Colossians 4:2-6; Psalm 95

Colossians 4:2-6

"Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart." v. 2 Wow--there's a lot to think about right there!

• Devote yourself to prayer. OK we can devote ourselves to our families, our jobs, our hobbies...And so how do we devote ourselves to prayer? It seems to me that this would involve perseverance and regularity--just steadily staying at it. Daily we should be talking to God, and daily we should be listening to Him through His Word.
• Pray with an alert mind. We don't just go through the motions of memorized words, but we practice our faith with thoughtful prayer talking to God about specific needs.
• Pray with a thankful heart. Thankfulness is another way to express our faith, acknowledging that God is hearing our prayers, that He is good, and that He is in control.

Remember that Paul was in prison when he wrote this letter. It's interesting that he didn't ask them to pray for his release or even his comfort, but he asked them to pray for open doors of opportunity to speak about the wonderful message of Christ. And so it seems that prayer and ministry go together. In vv 5 and 6, Paul encourages us to live wisely among unbelievers so that our gracious actions and words might reach others for the Lord.

Psalm 95
This is a call to joyful worship! Hopefully we'll be doing this on Sunday when we celebrate the resurrection!

• Let us sing to the Lord.
• Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation.
• Let us come to Him with thanksgiving. (There's that thanksgiving thing again!)
• Let us sing psalms of praise to Him.

Just as our prayers can become routine and meaningless, so can our singing and our praise. We must focus and discipline our minds to singing, praising, and being thankful in new and fresh ways.

vv. 4-7 remind us of some of the reasons God is worthy of our praise. He "is a great God, a great King above all gods. He holds in his hands the depths of the earth and the mightiest mountains. The sea belongs to him, for he made it. His hands formed the dry land too." When we remember that God is the Creator and the Caretaker of everything, perhaps our problems and issues won't seem so big.

"Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our maker, for he is our God. We are the people he watches over, the flock under his care..." No shepherd could be more loving or more competent than our Good Shepherd.

The psalm ends with a warning not to harden our hearts as Israel was prone to do.