Grown-Up Souls--March 10, 2021
"Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you. He is always wrestling in his prayers on your behalf, so that you may stand mature and fully assured in everything that God wills." [Colossians 4:12]
It's a humbling thing, isn't it, to leave yourself open enough to let someone else pray for you. It's both an honor, in that someone cares about you enough that you would be on their minds to pray for you... and at the same time humbling, in that someone else can see needs in your life that you might not have recognized.
This verse does both at the same time. It's a beautiful think to consider that someone else was praying so hard and so fiercely for the Christians in Colossae that it's like "wrestling." That suggests someone else as your advocate, as your champion, as your support--fighting for you, speaking up for you, using their voice for your well-being. How amazing to be prayed for that way!
And at the same time, what a humbling thing to get to overhear what Epaphras had been so diligently praying for for the Colossians: that they would be mature and grounded in God's will. It's not for money or success or power or a bigger house. It's not even church-growth, the way we usually think of church growth: Paul doesn't say that Epaphras prayed they'd get a hundred new members in the next three months, or that their offerings would grow enough for them to build a gymnasium and coffee shop for their members. Instead, the prayer is for maturity. It is a prayer for them to become--or to remain--spiritual grown-ups.
Imagine it for a moment. Someone else being so focused, so concerned, that you would be brought to maturity in faith that they wrestle over it--that they are up nights and giving up sleep for you, and that of all the things they could spend their energy on, they dedicate themselves to you... and your coming to maturity. That sure makes it sound like it's important.
So often, our prayers for others (when we can get ourselves out of the habit of centering ourselves and my individual wish-list) focus on their physical health. We pray for cures for sickness, food for the hungry, strength for doctors and nurses and such--but, wow, I honestly have a hard time remembering the last time I prayed for someone else to be granted maturity in their faith. Surely it's been even longer since I dared to ask something like that of someone else--we don't really want to ask someone else to pray for us to be mature, do we, because that sounds like an admission that we each have some growing up to do. And nobody wants to admit their immaturity.
For that matter, we do seem to be living in a time that doesn't just allow immaturity in our character, but almost seems to revel in it, celebrate it, and often praise examples of it. We teach our children (in theory) not to resort to bullying or petty name-calling, and then we end up turning glorifying the public figures who are rude jerks and immature name-callers, or we give them a pass for doing it. We can't help but get baited and drawn into petty arguments on social media when we know better--and when we know that the person baiting you isn't looking to attain truth, but just to argue and try out their same tired one-liner they heard from their favorite talking head on the airwaves. We look down on the people who listen carefully and think measuredly before they speak, as though they aren't "tough" enough or "strong" enough, when maybe they are really just the ones who are adult enough not to shoot first and ask questions later. And for us as people who live in such a time and culture, it seems almost surprising to hear a prayer for maturity as something so urgent as to require "wrestling" in prayer.
But that's all just part of how we are called to be different, isn't it? Followers of Jesus are called to seek after a different wish-list than the world may be used to. Instead of striving for our own wealth and power, our own political advantage, or our own leg-up in life, we're called to be the kind of people who pray for other people's needs with such passion that the best word to describe it "wrestling." And we're called to pray, not just for a smooth recovery from surgery or a safe flight on a plane, but for others to be brought to maturity from being childish. We are going to look and sound weird, honestly, if we are going to be people like that. The world will wonder, if they overhear us at all, why we aren't just making divine wishes for our own self-interest--larger paychecks, easier work-weeks, or whatever--and instead why we spend ourselves so intensely seeking for the needs of other people... and for their maturity, at that.
What do you think it will look like when you are more fully mature in Christ? What things that you struggle with now will no longer be a worry for you? What are ways you can see and feel the pull toward childishness in yourself--and what would it look like to open yourself up to someone else enough to ask them to help you to grow, to pray for you, and to aid you in becoming more mature? What could happen if you and I dared to ask other people to help us to recognize our blind-spots--the places in our character where we can't see our jagged edges or the ways we harm others--and to ask others to help us to see, change, and address them? What kind of people could we become if we dared to ask others to pray for our maturity... and then lived daily as people who are being prayed for into spiritual adulthood?
I want to find out, don't you? Let's dare.
Lord God, bring us into maturity, past our childish ways, and into new depths of knowing you.
No comments:
Post a Comment