1. Editorial: Plugging into Prayer Power - Duncan McGregor

Search - Aug 2003

In Colossians 4:2-6 Paul has just three basic instructions to give:

Persevere in Prayer - Walk in Wisdom - Season your Speech

In this issue, Vicky Wilkinson reminds us that grace (with which our speech is to be salted) should be reigning in our lives (Romans 5:21) and hence directing our walk. That walk, Nathan Johnson points out (page 9), is a spiritual experience that can parallel the sort of walks which the Lord used to enjoy on earth. And to enable us to walk in wisdom and season our speech we need to: "Continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving", as the New King James Version puts Colossians 4:2.

This month also sees Sylvia Penny analysing some experiments into the effectiveness of intercessory prayer; perhaps a rather questionable approach to looking at prayer when we consider that prayer is the vehicle that transports us into the very throne-room of heaven and there we leave our petitions to be dealt with by our God whose judgments are unsearchable and His ways past finding out (Romans 11:33).

However, it does raise the question again about the way in which we pray and for what we ask. I always find it a rather sobering experience to compare what I pray for with the sort of things for which men like Paul prayed. For example, take the apostle's prayer in Ephesians 3. Look what he asks for:

	"That he (God) would grant you, according to the riches of his glory..." (v.16). When did I ever have the confidence to ask that God would grant me something which was "according to" or in proportion to, "the riches of his glory"?
	"...to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith" (vs.16,17). Why do I need strength to enable me to have Christ dwell in my heart? Well, if it is "a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Hebrews 10:31), what must it be like to have the living God 'fall' into our hands, or hearts, and dwell there?
	"...be able to comprehend....what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God" (vs.18,19). Oh dear, I feel a sermon coming on and I've only got a few lines left! Our God operates in four dimensions? (at least!), and how can I know a love which "passeth knowledge", and dare I ask to be "filled with all the fulness of God"?

I guess the answer may be in verse 20-God "is able to do exceeding abundantly....according to the power that worketh in us". Wow! In other words: realise your voltage, lower your resistance, and conduct His power. God is able - if we'll be the cable!