Reading: Colossians 1:1-23

Paul tells us a lot about how he prayed for the Church and what the ultimate goal of his prayer was. Prayer’s ultimate goal is not that God’s people would be comfortable or happy, but that Jesus Christ would be manifested and glorified and reign supremely through His Church.

This is not something that can happen without prayer. Jesus leads the way in prayer.

Therefore, He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.
Hebrews 7:25

Paul gets specific about what has to happen in the Church. Prayer has to be consistent:

• Praying always
• Praying for fruitfulness
• Praying to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will
• Praying to be filled with wisdom and understanding and continuing to increase in it
• Praying to be strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power
• Praying to be patient, longsuffering, with joy while giving thanks to the Father

When we pray and give thanks, we become partakers of our inheritance by:

• Coming out of darkness into the light
• Out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of His Son of His love
• We experience complete redemption

All God does in the Church is for the purpose of bringing complete reconciliation in both heaven and earth through Jesus Christ. He‘s the perfect snapshot of what God the Father is developing in us the Church.

It’s not something we can do, to be like Jesus, it’s something God does as we continue to believe and pray that He will. Be careful about being critical of the church, as though the church was of its own making. Remember, the One who died is inside (Jesus in you the hope of glory).

He is perfecting that which concerns us (the church). Our part is not to be critical, but to pray, and obey, believing that God can and will bring us into the fullness and likeness of Jesus Christ.