People Who Believe in a Great Christ Isampula

Pray As Epaphras Prayed

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.

You’ve got to love Epaphras. He is from the city of Colossae, but now he is in Rome with Paul. Yet his heart is still in Colossae with his people, so he prays for them, and how he does pray. He struggles in prayer. 

What does it mean to struggle in prayer? I’m not completely sure, but I am sure of what it is to not struggle: to pray a tepid, lifeless, soulless, or mechanical prayer. No, Epaphras struggles in prayer for his people. He goes to battle, storms the gates, attacks the hill. The prayer has heart, life, passion.

“O God! Please intervene. You’ve just got to protect them, deliver them, rescue them.”

Moreover, not only does Epaphras struggle in prayer for them, he is always struggling in prayer for them. Not just on rare occasions but continually, day in and day out. And what does he pray? That the Colossians would stand mature with God, right in the middle of God’s will, mature and fully assured of where they stand with God. Epaphras is praying for a healthy and strong spiritual life so that they would be all God wanted them to be.

Let me ask: Wouldn’t it be something to have an Epaphras or two praying for you? Wouldn’t it be something to have a whole church full of Epaphrases going to battle for each other and for the kingdom? Wouldn’t it be something?