Confession Time: Prayer
By Dean Collins
I have a confession: I am still learning how to pray. Oh, I pray every day; I begin every morning with Scripture reading and go over my prayer list. And throughout the day, there are many short prayers, along with brief prayers in meetings and at meal times. Maybe you have a similar routine.
I don’t remember the first time I prayed. Probably, like you, we heard prayers at mealtimes and at church long before we began to offer up our own words in prayer. And my guess is that when we started praying as children, our short and simple prayers had similar themes: thanking God for our food, asking God to keep us safe while we slept, asking him to heal a family member who was sick. As we got older and realized that we sinned, we likely had lots of prayers requesting forgiveness.
At some point in our faith journeys, we learned the Lord’s Prayer, and over time, we began to understand the expansive and powerful nature of the prayer Jesus gave his disciples when they asked him to teach them how to pray. So, if your faith story is like mine, you have been praying a long time, and yet you have seasons where praying becomes routine and seems to lack depth – or at least feels like it does.
As I read through the epistles, I noticed how frequently Paul starts his prayers with thankfulness for the people he is serving and teaching in the various churches he started. I didn’t review all of the epistles, but I am confident that Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, Timothy, and Philemon have passages where Paul thanks God for the believers in these churches.
So my confession is that while I pray for many people every day, and often over and over again, I often fail to simply thank God for the people I am praying for regularly. Oh, I am very thankful for my friends, my family, my coworkers, for those who take the time to read my devotional thoughts, and for those who take time to encourage me in so many ways. But what I sense as I read Paul’s letters is how naturally and consistently his gratitude is expressed for people and for his situation, even in the face of adversity and suffering.
Reading the first chapter of Colossians gives us a beautiful and powerful model of how to pray and what to pray for as we consider those in our lives and our co-mission of sharing the good news and the goodness of God everywhere we go.
A few takeaways from Paul’s opening prayer:
Start with thanking God for the people he has called you to serve and to love.
Thank God for the love the people in your lives have for others and for the work he has called them to do.
Thank God for the people who shared the good news with you.
Take time to reflect on and thank God for those who serve you and help you in your ministry.
Pray that the people in your life will be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
Pray that the people around us will bear fruit in everything they do.
Pray that those in our lives continue to grow in knowledge of who God is and what he has called and equipped them to do.
Finally, offer thanksgiving that God has delivered us from darkness to light and from death to life in Jesus.
Confession is good for the soul. It might also help us to pray more like Jesus and like Paul.
Father, thank you for the believers who first taught us about you, as well as for those who continue to teach us how to follow you fully today. Thank you, Father, for the gift of the Holy Spirit, who daily assists us in our prayers. Forgive us for our moments of forgetfulness when we drift toward selfishness in our prayers. Today we ask that you continue to teach us how to pray. May your kingdom come and your will be done, in us as it is in heaven. In Jesus's name, amen.
Your Time with God’s Word
Colossians 1:3-14 ESV
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
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