Pray!

Listen for God’s word to you from Ephesians 6:18-24…

And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind… be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.

Tychicus, the dear brother and faithful servant in the Lord, will tell you everything, so that you also may know how I am and what I am doing. I am sending him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are, and that he may encourage you.

Peace to the brothers and sisters, and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love.

Pray in the Spirit.

 

Last week, we considered Paul’s compelling image of the Christian putting on spiritual armor to fight in the spiritual war that is raging all round us all the time. Now, Paul tells us what we are to do, once we have our armor on. We are to pray…

 

And not just any kind of prayer. Paul commends praying in the Spirit. That is to say: in the power of the Holy Spirit. In Romans 8 Paul tells us, “And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” And then he goes on to say… 

 

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. 

 

Timothy Jones writes in his book, The Art of Prayer… “We don’t like to stand speechless or stammering before God, but that doesn’t mean God holds it against us when we do.”

It’s like when I went to France with my parents when I was fourteen. I had taken French in school and was using it for the first time in real conversation. I don’t remember a single French person complaining about my accent or any of my mistakes. They were just happy I was trying to speak their language. I remember one elderly lady on a street in Strasbourg. I asked her for directions in French. After giving me the directions, she gently grabbed my face with both hands and kissed me on both cheeks.

I think, perhaps, God responds in a similar manner when we sincerely try to communicate with him in prayer. It doesn’t matter if we use all the right words. What really matters is our intention.

Timothy Jones says, God “hears all that arises from us—the words of our mouth, the longings of our hearts, the thoughts of our minds, the intentions of our wills. Regret, grief, thanksgiving, hope—God hears our emotions, not just our grammar. Because of his grace, not our eloquence, we can pray. Even if we stammer.”

Prayer is mysterious. No mere human being knows how prayer works. But as Archbishop William Temple once observed, when we pray coincidences happen. And when we stop praying, sometimes those coincidences stop happening. Perhaps we should not call them “co-incidences” but rather “God-incidences”. 

 

I am reminded of the great golfer who someone accused of being lucky. He agreed with his accuser, but then he said, “The strange thing is that the more I practice, the luckier I get.”

 

Just so, the more we pray, the more God opens our eyes to what he is doing in the world in and through us. And amazing things happen. Even though the great Paul himself does not understand how prayer works, he is nonetheless convinced that it does work, even when practiced by simple Christians like us. 

 

Prayer is hard work. Anyone who has made attempts at prayer will soon find this out. I think one of the main reasons why prayer is hard for us is because it is so focused on the spiritual realm. That is to say: prayer is focused on the immaterial. We are praying to a God we cannot see. And sometimes we don’t see the answers to our prayers either. Thus, it is hard to continue in prayer. To dabble is easy. To pray consistently, over a lifetime, is hard.

 

But that is what Paul encourages us to do.

 

Pray on all occasions.

 

First, Paul urges us to pray in the Spirit. Second, he says, “Pray on all occasions.” Some translations say, “Pray in all seasons.” The word that Paul uses is καιρῷ. 

 

There are two words for time in Greek: Chronos and Kairos. From the word Chronos we get our word chronology and chronological. Chronos is the time of minutes, hours, and days. It is time as tabulated.

 

Kairos, by contrast, is the time of special moments. So, we might translate Paul’s statement as: “Pray in every moment.” Kairos cannot be measured by the clock. Kairos is the word used to refer to God’s “now time”. God does not live in time in the sense of Chronos. Time (Chronos) is part of God’s creation, just like space. God doesn’t live in Chronos, he lives in Kairos, an eternal now. 

 

I believe that in the next life, or at the end of human history, we will step out of Chronos and into eternal Kairos. Perhaps Paul is suggesting that we can begin to do that now through prayer. Perhaps whenever we pray, we exit time in terms of Chronos and we step into God’s eternal Kairos.

 

Of course, prayer does take time (Chronos). In 1 Thessalonians 5:17 Paul says, “Pray without ceasing.” That takes time, all our Chronos time. I think Paul meant this quite literally. I believe Paul had gotten to a point in his life where he simply carried on a running conversation with God throughout the day. Such a goal may seem impossible for us to reach. But if we begin by setting aside a few minutes sometime in our day where we specifically devote ourselves to prayer, that practice can become like a launchpad for the sort of running conversation with God that Paul recommends.

 

Pray with all prayers and requests.

 

Third, Paul urges us to pray with all kinds of prayers and requests. Paul uses two general words for prayer that describe prayer’s character. προσευχῆς literally means “to express a wish towards”. In prayer we express our wishes to God. Δεήσεως is the other word Paul uses. It means “to beg or to ask”. It refers to prayer in terms of heartfelt petition. In prayer we pour out our hearts before God. We pray for felt needs.

 

Some people ask, “Why pray when God already knows everything and presumably already has a plan in mind regarding what he is going to do?” One answer is: because God tells us to pray. Jesus instructed us how to pray. And one petition of the Lord’s Prayer is: “Give us this day our daily bread.” God obviously wants us to ask him for specific things. He wants us to be part of the process.

 

E. V. Hill, who pastored Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles for many years, tells the story of how “Mama’s” love and prayers changed his life. During the height of the Depression, Hill’s biological mother, who had five children of her own, didn’t have enough food to go around, so she sent four-year-old Ed to live with a friend in a small country town called Sweet Home. Eventually, Ed just called the woman who raised him “Mama”. As he was growing up in Sweet Home, Mama displayed remarkable faith which led her to have big plans for young Ed. Against nearly insurmountable obstacles, Mama helped Ed graduate from high school (the only student to graduate that year from the country school) and even insisted that he go to college.

 

She took Ed to the bus station, handed him the ticket and five dollars and said, “Now, go off to Prairie View College, and Mama is going to be praying for you.” Hill says that he didn’t know much about prayer, but he knew Mama did. When he arrived at the college with a dollar and ninety cents in his pocket, they told him he needed eighty dollars in cash to register. Here’s how Hill describes what happened next…

 

I got in line …, and the devil said to get out of line … but I heard my Mama saying in my ear, “I’ll be praying for you.” I stood in line on Mama’s prayer. Soon there was [another new student ahead of me], and I began to get nervous, but I stayed in line …. Just about the time [the other student] got all her stuff and turned away, Dr. Drew touched me on the shoulder, and he said, “Are you Ed Hill?” 

I said, “Yes.” 

“Are you Ed Hill from Sweet Home?” 

“Yes.” 

“Have you paid yet?” 

“Not quite.”

“We’ve been looking for you all this morning,” [he said]. 

I said, “Well, what do [you] want with me?”

“We have a four-year scholarship that will pay your room and board, your tuition, and give you thirty dollars a month to spend.”

And I heard Mama say, “I will be praying for you!”

 

God wants us to tell him what we need. And when we pray, coincidences happen!

 

Pray with all perseverance.

 

Fourth, Paul urges us to pray with all perseverance. Literally, Paul urges us to “watch” with all perseverance. The word translated as “watch” refers to “wakefulness”. Prayer is how we “wake up” to the real spiritual world. The idea of “mindfulness” which is so popular right now in our culture really has ancient foundations. Of course, there are many things we need to be mindful of in our everyday life. When I cross the street, I must be mindful of the traffic and look both ways before I cross. But the kind of mindfulness involved in prayer is mindfulness toward God, being awake and alert to him. 

 

I suppose many if not all people have moments where they suddenly wake up to the presence of God. But Paul tells us to persevere in this, to stay awake. That is hard. Even Jesus’ first disciples, who had his physical presence, could not “watch” for one hour with him in the Garden of Gethsemane. They fell asleep. They were probably not the first people to fall asleep in prayer and they certainly were not the last. To persevere in being attentive to God is hard work. 

 

I find that often, when someone first comes to faith in Christ, they have a deep desire to pray, read the Bible, and worship. But oftentimes that desire fades. It works that way in all aspects of life.

 

When I first went to seminary, it was exciting to be studying Greek, the original language of the New Testament. I had a desire to learn. But that desire did not last, at least not with the same intensity I experienced at first. When desire fades, that’s when duty must kick in, and discipline. Without daily disciplines, our spiritual desires don’t really go anywhere. And so, if we want to grow spiritually in prayer, we must set aside time to pray every day. And we must keep at it. Every time we fail, or fall out of the habit, we must start again and keep going. Yes, we may fall often. But each time we fall, we can, by the power of the Spirit, get up again.

 

Pray for all the Lord’s people.

 

Fifth, Paul urges us to pray for all the Lord’s people. We call this type of prayer “intercession”. The New Testament teaches us that Jesus is interceding for us right now at the right hand of our heavenly Father. We are called to imitate Jesus and join with him in his intercession by praying for all the Lord’s people.

 

The word in Greek that the NIV translates as “the Lord’s people” is ἁγίων and means “holy ones” or “saints”. Every follower of Jesus is, according to the New Testament, a “holy one” a “saint”. The word means “to be set apart”. The moment you put your faith in Jesus you are set apart to belong to God. Paul wants us to pray for all such “set apart ones”.

 

Just like praying without ceasing does not happen all at once, so also praying for all the Lord’s people does not happen all at once. We must work at it. 

 

In Dickens A Christmas Carol, Tiny Tim prays, “God bless us, everyone!” That is a wonderful childlike sentiment. But to go deeper in intercession as an adult believer, I think one must begin by praying for a few specific people. 

 

I find it helpful to have a list of people I am praying for. I have had many such lists over the course of my Christian life. I keep the list in my Bible and pull it out to remind myself of the people I need to be praying for. I also use our church’s online directory to remind myself to pray for all the members of the church. If we start by praying for a few people (family members, friends, church members), eventually we can expand our list to include more people. 

 

When I began the journey of intercessory prayer and first made a prayer list, I found that people started coming to me and asking me to pray for them. They didn’t know I had a prayer list. It just happened. When we pray, coincidences happen!

 

Pray also for me.

 

Finally, Paul almost adds as an afterthought: “and also for me.” Christian leaders and preachers need our prayers. Isn’t it interesting that out of all the things Paul could ask the church to pray for him, he asks for only one thing? Paul asks that whenever he speaks, he may be given words to fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel. 

 

I would humbly ask you to pray the same thing for me. Merrill C. Tenney once said, “If a church wants a better pastor, it can get one by praying for the one it has.”

 

With this prayer request, Paul makes it clear that he is not allowing his imprisonment to stop him from carrying out his one mission in life. In Acts 20:24 Paul says, “I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.”

 

Even if Paul can’t travel and speak the good news around the Roman Empire, he knows he can speak it to each soldier assigned to guard him. And eventually, Paul will speak that same good news to the emperor. But Paul knows that his words will be of no use unless given and empowered by the Spirit. And thus, he asks for prayer.

 

I wonder: would we dare to ask for boldness of speech for ourselves… a boldness that is outspoken, frank, plain, concealing nothing and passing over nothing of the good news found in Jesus Christ?

 

Conclusion

 

When we began our study of Ephesians, we noted that this was a circular letter. Now Paul tells us that the bearer of this letter is Tychicus. Tychicus is mentioned in four other places in the New Testament. (See Acts 20:4; Colossians 4:7; 2 Timothy 4:12; Titus 3:12.) We learn from these verses that Tychicus was a traveling companion of Paul and a member of his ministry team. Tychicus would be able to tell all the churches how Paul was faring in prison. Paul calls Tychicus a dear brother and faithful servant in the Lord. As a bearer of Paul’s letter, Tychicus will not simply read out this letter to the churches, he will also add his own words of encouragement.

 

Paul concludes this letter with a blessing. And this blessing includes, once again, some of the great words from the rest of the letter, words like peace, faith, and grace. But more important than all these is the word, love, which Paul mentions three times in this brief blessing…

 

Peace to the brothers and sisters, and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love.

 

Ephesians truly is Paul’s love letter. And as Tom Wright says, “being a Christian is all about loving Jesus with an undying love, in response to his dying love for us.”

 

I know that undying love seems, at times, a bit unrealistic. How can we possibly have an undying love for Jesus when we are such weak, fallible human beings? I believe the only way we can love Jesus with an undying love is if we first plug into the power of his unquenchable love. His love alone can empower us to love him and to love others in return.