Burden, Passion and Mission

Listening to the missionary in last evenings service continued to feed the fire in my soul for people. The missionary spoke of his burden and passion to reach the country he was leaving for. In turn he challenged each of us to become passionate about people needing God. I wonder what would happen in our life if we suddenly made the over there, the foreign field, our neighbors yard. What if we become passionate about touching lives? This morning our Student Pastor tweeted this dare, “Challenge: Pray for the Lost Souls that are in a one block radius of your home. There are fifty people around my home. That’s opportunity.”

We need to pray and ask God to put a burden, a passion and a mission in our hearts to touch our world around us. With this in mind here are some points from last week’s Bible Study.

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.

And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains.

Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.

Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. Colossians 4:2-6 NIV

Near the beginning of Colossians chapter 4, Paul wraps up a letter that was painstakingly written to the church at Colossae from a dark, isolated prison cell. This part of the letter is the final essential content from Paul to this church. The rest of the chapter and letter is personal greetings and personal matters. The kind of stuff that we would put in a PS part of a letter. So in essence, as far as the believers in Colossae were concerned, our text was Paul’s “famous last words.” to them.

In reading the letter Paul’s burning desire for the church people at Colossae was that they would stay rooted and grounded in Christ. That they would continue in their faith. That they would not be deceived by this world’s enticing ideas. And that they would let the peace of God rule in their lives. But then he sums up his thoughts for them with this command, “Devote yourselves to prayer be watchful and thankful!” In case you are wondering I studied this phrase and guess what it means, it means to “Devote yourselves to prayer.” KJV says “Continually Pray.” The Message says, “Pray diligently” in other words Pray every day! Pray a lot! Pray when you’re alone, pray when you’re with a lot of people. Pray in small groups, pray in large groups. Pray when you go out and pray when you come in. Pray when everything is good and pray when everything is not so good. Simply pray!

Devote yourself to prayer. If you don’t pray you will spend more time screaming at the dark and complaining about the ugliness of this world rather than having the mind of Christ. Paul tells the Thessalonians to pray without ceasing. Another translation says pray continually.

Paul in these few verses in Colossians gives the secret to effective evangelism: if you ever hope to lead people to Jesus, you have to be a person devoted to prayer. The two are bound up together. In Paul’s final words to the Colossians he essentially says, “Don’t even think about doing the work of evangelism until you pray! Next Paul say to do two other things.

Watch – pay attention to your daily life actions. The human vessel you are trying to overcome will destroy your testimony in a matter of minutes. Satan and his helpers are working daily to make you a failure in the call of God for your life. When you pray and get alone with God you get the chance to look at your life through prayer. Look at your life through the mirror of the Word of God. Make sure you pay attention to your daily life and not fall into a place you are ineffective for the Lord. You will have to pray and pay attention! Watch, so that you don’t destroy everything you have built in a matter of minutes because your life actions became a mess.

Be thankful – everyone has things to be thankful for. It is the unthankful heart that continually complains about how unlucky they are or how they don’t feel they get what others get. Complaining, people become bitter people. Yes, there are a lot of weeds, mud and junk in this thing called life in this world. Yet, past the mud, beyond the weeds just a step around the junk is the created will of God that is full of purpose and blessing. You will never be able to touch a life for God and help someone become a faithful child of God by complaining and being bitter. You need to pray every day to become thankful.

What to Pray For – an opportunity

Paul continues in Colossians 4 by expounding on his burning desire for that church – and for us. The spirit of his comments is this: “Please pray for us, because we’re striving night and day to make Christ known to those who are far from God.” I love the nugget tucked in verse 3, “Pray for us that God may open a door for our message.” Paul, no longer new to the evangelism field, understands the importance of this. He wants his spiritual brothers and sisters to pray that the Lord would give open doors. Paul has learned that you can’t simply force people to receive the message. You can’t cram Christ through closed doors! So in essence he says, “Pray for open doors of receptivity in people’s minds and hearts because without that we’re sunk.”

We must pray for God to give us a chance, an opportunity to step through a door and evangelize a life. After we have prayed we must watch for the door that God will open. Then walk through it.

"Have you noticed how much praying for revival has been going on of late – and how little revival has resulted? I believe the problem is that we have been trying to substitute praying for obeying, and it simply will not work.

To pray for revival while ignoring the plain precepts laid down in Scripture is to waste a lot of words and get nothing for our trouble. Prayer will become effective when we stop using it as a substitute for obedience." ~ A.W. Tozer 

When the door swings open then do what Paul told the church in Colossians.

Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. NIV

Be wise and caring as to how you approach outsiders. Salt is a seasoning and a little goes a long ways, but it is a necessary ingredient to be used in the right amount. Remember for salt to be effective it must get close or on something. It is useless sitting on the table if it is not applied in the correct amounts. Study and prepare your daily life to reach for any person that God opens a door for you to reach.

The reason we are called and filled with His Spirit is so that we can fulfill the purpose of Christ. He came to seek and save the lost. He is not willing that anyone not come to repentance. So, pray, watch, be thankful, ask for an open door of opportunity then plan to walk through it prepared and anointed by God.