A Body Collective

I thank my God, making mention of you always in my prayers

(Philemon 1:4, NKJV)

We have learnt to juggle many things in a day and multi-tasking is well accepted by many while others try to perfect it.  This rush in different directions takes away our focus and attention from others around us, as all what we want to do is to complete the activities in our to-do list for the day.  Sadly, I have found that this has slowly found its way into family circles too, so that there is rarely enough time to bond and love on each other, and family conversations have at times become transactional and not relational. Hopefully this is not a common or accepted state of our lives and if it is, may our attention be drawn to how our busyness is tearing us apart.  Allow me to go back to all what takes our attention, with the demands of life our moments of silence if any are filled up with thoughts of how we get past the hurdle that we face.  In my own life I have realized that there is always something to be done and this tends to take more of me than I would wish to acknowledge.  The result of this for most of us, is that unconsciously our prayers and concerns surround what is going on in our lives.  In fellowships and prayer groups, most prayer requests are centered on something to do with the individual and his/her physical needs and while there is nothing wrong with this, our reference verse startled me to a new realization of how much we need to pray and remember others on matters faith. 

 Paul in addressing the churches starts his letters with warm personal greetings to the people, calling them by name and acknowledging their specific labour of faith.  In writing to the Colossians, he makes mention of Epaphras and says that he labours fervently in prayer for the believers, that they may stand perfect and complete in God’s will (Colossians 4:12).  This is not a prayer for the physical well being of the believers but for the strengthening of their faith and as I pondered on this, I was challenged.  While it is good to pray for our physical comforts, it calls for a deeper revelation to focus our prayers on the will of God for others, a prayer that calls for the joint health and perfection of the church.  Maybe it is time we introduced in our prayer requests of the spiritual walk of the brethren, that we all walk in conquering faith even as we keep the goal of eternity in our daily living.  As believers our concern for each other needs to be more tangible and felt by each one of us, after all, we are reminded to continually do good to all and especially to those of the household of faith, our brothers and sisters (Galatians 6:10).  Brethren, there are competitions among believers but it need not be so, we are not to compete but to complete each other, to hold each other up in faith that we may all come to the fullness of the knowledge of our Lord.  Our prayer for each other must include praying that we keep the faith (Colossians 1:3-8).  It should concern us that none of our flock falls away, we have the responsibility of being our brothers’ keepers so that we carry each other’s burden both physically and spiritually. 

Beloved, fire embers keep each other burning, a spark from one ignites the other log and together they form an undeniable beam of light that keeps others warm.  We are embers and our light in Christ should help give hope to another person whose light is dimming out.  At times it calls for silent prayers that even the other person never knows you offer, but we know God takes note of these prayers and He answers.  All we need to do is to commit to remember others before God, having eternity in mind so that even as we pray for today, our pleading will be more for their future with God.  As we pray for others, God will also raise others to pray for us.

Thoughts:

Who and what are you praying for?

Are there people that you could hold up in prayer?

How will this influence your prayers going forward?