Prayer is a Full Contact Activity!

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. 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. (Col. 4:2, 12 NIV)

In our daily Bible study, last night we were reading the fourth chapter of Colossians. I was struck by the two verses I shared above. Paul knows the power of prayer and so he admonishes the believers in Colossae to be devoted to prayer, while being watchful, which I take to mean alert and aware of all that is going on in our lives, especially the spiritual; and to be thankful, which I take to mean in, and for, all things.

But the meatier part of the verses is that word "wrestling" as that man Epaphras did in his daily prayers. I took that to mean that the man not only knew about the trials, temptations and challenges of the believers, he took them on in his prayers. That means, as we pray for a dear one who is battling cancer, take on the cancer in your prayers! Wrestle that cancer in Jesus' name, asking the Lord be the victor in the struggle. If the opponent is doubt, take on the doubt on behalf of your brothers and sisters who have shared they are doubting. Is your friend needing a better job, or a job because they are unemployed? Take that on as well! Prayer is a full contact activity if we make it so! If you wrestle in prayer and your friends know, they will, as Epaphras asked, be able to stand firm in whatever comes, knowing the will of God is being done. They also can face it with maturity and the assurance that we need in our lives.

So, as we get prayer requests, join forces with God as we wrestle against some powerful opponents, but knowing that God's power is mightier, and it is God's will, not ours, that gets done.

Lord, as we pray together, we join forces with You as we take on the enemies of dear ones in our lives as they have shared with us. We wrestle against disease and illness in the bodies of family and church members. We ask that these would be defeated and deployed to outer darkness where they can harm no one else. We take on doubt and despair, asking that You remove those from loved ones, and make them mature and assured of their worth and value in Your loving eyes. We take on anything and all things that stand in the way of our loved ones and You. May You have the final word and the victory as we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen!

Half-Mast

Our flag is at half-mast. Everywhere you turned today, the businesses and buildings that fly our flag have it at half-mast. I remember learning about a flag at half-mast in November of 1963. Our president had been assassinated and our teacher explained what the flag not fully raised meant. I remember seeing it, as I do the ones today, with great sorrow. It meant we were not where we should be; our country had been hit as had been our hearts, and the flag flying at half-mast meant we were in mourning, we were hurting, we were not whole any more.

The flag when fully flown represents the power and majesty of our country at its best; the images of those Marines on Iwo Jima raising the flag, even in the midst of great suffering and setback, showed the promise and the possibility of the United States of America, "one nation under God, indivisible," the "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send those, the homeless, tempest-tost to me," country where people come because they believe in the American Dream - that which means different things to different people, but the basic underlying hope of living free; and what are we offering? Death. It has come so quickly, to so many, of different colors and diverse creeds, the same colored red blood spilled senselessly on the streets, ripping out the hearts of mothers, wives, children, neighbors and friends. Not a reason to fly Old Glory at full-mast, lower the flag as our hearts and spirits have been. We can only say, help us God, to be comforted and reassured once again that we can be "the land of the free, and the home of the brave."

It Was on a Sunday...

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. (Rev. 3:20). There was an old chorus we would sing in the Rio Grande Conference churches at events and gatherings, "It was on a Sunday, when Somebody touched me..." and the song would go on to the different days of the week and one was supposed to stand on the day that God had touched us. I always stood on Sunday because I knew it had been during a Sunday morning worship service when I was about eight years old that I heard our preacher talk about Jesus wanting to have a relationship with us. He may have used the above text as his text, but all I know was that I was paying attention and I heard that we should invite Him in to our hearts, and I did. I cannot remember who my pastor was, nor the date of that event; all I knew was that it happened - Jesus came into my heart.

I did not fly home, for wings did not sprout out my shoulders. And the family slept well that night, the house was not brightly lit with the afterglow of that experience; and my cap still fit me for there was not a halo to contend with. I was still a shy boy, and I don't remember standing on a street corner shouting out sermons calling for Kingsville to repent. I can say my attitude towards all things God changed. No longer did I fuss about going to church and it reached the point where I asked my parents why we couldn't have Sunday school five days a week and public school once a week; I figured the importance of God in my life at that point outweighed whatever they were trying to teach me at Flato Elementary. My Bible became important to me. My prayers became important too. I began to sense a purpose to my life, which made me sense a value in God's eyes that I found in very little other places.

The interesting thing as I reflect back on that day is that in 1960 or thereabouts, when this event occurred, the churches were filled with people. Texas was under Blue Laws, and that meant pretty much every thing was closed on Sunday, and those stores which were open were limited by law as to what they could sell. Wednesdays on school nights, were homework free; there were not practices of the football team nor the band, and it was expected that Wednesday was a church night. We had mid-week service, as well as a Sunday night service; but still the invitation to come to Christ was being offered pretty often. Pastors did not take it for granted that all were in a relationship with Jesus and so invitations through sermons and altar calls were being made, or at least in the Spanish language services of the Río Grande Conference. All events of the church offered that opportunity as well, and even on television Billy Graham had regularly televised crusades that called to my attention and to many. His was a straightforward message and very little was said about money, and nothing flashy was being shone to drum up contributions. Yes, Katherine Kuhlman was on during that time and I saw her as being spooky; and Oral Roberts also made an occasional appearance; but the main driving place for Jesus was the local church.

Has it been on a Sunday that you have been touched by the message heard in your church? Has it been on a Sunday that your message has touched someone in a way that invites him or her to come to Christ? I believe that now more than ever, the local church should be the arena in which disciples are made, strengthened, and deployed to go and make more disciples.