03.06 | Permeated by Prayer
Colossians 4:2-18
'Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.’
Colossians 4:2
How’s your prayer life?
It’s a funny question—although most of us who’ve been Christians for long enough have an understanding of what is intended by it. We understand it to be asking about both the quantity and quality of time spent praying. Is it regular, earnest, lengthy, and passionate? Or is it sporadic, desperate, distracted and clunky?
By this metric, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a positive response.
Be encouraged. The question misses something. Because while the Bible does describe times specifically carved out for nothing but prayer, the vision is vastly wider. Those scheduled times of prayer—times of intimacy and asking and listening—are there as training grounds for the soul towards a life of continual closeness with the Father. They are there not to contain prayer to those moments, but to let prayer permeate your every moment. To ask about your prayer life is really to ask about the intimacy and quality of your entire life, and the extent to which it is being lived saturated by awareness of and interaction with the Father who accompanies and animates you.
The better question might be, is your life prayer?
Today, Paul, moving quickly, gives us a thesis of prayer in just three words. They give us an insight into what kind of prayer trains the soul.
Steadfast. This word captures the idea both of direction and strength. It captures an idea of something that may be difficult, and yet urges you to persistence within it.
That doesn’t sound very encouraging.
Look closer.
Do you experience prayer to be easy, or difficult?
Most of us will say the latter.
To be steadfast in prayer is to recognise this difficulty. It is to recognise that prayer, while intended as our created language, has become a land through which we all stumble our way. Steadfast is the call to keep at it when it feels hard. Steadfast is the way of those who recognise that limping towards God is far greater than running away from Him. Steadfast is the dogged persistence of the one who does not view perfect intimacy to be attained in a moment, but sets their life in the direction of endless increase of friendship with the Father, through consistently returning each day to the basic direction of Him.
Watchful. The word has connotations of being awake, a metaphor in the Scriptures that has to do with intentionality. The sleeper is unintentional. The sleeper is unaware. The sleeper lets life happen to them. The sleeper is awake only to the realities of the world, missing the activity of heaven that reverberate on the cusp of your every moment. The watchful awaken to this reality, leaning in and opening up and learning to see. The watchful let their life of prayer be steered in each moment by the radical potential of God’s inbreaking world. The watchful are not passively waiting for God to happen to them; they are living every moment towards the imminent realities of the Kingdom of Jesus.
Thankful. Few things transform our prayers like thankfulness. Prayer without thankfulness is a shopping list. Prayer without thankfulness tends to treat God as a benefactor rather than a Father. Prayer without thankfulness wants the gifts of God without knowing the greatest gift is God Himself. And yet thankfulness deeply changes this. Thankfulness helps us to inhabit the beauty of this moment with God, without anxiously clutching for the needs of the next one. Thankfulness leads the heart to the rest of intimacy, able to breathe out and smile in the sunshine of His love in this moment, as the greatest and most enlivening and wonderful reality that our souls could ever taste. Thankfulness abides in His love in all situations, with His love as the very ecosystem in which the life of prayer grows.
Keep going—with direction and strength. Awaken to His reality in your every moment. And bring Him, always, your simple enjoyment of Him.
Three words that lead us deeper into the life permeated by prayer.
Reflect:
Steadfast. Watchful. Thankful.
Which word does my walk of prayer need most greatly right now?
Pray:
Father,
I’m always making you smaller,
And by doing so, I think,
I’ve made prayer smaller too.
I’ve made it a duty, at which I’m pretty sure I’m failing.
But Father,
I want to live more greatly than this.
I want to walk my every moment
In the atmosphere of your love
And in interaction with your voice
And permeated by your presence.
I want my times of prayer to train my soul towards this way of living
That my life be prayer,
And that you be my life.
And so, Father,
With steadfastness, and watchfulness and thanksgiving,
I ask you to open my eyes,
That my every moment may become lived with you
And this life may, day by day, become
Prayer.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
1 Kings 21-22 | Psalm 71:17-24