New Years Prayer

Message Transcription

SUMMARY

Karl Ihfe reflects on Paul's prayer for the Colossians, applying it to his church for the coming year. He emphasizes the importance of being filled with God's wisdom and knowledge through the Holy Spirit, leading to a life that bears fruit, grows in faith, demonstrates strength and patience, and overflows with thankfulness. The ultimate goal is to live a life worthy of the Lord, recognizing God's work in qualifying us for His kingdom.

TRANSCRIPTION:

Well, it is good to be with you this morning on the last Sunday of 2024. Hope you trust that you had a great Christmas season, that this new year will bring even more blessing into your lives. If you have your Bible with you, invite you to turn over to Colossians chapter one. We'll be there this morning. It may seem a little familiar.

We were there just a couple of weeks ago as we were thinking together about Jesus being more than enough, right? He's the image of the invisible God. We talk some together about how if you want to know what God is like, simply look at Jesus, listen to Jesus, watch Jesus, follow Jesus around. He gives us this incredible picture of who the one true living God is. This morning we're going to back up and look at a couple of verses that precede that passage because I want them to be a prayer for us.

They were Paul's prayer for this church in Colossi, and they're going to be my prayer for our church as we head into this next year. And my prayer is that they will echo in your hearts as well. Just by way of reminder, remember, Colossus is a Roman colony, a city there. And as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, they were facing a couple of at least these two challenges. Number one was this, that Rome is the hope of the world.

Rome ruled the known world basically from India to England for about thousand five hundred years and did so in relative harmony and peace. It was peaceful because Caesar said it's going to be peaceful. And he ruled by violence and force of will. But they ruled for 15, 500 years. We're getting ready to come up on our, what, 250th anniversary here in the United States, just to kind of put a little perspective for you.

But not only that they built roads, they created laws. The world began to shrink. The known world at that time began to shrink because now there was a way to connect cities and people in ways that had never been so before. So Colossi is the city centered right at the heart of all of that innovation of that day. So it brings us to kind of the second challenge that they faced was this idea called syncretism.

This idea of Rome didn't mind if you didn't follow all of their gods. Just as long as you didn't do anything to tear them down, you could follow your own, but you had to leave theirs alone. So it was kind of like your faith plus whatever. And so as Christians, this young church is trying to navigate. Okay, what does it look like for us to follow the one true God, Jesus.

When the culture around us says, well, Jesus sounds like a good guy, but it was Jesus plus Jesus. And, well, maybe I should follow like my neighbors who seem to be pretty good people, maybe I should follow a little bit of what they do, or maybe I should include this God and pray to this God. So they were facing these challenges of Rome is the hope of the world. If anything's going to happen, Rome's going to make it happen. And this idea of Jesus plus those were two big challenges.

Challenges this young church is fulfilling it. And Paul's writing this letter and then currently he's in prison in Ephesus. He has not been to Colossi, so he can't be there in person. So he has to do the only things that he can do. Number one, is to write a letter to try to send them some teaching, some exhortation, some ideas about the way things should be.

But then he also says, I'm praying for you. Those are the only two methods that Paul has to get a message out to this young church who's trying to make their way navigate a culture of their day. And of course, he knows the most powerful of those two is prayer. Now, that might be just enough for us to take with us today that in your life you're going to face all kinds of challenges and sometimes there's going to be something you can do about it, but most of the time there's not. In fact, there's maybe one thing you can do about it, and that's prayer.

And we kind of tell ourselves, well, you know, I mean, that's a good thing to do, but is it the thing to do? Paul would say, no, no, no, that's actually the most important thing that you could do. In fact, you can have incredible influence if you would become the kind of people who pray, who pray about all kinds of things and in all kinds of situations. He would tell the church of Philippi, pray about everything, because that prayer unlocks a power. Now we know, as we got to witness this morning, that when we're baptized into Christ, that God gives to us his presence, his spirit, to live and to teach and to guide and to lead us, to show us, to remind us, right?

This incredible power that's unleashed in our lives. But for those of us who, like Leyton, have put on Christ in baptism, we recognize, we remember life doesn't stop just because we got baptized, right? Hard stuff doesn't stop coming into our lives. Sometimes we think we're supposed to have it easy now that we’d become a Christian. Actually, that's never been a promise found anywhere in Scripture.

That life continues to happen, challenges continue to happen. That noise that was so noisy, that was driving us crazy before we found Jesus and found a better way to live. That noise still shows up in our lives. And so we've got to learn to tune our hearts, to tune our ears and our eyes, to see and to hear that presence that God has given to us through baptism, his Holy Spirit. And so Paul says we've got to learn how to train our lives, our minds, to hear his voice in the midst of all the noise and the chaos.

And so he'll say things like to the church in Galatia, he says, since we live by the Spirit, let's keep and step with the Spirit. Meaning we got to reorient the way that we walk in the world so that we stay in step with God's spirit that's at work in us. To the church in Thessalonica, he would say, rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. And do not quench the Spirit. Meaning there's a way that we can live in the world that actually opens us up to God's Spirit, to His leading, to his direction.

But there's also a way that we can live that shuts us down, that quenches that voice in our lives. One of the primary ways that that happens is sin. That's why we talk about sin and avoiding sin and pursuing God's way of life. Not because there's some eternal cosmic check Mark out there waiting to be checked or erased, but rather to say, God wants you to be formed into the image of His Son. And to do so, we have to walk in a certain way.

And so we want to be sensitive to that. It appears, at least so far, that the church in Colossi, they're doing okay with that. They're wrestling, they're struggling, but they're doing pretty well. In fact, this is how Paul opens the letter. He says, we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all God's people, the faith and the love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about what you have already heard in the true message of the gospel that has come to you.

In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world. Just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God's grace. You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.

Paul says, you learn this gospel from this guy Epaphras, and he's told us all about it. In fact, every time we pray, every time I pray, I give thanks to God for you because I'm hearing these incredible things that are going on in the city of Colossi and in the Young church there. And he points to two things directly. He says, number one, I thanks to God for your faith. It's a public thing.

You're living your faith out loud. You're living it in front of other people, and it's having an impact. In fact, as he said earlier in verse six, that the gospel that's at work in the world doing this incredible transformation, I'm hearing, it's actually happening in your lives, and that's incredible, and I'm so thankful. In fact, I give God thanks for that all the time, but not just for your faith, but that your faith is actually living itself out in love. I thank God for the ways that you love each other because of this deep hope he says, that you have stored up in heaven.

He says, you're living in such a way that we can tell your hope is not of this world, that you're not hoping in this world. You're hoping in heaven. Now, what does that look like? Do you know anybody whose hope is only here in the world? Have you ever come across someone whose hope is merely just here?

Meaning the only thing that matters is what's happening right here, right now, in this moment, in this life. After we die, it's all over. It doesn't matter anymore. Have you ever met someone who lived that way? Maybe that was you at one point in your life.

But you and I both know, for someone whose hope is only in heaven, well, that's a pretty dark hope. Because we all recognize and we can all see around us the brokenness of our world. And if our hope is only in this world, Paul would go on to say, if our hope is not in Christ and him being resurrected, but only in just living this life, he says, then we're to be pitied more than anybody. We've completely wasted it and life is meaningless. Says, but that's not the hope that you live with.

It says, your hope is in heaven, meaning you recognize that what's happening right here is not the only thing happening in the world, that Jesus Spirit is at work and change is happening. Transformation is taking place. That the kingdom of heaven is coming on earth as it is in heaven and as we live that out in one another's life, that another little stronghold of the kingdom gets to break in just a little bit more, a little bit more knowing that one day Jesus will come and everything will be made then as it should be. It's not that way now, but we get to partner with bringing the kingdom into the world. He says that hope causes you to live differently.

It causes you to interact with your neighbors and your coworkers and your fellow students at school differently. You don't have to judge in the ways that the world does. Paul tells the Colossians, I thank God every time I pray for you because of your faith and your love. That gospel that's transformed your life, it's continuing to transform the city of Colossi. So he says, we continually than we thank God for this reason.

Verse 9 as Adelaide read for us just a moment ago, since the day we heard about you, we've not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives. Paul says, first, we're praying for you first that you’d be full, that God would fill you up, meaning you're not full yet. That you need to be filled up with all the knowledge and the wisdom that the Spirit gives so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way. Paul says, I'm praying for you that you'll be filled with wisdom and knowledge and understanding, everything that the Spirit can provide you so that you can live a life that's worthy of the Lord, worthy of the one in which the image you've been created in.

And he points to a few things bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, so that you may have great endurance and patience and giving joyful thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. Paul prays that their knowledge of God through the Holy Spirit would grow so that they could live a life worthy, worthy of the gospel. And this is critical. Paul says, what we do flows out of who we are, who we are becoming. You know, we spent last year, 2024 this last year we spent a lot of time talking about the most important thing God gets out of your life.

It's not the Stuff that you do, it's not. It's the person you're becoming. Because, see, the person that you are becoming, it shapes what you do. It shapes the kind of life that you live. It shapes the kind of person that you are when you're at work or school or at church or out in the community, at the grocery store.

See the person that we're becoming. It's so key. Paul says, I'm praying that you'll be filled with wisdom and knowledge and understanding that the Holy Spirit will grab hold of your life and that you'll have ears, listening and eyes watching for the ways that he's shaping and molding you. And one of the first things he does, he says, I wanted to fill you with knowledge of God's will, of how incredible God is, of his amazing love for you, of the ways that he cares about you. Paul's hope and prayers that the church in Colossi would get to know God would get to know what he thinks, how he feels about other creative people and why he cares so desperately for them that he would send his only son, he would give his life so that God would be reconciled and restored back into relationship with all of his creation.

Paul says, I want you to learn to be filled with knowledge so that you can live a truly good life. I don't want you to understand how good God is, because as we understand that, it's going to change you, it's going to transform you. One of the great things I get to do in ministry is premarital counseling. I get to work with young couples who are thinking about stepping into this life called marriage. And so we spend some time together talking about marriage, what marriage is, what it looks like, what it can be like, how God created us and designed us to uniquely love and serve and be served and be loved and be known in this thing called marriage.

And so we point to pictures of really good marriages and we talk about what healthy, strong, loving relationships look like and how they fight and how they work through finances and how they solve problems and how they grow kids up and teach them how to love the Lord. We talk about all those things. Why? Because I'm convinced if they get a glimpse of that, if they can understand it, not just with our heads, right? Paul talks about this idea of knowledge.

It's not just, if I could learn something, like a robot. It's like, no, if you could experience that, it will change your life. And so I give them an example. I give my couples an example every time. It never fails, okay?

And I'LL challenge you. Try this. When you get home, I'll tell the guy. I'll say, look at the girl. Look at your fiancé, and tell her just one thing that you really love about her.

Just, I'm telling you to tell her something you like about her. And then I flip it over and I say, I'm telling you to tell him something that you like about him. And I'll watch him do it. And you know what they do? They smile.

They get kind of, you know, he's so sweet. She's so kind. He's so funny. And after I do that, I'll go, how did it feel for them to tell you that? And they go, it felt great.

And I go, hold on a minute. I told him to tell you that. He didn't come up with that on his own. He didn't just walk up and say, oh, honey, you're so wonderful. I love you.

No, I told him to do it, and it still felt amazing. Now imagine. Imagine when he does it and nobody told him to do it. What would that feel like? Imagine if she didn't have to be prompted to tell you the things that she loves about you.

How would that feel? And that doesn't just have to be for couples wanting to get married. That could be in any relationship. Imagine if your friends didn't have to be prompted to tell you what they think of you. They just told you, you're amazing.

I love you. I can't believe you are my friend. This is incredible. Why do we do that? Because I'm convinced if they get just a little glimpse of what life is like and that kind of relationship, it'll change him.

Because I know I told him to give her a compliment and it felt amazing to her. Like, just give her just a little window into what might relationship be like if we actually chose to build our relationship on that kind of love. Can you see that? Paul says I'm praying every day I don't stop. That you'll get to know.

Just not just that, you'll get to know who God is and his amazing love for you and how powerful it is that he cares about you. Not some future version of you when you get it all figured out, but you right here, right now. Because I'm convinced if you see that, it will change your life.

In church, I've been hearing about the ways that God has s been changing your life, and it's amazing, he says. So I keep giving thanks to the one who's doing the changing. Oh, church. If you could just grasp it you see, that's why when we see a life transformed here at church, we recognize, oh, that's God at work. We hear the stories of life change where somebody left a away and came into this new light that got out of the darkness and into light.

We recognize, well, that's the power of God at work in the life of another person.

Says my hope church, is that you'll come to know this amazing. You'll be filled up with all the knowledge and wisdom and understanding that the Spirit can give you. Like he'll max you out. He will ll fill your cup to where you're just overflowing. And that overflow then would start to produce a different way of life.

And he points to these four things. He says that you d start bearing fruit in your good work.

That means that what you do would actually start making a difference in the world. So like when you get back to school, you start just saying, I'm going to be a positive, encouraging force in the life of my friends because most of them don't have that. So I'm going to choose to be that force because that's the force that's at work in me. That's the force of the Holy Spirit that's prompting and leading and guiding me. I'm going to be a positive, encouraging force in my workplace, in my neighborhood, in my home, in my family, in my relationships.

Paul says, I'm praying that you'll be so filled up you'll start to bear fruit. Not only that, you'll keep growing in your knowledge of God as you keep blessing others. Your eyes will be open to the ways that God has been blessing you. Then he says that you'll be strengthened with all power so that you would have patience and endurance. Now why does Paul say im praying for that?

That's one of those prayers that should give us a little pause, shouldn't it? Paul, why are you praying that I would have patience. Paul, why are you praying that I need to know how to endure? Because life happens and we know that life has happened to us in 2024, hadn't it Church? And we've experienced some life.

And Paul says, I'm praying that you'll be so filled up that even in the midst of life happening you'll have patience and endurance because you recognize this is not all the story, this is not all that there is, there's more to life. And so I'm not going to give up. I'm going to keep trusting, I'm going to keep hoping, I'm going to keep Believing. And when my friends are struggling and they're down and they're depressed, I rally around them and I, and I put an arm around him and say, don't give up, don't give up. Hang on, keep going, hang with me, I'll with you.

You're not alone. Paul says, I'm praying that you'll be so full, that you'll be strengthened time and time again with endurance and power and all of that will then well up into this thankfulness.

You see, church, our culture is training us to look at the negative all the time. Just watch the news. Actually don't watch the news. Just like look at the opening story, look at the headlines. They're not going, this incredible thing happened.

This guy was so kind of generous, he just gave his seat up on the subway for her. And nobody cares about those stories. They want to know about who died and how they die and what evil thing happened and how did this thing terrorizing it. We're being trained to look at the negative.

Paul says, I'm praying that you will be so full, that the spirit will be so active and at work in your life that you'll begin to see the good in the world, that you'll begin to see in the midst of chaos, in the midst of brokenness, these beautiful images of oh, Jesus showed up there. O, do you see Jesus? He just opened that door. Did you see Jesus? He just stepped out of the way so that person could step in front.

I'm praying that you'll be so full of thanks it will ll change. You see, when we're just focused on the negative, it chokes out our capacity to be thankful, to be grateful. Instead, he says, I'm praying, church, that you're going to be so full of the spirit that you can't help but see God's work in your life, that you continue to endure and to be strengthened, that you continue to encourage others because you know God is at work in the world. And so verse 12, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. For he's rescued us.

He's rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son that He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. See, God qualifies us, not some future version of us. He doesn't say, listen, work on a couple of these issues you got, you know, you know what they are, figure them out, then come back and talk to me. We'll see what's Up, Right? Well, just.

That's not what he says. He says he has qualified us to go to the Father by the blood of Christ, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. So, church, this is my prayer for us as we head into 2025. That God would so fill us with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit provides. That we would live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way.

And that you, church, would bear good fruit in your work. And that you, church, would grow in your knowledge of God. And that you, church, would be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, so that you could endure, that you could be patient in church. That you would give joyful thanks to the Father, the one who created and who redeemed and who recreates in you, the one who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people. The one who reminds you that what's happening right now is not all that's going on, that there is a force at the work that's greater in us.

This force in us is greater than the force in the world. And so may church, may that be our prayer in 2025, God, may it be. May it be the way that we live. May others see that we are so full of the Holy Spirit, that we've been so filled up with your love and your grace, that we can't get enough like goy that you would remind us why we gather every Sunday. It's not just to put a check in the box, that we gather around your word.

And we gather together in worship not because we have to, but because we long to. We want to know what true life really is like. We want to get to know you, Lord, your heart for others and your heart for us. We want to get to know the will that you have for our lives and God. We're praying about that as a church right now.

That you would open our eyes and our ears to what it is that you would have a say and do in the year ahead. That God, in doing so, you knit our hearts together as your church here at Broadway. And that God, as we move into 25, that you would help us to bear fruit, that in all the works that we do, that they would bring you glory and honor. And that, God, as we get to move together, that you would continue to grow our knowledge and our wisdom, not just in our heads, but in our hearts of who you really are. And in doing so, God, we'd be strengthened, we'd be empowered so that we could endure.

And so that we could have patience, knowing that life is still going to happen, that this side of heaven, Lord, sin is still at work. And the world, death is still a thing. But one day, Jesus, you are coming back and you will make all things new. But God, between that day and this, would you strengthen us so that we can endure, so that we can have patience, so that we can be a light of hope, A city on a hill.

And Father, would you help us to be the most thankful people around?

We’d be the most gracious people around because we've received the gift that has changed everything. God, would you help us to live in light of that beautiful gift? Now, that's our prayer. May it be so. In this year to come.

We pray in Jesus name. Amen.