As I continued meditating on what it means that God wants to
strengthen his children with all power, it became very clear that our
weaknesses are not in the way of what he wants to do. It is our willingness to
seek his strength that determines how well we join him in his work.
Here is a look at the meaning of “strengthened with all
power”[1]
with a view to understanding and appreciating how both the strength and the
power are of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are able to be strong in him if we
humble ourselves and pray for his strength to be perfected in our weakness.
Again, because this is the will of God, we can trust God to do this for
everyone who asks in Jesus’ name.
[1]
Colossians 1:11 (in the context of Paul’s prayer of Colossians 1:9-14)
So often in my sharing about God’s word, I find myself eager
to share both the general picture of how everyone can get to know God in his word,
and the specific testimony about what I just learned that day that illustrates
this point.
This Vlog aims to accomplish both desires. The general
picture is in how God’s word is like discovering hidden treasures, and the specific
testimony is how God used a number of these treasures to encourage me to pray that
we would be “strengthened with all power” in our living for Christ.[1]
Not only did I see why this prayer is so important, but I
also saw how God will answer us even as we are praying through his word! I do
have the advantage of age where our natural decline in physical strength does
seem to have an encouraging effect on our spiritual strength. However, this
certainly applies to all God’s children no matter our age.
It was one of those mornings where my eyes popped open earlier
than my alarm and I had to ask our Father in heaven whether there was anyone in
my life who needed prayer right then. While some people came to mind to pray
for, I mostly had a sense that I was to pray through the Beatitudes of Matthew
5:1-12 and seek God to make those things real for everyone in my life.
As I was praying, I became overwhelmed with the awareness of
two things. One was the way God was blessing me in my praying, and the other
was in the consideration of what Jesus had to do so my prayers could be
answered. I was so blessed in the things our Father was teaching me, and so
glad I could share them with you while out on my truck route prayer walk.
The more I learn about prayer, the more I realize that God
isn’t nearly as interested in my ideas for fixing things as I once imagined. Or,
perhaps I never even imagined that he was interested because I was too busy
being interested in my own ideas myself! Whatever the case, God has been
working on me to stop trying to figure out and fix things, but to pray the way
the apostle Paul has been teaching me in Colossians 1:9-14.
On the Saturday of Easter weekend 2022 I fulfilled a long-time
desire to hike a particular backroad that carved its way along the hillside to
the northeast of our community.
I enjoyed sight of a number of mule deer,
and discovered
a part of the range land where blue birds seemed to be in abundance.
Along the way I was pondering the things God had taught me
earlier in my time alone with him in his word. I was quite sure I’m not the
only one who has a propensity to struggle with prayer while having no problem
coming up with my own ideas of what I should do.
Since God was making the
difference so clear to me, it was easy to share these things in a video that
might encourage you as well.
I am all
for making the most of the fellowship and witnessing we can do on social media.
I like to hear what God is doing in other places and in other situations. I
like to share things to encourage the children of God, and I like to share
things that help people consider the good news of great joy that is all about
our Savior, Jesus the Christ.
However,
there are times when it feels overwhelming to hear of another disaster ruining
lives, or another wave of persecution decimating the Christian population of an
area. It is overwhelming to consider one prayer request after another to help
the Christians in war torn countries, or to intercede for Christians in prison
camps in communist countries and dictatorships.
And then
there are the tragic reports of people who are rescued from human trafficking
rings while we know that so many more are not. And unlimited accounts of people
trying to attach to God but hindered by horrific experiences of childhood abuse
with all its damaging trauma.
The other
morning in my meditation on God’s word, continuing to prayer-journal through
Paul’s prayer in Colossians 1, I found myself including more and more of these
hurting groups of Christians in my praying. It wasn’t easy. But neither was it
disappointing.
Instead, it
was almost a relief to give in to the need to pray for others with an open
heart that is willing to “weep with those who weep” even while we wish
we could “rejoice with those who rejoice”.[1] In
the end, it was another illustration of Jesus’ Beatitude, “Blessed are those
who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”[2] I
hope this short video has the same effect on you.
I don’t know when I first heard the word “attachment”,
but as I learned what it meant, I realized that it was the bridge between
things I knew inside me and what I saw revealed so clearly in God’s word of the
love, joy, and peace of the Spirit that conditions the fellowship of God’s
people.
I can recall reading about people struggling to explain the
Greek word “koinonia” which is translated into English as “fellowship”.
I could sense that various writers had come across a treasure of close
relationships in the early church that they longed to see reproduced in every
generation.
I can remember hearing about how Paul’s heart was expressed
in the book of Philippians in such a personal way and knew that I wanted to get
to know Paul like that. I could see for myself that he wrote the little book of
Philemon to address a very personal and sensitive issue between two brothers in
the Lord, and I knew that he had something going on in his relationships that
was almost foreign to me.
My point is that my discovery of the word “attachment”
seemed to shed so much light on this quest to know and understand how important
love-relationships were to God, and even how the triunity of God was so significant
to what it meant for us to be made in the image and likeness of the Triune.
In a very helpful book on developing relationships in the
church, The Other Half of Church, I found this description of
attachment:
Attachment is the strongest force in the human brain. It is
not an emotion, although we feel it strongly, and attachment runs much deeper
in the brain below willful control. Attachment is the best word scientists
could find for what glues people together and little creatures to their
parents. It produces an enduring care for the well-being of another. Attachment
is a life-giving forever bond with no mechanism in the brain to unglue us. If
God has an enduring love for us that brings us good, the only force in the
human brain that can understand such lasting kindness and care is the brain’s
attachment system.[1]
My point in sharing this is simply that it explains how God
designed our brains to match his design of our souls and spirits. He wants us
attached to him in a love-relationship with him that consumes us in heart,
soul, mind, and strength, and he wants us loving our neighbors as ourselves,
loving our enemies as he loved us while we were enemies, and loving one another
in the church in the very same way as Jesus loved us from the cross. Such a
high and lofty aim has a level of reality to it that is absolutely stirring,
while explaining why we are so traumatized by anything that is wrong in our
relationships.
If you’re still with me, this Vlog post is just a few minutes
more of showing how personally God’s word speaks to our need for attachment,
and for healing when attachments go wrong. May the word of Christ dwell in us
richly even in this![2]
I have often heard people stumble over the different ways
things are expressed in God’s word. Sometimes they think that God is
contradicting himself when he is simply looking at a truth through a different
facet of the diamond.
This hit me this morning when I saw that Paul’s prayer in
Colossians 1:9-14 referred to knowledge in one way that requires us to pray to
be filled, while looking at knowledge in another way requires us to pray that
our knowledge could keep increasing without ever being filled. And, both are
wonderful expression of God’s will!
The surprise of a snowy morning seemed so inviting to go out
and share a few thoughts about the way we can be both filled and increasing
while we pray. It was certainly a beautiful day to be out in God’s creation.
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