2019-12-27
Good Morning Dear Ones,
As I’m led to continue providing support Scripture for the book of Colossians, we also examine the relationship vertically, between ourselves and God and horizontally, between ourselves and other humans. The Holy Spirit has me begin today’s message with prayer’s impact on sin. In the past when we decided to accept Christ as our personal Savior, we were justified, i.e. deemed acceptable by God. At that point, our time of sanctification began. That is when we were sanctified- began participation in the Covenant of Grace, a two-way promise in which we agree to spend our earthly lives finding and confessing our sins before God in prayer, and to stop the sinful attitude or behavior. God agrees to open His wisdom to us, listen to our prayers no matter when they are offered, and bless us. In this way, God does the gradual task of perfecting us. All of this is in preparation for the day He decides we are ready to come home to Him in heaven, and we are glorified. No doubt, this is hard work for us and for the Lord.
We can be assured that Paul and his assistants, like Epaphras, for instance, labored long and hard in the mission field. In their day, walks were long, there were none of today’s conveniences, like cars, trains, and airplanes, and security was always a problem along the way. The apostle Paul, was imprisoned, making it necessary for him to entrust his messages about Christian faith and living to his assistants, who made the arduous journey to Colossae, Hierapolis, and Laodicea from Rome (where Paul was on house arrest). Paul felt his God-given responsibility to convey the truth keenly. That is why he asked the letter’s recipients to, in COL 4: 2-4, “Be persistent in prayer, and keep alert as you pray, giving thanks to God. At the same time pray also for us, so that God will give us a good opportunity to preach His message about the secret of Christ. For that is why I am new in prison. Pray, then that I may speak, as I should, in such a way as to make it clear.” Later in COL 4: 12-13, Paul writes, “Greetings from Epaphras, another member of your group and a servant of Christ Jesus. He always prays fervently for you, asking God to make you stand firm, as mature and fully convinced Christians, in complete obedience to God’s will.” Epaphras may well have been responsible for Paul writing this epistle in the first place, as he went to Paul and remained with him for a time. That is why Paul calls him his “fellow prisoner” in PHM 23. It was Epaphras who told Paul about the Colossians, the group of people from which he came and dedicated himself to preaching the Gospel. His name is a shortened form of “Epaphroditis” (from “Aphrodite,” the Greek goddess of love), although he is not the one mentioned in PHIL 2: 25 or 4: 18. This name suggests that he is a formerly Pagan convert to Christianity.
PS 66: 17-20 shows us that long before the book of Colossians was written, the subjects of prayer and sanctification were in Scripture. “I cried to Him for help; I praised Him with songs. If I had ignored my sins, the Lord would not have listened to me. But God has indeed heard me; He has listened to my prayer. I praise God, because He did not reject my prayer or keep back His constant love from me.” I’m reminded that God has three possible answers to prayer: “yes,” “no,” or “maybe later.” All that our Lord does is at the exact way and time that will maximize His teaching and our understanding of what faithful obedience to Him means. Disobedience to God is an abomination, which is why the opposite is so important to Him. This is explained in PR 28: 9, “If you don’t obey the Law, God will find your prayers too hateful to hear.” Prayer in the on-going process of sanctification means a great deal to the Lord. Since He listens to all our prayers, He wants to hear us speaking the truth. Christ’s Atonement has opened the way for believers in Him to seek, find, confess, and stop our sins. An important result of this practice is our forward motion in spiritual maturation. Interestingly, the Orthodox Jewish practice of wearing phylacteries (two boxes containing Scripture, attached by narrow belts, and worn wrapped around the head and left arm) and dahboning (praying while swaying back and forth to demonstrate inward emotion) arise from the fact that the Hebrew word, tefillin (another name in Hebrew for phylacteries) means “prayer.” This is done in their temples and before the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
PRAYER: O Lord, we stand before Your mighty throne today to reject prayer to confess sin that is not genuine. We know this is an abomination to Your ears. We acknowledge that our willingness to learn from Your teaching and be faithfully obedient to You matters greatly to You. You have shown us from Your history with Israel and Judah in the past, that You want us to be unified in our faith, open to Your Spirit, and to place You and Your teaching at the center of our lives. You have told us, in 2 TIM 3: 16-17, about the importance of Your teaching to us. “All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching the truth, rebuking error, correcting faults, and giving instruction in right living; so that the person who serves God may be fully qualified and equipped to do every kind of good deed.” The Scriptures have shown us the necessity of acknowledging our status as sinners and our need to pray to You in confessing that sin. It is the only way we can be forgiven and work with You to prepare us to gain eternal life with You. It is Your unmatched love for us that motivated You to share Your wisdom and Your word with us. It is the secret truth of Jesus Christ within us once we believe, that makes our hope real and our salvation possible. We offer You our love, praise, thanks, honor, and loyalty for all that You are and all that Your do for us. In Christ’s name, we pray. Amen.
NEXT WEEK: I’ve been told by the Holy Spirit that I am to continue today’s subject with practical examples from Judah’s history. Prayer or the lack of it has a marked impact on sin. God does draw limits to how much sinning He will endure. We can learn what to do in the face of sin, to bring about forgiveness. There is truth to the adage that, “Those who refuse to study history’s mistakes are doomed to repeating them.” In addition, a basic Biblical truth is that prayer is powerful. No one wants to spend eternity in hell, and, through the Atonement of Jesus Christ on the cross, our loving Lord has given us a way to gain eternal life with Him. Remember, the definition of “hell” is eternal torment and misery from which there is no escape. The story of the rich man and Lazarus, in LK 16: 19-31 serves as another teaching on sin that God wants us to understand. The consequences of serial sin, ignoring God’s teaching and not praying with genuineness, are unthinkable. We’ve been commanded to live in faithful obedience to the Lord, so that we can spend an eternal and blissful life with Him. Praise and thanks be to God!
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn
JS 24: 15
© Lynn Johnson 2019. All Rights Reserved.
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