Month: January 2021

Praying with Paul

Of the many prayers recorded in scripture, Colossians 1.5-12 contains my favorite “outline” to pray for myself, my family, my friends and co-workers, and many others.

It begins with Paul saying “we haven’t stopped praying for you.” Convicts me as I remember people for whom I’ve not prayed, and wonder how many people I’ve told “I’ll be praying for you” and fail to follow through.

Then come specific requests:

  • He asks “that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding…”
  • That prayer helps us “walk worthy” of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him”
  • Part of that pleasing is we are “bearing fruit in every good work”
  • And even as we bear fruit we are “growing in the knowledge of God”
  • Which allows us to be “strengthened with power according to His glorious might”
  • Which will give us “great endurance and patience“
  • So we may “joyfully give thanks to the Father…”

There it is…covers a lot of bases…and thus I often pray it for myself and others.

Perhaps it would be of help to you in your times of prayer?

Special Tuesday Throwback Tune

Too many (in my count) friends have died over the last few weeks.

Covid, sudden, miscarriage, etc.

First Corinthians 15.55:

“O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

The death of Christians causes us to grieve, but not as those without hope grieve. Though our minds know our loved one is with Jesus; our heart is crushed.

I don’t know, nor need to know, the process of a Christian’s death…I’ll experience it soon enough. “Absent from the body, present with the Lord” (2 Cor 5.8) is good and clear enough for me.

How that transition happens; what, exactly, is it to be present with the Lord is beyond my understanding.

But I try not to let what I don’t know mess up what I do know.

A friend passed away from COVID this afternoon. While praying for his widow and other family I remembered today is also his physical birthday. The Puritan Alexander Grosse wrote,

“For the day of death to the body is, as one saith, the birthday of eternity to the soul.”

For the believer death has no victory, and the sting of death, though painful, is countered by “blessed assurance.”

Usually on Tuesdays I post a “Throwback Tune.”

Only this seems appropriate today: