Colossians 1:3-4 “We give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, 4 since we heard of your faith in Christ and of your love for all the saints.”
It is not easy to pray!
It is even harder to faithfully lift up all those on our prayer list day in and day out. We get weary, we doubt, we fall out with someone on the list, we get distracted. But in these verses Paul encourages the Colossians by reminding them that he prays for them always. Not only does he pray for them always; he exceeds that and says he gives thanks to God for them.
Now praying for others is easier than giving thanks for them. Actually, it is easier to find what to condemn in others than it is to find what to appreciate. Thus, when we give God thanks for others we generally look for their best qaulities and similarities to our nature and preferences and thank Him for them. Really though, we should be thanking Him for their weaknesses and their failings and the qualities about them we find uncomfortable because, in so doing, their weaknesses and failings will eventually be overcome and our prejudices will diminish.
Abraham Lincoln once said, “I don’t like that man; I better make a friend of him.”
Agape love is not love that simply tolerates others. Rather it is love that seeks another’s highest good at our personal cost. So Paul was praying for the best outcomes for all the assembly at Colossae. He did not pray just for his favourite clique, the intelligent, the leaders etc., but the whole assembly. The babes, immature, carnal, faithless and the faithful.
Why? Because, despite their weaknesses, they had a reputation which he had heard about; they had faith in Christ. They believed He was the Messiah. They believed He was worth living for. They believed He was worth dying for. And, they believed He lived in their fellow brethren, despite their weaknesses and unloveable characteristics. Simply put: they loved one another as Christ loved them.
What a great reputation.They loved the Messiah and that was seen in their love for one another. Their love was something the lost world found attractive. They had something worth living for and the world wanted it.
Does the world want what we have in Christ? Are they crying out for what we have in Christ? They will when we start loving one another enough to give God thanks for one another. They will when we are willing to maintain our prayer lists at all cost. They will when we looked for Christ living in each other despite our differences, personal failings and status in life.
Blessings
Bob Chapman MA
**Award winning book 2007
More about the book: http://www.christianstoryteller.com/Bob%20Chapman.htm
