A message on what to pray
“10 And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.”
In our first study of this prayer, we thought about Rachel and Lillian. Rachel didn’t know what to pray for little Lillian. She loved that baby more than anything and she wanted to give her everything, but she didn’t know what was sufficient to pray to express that love. We saw that Paul’s prayer for the Colossians did nicely. Rachel could pray that Lillian would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will and that she would live for the Lord.
Lillian is now a teenager and Rachel still wants to pray something meaningful. She still prays that Lillian would grow in the knowledge of the Lord. She still prays that Lillian would live for the Lord. Are we still praying that for our loved ones. I have on some days. On other days, I forgot.
Now as Rachel thinks about the difficulties and temptations of Lillian’s life as a teenager, she finds herself thinking about what it would mean for her daughter to live for the Lord. What would that look like for a teenage girl to live for the Lord? Rachel wants to leave it all on the field in prayer because she loves her daughter. What should she pray for Lillian as she drives off to school? What should she pray for Lillian?
She could pray that Lillian would grow in good works, keep growing in the knowledge of God, be strengthened for patience and endurance, and joyfully give thanks to God for her salvation. We can all pray that. We can all pray to grow in good works, in the knowledge of God, to be strengthened for patience and endurance, and to joyfully give thanks to God for salvation. That’s the claim of this sermon. Pray that for yourself and others.
We will study these four parts of living for the Lord in four points. First: bearing fruit in every good work. Second: growing in the knowledge of God. Third: being strengthened with all power. Fourth: joyfully giving thanks to the Father. Points one and two come from verse 10. Point three comes from verse 11 and point four comes from verse 12.
First: bearing fruit in every good work. Paul prayed for these Colossians in whom the gospel was at work. Christianity isn’t merely a matter of getting people to accept certain data—Jesus died on the cross—and then moving on. It, like anything alive, necessitates continual nourishment. That’s why Paul prayed for these Colossians. That’s why we pray for our loved ones. That’s just part of why we pray as a congregation. That’s why we are taking in God’s word right now. That’s the biology of the spiritual life.
Paul prayed that these Colossians would live lives that were worthy of the Lord and please Him in every way. That was the end of our last sermon in Colossians. Now we see what it looks like to live lives worthy of the Lord and please Him in every way. That’s the four points of this sermon. You see the connection with the colon in verse 10, “we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way (colon, as in this is what that means) bearing fruit in every good work,” and our other three points. This is what it looks like to live a life worthy of the Lord. This is what Rachel can pray for Lillian as she drives off to school.
Paul prayed that the Colossians would bear fruit in every good work. Before they came to faith in Christ, the Colossians did evil works. That’s 1:21, “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior,” and 3:7 “You used to walk in [sin], in the life you once lived.”
What’s inside a person can’t help but come out. If spiritual death is in a person, it will come out. If Christ is in a person, that will come out. You can’t help but bear fruit—good works or evil works. As Jesus put it, “out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” We could also say, “out of the overflow of the heart, the body acts.”
The Colossians were now connected to Jesus and so they were increasingly producing good works. “I am the vine; you are the branches,” said Jesus. “If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
People who are connected to Jesus bear good fruit. They are compelled to live lives increasingly typified by, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” They will put that into action in the service of others. To know Jesus is to want to become like Jesus. To totally fail to become more like Jesus is a sign that you don’t really know him. That’s part of what’s going on in Jesus’ picture of the final judgment upon those who didn’t care about good works and his haunting words, “I never knew you.”
Knowing Jesus leads to good works. Now obviously Rachel doesn’t want Lillian doing evil works of the sort we see in chapter 3, “sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed,” but is she praying that Lillian would, “bear fruit in every good work”? A teenager can avoid sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed and still not live a life worthy of the Lord. So can an adult. Living a life worthy of the Lord involves not just avoiding sin but pursuing; “bear fruit in every good work.”
This is why every growing Christian finds themselves attracted to some form of service. “Everybody belongs; everybody serves,” as the denomination’s disability ministry puts it. Growing Christians want to live lives that are worthy of the Lord and so they ask Jesus the question Paul asked at his conversion, “Lord, what do You want me to do?”
The better you know Jesus, the more you will want to do for him. Notice that I didn’t say the better you know Jesus, the more you will have to do for him. There is a temptation in the human heart to keep your distance from Jesus lest he ask you to do something for him. We tend to want to be close enough to be saved but not close enough to be commanded. I get that. I get that because I have indwelling sin in me too but avoiding bearing fruit in every good work is not the Christian life. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it is.
Pray that you would live a life worthy of the Lord. Pray that you would bear fruit in every good work. Pray that for us as a church. Also pray that we would all keep growing in the knowledge of God. That’s our second point: growing in the knowledge of God.
Just as people who know Jesus bear fruit so people who bear fruit know Jesus better. Notice that “bearing fruit in every good work,” comes before, “growing in the knowledge of God.” An implication is that obedience to what you already know about God is a prerequisite for knowing God better. As FF Bruce put it, “obedience to the knowledge of God which has already been received is a necessary and certain condition for the reception of further knowledge.”
If you find your experience of knowing God to be stagnant, put what you do know into practice. God offers more of what’s best—Himself—to those who do what He says. The Bible is a very boring book to people who won’t obey what they know. God will say nothing new to a soul which has proven it won’t listen. The flip is also true, in the Bible reveals what is best—Himself—to anyone who, like little Samuel in a passage we recently read in the Old Testament says, “speak Lord, your servant is listening.”
There is nothing better than knowing God. You can’t read the gospel of John without being struck by the fact that Jesus thinks his Father is the most remarkable person imaginable. Jesus says the substance of eternal life is to know his Father. Knowing God is the greatest thing you will ever do, and if you already have that, please recognize that you will never do anything more meaningful. Dive deeper into what you already have.
What you already have in Christ is best. Paul saw that. He said, “I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ.” That’s a heart that knows what’s best, wants what’s best, and has what’s best. Rachel would do well to pray that Lillian would have a heart like that—that she would be, “growing in the knowledge of God.”
Growing in this knowledge is part of everything made new. This same verb for growing is used back in Genesis 1 to describe humanity multiplying—“be fruitful and multiply.” This language of “bearing fruit” and “growing” in verse 10 is meant to take you back to the Garden. Be fruitful in good works and grow in the knowledge of God is new creation language. Doing good and knowing God is what the new creation is about. You can enter that a bit now—all things made new. That’s what Jesus is about. It’s worth asking ourselves if that’s what we are about.
This is quite a calling. We see the power we need to live this life in our next point: being strengthened with all power. Lillian can’t live a life worthy of the Lord under her own power. I can’t. You can’t. We, like the Colossians, need to be, “strengthened with all power according to His glorious might,” as verse 11 puts it.
We need this power Paul prays for to bear fruit—“apart from me you can do nothing,” as Jesus put it. We need this power to grow in the knowledge of God. We need this power to live for the Lord. We need the power of the Spirit, which is what this clause is talking about. As FF Bruce put it, “The power which they long to see manifested in their readers’ lives is the power of God Himself—nothing less.”
This is a word about how very weak we are and how high the calling of the Christian life is. We are so weak that need the power of the Holy Spirit to live it and the life is so exalted that we need the power of the Holy Spirit to live it.
Think about Rachel and Lillian. Rachel is right to be concerned about Lillian. She is a teenager girl living in a very dark age. If Rachel consoles herself thinking that Lillian is strong enough to handle whatever life throws at her, she is deceiving herself. Lillian isn’t enough for the world, the flesh, and the devil. I’m not. You aren’t enough for this. If Lillian is going to live for the Lord she is going to need to be, “strengthened with all power according to His glorious might.” That goes for me and for you.
Now, notice why Paul prayed for this power. He prayed for it “so that,” in the words of verse 11, “you may have great endurance and patience.”
The power of the Spirit in the life of the believer in this passage isn’t an out-of-body, mystical experience that anyone would crave. It is about growing in great endurance and patience.
Living for the Lord involves growing in endurance, which is “what faith, hope, and love bring to an apparently impossible situation,” and in patience, which is “what they show to an apparently impossible person,” as one scholar put it. That’s the power that’s needed to live worthy of the Lord in a dark age. That’s the power Lillian will need if the culture turns so hostile that she can’t go into the field of her choice because of her beliefs. That’s the power Lillian will need if the man she marries turns out to be a bum. She will need to be “strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that she may have great endurance and patience.”
This language of “great endurance” harkens back to “all power.” The adjective for “great” in “great endurance” is the same as the adjective for “all” in “all power.” It is a word signifying the highest degree. For naturally selfish people like us to truly live for the Lord we are going to need the highest degree of power. We will need the Spirit. We must pray for His power. He can change anyone, but apart from Him we can do nothing.
So we live for the Lord by bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, and being strengthened with all power for great endurance and patience. We round this out with the final request: joyfully giving thanks to the Father. That’s our final point.
Paul prayed that the Colossians might be thankful; “joyfully give thanks to the Father,” as verse 12 puts it. Giving thanks implies that you’ve received something. In our next study we will see what the Colossians received—salvation. Now we focus on the call to thanksgiving. You don’t give thanks for what you’ve earned. You give thanks for that which is unearned. You give thanks for grace. As Doug Moo puts it, “Thanksgiving is… the flip side of a key Pauline theological claim: that Christians are saved by and live in grace.” We have this baked into our tradition with the Catechism: guilt, grace, gratitude. Grace leads to gratitude.
There is a marked difference between a heart that is thankful for grace and a heart that is unaffected by it. That’s what Jesus thought. When he healed ten lepers, only one returned to thank him. Jesus asked the man, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?” Jesus then told him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” The message is that only that one was actually saved because only he was actually affected by the grace Jesus had shown by healing him. The other nine had healed bodies but their hearts were just as dead as before. There is a marked difference between a heart that is thankful for grace and a heart that is unaffected by what they’ve tasted. We are to pray that our loved ones would have hearts that, “joyfully give thanks to the Father,” for what they have tasted.
This thanksgiving is joyful. The Christian life is not, “suck it, buttercup.” The Christian life is, “joyfully giving thanks to the Father.” That is the proper tenor of life for the Christian. This doesn’t mean that there won’t be the sort of lamenting we see in the Psalms or the sort of questions we see in Job, but it does mean that the bass line of the music of life will be, “joyfully give thanks to the Father.”
You can’t live a life pleasing to the Lord without joyfully giving Him thanks. No one has ever done it. As we saw at the outdoor service having a thankless heart can only lead to death, “they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.”
Rachel doesn’t want that for Lillian. She wants her daughter to want to do good works and to do them. She wants her daughter to know God—that’s the best you can hope for. She wants her daughter to be strengthened by the power of the Spirit because that’s what it will take. She wants her daughter to see that all she has comes from God and to give Him thanks joyfully.
That’s why Rachel prays as Lillian drives off to school. That’s why we are to pray for those we love—our church, our friends, our family. What could be better? And you and I can do that too. Amen.