Let's turn to Colossians chapter 4, and in a moment we'll be reading verses 2 to 6, but tonight we're just going to be looking at verse 2. This evening we want to begin what will probably be a two-week series in looking at prayer, and then prayer and evangelism. We want tonight to look at the command to pray. We want to consider our commitment to prayer. We want to reflect on a believer's proper attitude toward prayer and in prayer. And we want to look at the content of our prayers. And that's going to be the foundation we're going to lay tonight. And then next time, Lord willing, I want us to consider then the role that prayer plays in evangelism. If God is sovereign, why are we to pray? And why would you pray specifically for the salvation of a sinner? What specific things should we be praying for in regards to evangelism and the preaching of the gospel? And along those lines, what should you and I be looking for and hoping for when it comes to gospel opportunities? And so we're going to have a focus both on prayer, prayer and evangelism and evangelism itself. And so in order to explore this question or these questions on how to pray and what to pray for and why to pray when it comes to evangelism, I want to first turn to our text. Our passage is Colossians, again, 4, verses 2 to 6. And we're going to be here, Lord willing, in the next couple of weeks. Here the Apostle Paul makes a very special appeal and gives very specific commands. regarding the believer and prayer, and he addresses the role of prayer in evangelism and evangelism itself. Follow along with me as we look briefly at these five verses. Verse two, devote yourselves to prayer. Keep alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving. praying at all times, or excuse me, I should say, praying at the same time for us as well, that God will open up to us a door for the word so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been imprisoned, that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak. Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity. Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person. And speaking of prayer, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, as we consider tonight several principles, three principles, to be specific regarding how to pray and what the believer's attitude is to be toward prayer, help us to grow in our devotion and our knowledge of what it means to pray and how to pray. I pray that we would be a praying people. I pray that we would have a powerful personal private prayer life, that we would also have a powerful prayer life with our husbands and wives, with our children, with Our family members with our brethren here in the church help us to be a praying people. Show us how to pray. Teach us how to pray. And Father, then show us how we pray and how we are to target our prayers in light of evangelism as we will see Lord willing next week. And also show us the attitude that we're to bring in evangelism, how we're to be prepared and what we are to expect in the process of evangelizing the lost. Help us to be able to tie this all together, this glorious calling to prayer, which leads ultimately also to evangelism. And so help us to just see the important role these things play, all working together as a part of your sovereign purpose in redeeming the sinner. And we just ask that this would be a special time. Help us to increase in our prayers. Forgive us for our infrequency in prayer. Forgive us for our neglect in prayer. We pray that we would have a fresh, renewed commitment to prayer as a body of believers. We ask this in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Now, as we come to our passage before us, really verse 2 tonight, I want us to look at three principles of faithful prayer. alertness and thanksgiving, devotion, alertness and thanksgiving. Paul begins with this command in verse two with this admonition of devotion to prayer. He literally says, devote yourselves to prayer. This then is the first principle, which is Paul's first exhortation. The believer, every believer, has been called to devote themselves to prayer. This is not simply a command isolated to the first century Colossian believers. This is for all of us. This is for you. This is for me, Christian. Devote yourself, devote yourselves to prayer. It's interesting how many times in the scriptures. They command us, they urge us, they exhort us, they call the believer to a life of consistent, faithful, devoted prayer. Stressing not only the importance of prayer and how to pray and why to pray, but embedded within this command and other commands like it, is this implied concept that Every believer has a tendency to drift from the mornings of devoted prayer. Why these repeated calls to be devoted in prayer all the time? Not just to stretch the urgency of it, but to remind us that we tend to drift from devoted prayer. In fact, I suspect that few believers have ever even ventured into the waters of what could even remotely be called devoted prayer. Nevertheless, we are repeatedly in the scriptures, all of us who are in Christ, commanded and called to a life of devoted prayer. But before we look at what devoted prayer is, let's ask the question, what is prayer? Very simply, prayer is the believer coming to God in faith through Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit, and thus speaking to God, either verbally or silently, arises out of the heart and the mind. It includes prayer and adoration. exalting God and His works and His will in our prayers. It includes supplication and requests, demonstrating our total dependence upon Him for all things. It includes thanksgiving to God in prayer, expressing our gratitude toward Him for all of His provisions and blessings, and all that He has done, is doing, and will yet do throughout all eternity. Prayer is born out of the believer's love for God, in that we yearn for fellowship with Him in prayer. It makes no sense at all to claim to desire fellowship but not seek Him in prayer. Prayer is born out of the believer's faith and trust in God, in that we look completely to Him for all of our spiritual and physical needs. We are dependent. Prayer is born out of a heart which knows that God is sovereign. And Him being sovereign, we know that if anything is going to happen, He's the one who must bring it to pass. And we know that He has chosen to use the means of prayer to bring about His will. Prayer is born out of our longing for God to obey Him, because He is the one who repeatedly calls us to devoted prayer, and so we want to obey him in this. Prayer is born out of a heavenly, spiritual, eternal perspective that looks to God and to the future and to spiritual matters, not merely to the earthly realm for solutions, for answers, for devotion and direction in life. Prayer is born out of a desire to fight against sin, because nothing guards and protects against temptation and sin more than faithful, fervent, devoted prayer. Therefore, our devotion to prayer, or lack thereof, really reveals how much we desire fellowship with God. Our devotion to prayer, or lack thereof, really reveals how much we actually trust God and depend on Him. Our devotion to prayer, or lack thereof, really reveals how much we desire to obey Him. And our devotion to prayer, or lack thereof, reveals exactly how badly we want to get rid of sin in our lives. Prayer may be the truest barometer in a believer's life to indicate exactly where we are, spiritually speaking. Nothing else we do as a Christian, as a matter of fact, shows forth our inner desires for God, our sincerity in faith more than our devotion or lack thereof to prayer. Almost everything we do as a Christian, almost everything else can be done by duty, by habit, by external show. It shouldn't be all for show. It shouldn't be for show at all. But the private, personal prayer life, which no one can see, you can't fake that. Because no one can see that but you and God. It sure is a sign, therefore, for the believer of the genuineness and the intimacy of their walk with God is their private, personal prayer life. Few will devote themselves to genuine prayer who are not genuinely devoted to God. And all of those who are devoted to God, I mean really devoted to God, for real devoted to God, will also be devoted to prayer. Prayer, especially private prayer, reveals the strength of the believer's relationship with God like nothing else. In fact, only you and the Lord know the strength of your private prayer life. You could be a prayer warrior all the time praying, or you might not pray at all and we wouldn't know it necessarily. I believe it's going to be manifest in your life, but we won't know what's going on behind the scenes. Sure, all of us can pray publicly. Most pray before meals, before road trips, before a special event, before surgery, before Bible study. We can bow our heads and agree when someone else prays and that's all fine and good. But only you and God knows what takes place when you're alone. That's where your real prayer life thrives and exists. When we're all alone. But no one can see or hear what's taking place in our minds. Therefore, I would ask you, as J.C. Ryle does in his famous book, A Call to Prayer, I ask you, brethren, do you pray? Do you pray? And I don't mean just before the meals or before the road trips. I mean, do you devote yourself? Do you devote yourself to prayer? The word here that Paul uses for devoted, it's an interesting word, proskartoreo in the Greek has a root word, kardoreo, kardoreo literally speaks of steadfastness or endurance. And added to that root word of steadfastness and endurance in prayer is a prefix which really only serves to intensify the meaning of the root word. And so if cartereo literally means steadfastness or endurance, pra-cartereo means super steadfastness and endurance. Here is the command. It is a command from God through Paul to you, believer, It says basically this, quote, you be really, really super devoted to ongoing, faithful, fervent, persistent, continuous prayer. That's the command. Literally, it can mean to hold fast to prayer and never let go. Private prayers, prayers with your family, prayers with your spouse, prayers with your brothers in Christ, corporate prayer. Let's kind of illustrate this call to persistent prayer. I want to reference a couple of parables that Jesus told regarding prayer. Both of them I want to look at are in Luke. Let's begin with the one I find or we find in Luke chapter 18, starting in verse one. Here you find a widow who is appealing to a wicked judge. And Jesus begins in verse one of Luke 18. Now he was telling them. a parable to show them, look what he says here, that at all times they ought to pray. Now, Luke is telling us exactly why Jesus is telling us this parable. Jesus is telling us this parable, Luke says, to show us, to teach us, that we ought to pray at all times and not lose heart. According to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, according to the commentary that Luke here provides, how often should a believer pray? Well, all the time. All the time. Do you hear that? That kind of prayer life we should have, Luke says. It says that Jesus told this parable to show them that at all times they ought to pray. We should do this, we ought to do this. Luke tells us where we are basically never entirely, basically we are never entirely to be disengaged from prayer. Because our minds are never disengaged from God, at least they shouldn't be. We should be constantly aware of Him. constantly dependent upon him, constantly seeking his provision and guidance. It's like breathing, right? How long could you go without breathing? Not too long. And so we're to seek a prayer life that is something akin to breathing. It doesn't mean that every prayer is this long organized prayer where you get alone in a closet and you close your eyes or you lift your hands up to heaven. They can be a silent prayer, just talking to the Lord, awareness of God throughout the day as you're continuously beseeching Him and seeking Him and aware of His presence and in a state of gratitude. We're never entirely disengaged from prayer. As I was preparing the lesson tonight, not for boasting, but I think in my own mind, I probably stopped 40 times, just brief prayers as I'm preparing the sermon. You can discipline yourself to learn to do that so that prayers are lifted throughout the day. I try to get to the point where it's almost every minute or so, just a thought, just anything. And in between that, just constant awareness of God. I don't claim to be there, but that's what we should strive for. You know, I've often wondered how often we would pray if God always immediately and very noticeably answered every single prayer exactly as we asked, how often do you think we'd pray? If he answered us always, immediately, noticeably, exactly as we asked, every time. Lord, I want a sports car. Boom, there it is. Keys, bow in the hood, everything like that. If the Lord were to provide for us like that, We would be so fervent in prayer, you couldn't shut us up. You see, the point is, we don't always see his working, we don't always see the immediate answer. We don't always know how he's going to work it out. We lack the faith, we're too earthbound in our perspective. And since we don't see those kinds of immediate results and since they aren't all aligned with our desires, we tend to neglect prayer because we don't see the practicality of it. Notice how Luke says in verse 1, not only did Jesus tell them the parable to show them that at all times they ought to pray, but also to not lose heart. Don't give up. Keep on praying persistently. Just because you don't get what you want with a bow on it, boom, they're right next to you the instant you ask for it. Don't stop, don't quit, don't give up. And so he tells this parable of this woman who comes to this wicked judge. Let's look what he says here, verse two, saying, here's the parable, in a certain city there was a judge who did not fear God and did not respect man. It doesn't get much worse than that. This is the last guy that you'd want to be dependent upon to have a need met. But this human judge there in Jesus' parable stands as a contrast to God. This is a wicked, secular judge versus the glorious, divine, heavenly judge. And Jesus continues in the parable, verse 3, There was a widow in that city, and she kept coming to him, saying, Give me legal protection from my opponent. For a while he was unwilling, but afterward he said to himself, even though I do not fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow bothers me, I will give her legal protection. Otherwise, by continually coming, she will wear me out. I mean, this woman is relentless. She comes again and again and again, day and night and weekends. When he's in a round of golf, he's just always there. She's just harassing him. She's wearing this guy out with continual requests. I hope you know I'm joking about the golf comment there. Look at verse seven. Now, will will not God bring about justice for his elect who cry to him day and night? In other words, is this wicked? Unrighteous judge would respond to the persistent pleads of a woman. How much more the righteous judge of the universe, who is your heavenly father, who cares for you? When you beseech him, will he not answer your prayer? We are to be crying out, Jesus said, by illustration, day and night. You see the cries of God's people. How far are our prayers from crying out day and night to God? Just by way of self-evaluation, I would encourage you to think about, okay, take away the prayer before meal, take away the prayer before the drive to the city, take away the prayer before the surgery or the doctor's visit, take away the prayer before Bible study, You should do those things. Take those things away, though, and what's left? Because those are kind of the peripheral things, not the central things. That's not the heart of a life of devoted prayer. That's the outworkings of a life of devoted prayer. At least it should be. So, in your own mind, think about your own life between you and God, and you take away those issues, those times of prayer. What are you left with? Could it be said of you? This is a man or woman devoted to prayer, who cries out to God day and night, beseeching the Lord of the universe. Jesus said, I tell you that He will bring about justice for them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, now notice this, verse 8, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth? Now that's an interesting statement. You hear the sorrow? the grief, in Jesus' words, His people, even His elect, ought to be praying all the time, day and night, continually, lifting their voices in faith and unceasing dependence upon Him. But Jesus says, when I return, will I find even one person who is praying as they ought to pray? One person that has the sense to be that dependent upon God. And I think we're tempted to conclude that Jesus and other commands like this is sort of all an exaggeration. God doesn't really expect us to pray all the time. But I tell you, folks, it's repeated so often and it's so clear in Scripture, I don't know any other way to interpret it. Sometimes people just take what he says and well, I think all that Jesus is saying is we ought to pray a lot That's not what he says. It's not what the scriptures say says pray all the time This is not an exaggeration Now again, that doesn't mean that we're constantly ordering our words up to the Lord and There is time for that, there is time for vocal prayer, there is time for private prayer. I think the idea here is that the Christian is going through life with a continuous sense of the awareness of God, of the awareness of the presence of God, of the eyes of the Lord upon him, of his own life before God. So that nothing is done or said or thought apart from this full, vibrant awareness of the immediate presence of God in the sense of absolute awareness and accountability before the Lord all the time. So that in the midst of all of that, a heart, a life, a mind that is that aware of the presence of God is going to be continuously also verbalizing various prayers. It's the most natural thing to do. If you are that dependent upon God and that aware of God's presence and that thankful to God in your own life, that desirous of fellowship with him is just going to happen again and again and again and again. But we need to be reminded because our tendency is to be distracted by the world, the flesh and the devil, to get our eyes on the earthly plane, to forget, to get distracted. Let's look at another. Parable, this is back a few chapters in Luke chapter 11, verses 5 to 10. This time, this is not a wicked judge, this is actually a friend. We read this time, it says, then he said to them, suppose one of you has a friend and goes to him at midnight and says to him, friend, lend me three loaves. You ever gotten a knock on the door in the middle of the night for food? I haven't yet, but you know, I think that that's Jesus point. This is kind of surprising. It's like midnight and I need some food. Some people have just shown up from a journey, verse six, and I have nothing to set before him. No time to prepare the bread. And from inside, he hears an answer. Do not bother me. The door has already been shut. My children and I are in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything. Not much of a friend, but maybe a little better than the judge. I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence, he will get up and give him as much as he needs. And again, we don't want to conclude from this that Jesus is saying that God is somehow reluctant to answer our prayers and that he will answer our prayers if we just harass him enough. Again, the idea is one of comparison. The idea is this. If you have this wicked judge or a not-too-great friend, and you harass them enough, they're going to give you what you ask. How much infinitely more the God who knows you and loves you and cares for you, why would we hesitate to persist in prayer with Him when He is glad to provide us? what we need. He who provided Christ, the Bible says, you gave the son. How will he not also freely provide us or give us all things? Verse nine of the parable. So I say to you, and here's where Jesus makes the application to prayer. Ask And it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be open to you. Those three forms there, ask, seek, and knock, are given by way of command. They are imperative command. You do this. Ask, seek, knock. Then look down at verse 10. There's something here I want us to see about the form of the words here. In verse 10 he says, everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What's interesting here is that the word asks, seeks, and knocks here are what are called the present participles in Greek. We've seen that on Sunday morning in 1 John. Remember talking about the one who sins? It's a participle referring to one who continuously sins as a way of life. When we talk about one who does righteousness, that also is a participle, speaking of one who continuously does righteousness as a preponderance or a predominating aspect of life. The same structure of the Greek Words is found here in verse 10 for asks, seeks and knocks, and it could be translated like this for everyone who keeps on asking. Receives. And he who keeps on seeking. Finds and to him who knocks or keeps on knocking, it will be open. There's been this continuous ongoing action. Continuing with this theme of devoted prayer, Ephesians 6.18 says that we are to engage the Lord with all prayer and petition, praying at all times in the Spirit. And with this in view, be alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints. Pray at all times in the Spirit. 1 Thessalonians 5.17 says, pray without ceasing. This, by the way, is actually the shortest verse in the Greek New Testament. We've talked about this before. Jesus wept is the shortest English verse, but this is the shortest verse in the Greek New Testament. And it literally reads this way. It's a you, plural, it's a command. It literally says, it begins with the word unceasingly or constantly. It is like saying this, Eric, unceasingly, constantly pray. That's the way the verse reads. Julian, unceasingly pray. That's what God is saying. Brent, unceasingly pray. Phyllis unceasingly pray. This is the Lord's command to his people unceasingly pray. Romans 12 to Paul says there that we are to be those who rejoice in hope, who persevere in tribulation, who are devoted to prayer. Some of the prayers will be silent. Some will be vocal. Some will be private. Some will be public. Some will be short. Others will be long. Some will be more just an awareness of God and our dependence upon him. In Acts chapter one, verse 14, as we look at the history of the church, we see the first 120 disciples gathering in the upper room after Jesus' crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. And it says there of those people, these were together with one mind, continually devoting themselves to prayer. They were not just in devoted, continuous prayer in their private life, they were, as a congregation, continuously devoted to corporate prayer. It was a way of life for them. It dominated the early church. They were committed to corporate prayer, and that doesn't mean just listening to the preacher pray and agreeing. That means gathering with God's people at times that the church marks out to pray and being with God's people. This is a mark of discipleship, not just a commitment to evangelism and preaching, but a commitment to corporate prayer in Acts chapter two, verse forty two. It describes the nature of the fellowship of the early church in this way. Quote, They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles, teaching to fellowship to the breaking of bread, which would have been probably the Lord's Supper and to prayer to prayer again. There is, according to Luke's language here, this devotion in the early church to preaching fellowship and to prayer. I'll tell you, it would cause my heart as a pastor to leap for joy, to see our time with corporate prayer swell to such large ranks that we would have to move into the worship center. But in the five years I've been here, The corporate prayer time is the lowest attended of anything we do at the church. Rarely have we ever had more than 12 people. Usually it's less than that. Now, as we continue going through the Book of Acts, we see that not only was the church devoted to prayer, but the church leaders identified themselves as being devoted to prayer. Remember when the first deacons were selected? how they didn't have time to spend waiting on tables. Remember that? And so they selected these deacons to take care of the Hellenistic widows. And what was the reason they couldn't do this as the church leadership? They said, Act 6.4, but we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. So a healthy, vibrant church is a church as equally committed to corporate prayer as it is to corporate preaching. We find them throughout the Book of Acts going hand in hand, corporate preaching time, corporate prayer time. I heard Steve Lawson say one time, even at his own congregation, and they're a much, much larger church than we are, that during the time of preaching, there are lots of folks there, but when it's time for corporate prayer, it's like marbles in a barrel. Just very, very low, low attendance. I can't help but think that it might be reflective, possibly, of a degree of personal prayer life. I don't know. It's between the individual and God. There's other reasons, I understand. But we need to consider, are we devoted to prayer, the way the Scriptures call us? to be devoted to prayer. Secondly, not only are we to be devoted to prayer, we are to be alert in prayer. That's the second principle of prayer we see in verse two. Be alert in it. Be devoted. That means be continuously, faithfully ongoing in prayer. But in that prayer, be alert in that prayer. That has a lot of implications to it. First of all, when we're praying, we don't want to wander into mindless wrote repetition, you know, familiar words without meaning. Ramblings without deliberate content. or intent, such that we can become distracted. And people can do this. They're so familiar to praying a certain way and saying certain words over and over again that they just sort of can engage in prayer without even thinking about God or thinking about engaging God or thinking about the words they're saying. There is to be for the Christian, not just devotion, but a great deliberateness in prayer. The word again here for keeping alert is a participle, just like we saw before, and it speaks again here of ongoing, unceasing, unyielding alertness. You stay alert the whole time. In other words, be devoted to prayer, but let every prayer be deliberate, be thoughtful, be purposeful, be specific. The word here for alertness or being alert is Gregorao. We get our English name Gregory from it. You never knew there was so much Greek in English, did you? The word means to keep awake, to stay alert, to be watchful. Fundamentally, it also means to stay awake and not fall asleep during prayer. Stay awake when you pray. You ever struggle with that? This word was used, for example, by Jesus in speaking with his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane on the very night that he was betrayed. You remember, he left them alone to go off in time of private prayer. He wanted to go pray, but each time he came back, they had fallen asleep. What did Jesus want them to do while he went off alone to pray? Just hang out? He wanted them to pray. And the problem is they kept falling asleep in prayer. And Jesus uses the same word here for being alert a couple of times. Matthew 26 verses 40 and 41. He came to his disciples, he found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, so you men could not keep watch, there's that word, with me? You couldn't stay awake and pray for one hour? You know, we have a society, a modern evangelical church, if you keep people for more than an hour for anything, you've broken some unwritten cultural code. We're so, we're wimps, you know? Where's the, you know, where's the discipline? I don't mean that there's not times when our bodies don't struggle or anything like that, but we have to be training our kids up from childhood to sit and to be quiet, and to pay attention, and to focus their attention. We have a society now which is distraction, distraction, distraction, distraction. I enjoy old movies. You guys are familiar with that fact, I'm sure. It's interesting that in the old days they used to have a camera angle and they'd hold that camera angle and they'd play out a scene that would last for a while. And now I think the average TV show shifts camera angles On average, every one and a half to two seconds in some some areas, we're just constant change all the time. Move, move, change. And if there isn't constant changing, we're just bored. I was having a conversation online with some other pastors around the country, actually around the globe this last week. And we can't preach to the people. We can't go over this amount of time. They just they can't handle it. They're just bored. And I'm thinking, are we talking about the same Bible and the same God? Did these same people fall asleep watching the Avengers, which is over two hours long? Why do these things hold our attention and not the Word of God? The Word of God ought to be so far above anything this world can possibly offer us in the realm of entertainment or music that we are just enthralled and thrilled to the core of our being to be exposed to deeper truth by the Word of God or within the Word of God. Sometimes people say, there's so much, I can't contain it all. That's good. That overflow is good. It shows you how big God is, how big His truth is. You go to a lot of churches, it's like your life and your mind is a water bucket and they take a little drop and they go, you got it all, great. I'd rather just dump, you know, the ice bucket challenge and fill it up to overflowing. You're going to have a lot spill out over the edges, but you're going to get a whole lot more in your bucket as well. We need to have a people in today's day and age, especially as the world is collapsing and falling apart in certain areas, in many areas, in every area virtually. We need a church that is patient, that is steady, that is stable, that is faithful, that is steadfast, that is immovable. that is committed to preaching, that is committed to prayer, that is committed to discipleship and evangelism, and so much of this requires time and sacrifice in giving of ourselves for the body. Remember what Jesus said to his disciples? Could you not stay awake with me for even one hour? He says, Keep watching, and there's that participle again, keep on watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, and that's our problem, isn't it? Why aren't we as devoted as we should be? Why aren't we as alert as we should be to prayer? Well, it's because our spirit is willing to pray like this, but our flesh is not. And that's the clue. That's the key. Don't you want to pray like this? I sure do. Don't you want to be marked out in your life as a Christian, as devoted and alert? Yes, we want that. Doesn't your spirit want that? Guess what? Your flesh doesn't want it. Who's going to win the day? Remember what Paul said, I beat my body to make it what? My slave. Somebody's got to rule the roost. It's either going to be your flesh ruling your spirit or it's going to be your spirit ruling your flesh. You make this casing that is housing your spirit your slave. You make it do what it needs to do. You make it sit down and read the Bible. You make it pray. You make it hold back its desires and its pleasures and its relaxation to do the things that matter. There's a battle going on there and you must subdue that flesh. You must bring it into alignment with the will of God. And it's not easy. It's difficult. Listen to Peter, first Peter, four, seven. The end of all things is near. It's interesting, even 2000 years ago that Peter would say that, isn't it? The end of all things is near. And I'll tell you, when we get into an eternity, we're going to look back at all of redemptive history and it's going to look like that. Peter says the end of all things is near. So what do we do as Christians? Therefore, be self-controlled, sober minded for the sake of your prayers. Get a hold of your body, get a hold of your mind, discipline yourself, focus your attention. Don't let your flesh have its way. Don't let your mind get distracted. We are to make our flesh, our bodies, our minds subject to our Spirit, to the Holy Spirit, to the Word of God. 1 Corinthians 9.27, again I've made reference to it, I discipline my body and I make it my slave. But this alertness, by the way, in prayer goes beyond even mental and physical alertness. This alertness also means that we should be fully aware about what we are praying. Right. We need to know the prayers of scripture. We need to know what to pray for. We need to know how to pray. Being alert in prayer means praying for very specific things. Too many Christians pray these sort of vague, fuzzy, general, one-size-fits-all kinds of prayers, you know, God bless so-and-so, and God bless the church, and bless this, and bless that, and forgive us of our sins, and save the lost, and... How are those kind of prayers going to get answered? And how would we even recognize them if they did get answered? How about praying for very specific issues? Pray about specific sin issues in your life. When you come in repentance, ask for forgiveness for that particular sin. Don't forget to deal with your motives. Forgive me for my sinful attitude. Forgive me for my selfishness. Forgive me for my greed. Forgive me for not loving my brother the way I should have. Forgive me for the words that I spoke. Forgive me for dishonoring your name. Forgive me for not walking worthy at this moment of my calling. You start lifting up every single one of your perceived sins that you are aware of in your life, and it's going to radically affect the way you live. Don't just pray, God bless so-and-so. Make specific requests what blessing you are asking of God on behalf of the person. Don't just say, God save the lost. Pray for people by name, people you are concerned with, people you have opportunities to share the gospel with, or somebody that has made requests of you. Would you pray for so-and-so? Pray for specific blessings. We also tend to pray for the wrong things. The Bible tells us we tend to be too fleshly minded, not heavenly minded enough. James 4.3 says you ask and you do not receive because you ask with the wrong motives so that you may spend it on your pleasures. We get upset because we don't get that car with the bow on the hood. So we're to be devoted to prayer and we are to be alert in prayer mentally, physically, spiritually, and we're to know what to pray for and where to be specific in our prayers. And then third, the final principle for tonight in verse two. When we pray, we are to approach the prayer with an attitude of thanksgiving. That's first to also devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving, literally with thanksgiving. This describes, by the way, both our attitude, one of thanksgiving and the specific content of our prayers. We ought to be giving actual thanks. I think we actually begin to think of all the things that God has blessed us with physically and spiritually. We wouldn't even get out of the Thanksgiving portion of our prayers to supplication or requests. First Thessalonians 518 says this in everything. Give thanks for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Do you hear that? In everything, give thanks for this is God's will for you. You want to know what God's will is for your life? One of the things that is God's will for you, for me, is that we would be those who learned to give thanks in everything. Everything. And again, not just these generic, thank you Lord for my blessings. Thank Him specifically. Thank you, Father. I'll pray this for Kimberly all the time. Thank you, Father, for a godly wife. Thank you for a woman who loves the Lord, who loves the children, who loves me, who cares for our household, who provides for our household needs, for a woman who's discerning and who's wise, who loves the scriptures, who loves the ladies at the church. Lord, would you do this in her life? Would you do that in her life? Would I be a better husband to her? All these things just get really, really, really specific. with your prayers, because this is what is going to, first of all, focus your mind and your attention on those things that you need to work on in your life, and then when God begins to do these things in your life, you're going to see the answered prayer, and that will redound to thanksgiving. You're going to see the specific answers to specific prayers. Specific prayers get specific answers. Generic prayers get... who knows? Philippians 4.6, be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known unto God. And the context there is that of anxiety. And anxiety involves worry or trial. And what it's saying is in the middle of your worry, in the middle of your trial, go ahead and bring that to the Lord in prayer. And when you do that in the midst of your trial, do that with thanksgiving for the trial. God wants you and I to literally give thanks in everything. This is to be our attitude in prayer, but we're also specifically to give thanks for those blessings, those provisions, those plans of God in our lives, for everything the Bible tells us is from Him, and for His purpose, and for His glory, and for your good and my good. even when we face trials. James 1, starting in verse 2, says, Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance, and let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect, complete, lacking in nothing. It's all to be a cause for joy, and for that it is all to be a cause for thanksgiving because God is using every experience, every situation in your life and mine to sanctify us. Five times, by the way, Paul mentions thanksgiving here in this letter to the Colossians. The first time we see this in the first chapter, verse 3, there Paul, He's thankful for the brethren. He's thankful that God has saved them. Verse 12 of chapter one, he says that we should be thankful for our inheritance in Christ, thankful for our salvation. Chapter two, verse seven. He says, now being firmly rooted and built up in him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. And so our gratitude is to be in everything and our thanksgiving is to be in everything. It's to overflow. That's why you need buckets that are overflowing with truth, by the way, because your prayers and your thanksgiving are to be overflowing. It's to be so much we can't handle it. That's good. That's the God of Scripture. The God of Scripture is so glorious, so big, so grand that we can't handle all of it. And when you get a sense that it's too big and too much, then you know you're coming closer and closer to the God of Scripture. Because that's who he is. Colossians 3 15. Let the peace of Christ rule in your heart, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful. And so the general rule of thumb is that peace within the body of Christ comes about amongst the people who are grateful, who are thankful. Grumpy, complaining people are not peaceful people, right? They tend to not bring peace with them because they're not content, and they bring instead clamor until they get what they want. Be thankful. That's that's a formula for peace amongst the brethren in the home. Be grateful. Colossians 317 says, Whatever you do in word or deed, you all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father. Anything you do word deed, do it all in Jesus name. That is all for his honor, all for his glory, all within his will. And in all of that, giving thanks through him to God, the Father. And so in whatever we do, we are to give thanks in everything we go through in life. And here again, it is critical to know the scriptures so that we can recognize those things for which we should be thankful. The more you know the word of God, the more you're going to see the mark of God in your life and his work in the world around you. Things for which people should be thankful for are passing by them all the time, and they don't even recognize it because they don't know what God is doing. We need to know the Word of God well so that we can be in this mode of gratitude. In Psalm 26 7, the psalmist says, Oh, that I may proclaim with the voice of thanksgiving and declare your wonders. Psalm 6930 says, I will praise the name of God with song and magnify him with thanksgiving. Psalm 751 says, We give thanks to you, O God, we give thanks for your name is near. Psalm 95 to let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, let us shout joyfully to him with Psalms. And then Psalm 100, the entire psalm is a psalm of thanksgiving. Let me just read it for you. It's really brief. It says, verse 1, Psalm 100, a psalm of thanksgiving. Shout joyfully to the Lord. All the earth serve the Lord with gladness. Come before him with joyful singing. Know that the Lord himself is good. It is he who has made us, and not ourselves. We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his court with praise. Give thanks to him. Bless his name, for the Lord is good. His love and kindness is everlasting, and his faithfulness to all generations." All throughout Scripture, this concept of thanksgiving is not only tied together with prayer, but with worship. That's really what prayer is, by the way. It's a form of worship. In fact, most of the uses of the word thanksgiving in the Old Testament are found in the Psalms, which is the songbook of the Old Testament. Be thankful. Praise, worship is born out of gratitude. It acknowledges God as the source, as the provider for all good things. He made us. We are his sheep. He has provided a pasture for our provision. Therefore, we enter his presence with thanksgiving. So my encouragement, my exhortation, my prayer, brethren, would be that we would fully apply ourselves to pursuing these three principles of prayer. Devotion. Alertedness. and thanksgiving. May God make us in every way a praying people who pray like this. I don't think that God really ever blesses a church as it could be blessed until the private prayers and corporate prayers of that church are lifted above a whisper. Pray that the Lord would enlarge our faith that we might see the need for prayer, enlarge our desire to fellowship with him, that we might long to come before him in prayer, enlarge our desire to be a part of the prayers of his people, that we would see it, that we would not grow weary. Pray that we would be awake and alert and oh, such a grateful people. Would you pray this for yourself? Pray this for your family. Pray this for the church. Father in heaven, Lord, we don't know why we're so forgetful of prayer at times. We're so weak. We're so distracted. Our eyes grasp onto the physical world around us, our ears embrace the sounds, our hands sense the tactile interaction of our environment. We feel it, we see it, we hear it, we sense it. And along with that intensity of physicality that is part of being human is this tendency, Father, to just be drawn away, to coddle and to care for only that aspect of our being. And yet, Father, that's really the wrong priority. Yes, we're to get the right rest, the right exercise, eat the right foods. We're to enjoy many of the good pleasures that you've given to us in this world within right measure and in the right circumstance and context. And yet these old bodies are going to die. They will not live forever. Only our resurrected bodies will live forever. Let us, as Jesus said, lay up treasures in heaven where moth and rust don't corrupt, where thieves do not break in and steal. Let us see, Father, that even though the spiritual realm and the kingdom of heaven is less tactile to us here, we do not see, we do not hear, we do not perceive the angels singing, we do not see the throne of our Savior. We do not perceive yet the glories of heaven. Our feet are not yet striving and walking on streets of gold. So the temptation is to see that it is so far away. And yet, Father, I pray that spiritually we would become so grounded in the reality of the future glory with you that it would actually supersede. The earthly, the present, the temporal. Since we would be driven in our spirits like Paul to set our minds on the things above and discipline and buffet our bodies to make them our servants, that we might, first of all, use these hands, these ears, these eyes these lips, these mouths, these feet to serve you, to make them be subject as slaves, to do the work of ministry, to pursue you in prayer and in the study of the word, to make our hands hold the Bible and open them, to make our eyes gaze upon the words of the page, to engage our brains in the word that is being spoken, to move our lips in teaching and preaching and prayer. soul might cry out in conjunction and harmony with the Spirit who is within us. We have minds that are renewed and sanctified, that you would move us increasingly toward prayer. Even if we are older, middle-aged, whatever, if we've never known prayer this way, let us pursue that kind of prayer the rest of the days of our life. Father, we are feeble, we are frail, We often don't know what course to take to start down the path of biblical prayer, especially if it's not been a habit. In fact, if it's not been a habit, the temptation is to conclude that this is a part of our own personal spiritual makeup, that we're just not cut that way to be men and women of prayer. But this is not true. You created the heavens and the earth. You sustain them by your power. And so you can work in the life of any believer. and to make them as devoted to prayer as Christ or Paul. Father in heaven, we do pray that you would so work in us that we would be... we realize, Father, there's not a one of us here who this side of heaven will ever establish the kind of prayer life that we should. But let us pursue it relentlessly. Remind us again and again through your Spirit Hound us, Father, in grace to bring us to prayer. Help us to pursue devoted prayer, faithful prayer, alert prayer, thankful prayer. May we encourage each other. May we gather together for moments of prayer here and there, twos, threes, groups, meeting in homes and elsewhere, and especially in the corporate prayer meeting, Father. You know our schedules. You know our needs. You know the physical demands. I'm not going to presume to dictate to anyone. You know, and so I just put them and we place ourselves in your hands. But we do ask that if there's nothing truly hindering from gathering for corporate prayer, would next Sunday, next Sunday at five o'clock, be the largest attendance of prayer time that this church has ever seen? And may that flood into our lives and into our church as a true reformation and revival. Revive us, O Lord. We're so thankful for everything you've done in our doing. Would you do more? Would you do over and beyond, more abundantly, beyond anything we could ask or think in a way that would surpass even our wildest, most glorious imaginations? Help us in our frailty. in our shortcomings, to be increasingly made like Christ and our Savior in our prayer life forward. And we ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. And amen.