of Jesus, who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; and no man comes to the Father but by Me.” And Jesus, who told us that the truth will set us free. And He spoke the truth to us as well. And we are among those who are them, the saint in light, sharing in an inheritance because the Father qualified us.
0:31:14.0
Paul says, “I give thanks to God on behalf of you and the fact that He does that.” Then he shifts from “you” to “us.” He can’t help himself. He goes on in verse 13, and he says, “And he has delivered us. He qualified us, but, oh, He delivered us.” The word “delivered” means to resuce, to rescue something that is distraught and going in a bad direction, to rescue something that is lost.
0:31:42.4
And there are four ways that he speaks of being delivered. First, from darkness to light. From darkness to light. In the Bible, darkness and light are often metaphors for truth or no truth. Darkness is not the opposite of light. Darkness is the absence of light. And if you're in darkness, spiritual darkness apart from Jesus Christ, you are groping around in this world. You are walking in spiritual darkness.
0:32:17.1
Just close your eyes for a moment and imagine what it’s like to spiritually blind and in darkness. You can have all the light in the world coming through your eyes and you can see physically, but you are spiritually in darkness. And you need the light of Jesus Christ. This is why Jesus says, “I am the light of the world.”
0:32:40.5
So from darkness to light. From the kingdom of Satan to the kingdom of God. What a transformation took place there. He transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son. Who is in charge of your life? You say, “Well, I am. I’m the captain of my soul.” No, not really. The God of this world, who is Satan himself, the fallen angel Lucifer, really has you in the grip of his kingdom. And Paul’s letter to the Ephesians he says, “You once walked in the course of this world according to the god of this world.” You were probably oblivious to it. But when you come to faith in Jesus Christ, he transfers us from this kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light. From the kingdom of Satan to the kingdom of God.
0:33:40.5
Thirdly, from slavery to freedom. That’s captured in that word “redemption.” The idea that we were once in spiritual bondage to our sin, but now we are set free in Jesus Christ. And a lot of people have the idea that freedom is the absence of all moral restraints. And just the opposite is true. You start erasing the moral boundaries that God establishes in His Word for our good…not to steal our fun, but for our good. You start erasing those moral boundaries and those moral restraints, you won’t be more free. Eventually you’ll be more enslaved and in bondage and addicted to sin.
0:34:25.4
This week at student camp I had the privilege of speaking on Monday night. And we talked about three or four philosophies of life that threaten to kidnap our thoughts and to take us captive. And I mentioned to the students, one of those is the sexual revolution. I took them back to the 1960s. And I said, you know, I was born in 1963. Don’t do the math, but it’s like 56 years ago. It makes me qualified to be a fossil. I get that. Most of our students were born in the early 2000s, right, guys? And so something that happened in the 1960s, a thought, a philosophy that came out of that, that erased all of the moral boundaries with the idea that you’ll be free. You’ll be liberated to express yourself any way you want sexually, and has produced a society that is enslaved. It wasn’t long after the sexual revolution of the 1960s we had the decision in 1973, Roe v. Wade. And we’ve slaughtered how many millions of children in the womb? Not long after that, “no fault” divorce came, the rise in sexually transmitted diseases. And now sexual identity and gender fluidity a generation later. We don’t even know what is male and female because we’ve erased the moral boundaries, thinking better of ourselves. And we’ve enslaved ourselves to a way of thinking that has put us way over here, adrift in moral sea.
0:36:02.5
But Jesus Christ comes to deliver us from slavery to our sin to freedom in Christ. And then finally, from condemnation to forgiveness. You see the word “forgiveness” there at the end? “The forgiveness of sins.” I love Romans 8:1. “There is now therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” No condemnation. Why? Because you’ve been forgiven of your sins through faith in Christ. Fully forgiven. Even though the devil loves to whisper in your ear, “Hey, but don’t you remember you did this? Or last week you stumbled over here.”
0:36:43.7
The Bible says the devil is “the accuser of the brethren.” And if we understand Job 1, then he has some access to the throne room of God. He loves to step into that presence and accuse you and accuse me. And every time he does, you know what? Our defense attorney, Jesus Christ, who is our advocate…the devil is our accuser. Jesus is over here. He’s our advocate. He puts His arm around us and says, “Don’t condemn this man. Don’t condemn this woman. He’s one of my mine. I have forgiven his sins. I have died on the cross for his sins. And he or she has put faith and truth in Me.” And Paul is thanking God in his prayer that God qualified you when you were marked disqualified. When the devil said, “You aren’t worth anything.” When you were marked disqualified, He qualified you. And He delivered you from all of this. Isn’t this a marvelous prayer?
0:37:40.5
Wouldn’t it change the way we pray for one another if we just read a prayer like this and said, “You know, I don’t know exactly how to pray for you this week. I know you’re going through a difficult time. Why don’t I just pray verses 9-14 over you?” Because anytime we pray the Word of God, guess what? We’re praying the will of God, and we can have confidence that God will answer these prayers when we do it ceaselessly, when we don’t give up, when we persist in our prayers, and when we fill our prayers with thanksgiving. How to pray for others. What a wonderful, wonderful instruction from the apostle Paul.
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