Pray & keep praying… (Colossians 4:2-5)

Posted on April 24, 2018 Updated on April 24, 2018

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Consider this for a moment. Apart from a mother in the throws of child-birth or the patient receiving some excruciatingly painful physiotherapy – people do not normally need to be encouraged to keep breathing.

That’s because Breathing is essential to life. Any kid who has tried to hold out on their parents request or instruction by holding their breath – goes red fairly promptly and then gasps again for as they resume breathing again. We breathe continually because it is essential for physical life.

And yet our connection with God our Father in prayer, or with the Holy Spirit for His enabling power in some situation is really as essential as breathing. So;

We pray because we know we can call out to our Father & because we know He loves to answer (see Psalm 18)
We pray because we know that we have the Holy Spirit as our Helper, who is ever-present & ready to respond.
We pray because we know Jesus ever lives to pray with us and on our behalf, making intercession to the Father for us
We pray because we know that we don’t have the resources, wisdom or capacity we need in any given scenario and we know that God does
We pray because, when we pray, we are humbled & helped and God is exalted as the all-sufficient, loving God.

“Prayer is weakness leaning on omnipotence.” W. S. Bowd

Colossians 4:2-5 urges us strongly to be consistently diligent in prayer. We are urged to saturate our prayers with thankfulness, to be watchful in prayer, to be alert and to keep awake, to be vigilant in our prayers and vigilant enough to pray. So, be vigilant (to pray) remembering that you have an enemy who wants to stop you from praying wants to disconnect you from God. Be also vigilant in your prayers, be consistent, don’t be caught off your guard having been prayer less, and lastly be alert regarding HOW you pray or even WHAT you pray for.

I urge you to take this opportunity to reflect on your life rhythms and patterns and ask yourself whether your prayer life can be described in this sort of way. If so, then the encouragement of Scripture is to keep being consistent in this diligence. And if not, then I urge you to make some changes in order to make constant communication with God your life-pattern.

Consider: what does ‘being watchful’ in prayer mean?

Lastly, note how prayer unlocks mission! Prayer unlocks Gospel advance and kingdom breakthrough. That is where this appeal from the apostle Paul comes from. Make it a life-habit to not only pray about personal needs or those of close loved ones, but pray in ways that release mission and cause Gospel and Kingdom advance. Your prayers unlock situations for churches and ministries, open doors and release things. So pray, and keep being diligent in prayer.

In Reconciliation Road Church we have the following prayer meetings you could commit yourself to (apart from your own personal prayers times):