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Maturity and Full-Assurance

Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured. (Colossians 4:12) Oh, now here’s a prayer request sure to rankle the flesh of some. “Mature? I’m mature! I’m over 70 (over 40, over 30, over 18)!” I’m the other way. I’m still trying to figure out what I’m supposed to be when I grow up, but I understand the irritation because among the big contestants for what I want to be is “perfect,” and my failure in that rankles, too. Put into proper context, however, the prayer request is just a little different. Epaphras prayed that the Colossians would stand firm in the will of God. This brings Ephesians 6 to mind, where, we’re told to stand firm as soldiers in armor. Here, the standing firm involves maturity and full assurance. Maturity is the state of being complete in natural (or spiritual in this c

Prayer Requests 3

I pray that out of His glorious riches, He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16-19) As I typed this prayer, I remembered the prayer passages from the last two days. Both times, Paul prayed that the people to whom he wrote would be given power. Who does that? I suppose it makes sense because Paul saw these congregations as allies and what power he prayed for was fairly specific, but it still feels strange, dangerous, and even unnatural, at least to the natural mind. This may be because often, power means “power over” rather than “power to.” In this prayer, the first po

Prayer Requests 2

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know Him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. (Ephesians 1:17-19) This is another of Paul’s prayers that we can use for others and ourselves. This time, the first request is for the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that we may know Him better. One of the challenges here that requires wisdom is that we generally only have three ways to recognize that we have grown in wisdom, received revelation, or know Him better. The first is that we receive some spectacular bit of wisdom or revelation. We notice that, but God doesn’t tend to work that way. The second is that we compare ourselves to others. That leads to roller-coaster faith, up o

Prayer Requests

With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of His calling, and that by His power He may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith. We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (II Thessalonians 1:11-12) Ever wonder what to pray for someone? Do we all have some standard “and God bless” requests? There’s nothing wrong with the God bless prayers. They’re good prayers, but sometimes I feel that sort of prayer becomes thin and weak as I pray it for person or group after group. At the same time, I feel invasive if I start barging into someone’s life, asking them to lay bare their souls so that I can pray for their “real” needs. I know when someone asks for prayer for a third party – and another person asks for details that weren’t given, I get irritated. A prayer request isn’t meant to be an opp

The Law, the law, and...

We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me. (I Timothy 1:8-11) I tend to like to tell people, “You are not my parents, my master, or my God.” I want to be independent. Some people might think I’m an antinomian, but they’re wrong. I don’t reject the Law or the law. I reject when others try to use the Law, the law, or their law improperly. This isn’t a political thing. We all tend to try to treat our law as The Law. We all tend to treat others as our children, slaves, or worshippers. At best, they might be our student

With Him

One of the servants answered, “I have seen a son of Jesse of Bethlehem who knows how to play the lyre. He is a brave man and a warrior. He speaks well and is a fine-looking man. And the Lord is with him.” (I Samuel 16:18) This won’t be long because I’ve been on the road since 7:30 this morning and it’s after 11 pm. After this one, I won’t have ready access to the internet for a few days, so I will post when I can. But, this verse stood out as I listened to I Samuel-I Chronicles today. Saul was in a pickle. He had failed miserably and more than once, and God had rejected him as king. The Lord had been with him, but the Lord was no longer with him. So when one of his servants said that the Lord is with David, I wondered if perhaps the reason Saul wanted David around was in hopes of having the Lord with him through David, so to speak. And he did. That was the problem. The Lord blessed what David did, and it’s a blessing that Saul believed he shoul