Archive for October 20, 2010
Oct 20
Follow-up to Sunday’s Sermon: Our Prayers, God’s Priorities
When Paul prayed for strength for believers be prayed that they would be “strengthened with power.†Prayer for power is a frequent request of the apostle’s for the church. Several things come to mind when we think of “power.†Last week we lost power before the first service when a balloon collided with a local power line. Cars are powerful. Bombs are powerful. But there is a kind of power that outdoes them all. D.A. Carson has a helpful explanation of the power that is “according to his glorious mightâ€:
“The power that raised Jesus from the dead–is the power that is at work in us to make us holy, to make us a fit place for Jesus to dwell, to enable us to grasp the limitless dimensions of God’s love for us (Eph 3:14-19), to strengthen us so that we have great endurance and faith and lives constantly characterized by thanksgiving (Col. 1:11-12). It takes extraordinary power to change us to become like that. In fact, it takes nothing less than the power of God that raised Jesus from the dead. What the apostle wants, then, is not power so that he might be thought powerful, but power so that he might be conformed to the will of God. Only the power that brought Jesus back from death will do.†– Basics for Believers: An Exposition of Philippians, Pg. 87
In Sunday’s message, Our Prayers, God’s Priorities, Ryan Kelly showed us from Colossians 1:9-14 how to pray. Taking Paul’s lead, we should pray frequently, for understanding, for fruit, for strength and in all of our prayers we should keep circling back to redemption, for we pray as those who have been “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 sins” (1:13-14). Ryan also recommended an excellent book on the subject of prayer by D.A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers.