Further Instructions
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.
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.
I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you.
My Understanding: As I prayerfully read over this passage of scripture, I immediately saw that it could be divided into several sections or topics – Prayer, Wisdom, Opportunities, and our Conversations. These were Paul’s concluding instructions to the church in Colosse.
Prayer
We are instructed here to devote ourselves to prayer. To devote ourselves to something means “to commit yourself to, or allot or use something for, a particular activity, aim, or purpose” (Encarta). It means to pledge, surrender, promise, and make a covenant (agreement) with God. Prayer should never be casual or seen as something we do for five minutes a day to just fulfill an obligation to God. Prayer is to be continuous (see I Thess. 5:17; Heb. 13:15). It is to be ongoing. This does not mean we are saying words constantly, but rather that we are in continuous communication with our Lord in attitude, heart and mind to where he can prompt us to pray for someone or something at any moment of the day. And, this is developed through our daily times with him in his word and in prayer, and through repentance, so that our communications with God are not obstructed by sin, and then in obedience to his commands. The more we hear him and the more we obey him, the more of himself he will reveal to us.
In our prayers, we should be watchful and thankful. Watchful is a word in the Bible often used in reference to being on the lookout for anything that might distract us from pure devotion to our Lord, being consciously aware of our own weaknesses and vulnerabilities to sin, so that we are not caught unaware by the devil’s traps, and being consciously attentive to God’s voice, to his warnings, to his instructions, and to his calls to us to change our hearts and minds. We should never close our hearts and minds to God’s voice speaking within us just because we don’t want to hear something. As well, we are to be thankful. In other words, we are not to come to God in prayer in grumbling, arguing with him, making demands, looking out for our selfish wants to be filled, etc. We should come to him with a heart attitude of thankfulness for all that he has provided for us, and even for the tough times, because those are for our good, too. And, we should thank him in advance, in faith, for how he is going to answer our prayers that are prayed in the will of God for our lives.
We are to pray for others. Some of the ways in which we should pray for others is: 1) Pray for those who are sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, that God will open doors for the gospel message to be shared; 2) Pray for those sharing the gospel message to proclaim the message clearly and fearlessly, so that they do not shrink back from declaring the truth of the gospel, nor do they water down the message to make it more palatable to the listener; 3) Wrestle in prayer for other believers against the forces of evil coming against them, so that they may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured in their faith, purpose and witness for Jesus Christ; and 4) Remember in prayer those who are in “chains” for the gospel of Jesus Christ, which can include persecution, rejection, abandonment, slander against them, physical suffering, physical imprisonment and the fear of being killed. Also, remember in prayer those who are in “chains” to sin and who need to experience the grace of God in their lives in delivering them from bondage to sin and in setting them free.
Wisdom
Here we are instructed to “be wise in the way you act toward outsiders.” I believe this goes to our witness for Jesus Christ. Those outside of Christ are watching our lives. They are looking to see if our walk matches our talk. They are looking to see if we live the things we preach. We are the only Jesus that many people will see. He lives within us and we are his body; his temple. His light and love should be shining out through us so that others can see the truth of who God is, what he is about, why Jesus died for our sins, and what it means to truly be in Christ, as well as our lives should be revealing his characteristic traits of love, mercy, grace, kindness, gentleness, patience, and truth, etc.
Opportunities
Coupled with this wisdom is that we should make the most of every opportunity to show God’s love, grace, mercy, kindness, forgiveness, compassion and his truth to others. God has other people in our lives for a purpose. He often presents us with opportunities to show his love to others. We need to be sensitive to hear his voice, to know what opportunities he is presenting to us, and to be willing to do what he leads us to do, no matter how difficult that may be sometimes. We must be willing to surrender our rights, time, heart, and emotion in order to be used of God as his hands and feet in the lives of those with whom he has opened doors for ministry. Sometimes we miss these windows of opportunity because we are selfish, we are busy with our own stuff, or we are just not sensitive to needs or to God’s voice. So, we need to be willing, available, and open to what God has for us.
Conversations
In verse six, we learn that we are to let our conversations be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that we may know how to answer everyone. There are many varied interpretations of what this means. I do so want to understand it for myself so that my conversations with people are what God wants them to be. So I pray for understanding.
God’s grace to us began with his divine character and attributes, and with his love. He loved us so much that he gave his one and only Son to die on the cross for our sins so that we could be free from sin. We did nothing in and of ourselves to deserve or to earn this. While we were still dead in our sins, Jesus Christ died for us. Grace is getting what we don’t deserve, and involved in this is mercy, which is not getting what we do deserve. Jesus Christ forgave our sins when he put them to death on the cross and when he arose from the dead in triumph over Satan, hell, death and sin. We receive this forgiveness through faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord (master) and Savior (from sin).
So, when we show God’s grace to others in our conversations with them, we should, first of all, listen to others attentively, showing respect and consideration for what they are saying, and we should pray for the correct response to them within our own hearts, minds and speech. We should have other people’s best interest in our hearts and minds. We should have genuine care and concern for others’ legitimate needs, and pray concerning how best we might meet those needs. We should answer kindly and with gentleness, even if the other people are not speaking in like kind. And, we should be willing to forgive any and all offenses by the other people toward us. Our goal should always be one of genuine love, with a commitment to obey our Lord and to demonstrate his love, mercy and kindness.
This grace is to be seasoned with salt. To season something means to add flavoring. To add flavor to something, in particular food, means to give the food “an identifiable or distinctive taste;” and/or “to give a unique individual characteristic to it” (Encarta Dictionary). Salt is used for seasoning and preservation of food. Sometimes salt is used as a healing agent. From a spiritual perspective, since salt is used as a preservative to slow decay, salt is thus an element we add in our conversations with people to help preserve their lives from corruption and destruction; and from the evils of our society. “Salty” words should be pure (virtuous), wholesome and can be penetrating to the heart, as they should have God’s unique individual characteristic within them, i.e. they should reveal his character. Salt creates a thirst, so the goal of our conversations with people (in speech or in writing) should be to create within them a thirst for God and for his word. Too much salt can ruin food, and too much salt can also ruin the effectiveness of our conversations. In the same respect, no salt or little salt can make spiritual food bland and tasteless, rendering it ineffective in penetrating to the heart and in preserving lives from sin’s deceitfulness.
Pressing On
In Philippians 3, Paul recognized that he was not perfect, i.e. he had not already arrived in fully obtaining all the things he taught and knew we all must live and strive toward. He realized that he would not be fully made perfect until he reached heaven. Yet, he pressed on toward this goal of applying to his life the reality of what Jesus Christ did for him when he died on the cross for our sins so that we could go free from sin. In doing so, he made a conscious choice of the will to forget the sins of his past that had already been dealt with at the cross, and he did not allow them to defeat him in the present. We can’t change our pasts but we can change our futures. I, as well, realize I have not reached perfection in any of these areas, and yet I choose to repent when the Lord points out areas of sin in my life, and I choose to move forward, and to reapply what he did on the cross for me in how I live my daily life. “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death…” (Phil. 3:10 NIV 1984). So, I pray that the Lord Jesus makes me daily aware of these things and fully conscious of him so that I may surrender to him in full obedience to his will for my life. This is my prayer:
Refiner’s Fire / Doerksen, Brian
…Refiner's fire,
my heart's one desire
is to be holy;
set apart for You, Lord.
I choose to be holy;
set apart for You, my Master,
ready to do Your will.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P0s3OBBsN4
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