Prayer Addict (1)
Epaphras, who is one of your number, a bondslave of Jesus Christ, sends you his greetings, always laboring earnestly for you in his prayers, Colossians 4:12
Laboring Earnestly – What would happen if you did nothing but pray? Does that idea make you a little uncomfortable? The language itself makes us uneasy, doesn’t it? Did you notice the “nothing” in that question? It’s almost as if prayer is really nothing, no action, no real effort, nothing substantial. Of course, that isn’t the biblical point of view. Prayer is work – very hard work.
Epaphras labored earnestly in prayer. The Greek uses the words pantote agonizomenos. If you look carefully, you will see the word “agonize”. This is prayer with tears. Epaphras puts me to shame.
I wonder if we really understand the sovereignty and majesty of God. We have an intellectual appreciation of the words. We know the doctrines. But I’m not sure that we really feel just how great and gracious God is. Throughout the Bible, we see God as the active agent behind every move of the believing community. We are exhorted over and over to trust Him. Prophets consistently remind us that human effort accomplishes nothing unless it is aligned with God. We find example after example of God’s intervention in the human chronology as a result of true submission and humility. We see that prayer, in all of its two dozen Hebrew forms, is the engine that powers nearly everything God does. And yet, praying seems to be the one thing that we just can’t do very well. Ask me to climb a mountain; I’ll manage. Tell me to put a man on the moon. I can do that. Give me a command to reach the world with good-news information. Yes, no problem. But exhort me to pray like Epaphras – I stumble, I resist, I can’t imagine how.
It’s not supposed to be like this. You and I are supposed to walk in the cool of the evening, conversing with the One Who redeemed us for His own. We’re supposed to have unashamed openness, transparent emotional connection and deeply effective intercession. Jesus wept. Why don’t we? If the Son of God looked out on the city of the lost and could not hold back His tears, what has happened to us that our lives are so occupied with our routine and personal needs that we don’t even sigh? How can those hundreds who pass by us every day not cause us to stagger under the knowledge that they will suffer eternally without the God we know.
Notice that Epaphras wasn’t agonizing over his own needs. He understood the role of the priest – to provide intercession for someone else. He did the heavy lifting in prayer for others.
I want to be like that, but it seems like every time I pray, my own needs keep getting in the way of my priestly assignment. Maybe we need to covenant together. I will pray for you. You will pray for me. I’ll trust that you will do that, so that I am free to be the priest God’s wants me to be. Maybe then I can start to work on changing the emphasis of the phrase, “do nothing but pray.”
Topical Index: Prayer
