On Sunday, May 4, I have invited all of our churches to share in a day of prayer for the spread of the gospel across our Diocese – from the Hawkesbury to the Blue Mountains, the Southern Highlands to Wollongong and the South Coast, and Greater Sydney. A day of prayer for our friends, family, neighbours and colleagues who don’t know Christ, to come to know him and his redeeming love.

We’ll be sending material to every church to help you pray in your Sunday services for an open door for the message of Christ, open hearts, and for all of us to be ready to declare his praises. I hope every parish will be represented at the Cathedral that afternoon as we join together in prayer for the lost.

The apostle Paul writes to the fledgling Christian community at Colossae and says: 

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that
I may proclaim it clearly, as I should (Col 4:2-4).

See the necessity of prayer for the mission of Jesus. If the gospel is going to get out, it has to be prayed out. Prayer is essential for gospel ministry. This is a letter from Paul – the mighty apostle, church planter, troubleshooter and human author of Scripture, to whom the risen Lord Jesus himself had appeared! But Paul says to the Colossians, pray for me that the message would get out and that I would be clear.

And whose prayers does he seek? The prayers of the Colossians. Young Christians, themselves confused by false teachers and unsure of their faith. The city was unremarkable – a backwater in the empire. Paul had never met them and, as far as we know, he never went to Colossae. But Paul asks them to pray for him.

Sometimes we think that if there isn’t anything else we can do then “at least” we can pray! But the perspective of the New Testament again and again is that prayer is the first plank of our fellowship in gospel proclamation.  

We are not all expected to be proclaimers like Paul, but he expects every Christian to be “making the most of every opportunity” (Col 4:5).

And the whole church is called to pray for the proclamation of the gospel as a participation in mission with those who are proclaimers. Real, powerful, effective and indispensable partnership. 

Don’t let prayer be our last resort – be devoted to prayer, Paul says. If you are devoted to anything, you know what that looks like. You give time to what you are devoted to; you give energy and enthusiasm to it, learning the habits, practices and skills. When you are devoted to something, you establish goals and targets for it. You give yourself wholeheartedly to it.

At last year’s Synod I suggested that we might adopt the habit of praying for five people over five days – people who don’t yet know Jesus. If you missed it, or need a reminder, here it is:

Day 1: pray for a member of your family who doesn’t follow the Lord.

Day 2: pray for a friend who doesn’t know the Lord; a work colleague, a sporting buddy, someone from your book club, the parent of your child’s school friend.

Day 3: pray for your circle of acquaintances – a neighbour, your doctor, or people you see frequently but only fleetingly like your barista, or the person from whom you buy your bread and milk.

Day 4: pray for people you used to know but no longer see regularly. God can work in their lives through others, in response to your prayers.

Day 5: pray for those you know who have drifted from Christian fellowship or from faith in Christ, that the Lord would speak to them as he did to the younger son, and bring them to their senses.

Can we pray each week for five people to come to know the Lord or know him better? 

Paul makes clear what he wants the Colossians to pray for. He requests two things: a door for the message and clear proclamation.

When he says “a door for our message” I think he means an opportunity for the gospel. He mentions in passing that he is in chains. He’s in prison – but he doesn’t ask for prayers to be released! He asks the Colossians to pray for a door for the gospel. I suppose he wants to share Jesus with his fellow prisoners, or his guards, or those who will hear his case in court. It’s the message that is important.

Paul also asks them to pray for clear proclamation, because Jesus has promised to come to people in the message about him. To receive the message is to receive him and to reject the message is to reject him. So, Paul says, pray that 

I’ll be clear. And that’s got to be a good prayer, doesn’t it?

Will you pray for me, and for your church’s senior minister and ministry team, for chaplains in schools, hospitals, prisons and Anglicare villages, for your SRE teachers and youth and children’s leaders, that we would be clear in speaking of Jesus to others?

I am praying for you, as a “proclaimer”, in the opportunities, conversations and relationships in which God has placed you. Please join with me in praying that Jesus would save the people we know who don’t know him. And that he would help us all “declare the praises of him who called [us] out of darkness, into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9).