Colossians 4:3 meanwhile praying also for us, that God would open to us a door for the word, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in chains,

I’m not sure when the first time I heard of a genie was. But the idea seemed to pop up from time to time when I was a kid. Enough that I considered what I might wish for should the opportunity ever present itself!

Paul, at the close of his letter to the Colossians has a prayer request. If you’ve been around church for any length of time this comes as no surprise. A prayer request is a pretty common thing. I hear them often. We don’t feel the same constraints on prayer request as we do with bottle-genie wishes! We’re not limited to three!

Paul has a prayer request. That’s interesting. Maybe he was a lot like us! But hold on. What was his request? Of all that Paul might have asked them to pray about, his request seems a bit surprising. He asked that he might have an opportunity to spread the Gospel, or to speak a word for the Lord.

Is that unusual? Isn’t that what we’d expect someone like Paul to ask for? Is that what I would ask for? Is that the kind of prayer request we generally hear? It seems that most of the prayer requests I encounter, (even my own at times), have to do with asking God to alleviate some health issue, or fix some problem we’ve gotten ourselves into. If all of those kind of requests were answered by God and He ‘fixed’ all those problems, would it matter for eternity?

I think Paul was a lot like us, in that he knew what it was like to suffer and feel pain, discomfort, broken relationships, money troubles, etc. But the thing is, when he wrote this letter, when he asked them to pray for him, he was in prison! I’m afraid I would have led with that! “God, if you get me out of this prison, I’ll really look for opportunities to do Your will!”

Not Paul. His desire to spread the Gospel was his top priority. Maybe I should’t worry so much whether Paul was like me and ask God to help me be a lot more like Paul!

Blessings,

Pastor Russ