“Praying for WIGs” (Colossians 1:9-14), May 3, 2009

Very rarely does anyone ask me to pray for what Paul apparently considers “wildly important.”  He prays strategically for those areas which, if they are not in place, render everything else inconsequential. 

Wildly important

Two weeks ago was Holy Humor Sunday at Corinth, and because the pastor’s head was (or appeared to be) without hair most of the service, you might wonder if today’s sermon is a follow up.  No.

WIGs are “Wildly Important Goals.”  Gary Ledford introduced the concept to us at our Corinth Leaders Forum last Monday.  The presentation was for people who lead in business, community, and the church.  What Gary did for us is to distinguish between the “important” and the “wildly important.”

Important goals are, well, important.  They carry “much significance, consequence, or value.”  Let’s illustrate with my professional world.  Important goals sound like this –

·        To write and send the “Pastor’s Weekly E-mail” each Monday.  That’s measurable, it’s achievable, and, at least in my mind, it’s important because communication is important.

·        To prepare a well-organized agenda for each meeting for which I am responsible to lead.  That’s important, and it’s specific.  People quit coming to meetings if the leader does not prepare well.

But are those wildly important goals?  Gary says that a WIG is so important that if I don’t achieve it, nothing else matters.  It makes all the difference.  What are some wildly important goals in the life of a pastor?  Let me allow that question to sit there for a moment.

Most of us spend most of our time and energy trying to achieve important goals.  Important goals include beating deadlines, keeping the plates spinning, and meeting the expectations of others.  Important goals are so important and so time-consuming that we rarely even stop to ask what the “wildly important” priorities should be.  At least I don’t.  Do you?

We could apply this in so many areas of life.  And should.  Today I want to apply it to our prayers.

Prayers

Do you pray most for what’s important?  Or for what’s wildly important?

I am often asked to pray for important requests.  People generally only ask me to pray for important needs.  If they think they can handle life or prayer on their own, they don’t ask me to get involved or to pray.  But if the matter seems important, they want to talk to the pastor.  And they want the pastor to pray. 

If you don’t hear anything else I say today, hear this.  I am glad to talk about and pray for what matters most to you.  With few exceptions, what’s important enough to you to share with me becomes wildly important to me.  Why?  Because it’s likely to be an opportunity for Christ to transform your life. 

What do you suppose are the important issues people bring most commonly to me?  I would identify three areas – health needs (their own or those of a loved one or friend), financial needs (including jobs or the need for money), and relationships (marriage, family, friendship).  These are areas where people – you, I mean – feel that my help, my counsel, and my prayers are needed. 

Very rarely does anyone ask me to pray for what Paul apparently considers “wildly important.”  He prays strategically for those areas which, if they are not in place, render everything else inconsequential.

Paul and the Colossians

Let’s review.  Paul is sitting in a Roman jail, probably chained to a Roman guard, while he writes the letter to the Colossians.  If he thought about prayer like most of us, he would ask the Colossians to pray that God would spring him from prison, that he would be able to get some rest on those hard floors, that his health would improve and his life would be spared, that his guard would be kind to him.

Think about what’s going on in Colosse.  Paul’s friend and the founder of the church, Epaphras, has reported to Paul that false teachers are threatening the health of the church.  They have strange ideas.  Paul has been there with other churches and his own relationship to them became strained.  In addition, we know from other sources that the city’s commerce had declined because a major Roman trade route had been redirected away from the city.

If Paul had prayed like we do, he would have prayed for more jobs in the city, for protection from these perceived threats, for a better relationship with him.  Those would be important prayers.

He doesn’t pray for any of them.  He prays “wildly important prayers” for things that matter most.  I wonder what might happen if we prayed for one another the way Paul prayed for the Colossians.

I’m thinking Paul is on to something here.  Having opened his letter with thanks, he now turns to prayers for these believers about what should be their WIGs.  I am reading this for the umpteenth time, and realizing that I really need to reorient how I pray for others and how I ask others to pray for me.

It’s a little difficult to outline Paul’s prayer or his thought structure.  His grammar teacher would probably not approve of this sentence, because in the original language verses 9-14 form one long run-on sentence.  But there are some themes that emerge in his prayer.

(1)Pray to think spiritually

Here is how Paul says it in verse 9: “9For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.”  In verse 10 he adds a prayer that they would “grow in the knowledge of God.”

Let me go back to one of those three areas where people often ask me to help or pray – jobs and finances.  For a couple of months we have hosted here at Corinth a “Job Seekers” group on Tuesday afternoon.  We have probably had between 30 and 35 people participate in that program.  I’ve been there about half the time.

What I’ve noticed is that there seem to be two different groups of people who come to a group like Job Seekers.  Some folks come to look for a job.  That’s important.  Others come to learn, grow, and even help other members of the group find a job.  They get involved in something like this so they can become better people, so they can learn new skills, so they can in turn become more employable.  That’s wildly important.

The first group wants to come in, tell you what kind of job they’re looking for, hand over a resume, and see if you have any leads.  The second group wants help to review the resume and make it better, wants to know if they should learn a new skill in a new field, wants to know how they can grow personally and spiritually during their time of job seeking.  They think differently about a job search.

My sense is that if you asked the Apostle Paul to pray for your 401K, or for your business’ bottom line, or for a new job, he would pray for you.  He would pray that you would be filled with the knowledge of God and that you would grow in spiritual wisdom.

Let me be more specific about spiritual wisdom.  Among the different ways Christians distinguish their beliefs, one polarity is between Arminianism and Calvinism.  I don’t use words like that in preaching very much because they are important, but they are not wildly important.  The difference is between those who believe God is completely in charge (Calvinists) and “it’s all up to me” (Arminians).

If you really believe God is in charge, it’s not that you slack off or don’t do your best.  You just do all you do with greater peace, deeper trust, more profound faith.  That’s an example of spiritual knowledge.  You see life differently.  You stop saying, “If it has to be, it’s up to me.”  You’re more willing to let go and give up your Messiah complex.  The world only needs one Savior.  I pray you will have spiritual wisdom and understanding.  I pray you will think spiritually.

(2)Pray to overcome joyfully

Here is another theme Paul strings together starting in verse 11:  “being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father.”

The New International Version is trying for a little word variety here, perhaps unhelpfully.  When Paul prays that the Colossians would be “strengthened with all power,” the words “strengthened” and “power” are from the same root.  I wish the translators had left it “strengthened with all strength” or “empowered with all power” to show his emphasis.

Then he adds “according to his glorious might,” a synonym for power.  There’s no great mystery here embedded in the Greek original.  Paul prays that they will be strong.

Toward what end?  “Great endurance and patience,” another word couplet that implies the ability to face tough circumstances and tough people without giving up.  N. T. Wright says Paul is talking about “the weapons one needs to live in the world undaunted by its crises and panics.”  Now there’s a wildly important goal for prayer!  The result of that, Paul says, is joyful thanks.

What is this week’s panic-du-jour.  Swine flu, right?  Is it an important goal to stop swine flu in its tracks?  Yes, sir.  For the Center for Disease Control and Frye Regional Medical Center, it’s a wildly important goal.  That’s what they do.

But what if it became a wildly important goal for me – something critical enough to prioritize in prayer – that you and I would overcome joyfully even if swine flu swept across the globe, the nation, and Catawba County? 

As a believer, I don’t want to ultimately fear anything that can harm only the body. The very worst it can do is usher me into the presence of Jesus before I expected.  We expend a lot of energy and prayer trying to live as long as we can as healthy as we can.  Is that important?  Yes.  Is it wildly important? Not so much.

What’s wildly important is that we live and die strong, courageous, and grateful.  That we overcome joyfully.  What if we prayed that way for each other?

(3)Pray to love consistently

The final theme I want to point out is one that is not to obvious.  You have to look for it.  Studying the text in the original language helped me, but it wasn’t essential.

Listen as I read parts of Paul’s prayer again and emphasize a theme woven throughout –

·        We have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding (9)

·        And we pray (that you) may please him in every way (10)

·        Bearing fruit in every good work (10)

·        Being strengthened with all power (11)

·        Great endurance and patience” (11, literally, “all endurance and patience”)

That’s five occurrences of “all” or “every” in the six verses of this prayer. 

Let’s look at the third area where I am often asked to pray for you – relationships.  I don’t just mean romantic relationships (husband/wife, dating relationships), although that’s included.  There are other close family relationships – broken relationships with parents or children or siblings or friends.  Pastoral counseling and even pastoral leadership in the church often involves peacemaking or peacekeeping. 

More often than not the implied if not spoken prayer is that the other person will see things my way.  Very rarely will someone say, “Pastor, would you pray that I will love consistently no matter how he or she responds.”  Almost never.  But it’s wildly important.

You may have noticed, and it’s of interest to me, that Paul does not use the word “love” in this prayer.  He does so in a parallel passage in Philippians (1:9): “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.”

But when Paul prays for the Colossians, I am sure he is talking about love when he prays that they would please the Lord in every way, bear fruit in every good work, and have all endurance and patience.  That is a description of love if I ever saw one.

We tend to look at relationships like we look at everything else – as a means toward self-fulfillment.  We opt in and out of relationships (and remember, I’m not just talking about romantic relationships, but extended family, friendships, and churches) based on whether they add to our happiness.

What if we just learned to pray for ourselves and for others, “Lord, help me to love consistently”?  Compassion International is just one of those ways we can learn to love without expecting anything in return – no exchange gifts, no thanks, no pat-on-the-back.  What if we prayed that we would love like that in our homes and with the people we come into contact with the most?

Reverse the goal

Here’s what I discovered this week while studying this prayer of Paul’s.  It’s like every other area of life, including the business world and church life.  We tend to think if we give our energy to the important, the wildly important will happen.

So take my job.  I think if I get the weekly e-mail done and the meetings planned, what’s wildly important will get done as well.  Not necessarily.  What is wildly important?  It’s investment in transformed lives.  It’s evangelism.  It’s service.  It’s missions.  It’s teaching.  It’s preaching.  It’s worship.  It’s cooperating with the Holy Spirit to see people changed one at a time.  What if I spent more time in prayer  and effort focusing on one or two wildly important goals each week?

The same with prayer.  We tend to think better circumstances will lead to greater maturity.  If I can get the job, keep my health, and get that person to love me, then I can be strong and patient and joyful.

Paul doesn’t pray that way.  He prays for us to think spiritually, overcome courageously, and love consistently – in other words, for knowledge, strength, and joy – so that no matter what comes, we will reflect the character of Jesus Christ.  Amen.