The 'Complete' Prayer for a Significant Life

I read this passage a few weeks back and was blown away that everything I had been praying for in my walk with God and desire for my life was found in this passage.

I just wanted to unpack it here because I feel that this passage has so much in it, and it was so exciting I want to share it with you!

The scripture is Colossians 1: 9- 12:

For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him,being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light.

Long? Let's break it down.


1.
ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding

• 'ask' - there is an assurance of an answer
• 'filled' - not just 'have' or 'experience' but 'filled'. In the Greek, it means to 'fill to the brim', 'make complete'
• 'the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding'
  a) it's possible to have the knowledge of His will
  b) Paul qualifies the kind of knowledge he prayed for the Colossian Church with 'in all wisdom and spiritual understanding'. It's one thing to have knowledge, but another to understand it, and know what to do with it -- that takes wisdom and understanding) there's a kind of understanding that is inaccessible to the natural human mind. We need this 'spiritual understanding' that we can all ask for 
• walking in the will of the Lord brings us ...
  a) in line with the good works in Christ Jesus that were prepared before hand, that we should walk in them - ie we will be able to fulfill our destiny when we walk in the will of the Lord
  b) it puts us on the right path to receive all the blessings and equipping we need to fulfill our destiny
  c) puts us on the right path to meet the people we are meant to help towards THEIR destinies
• we should always seek to be in God's will, even if it means laying the right to our own will down - it will save you a lot of hassle!

2.

that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him

• it is possible to not just please the Lord, but fully please the Lord!
• if Paul can ask this, so can we
• if God is happy for us to ask this, then He must be more than happy to answer it!
• 'walk worthy' - the word 'worthy' is elsewhere translated 'as it becomes [someone]' (in the sense of propriety, or appropriate carriage of self in accordance to that person's stature or standing). The NLT translates this as 'then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord'
  a) this does not mean that we have to earn God's pleasure. If it did, it would be in direct contradiction to Paul's repeated message of salvation by faith, and God's grace independent of our efforts.
  b) walk worthy of the Lord= (in my understanding) live our lives in such a way that shows our sincere honour and gratitude towards God

3.

being fruitful in every good work

• A fruitful plant exhibits the ability to multiply itself and extend its range of influence
• 'EVERY' - it is possible to be fruitful in all the good work we do, not just some
  a) sometimes 'fruit' is not obvious, or takes some time to develop. This does not mean that the plant is not fruitful - it just becomes evident in other ways.
  b) someone else's fruitfulness is not equivalent to your kind of fruitfulness - don't compare!
  c) there are some seeds that fall unknown in far away, hidden places to spring forth elsewhere with great beauty and power. Don't think that the obvious fruit is the only fruit you bear.
  You may have influenced a life without knowing it, and that seed you sowed may bear more fruit than all your other works put together! Let God be the final judge of how effective or good you are - He sees everything, not just the obvious.
  d) therefore, give of yourself liberally without fear. Cast your bread upon many waters (Ecc 11:12), and keep yourself in the hand of Christ and in the path He has set for you. When we are willing to step out and sow the seeds God has given to us, it is He who will make them grow.
  However, this does not mean throwing caution to the wind and doing things willy-nilly - our efforts should be carefully executed, like a well-aimed arrow.
• 'good'= honourable, useful, excellent, joyful
• 'work'= business, employment, product, act/deed

Are you encouraged yet? There's still more to munch on from this passage but we'll continue another day - I'm a firm believer in small morsels well chewed! It makes for much better digestion and absorption of God's Word =) 

Take time to read the scriptures over and over again, and God may show you different aspects of these parts of the passage. Pray that God will show you how to apply this too.

More next time!

The Pursuit of True Treasure

I read today on twitter a little message from someone encouraging their followers to follow a young evangelist who was functioning in signs and wonders.

The Bible tells us that signs and wonders will follow those who are true believers of Jesus Christ (Mark 16). So you're supposed to have signs and wonders following YOU. Should we follow other people who are if we're not? Sure, if your motives are right.

I've met a lot of people who chase the shifting winds of signs and wonders. A Church over there, a dynamic speaker somewhere else. Don't get me wrong - signs and wonders are good if they are wrought by the Spirit of God and people's lives are being transformed and becoming followers of Jesus. It was relatively common to have miracles and things happening in the Early Church.

What gets me is when people chase signs and wonders as if they were great shows to watch. God does these things to draw people to Himself. But if people are watching all these amazing things, which could legitimately be of the Lord, but do not change, it makes me wonder. No one, when they encounter the living God and get a revelation of who He is can ever go away without being changed. God's own person must always be the focus, the centre. When people start focusing so much of the signs that they lose sight of the One who performs them, they have taken the wrong turning somewhere in their spiritual journey.

Jesus instructed His disciples: "You will know them by their fruit."

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles?  

Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them. Matt 7:15-20

People will never be perfect. That's why we as individuals should never put them on a pedestal in our hearts. Respect and honour is always due, but humans are weak beings given to idolatory and pride. When we place too much emphasis on the vessel rather than the One who fills it, we replace God's place with an idol. When that happens, Satan has a field day.

Signs and wonders are beautiful, amazing, great -- but the One who performs them is infinitely greater, and more majestic. It's like admiring a painting but completely overlooking the poor painter standing behind it. It's not only rude, but incredibly foolish.

Additionally, there are many people and religions out there that also purport to perform signs and wonders. The Bible said that this would be so. When Aaron's staff became a snake, Pharoah's magicians could produce the same result by their crafts. Why? The spiritual world is real. Just as the owner of a car and a thief may both know how to drive a car, so it is in the spiritual realm. But the law-abiding owner of a car will always treat the car differently from a thief. And a thief's motives for what they do will also be different.  The result may look similar, but the consequences that stem from them are always characteristic: one brings life, leading to life eternal; the other brings death. One will bring people closer to God, the other pushes them away from Him.

The conclusion? Don't chase after signs and wonders. If you are a true believer of Jesus, you would covet to walk in them as Jesus did. But there's no need to chase them around. There is a far greater Treasure. Pursue your Creator as a child seeks their Father in a grand game of hide and seek. When you meet, He is the source of everything you need. And your heart will grow and blossom as a tree planted and nurtured in a beloved garden.

Renovating our Hearts

The greatest life is the life most surrendered.

God is in the business of heart renovation. It's His speciality. Look at Saul the Church hater who became Paul, the Church builder; bratty little Joseph who became a wise, tempered governor of a powerful nation in its darkest hour; brash, impetuous Peter who became a highly respected Church leader. God can take broken, imperfect individuals and mold them into honored vessels of glory and power.

He is looking everyday to do something in our hearts: a word here, a warning there, wisdom here, a rebuke there. He allows circumstances to toughen us, to break down our pride and misconceptions; He lets us make mistakes so that in our brokenness we can see our limitations and in consequence, His greatness.

We get warped by this world, bent, twisted and stretched by our experiences and hurts - but just as He knew how to knit us together in our mother's womb (Psa 139:13), He knows how to put you right again. The question is - how much will you let Him?

Clay is malleable and soft in the Potter's hand when it is well watered and yields to His touch. The Bible tells us that the Word of God cleanses us and washes us (Eph 5:26; John 15:3). Are you receiving God's Word into your life? That little niggly feeling you've been having about your attitude towards that person -- are you pushing it away and making excuses, or are you listening? Or that time you read something in the Bible but thought it couldn't possibly apply to you because it was too hard to change? Are you saying - oh, that's someone else's problem! But not stopping to see if you have any of it yourself? Are you seeing the beggar on the road and feeling a twinge as you look away?

The Word of God causes us to look inside us and reflect on what we see. Our natural reaction is to tear ourselves down -- but did you know that that's not your job? Your job is to bow to the touch of your Maker. His touch might be painful, but it is healing - like the scalpel in the hands of a skilful surgeon. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1). So don't go do the devil's job and start condemning yourself. You don't need to help him.

When God illuminates something in your life, it might be difficult to realise how ugly it is -- but in my experience, God's rebukes are incredibly gracious (we could learn so much from Him in this area!) - but so direct. They pierce like an arrow through any excuses you might want to try!

When we surrender to God's touch and Word in our lives, it makes room for Him to remove the junk and build quality, lasting attributes into your heart that make you more complete, more beautiful. When we let God take over, we are allowing His bigness to fill our lives so that our influence, the work of our hands becomes greater than ourselves.

When we surrender to God's touch, we cease reigning over our badly managed lives and let God restore order, wholeness, power. We weren't made to rule over ourselves the way God wants to -- any attempt on our part will always end in disaster. We just aren't up to it. That throne in your heart belongs to God. It's when we relinquish it to Him that we can truly be what we were created for.

The greatest life is the life most surrendered. May we always choose to heed His voice.

To Attract, or to Compel?

We all want to feel wanted, and all ministers want their ministries to grow. Ministers all over the world are asking: How can we bring them in? How can we attract the attention of more people in our community to come and be part of our Churches, to get involved in the causes we champion? How do we increase the numbers?

But do we want followers of our limited selves, or do we want disciples of Jesus Christ, the Saviour King? The danger all ministers face is to make people depend on THEM, their words, their wisdom, their creativity, their advice. It's not wrong to dispense them, and it's not wrong for people to come to us seeking for these things - but when they all look to you as their answer and first port of call instead of Jesus, we've haven't done our job right.

The Battle Against Ourselves

Of all the battles we fight in life, some of the most serious are against ourselves. Our weaknesses, our fears, our uncertainties, hopes and dreams that lie so close and yet so far...

Warring Close to Home
The Bible reveals that we are essentially spirit beings (referred to as 'spirit' in my Bible) with a physical body (referred to as 'carnal' or 'flesh'/'fleshly' in some translations), and each has its own mind and nature. The conflict is unrelenting: we know one thing but do another.

Deep down in our hearts, we know the right thing to do, but our appetites and laziness often win the day. For some Christians, this kind of battle does not get easier when they are saved - instead, it can become more intense.

Why? The Bible says that the laws of the Lord are written in the hearts of men, but when we were in bondage to sin, our hearts are dead and are 'dead' to God (in the same concept as the phrase 'dead to the world' - dead people can't respond when they are poked - see Romans chapter 5 to 7). So when we are saved, our hearts are brought from death to life and we become 'alive to righteousness' -- we are more conscious of righteousness versus evil. However, our bodies are very much still alive and is used to having its own way.

Sleepy? We go to sleep. We want to watch that TV show? We'll go watch that TV show. But when our hearts become alive, it doesn't feel right to go to bed without saying goodnight to God -- so we stay up a bit longer but we'll doze off partway through the conversation.

Before we are awakened to true righteousness, we'll let our eyes watch lascivious, downright wicked things and even think them funny. After being awakened to righteousness, our conscience is pricked - but our eyes and minds are used to watching these things and it is hard to pull them away.  Jesus was so accurate when He said, 'The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.' (Matt 26:41)

The Answer

The Bible gives a wonderful command that I've found both difficult but mightily effective in the fight against ourselves:

I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Gal 5: 16-18

Gal 5:17 makes clear that the nature of our flesh has desires that the Spirit dislikes, and vice versa. The word 'law' in that passage specifically refers to the 10 commandments and the laws of Moses. Those laws also stipulate that breaking one of those laws effectively breaks them all. The punishment for sinning against these commandments was death. To me, the law of sin and death, in terms of our everyday lives, is basically the propensity to cycle between the desire to do good, the failure of that (sin), and the consequence of that sin (death).

Walking 'in the flesh' in the context of this passage means to be lead by the desires of the flesh, and to fulfill them.  The Bible goes on to define what the 'works of the flesh' are (ie the products of our fleshly nature):

Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like... Gal 5:19-21

Any of those sound familiar to you? At first, it might look archaic but closer scrutiny will reveal that we are surrounded by these things, our TVs are chock full of them.

Fornication is another word for sexual immorality - there's plenty of that on our screens. Jesus said that if a man were to look at a woman to lust after her, it is the same as actually making out with her - he called it adultery (Matt 5:28). Jesus said that hatred is as deserving of judgement as murder (Matt 5:22). Many western countries revel in drunkenness -- it's not a good party unless people get drunk.

We drink it all in, in the name of entertainment, and then it comes out through our language, our attitudes, our actions. Then we wonder why it is so hard to stay out of sin! What would God say about what you are watching?

It has been said that our flesh (bodies) make effective servants, but terrible masters. Fleshly Christians let their bodies' nature and appetites rule them. Spiritual Christians subject that nature and appetite under the rule of their spirits by the Spirit of God.

Walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. It is both a challenge and a promise. Which way will you walk today?

Spiritual Warfare 101

What is a spiritual battle anyway? We'd love to put on the armour of God, whip out the Sword of the Spirit and kick some demonic butt but how exactly do we apply it?

The Bible is really very practical. In an earlier post, I outlined the Steps to Victory as seek God, trust God, obey God, pray till it's over. This post fleshes it out a bit more.

1. Identify the Battle
2. Side-step or block the attack
3. Counter attack
4. Repeat 2 & 3 with prayer and consultation with God until it's over

One Who Fights Without Fear

Did you know that you are not exempt from God's mighty army? Whether Man or Woman, you were not made to stand on the sidelines! You were born to fight in the thick of it without fear for yourself, and your only thoughts to be: deliverance for the captives, and glory to my King.


And you were born to win those battles. Your scars from battle will be quickly healed when you go straight to Jesus. Then they will become badges of honour -- proof of the authority you've gained. Battles are not without sacrifice - but your tears will sow for you rewards untold.

 And you are not left to fight alone. Your Holy One, the Lord of Hosts is by your side, fighting with and for you - if you will only trust Him, heed and obey His Word.

Steps to Victory

You might be saying, "Well, I've got a problem right now, and I wish I knew what to do!"

Every battle has its own strategy for victory, but they all follow the same principles: seek God, trust His Word, obey His Word, pray through to victory.

1. Seek God

First, find out what God is saying about the problem. Are you contributing to it? Maybe it's not your fault but you have to make the first move? Or maybe you've been beating the wrong enemy! Perhaps the real problem is nothing like you thought!

When you're in the thick of trouble, step back, and ask God to show you clearly exactly what is happening.

Some tips:

• God will always show you YOUR part in the problem; He won't condemn or criticise other people -- if that's what you think you're getting, it's not from God! God is interested in YOUR character, and in developing it.
• If God ever points out somebody, it will always be to stir up love in you for that person. The result should be that you want to better understand them, pray for them and bless them. Any thought that ever makes you feel remotely smug, or more superior than them is NEVER from God.
• God's words will always bring a deep peace, comfort and hope
• God's words will strengthen you, and even His rebuke is healing and gracious. He will never make you feel condemned and unworthy.

2. Trust God's Word

Next, search the Word to find scriptures and promises about your situation. Write them down, memorise them, meditate on them, then start praying those promises into reality!

3. Obey His Word

In every battle we could face, the victory balances on our obedience to His leading. You may need to forgive others, or forgive yourself. You may need to let go of something that you put your hopes on.

If God is dealing with you about something, it's important to bow to His Word. In your obedience is the key to victory.

If you fail in your obedience because it is hard, or because you keep undoing what you've done (I do it all the time when I say 'I surrender'), just keep at it. I've learnt that it's better to fail obeying than to give up altogether. God understands how hard it is for us, and He will teach us how to obey Him effectively if we allow Him to - but we are never to give up.

4. Pray through to Victory

Faith in the completed work of God is good, but God works through our prayers -- they pave the path to victory. So we continue to pray for hardened hearts to soften, for the obstacles to be removed, for closed doors to be opened. 

If you feel like your prayers are becoming repetitious, they probably are! Sometimes they need to be - but always ask God for new insights for how to pray. There is always a new angle, a different strategy you could open up through your prayers.

For example, when I was praying for the spiritual awakening of someone in my life years ago, I started off by praying 'God, change him!' a lot. As I continued to pray, and ask God for how to pray, I began to pray, "Change my perception of him! Help me to see him like you do", and then everything changed. 

I saw his worth in Christ, and declared that in prayer; I saw a man of faith and influence, so I claimed that in prayer. As I prayed, I saw how I could encourage him - so I did. Did I actually start to see anything change? Not for a long while - but because I saw him differently because I had asked God to show me, I related to him differently, and that began a chain reaction of events and changes in his heart. 

Today, when I see him being the person that God showed me years ago, it warms my heart to know that God had answered my prayers. Is the work finished? No - but we are instrumental to the change we pray for. 

Keep praying till you see the completed work, even if it means praying for the rest of your life. God will still answer, whether or not you get to see it. Abraham was told, "your descendants shall be as the grains of sand." He believed it, but never saw it. But did it happen? You bet it did! Our prayers go beyond us!

Start seeking God for your path to victory today, and stick with Him ALL the way.