Enduring in Prayer (Colossians 4:12–13)

Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God. For I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and in Hierapolis.
– Colossians 4:12–13

What a great description of Epaphras. As Paul is closing out this letter to these Colossian Christians, he’s listing all these different names, and he comes to Epaphras. And he says, here’s a servant of Jesus who struggles on your behalf in his prayers. What a great description of love for somebody else. That you care about them so much that you struggle on their behalf in prayer.

This meaning that you labor. That’s the language in verse thirteen used to describe Epaphras. “He worked hard for you.” How did he work hard? Well, one of the ways he worked hard for these Colossian Christians was by praying for them. He worked hard, he labored, he struggled in prayer for them. I want to encourage you to consider, who are you struggling in prayer for?

There should be people in our lives whom we labor, struggle continually for in prayer, who we work hard to pray for. And this is where I just want to encourage you to think about people in your sphere of influence. Who is God calling you to struggle in prayer for?

And then I hope that part of participation in this podcast… And I use that word participation intentionally, not just listening to this podcast, we’re praying together on this podcast. I hope that it’s helping you learn to struggle for people you don’t know, for unreached people around the world. But we’re called to struggle, to labor, to work hard in prayer for others.

And at the same time, we need other people who are laboring, struggling, working hard in prayer for us. So I would encourage you, if you don’t know anybody in your life who’s doing this for you, to reach out to someone and say, “Hey, I was reading this verse…”

I know I need people praying for me, working in prayer for me. Would you consider doing that for me? We all need this and we all need to be doing this for others. What a picture of the body of Christ struggling in prayer on each other’s behalf.

Oh God, thank you for Epaphras. Thank you for his example here for us. We pray that you’d help us to follow in his footsteps. Even right now, Oh God, as we think about people in our lives, our families, friends, our church families, co-workers, classmates, people in our sphere of influence… God help us to faithfully struggle on their behalf in our prayers to work hard for them in prayer.

Thank you for designing prayer as an opportunity for us to come before you and to intercede for people around us, knowing that as we work, as we labor in intercession, as we struggle in intercession, that you hear us, will answer us, and will work in response to our prayers. So God, help us to faithfully struggle on others’ behalf in prayer.

And God, we pray for people. We ask that you would raise up people who will do this for us. I think about somebody the other day who just said, “I just want you to know I’m praying for you.” And I could tell they weren’t just saying this as a kind thing to say. They really meant it. I think, oh God, it sure seemed like they did. And how meaningful that was. God, we pray that you’d help us to be that for other people.

And we pray, oh God, that you would provide other people who are doing this for us. And God, we do want to faithfully do this for people who don’t have, maybe anyone else, praying for them in Jesus’ name, praying for them to know your love for them.

A Prayer for the Mahra People

We pray for the Mahra people of Yemen, for almost 150,000 Mahra men, women, and children.

We intercede for them right now. God, we pray, we ask, God, that they would be reached with the good news of your love in Jesus. Please, oh God, break down whatever barriers are needed, obstacles that are in the way for the spread of the gospel to the Mahra people of Yemen. We pray this for people all across Yemen amidst all the civil war and suffering there.

God. We pray, we labor, we struggle… God, we plead for your grace and your love to be made known among them, believing that you will work in response to our working in prayer. Oh, God, we pray all this straight from your Word in light of this picture of Epaphras in Colossians 4:12–13. In Jesus’ name, amen.