All right. We're going to be in Colossians tonight, Colossians chapter one. So I'll invite you to go ahead and turn with me there. I've really gotten to where I like this, this deal. It's not, you know, a true alternation. I don't remember if it's first, first, third, and Wednesdays that we're here or if it's at care group, but it basically works out to where we alternate. Now our church has grown exponentially and there's probably a lot of people that don't know that. So on a fifth Wednesday of the month, you'd be curious to know how many people show up at somebody's house and how many of them actually show up here. As much as I love gathering together, and this is great, it's a great opportunity to be together and kind of rest, take a breather in the middle of the week, sit under the preaching of God's word, fellowship together, I really love our care group Wednesdays. And that is, those couple days of the month are the days that I circle in red on my calendar. And I love our care group. I love getting to sit around and fellowship with the people in our group. I really feel that they, along with the church at large, has become family. And Brianna will tell you, it's like pulling teeth with pliers to get me to go out and do anything social. But I'm usually the one that's standing by the door on care group Wednesdays like, come on, let's go. We've got people to go socialize with. And so we go and we enjoy the fellowship together. Perry McChesney teaches our care group and does an amazing job. What's become my favorite part of the care group evenings is when we sit together and we share our burdens and we commit to pray for each other over the coming couple of weeks until we have a chance to get back together and kind of update ourselves on it. And it was a burden of mine going back even a couple months ago that Prayer requests can be a tricky thing. On the one hand, they can be a great thing. On the other hand, what prayer requests can be is they can be kind of gossipy, or they can be just kind of talking about whatever comes into your head. And I'm from a traditional Baptist background, and so every church I've ever been in, we had a prayer list. But a prayer list is like a government bureaucracy. When something goes on there, it never comes off. And you add to it perpetually, and you never follow up on the things that you've added to the list there. And so after a while, your prayer list is just like 400 names on a piece of paper, and you don't know really what you're praying for. And I was convicted about this. And I thought, you know, for our people in our care group, I want to pray for these people. And so I slip a little piece of paper into my Bible, and we'll be sitting around. sharing prayer requests, and I'll just be writing down people's names as we go, and I'll be writing down kind of what they're asking for prayer for. And as we go through the week, a lot of times what I'll do is I'll write, you know, take everybody's name and kind of put it there on a day of the week. And of course, you got two weeks, so we can fit everybody in there. And for that day, I'll be thinking about, you know, that person or that family and praying for them and trying to ask the Lord to meet that need that they've raised, that they're concerned about. And I've been burdened just in general that we need to pray for each other. We need to pray for each other more. We need to take it seriously. The commitment that it is to go before the Lord and say, Lord, this is my brother in Christ, my sister in Christ. This is the need that they've expressed. This is the thing that they need. And Lord, I'm powerless to meet that need. I can't heal them. I can't save their lost loved one. I can't fix the problems that somebody has in their family. I can't give them encouragement if they're feeling discouraged. I can't give them more faith if they feel that their faith is waning. But Lord, you can. You can do those things. And what I can do is come to your throne and say, Lord, please send the rain to the desert here because your people need you. In Colossians chapter one, of course, I'm sure at some point, Jeff has probably preached through the book of Colossians here, but in Colossians chapter one, you're actually introduced to a series of prayers and petitions, thanksgivings. It's a really beautiful chapter. In Colossians 1, I want to focus particularly on verse 9 and the following verses where Paul introduces his prayer for the church at Colossae. And what I think is beautiful about this, not only from a literary standpoint, but if you're just thinking about this as Paul is writing the letter to this church, he not only tells them that he's praying for them. That's good to tell somebody that you're praying for them. But he tells them, I'm praying for you, and this is what I'm praying for you. This is how I'm praying for you. These are the things that I'm speaking to the Lord about on your behalf. And I think even that in itself is something that we can learn a lesson from, how encouraging it is not to only have somebody say, I'm praying for you, but to have somebody say, these are the things that I'm praying for you. These are the things that I'm praying about when I think of you and when I think of your family. So we're going to start in verse nine. We're going to read about five verses here to the end of this section. He says, So from the day that we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience, with joy giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. In this passage, really the critical both from a syntactical standpoint, but from a logical standpoint. The key thing in this is in verse 10, where he says he's praying for them to walk in a manner that is worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him. When Paul is recalling in chapter one, especially all the things that the Lord has done for them, he's thinking of the hope that has been laid up for them in heaven. He's thinking of the work that Christ has done to redeem them. And he's thinking about the way that the gospel has grown, not only to come to the church at Colossae, but to go out from it. And that God is doing a great work there among the people. And what he wants to encourage the people to do is to walk in a way that is worthy of the Lord. And so although we're tempted to read verse 9 and think of this as the critical verse, because he says there that we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you'll be filled with wisdom and spiritual understanding, the purpose for which he's praying that prayer is for them to walk in a way that is pleasing to the Lord. I don't want to mitigate verse 9 by saying it's a means to an end, but mechanically, that's what it is. He's praying for them to be filled up with the knowledge of God for this purpose, that as they live out their lives, they will do so in a way that glorifies the Lord. Now, as is often the case when we're reading the Bible, we come across phrases that you and I know, and we've heard them, we talk about them, we even speak them sometimes in our prayers or when we're talking about things. But it does deserve attention to stop periodically and ask ourselves what we're really reading about here and what we're talking about. When he says in verse 10 that he wants them to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, there are two questions that come to mind. First of all, what does it mean to walk in a way that is worthy of the Lord? And secondly, why is that important? Of all the things that Paul could pray for this young church, why does he pray for them to walk in a way that is worthy of the Lord? I would submit that another way we could understand this phrase is to say that he wants them to live in a way that is appropriate or fitting for a follower of Jesus Christ. To walk in a manner worthy of the Lord means to live our lives in a way that is appropriate or suitable to those who claim his name. For those who say that they are Christians redeemed by the blood of Jesus, there is an appropriate way to live, there's a way to conduct ourselves, and Paul wants them to do that. Elsewhere in the New Testament, Paul calls on believers, for instance, in Ephesians chapter 4, which we've read recently here, In Ephesians chapter 4, he calls on them to walk in a manner that is worthy of the calling to which you have been called, by which he means the gospel. If you've been called out of the world, then walk in a way that is consistent with that. Walk in a way that is appropriate for those who say that they belong to the gospel. He goes on in that same passage to say that this means to embody humility and gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love. and maintaining the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. In other words, in Ephesians chapter 4, the same phrase means that to walk worthy of your calling means to live in a way that is consistent, that you're not hypocritical in the way that you live, but it fits well and it fits appropriately with what you say that you've been called to. To cite yet another passage that's similar, because it's written to a church at Philippi, he says, let your manner of life, which is a little bit different translation of this same phrase, let your manner of life, in other words, all the way in which you live, be worthy of the gospel of Christ. And then he goes on again in that passage in Philippians to define that. He says that a manner of life worthy of the gospel is one that stands firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel. So Paul's desire then is that believers would live in a way that is worthy of being people of the gospel. He cites elsewhere in the New Testament and talks about walking in a way that is worthy of God who has called them. And here he talks about walking in a way that is worthy of Christ. Specifically in this context, I think the best way to think about walking in a way that is worthy of Christ is to say that we emulate him. The best way for us to know that our actions are consistent with our words, and the best way for us to know that we're living out that calling and not living as hypocrites, is for us to strive to emulate Christ to the best ability that we can, of course, by His grace. In relation to the second question, Paul describes why this is important, or why this matters. It's because having the will and character of his people conformed to that of Christ is ultimately God's will for his people. So when he says that we are to walk in a way that is fitting or appropriate for a Christian and to emulate Christ, this is important because ultimately that is the goal of everything that God is doing within us. He is glorifying himself and he is growing his kingdom. But remember that God calls us to be conformed to the image of his son. Now this is probably best understood in the phrase, pleasing in every respect, in that same verse. When he says that we are to walk worthy of Christ, pleasing in every respect, I don't think we're to understand this as two separate commands, where Paul says on the one hand, you walk in a way that is worthy of Christ, and on the other hand, you walk in a way that is pleasing in every respect, but instead that these two things are actually inseparable. That if we walk in Christ, if we emulate Him well, if His character becomes our character, if His desire and His will becomes our desire and our will, then we're going to be pleasing to God in every respect. So, what does this have to do then with prayer? Well, what I would submit is that by reading Paul's prayer here, what we're able to do is to formulate something of our own prayer for our brothers and sisters in Christ. We're able to think about our people, our people here in this church, our people in our care group, our family, other Christian friends that we have. And we actually have a blueprint here for how we can pray for them in a specific way. Now, I very much believe that not all prayers should be written out. I understand that we can pray spontaneously. I understand that we can pray as we sit down alone with the Lord and we're thinking through the difficulties of life. But I also think it's wise to look at the prayers of Scripture and say, let's emulate those prayers. They were good enough to be canonized. They ought to be good enough for us to pray for our brothers and sisters as well. And so as we look through this passage, I think there are five things here And I do feel that they're consistent with the structure of this passage that gives us some guidance, gives us some direction for how we can pray for one another. Before I get into those five things, I just want to mention this again, that Paul's main aim here, the thing that Paul is striving for, is he wants these believers to walk in a way that is worthy of the Lord. And I believe we should share that prayer. I believe we should pray for one another that we walk in a way that is worthy of the Lord. So, as we begin to look at these, I want to first of all turn to the rest of verse 10, where Paul tells them to pray, or he tells them rather that he's praying for them to be filled with the knowledge of God's will. So if you and I are going to pray for each other to walk in a way that is worthy of the Lord, we need to pray for each other that we would be filled with the knowledge of the will of God. Being filled with the knowledge of God's will is the catalyst for this command to walk in a way that is worthy of the Lord. In other words, you've got to go backwards to verse 9 where he's praying this and he's saying, here's what I want for you is to be filled up with this knowledge of the will of God. And as a result of that, you're going to walk in a way that is pleasing to him. So understand which piece of this is the rocket and which piece of it is the booster. Being filled up with the knowledge of God is sending this into orbit. This is where we really begin to walk in a way that pleases God, is when we are filled up with His knowledge. There are other places, again, where Paul uses this kind of language. For instance, in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, consider this. He says, this is the will of God, your sanctification. Now that ties into what I just mentioned, that walking in a way that's pleasing to him is actually the goal that God has for his people, that he would be glorified in them, they would be conformed to the image of his son. So this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you knows how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God, that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things as we have told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. What is the will of God is a question that you've asked yourself and probably many of you are seeking through right now. And we seek the will of God in all things. That's a biblical command and it's a biblical precedent for us. So when we're thinking about our jobs, our careers, we seek God's will in that. When we're thinking about where we should live, where we should have community, where we should go to church, we seek God's will in these things. And we don't take it lightly when we do that. And usually in seeking God's will, there's an element of mystery that lingers on the other side of it, where we're praying and saying, God, I need you to open the doors that you see fit to open. I need you to shut the doors that you see fit to shut. And I need to know specifically what your will is. But I'm here to tell you tonight, and I hope this is comforting, that God's will is not always mysterious. Now, sometimes God's will is straightforward for us. For instance, we know that it's never God's will to transgress the law, and that it's always lawful to do good. And setting aside those times where we're seeking his will and certain decisions, we ask ourselves, well, what is it to be filled with the knowledge of his will? Well, you know this from the scriptures, that his will is that you do these things, and by it you be set apart and holy, you be sanctified and set apart from the world to his own glory. He speaks similarly in the next chapter in 1 Thessalonians 5 and says, we urge you, brothers, to admonish the idol. and to encourage the faint-hearted. Help the weak and be patient with them. See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. Rejoice always. Pray incessantly or without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything and hold fast to that which is good, and abstain from every form of evil. If you want to know what God's will for your life is, 1 Thessalonians 4 and 5 at least gives you a starting point. Because you can read these verses and you can understand that what God wants us to do is be conformed to the image of his son. And we could say, even though Paul isn't saying this explicitly in those texts, it would be consistent to say he's admonishing them to emulate the character of Christ. He's admonishing them to live as Christ lived, to do the things that are consistent with his revealed will. And so if we're going to walk in a way that is worthy of the Lord, we need to be filled up with this knowledge of the will of God and we need to be conformed to it. We need God to pour this into us and to make it clear to give us not only the desire, but also the ability to carry out the things that he has given to us. And we need the humility to know that we're unable to walk in a way that is consistent with our calling. We're unable to glorify him and we're unable to do what we've been called to do unless we're willing to humble ourselves and seek his will. So you're sitting here tonight and you're thinking about the people in your care group, you're thinking about the people in your church that you want to pray for. And there are a lot of legitimate ways that you might pray for them. You could pray for upcoming surgery, you could pray for lost family, you could pray for their encouragement and their well-being. Don't forget to pray that they would be full of a knowledge of God's will. Secondly, we can pray for one another to bear fruit in every good work. Back in verse 10, he says, walk in a manner that is worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him. And one way that you do this is by bearing fruit in every good work. I agree with and I follow basically G.K. Bill's conclusion on this. That this is intentionally pointing backward. And that it's looking past the New Testament all the way to the sixth day of creation in Genesis chapter 1. And there when God is bringing his creation to be, he creates man on the sixth day and he's giving him dominion over the earth. And you remember what he commands man to do. He says, now go forth and multiply, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And I agree with G.K. Bill that this similar language we find not only here but elsewhere in the New Testament, intentionally looks back on that original design of creation. That God is bringing about the work of his kingdom and he's doing it now, not just through the physical multiplication of his people, which was happening under the old covenant with the multiplication of Israel, and it does happen as you and I have children that are born into the world. But that it happens as we go forth into the world doing good works. Now, you can read Jeff's book on the Kingdom of God to get a much more thorough explanation of covenant theology. I'm not going to try to defend this proposition tonight. I'm just going to make it. I'm convinced that most people here will accept it with little reluctance. We're not waiting on the Kingdom of God to appear. We're living in it. The Kingdom has been inaugurated with the arrival of the King. And part of the work of the kingdom is that it's going to go forth and it's going to subdue the earth. It's going to return to this vision that's cast in Genesis 128 of being fruitful and multiplying and having dominion over all things of the earth and subduing it and bringing it into subjection. And even later in this same chapter, in the last few verses of this chapter, that's what Paul talks about. He talks about putting all things under the authority of Christ. But it does beg the question of how does this actually happen? How does it work that the kingdom goes forth into all the world and things are brought into subjection? And what Paul is arguing for here, and he argues for it elsewhere, is that this happens not only through the proclamation of the gospel, but it happens as we go out and we authenticate the gospel through our good works. And so as we go out and we do good things, then we're taking the work of the kingdom with us. That's why, for instance, as James says, caring for a widow and an orphan is a good thing. An unbeliever can do that. It's especially beautiful when a believer does it, because it goes forth in the spirit of the gospel. The whole idea, actually, of good works is somewhat ambiguous. What exactly constitutes a good work? Thankfully, we have the Heidelberg Catechism to help us think about this. In question 91 of the Heidelberg Catechism, it asks this question, what are good works? Which seems highly pertinent to the question that I just asked. And the answer is only those which are done out of true faith that conform to God's law and are done for God's glory. So we read the ambiguous texts sometimes in the New Testament and they talk about good works. And we ask ourselves, well, what is a good work? If you're driving down the street and you see a trash bag blow out of somebody's truck, and it's on the side of the road and so you pull over because you want to pick up the litter. Is that constituted as a good work? And I mean you could argue that yes, that is a good thing. But especially what the New Testament has in mind when it talks about these good works are those things which are lawful so they conform to God's law and they conform to his will and that they're done as an act of faith. That we believe what we are doing is something that is good, it's good for us, it's good for our fellow man, and it's especially good for the glory of God. This is why it's such a powerful thing as Jesus says to take a cup of water and to give it to one of these little ones in my name. That's a good work done looking to God in faith and done in a way that glorifies him. So Paul's desire for them is that their response to God's grace will be to do those good things which build up themselves and will build up their neighbor and will not be done in vain but will indeed bear fruit. When you pray for one another to walk in a way that is pleasing to God and you say, God, this is my brother, this is my sister, and I want them to be pleasing to you. I want them to be worthy of your name. I want them to be worthy of the gospel. I want them to be worthy of the name of the father. God, I want you to to make them pleasing. So don't only fill them up. with a knowledge of your will, but bring forth fruit from the good things that they are doing. So often doing good things gets lost in the busyness of life and most good things are not the things that we see happening at the macro level of the church. The Lord is doing amazing things here. I had a friend from Texas that called this week to talk and a few of you that know me like Tim I know especially will attest to this. I can be kind of long winded if it's a conversation that I'm interested in. And I can be very short-winded if it's a conversation I'm not interested in. And like most things in my life, I don't really have a middle ground. I'm either all in or I'm out. And we were just having a riveting conversation about our church here, his church there, about life, what the Lord was doing in our lives and in our families. And he asked me, he said, just what is going on at Grace Bible Church and at Grace Bible Theological Seminary? Like I'm hearing things from the outside, but what's it like from the inside? And so like two hours later, I finally got done explaining to him what we're seeing here. The Lord is doing amazing things here. He's not even rewarding us for our faithfulness. You know, it's tempting sometimes to say, well, all we've done is be faithful and the Lord has rewarded us, but the Lord can reward whoever He pleases. He's chosen to use us. He's not just using us because he found us to be the most faithful. It's good to be faithful. But this isn't some kind of barter where we say, Lord, we'll be more faithful to you as long as you give us more things. But look at how this church has grown. Lord willing, tonight, maybe he provides us a new building. Maybe he doesn't. Maybe he just gives us a grove of oak trees to meet under, and that'll be fine. He's given us a seminary, a place where we train men. to go out and preach the gospel. He's brought broken and hurting people to this church. And they have found their hope in Christ. One after another. And they're still coming. And they're finding refuge here. And this isn't something that we're doing. We're not going out and trying to acquire this. Would anybody here say you were targeted with a Facebook ad and that's why you ended up here? The Lord is doing this work. The Lord is bringing forth this fruit. But you know what else the Lord is doing? He's listening to the prayers of that mother and that father that is saying, God, please save my child. And he's listening to the prayer of that child or that grandchild that's praying for their parent or their grandparent who's ill and saying, Lord, make the last hours of their life comfortable. Or Lord, if it's your will, heal them. And the Lord is listening when he hears his people praying and saying, God, this is my aunt or my uncle or my friend, and they are lost and they need you. And I need you to intervene in their life and open their eyes and soften their heart and use me as an instrument. I might be the most dull and rusty tool in the shed, but Lord, use me. And the Lord will bring forth fruit there. So pray for your brothers and sisters. that the Lord will not only sustain them and give them the endurance to go out and do these things, but that He'll bring forth fruit in it. Because if we want to walk in a way that is worthy of the Lord, then we have to not only be filled with the knowledge of His will, but we have to go out here and work and bear forth fruit. Also in verse 10, a third way that you can pray for your brothers and sisters, and that is pray for one another to grow in a knowledge of God. In the last part of verse 10, He said, so to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, which is constituted by bearing fruit in every good work and being filled with the knowledge of his will. Then he prays for them to increase in the knowledge of God, which doesn't sound all that much different from saying back in verse nine that they would have a knowledge of his will. But I think what Paul has specifically in mind here is he's thinking of them being filled up with a knowledge of God, not just his work and his will, but knowing him personally and intimately. His desire is that they would grow to truly know God. There are a few principles, or at least a couple principles of a biblical epistemology that are particularly important here and that are relevant to this text. And I would just recommend to you, parenthetically, a work by Murray Ray. It's an article in a larger book, but it's called Incline Your Ear That You May Live. And it's a study of a biblical epistemology which says, listen to my words so that by those words you may live. And working from that and working from, you know, other ways of studying epistemology, which is basically just answering the question of how, you know, it's a theory of knowledge. How do we come to know something? How do we come to understand something? Well, how do I come to know or understand God? Well, first of all, by acknowledging that all knowledge of God is a result of his direct self-revelation. And so we're only going to know about God what He chooses that we're going to know about Him, and we're not going to know anything apart from what He has revealed to us about Himself. One of the beautiful things about the sufficiency of Scripture is that we can have confidence that what God wants us to know about Himself, He has put here. That what God wants us to know and what's necessary for us to know, both for our good and for our eternal destiny, that is contained here and he has given it to us. And there are other ways that God has, for instance, made his power known to us through natural revelation. And we have a general knowledge of God that all men possess in our conscience. But God, what he wants us to know personally and about himself, he has given to us in his scriptures. And I want to encourage you that you lack nothing there. That if you want to know more about God, there's nowhere else to turn except the Bible that you already possess. Because all of our knowledge of God is a result of his direct self-disclosure. What this demands from us is an attitude of humility. Where we realize that we can't apprehend a knowledge of God by accumulating facts or data. that we're totally dependent on the work of the Spirit to know anything about Him at all. And that's just to know Him on a superficial level. That's just to be able to say things about God. How much more do we need God to initiate that relationship if we are going to truly know Him intimately? Second, that knowledge of God is not an accumulation of facts, but that it's something that is apprehended through our piety and obedience toward Him. How do we come to really know God? Well, we would say on the one hand, we come to know God by studying His Word. And so when we show up on Sunday mornings and on every other Wednesday night, and we're hearing the Word be preached, if you've come here with a spirit of humility, if you're sober-minded, then what you're doing is you're not only learning about the Bible, and the cultural background of it, and the author, and the arguments being made here, but you are actually growing in a knowledge of God. You leave here tonight, if you come here with faith, and humility, and repentance, you leave here tonight knowing the Lord better than you knew Him when you walked in here. When we are baptized, or when we observe a baptism, This is our participation in the community of God and this is us actually living out our obedience to Christ's commands. And there's little that I could say that would make more illustrious the Lord's table when we gather together and we actually commune there and we hold up a little wafer and we say this is the body of Jesus broken for us and we take this blood. And you know my favorite thing to dwell on or at least this is where my mind goes to I don't know that I should say it's my favorite thing but this is where my mind goes to. when Jesus is talking to his disciples, and we often read this passage at the Lord's Supper, and he says, this is my blood of the covenant that is given for you, which is obviously an atonement of our sins, and that in itself is beautiful. But what else did he tell them? I'm not going to drink from this, not now, but I will drink it with you, new in my kingdom. There's a day where we'll have the Lord's Supper with him, where we'll actually participate with Him face to face in resurrected bodies. See, this is the way that we come to know God. It's not by going and buying every book on christianbook.com and trying to read all the theology that we can. You can't be taught to know God over here in this seminary. You can't be taught to know God by any peer-reviewed journals, at any institution, even under good, sound preaching that just gives you facts or data. We've all heard the preaching that's kind of like a history lesson. It has a hundred interesting data points. Those things are not what give us a knowledge of God. It's obedience to His will. It's humble confession that we're dependent upon Him. and it's communing with him by being with his people and sitting under the preaching of the word, participating in baptism and the Lord's Supper. These are the ways that we acquire a knowledge of God. And so I would encourage you that when you're thinking of your brother and sister and you say, God, I want them to walk in a way that's worthy of you, I would encourage you to say, please give them a knowledge of your will, help them to understand what they ought to do. And I would encourage you to say, Lord, bring forth good fruit from the things that they are doing. But I would also say, Lord, make yourself known to them. When they come to church and whether it's Brother Tommy or it's Danny or it's Jeff that stands up here and preaches. Lord, would you speak to them and would you let them know you better when they leave than they knew when you arrived? He says in the next verse, and this is the fourth way that you can pray for one another. that you can pray for each other to be strengthened by God's might. Now, I hope to this point, because I don't really have time and I'll have to move very quickly through these last couple, but I hope you see how all of this is connected now that Paul says, look, I am praying for you. He actually says we pray without seizing. We are incessantly praying for you to walk in a way that is worthy. And you're going to walk in a way that is worthy if you are filled with this knowledge of God's will, and if you're bearing fruit, and if you have this growing knowledge of Him. And this is added to that, that you may be strengthened with all power. What a beautiful thing to pray for one another that we would be strengthened, that we would be bore up by the power of God to carry out the things that he's given us to carry out. We read about this in Ephesians chapter 3 and for the sake of time we won't go back and revisit that. Jeff talking about all of our strength being drawn directly from Christ and that everything that we have, all strength and glory and ability and power, all of these things, they come from Him. And then in ourselves we have the ability, we have the power to do nothing. The goal of being strengthened, as you can see it here in verse 11, is that we would have endurance and we would have patience. So I grew up, not really a gear head, but I like cars, I like mechanical things. I remember being a kid and we would get underneath the truck and we'd be working on the truck and my dad, who is, if you think I'm structured and type A, you should meet my dad and you'll have no doubt where I come from. And we would get under there, and my dad's one of these guys that would jack the truck up on the, you know, with the jack, I forgot what you would call it. But anyway, he jacks it up, and then he slides a jack stand, and he says, hold on, let's get one more just in case. Slides it under there, and then he's like, ah, hold on, let me get one more jack stand, just in case this thing falls and the first one fails. And so pretty soon, you know, we've got 11 jack stands that are underneath the truck. But it would dawn on me, sitting there and looking up at that, going, what if this did fall on me? Now, of course, if I'm just right under the truck, it's not even gonna touch me, right, because of the tires. But you take the tires off, and I'm laying under an A-arm or something, and if this falls on me, you know, I'm as good as gone. And I like to pretend that, you know, you hear those stories every now and then about supernatural strength, where a panicked parent just grabs a Mack dump truck and picks it up off their kid. And I'm thinking, well, maybe the adrenaline will just kick in. You know, I'm laying under this one-ton Ford, thinking, well, maybe I can just binge press it off of here. When Paul talks about patience, the word that's translated patience means to abide underneath something. And the implication is to abide underneath it and yet not be crushed. So when we think of patience, we think of not losing our lid when our kid doesn't do something, when we tell them to. When the New Testament thinks of patience, it thinks of somebody that's under a tremendous weight, yet is unbroken. Somebody who's under a weight that should crush them, and yet they somehow get out from under it. Lord, would you strengthen our brothers? Would you strengthen our sisters? Who are going through this difficulty, or going through these uncertainties, that are going through this difficult time, and Lord, would you, by your own might, by your glorious might. Bear them up underneath this weight. Finally, in verses 12 through the end of the section here in verse 14, we should pray for one another to have gratitude toward God for our redemption. Now, I think it's best to understand these last couple of verses here, not as Paul saying, I'm giving thanks to the Father for your redemption. But rather, Paul is saying, I am praying for you to walk in a way that is worthy of the Lord, pleasing to him by giving thanks for your redemption. And on the face of it, it's a strange thing to be exhorted to faithfulness, because usually faithfulness is to be exhorted to thanksgiving or thankfulness because that's something that's more instinctive. Somebody does something nice for you, you say thank you. And you don't have to have somebody come up alongside you and tell you, hey, tell that person thank you, although we do that with our children. But it makes me think again, probably about the same time I was worried about being crushed by the truck, of being a kid, eight, nine years old, and I can remember this story, I mean, I can remember this like it's happening now or like it was happening yesterday. which is unusual, because it's such a mundane story. But it's about Christmas time. I'm, I don't know, eight, nine years old, I guess, you know, little kid. And my mom comes in the living room. I can't even remember what the couch felt like that we sat down on. We sat down on the couch, and she said, hey, this is a gift for you. You know, like I said, about Christmas. And this was a friend of hers and a co-worker that had gotten me this gift. And so, of course, she told me, you know, Ms. So-and-so got you this. And so, I take it out. You know, I'm unwrapping it. And it's a little Rubik's Cube. And so I wasn't thinking, of course, you're an eight or nine year old kid, all right, this isn't the biggest gift that I've ever received, but I'm receiving it thankfully and everything. Okay, this is great, it's a Rubik's Cube. And I remember my mom kind of grabbing my arm and looking me in the eyes. And she said, listen, I know this is no big deal, it's just a little toy. But her friend and her coworker there, I was going through a really tough time. Had recently been divorced, was having some issues at work, had a son. I remember the son was several years older than me and was very much kind of a wayward, do-his-own-thing child, and that was complicated by now being in a single-parent home, and that is out of the picture. And so I'm certain, even though she didn't say this, that finances were tight. And she said, you know, I know this isn't a huge thing, I want you to take care of this because she knew what I was gonna do and that was peel the stickers off and then put them back on to make it look like I'd finished the Rubik's Cube or you can even get a screwdriver and pop it open and then fit it back together and she said don't take the stickers off of this don't break it apart take care of it because it's not a huge gift but it was a lot for her to give I think about Jesus standing in the temple there right there's people coming in with money bags and they're dumping in Huge sums of money. And this older widow comes in and puts in two little coins. And Jesus said, that woman is the one who is really given today. Because she's given out of her heart. And because what she gave proportionately was a lot for her. Man, I never forgot that. Sitting there with my mom. Her saying, this is a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but this is a big deal. for the person that gave it to you and so it was take care of it and you're gonna have to write a thank you card to them and all that stuff and I can't tell you how many times I think about that now when I see some small act of kindness and I think don't ever let a small act of kindness get away well essentially what she was doing was she was exhorting me to thankfulness and saying look this is what you've received and you need to appreciate it well Paul teaches that same lesson to the believers here because he calls on them to walk worthy of the Lord by joyfully giving thanks to the Father. As a matter of fact, I think these last couple words in verse 11, this prepositional phrase here with joy, I think that really belongs grammatically with verse 12. Where what he's saying to them is joyfully giving thanks to the Father. Because the Father has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints and light, and he has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son. This idea of giving thanks is founded on two grounds here. First of all, because God has made them qualified, as it translates it here, to share in this inheritance. Qualified is another way here probably of saying something like worthy or has made you able even to receive this. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians where he says we've come and we've preached the gospel to you but not as those who are qualified to preach the gospel to you but as those who have been made qualified by God to preach the gospel to you. Those who are not able in our own power to do it and yet we've preached the gospel and it's been received and Paul explains that this isn't what we've done this is what God has done. Even thinking on that before I came to how to pray, and I said, God, who could qualify a man to stand up with your word and preach it? But it's you who qualifies, it's you who gives us the ability to do these things. I think we could translate this, though, you've made us worthy, giving thanks to the Father who has made you worthy to share in the inheritance of the saints. Now, remember what Paul was telling them back in verse 10, was to walk in a way, to walk in a manner that was worthy. And I believe this ties this section in and brings it together. Because what he's doing is he's saying, listen, you need to live in a way that is consistent with who you say that you are. You need to emulate Christ. You need to walk in a way that's worthy of him. And one of the reasons that you need to do this, or one of the ways that you need to do this, is by giving thanks to God for making you worthy. To participate in the inheritance. that He has laid up for His people. Secondly, God has brought them out of their darkness, both of mind and the world, and He has transposed them into the kingdom of His Son, redeeming them through the blood of Jesus. And in fact, that's what the next passage, especially verses 21 through 23, talk about. If you look at where Paul's argument's going, just to get a glimpse, in those verses, which would probably logically be the next passage we would preach from Colossians. He says, you who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death. And why has he done this? In order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him. The goal again, throughout the New Testament of what God is doing in our lives, is to conform us to the image of Christ, to make us like him. And to be conformed to the image of Christ and to be made like him is to walk in a way that is worthy of him. I hope that we can leave here tonight with a clear direction of how to pray for one another. Let it never come from our lips again to say to somebody in passing, I'll pray for you. or I'll be praying for you, or especially, I've been praying for you if you haven't. And putting an emoji on Facebook does not count as a prayer. And thinking good thoughts about people does not count as a prayer. But when you think of these people that you love, Pray to the Lord and say, Lord, make them to walk in a way that's worthy of you, in a way that's pleasing to you. Fill them with the knowledge of yourself. Fill them with the knowledge of your will. Give them strength in their trials. Help their fruit to be borne out from their good works. And Lord, especially give them a thankful heart so that they can remember and reflect on the things that you have done for them. Let's pray. God, you have truly been good to us tonight. to give us your word, whereby we would know you. And I pray for these, my brothers and sisters, who you have redeemed with the blood of your son, Jesus, and brought out of darkness to share with you in an eternal inheritance. Would you make them to walk worthy of the Lord Jesus? Would you fill them with the knowledge of your will? Bring forth fruit in their good works. Let them grow in a knowledge of you. Strengthen them by your might. and give them grateful hearts that are fixed upon your promises, and most of all, upon your son. Hear us we pray, in his name, amen.