To the Tick Tock and You Don't Stop

Paul says in Colossians 4:2 to

“devote yourselves to prayer.”

Devote (proskartereo) – to continue in, devote, to hold strongly, clasp on

Think of being in a stormy sea, maybe in the midst of a hurricane in the middle of the ocean. As you gasp for breath and frantically fight to stay above water you notice a buoy close by. You reach out and grab the buoy, embracing it with all your strength and might. You hold on for dear life, for this buoy is the only thing keeping you alive in this storm.

That’s the word Paul uses to describe our prayer life in Colossians. Pray diligently, devoting yourself to it. Devotion has to do with dedication and an investment. Too often we pray as an afterthought (“well, I tried everything else, I might as well pray about it”), or we pray mechanically (blessing the food, before we go to sleep, before a test or presentation, etc) or we pray out of a reactive panic (“oh no, my world just collapsed, God help me!!”)

Prayer is simply communicating with God. We all know relationships cannot survive without proper communication. If we only spoke to our loved ones as an afterthought, or mechanically, or only when things were as jacked up as they could possibly be, what kind of relationship would we be involved in? A dying one, if it isn’t dead already. Yet many times we approach God like this. To keep our spiritual relationship fresh and flourishing we need to live a life of communication. That’s why Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to “pray without intermission”. During plays and Broadway shows the acts are separated by intermissions. This is a time where the audience can socialize, freshen up, hit up the concession stand etc. Let’s bring it home to us. Halftime during a football game. It’s not the game; it has no relevance or determination towards the outcome of the main even – the battle that’s happening on the field.

Paul says don’t have a “halftime show” in your prayer life. This game is too serious to pause. Once we’ve been engaged we don’t want the enemy to have a “halftime” to go over our plays and our strategy and figure out how to come out in the 2nd half and be better, stronger, and more efficient. No! Let’s keep the game going; our strategy – prayer. Prayer without ceasing. Prayer works, and when we have a play that works, that the opposing team can’t stop, what do you do coach?

Join us tonight after service for our Men’s Prayer service. And let’s begin and continue to live a life of dedicated, invested, and devoted prayer.
God bless…