Struggle. It’s something we all face at different times and in varying degrees of intensity, including struggle for the sake of others. We all know what it means to struggle through something personally. Physical, mental, emotional, financial, chemical, spiritual, relational—these are a few of the big categories of common personal struggle. But if you’ve ever labored long and hard for something on behalf of someone else, you’ll have an idea of Paul’s sense of investment in the Colossian Christians in this passage. He’s a bit like a parent working extra hours or an extra job to provide for the family. He’s a bit like a coach who studies a rival relentlessly before the big game in order to know how best to marshal his team’s strengths against the opponent’s weaknesses. He’s a bit like a homemaker who’s up early, up late, and working hard all day to make the home a place of order and tranquility for the family. And he’s a bit like a mother laboring hard to bring a child into the world and to see that child equipped for success; only, for Paul, it isn’t a child; it’s a church (church-es, actually) who, in this text, are the object of his struggle: “For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face…”
As you can tell by my title and introduction, “struggle” is the word that most grabbed my attention in this text. And from this text, the big idea I want to argue today is that: We haven’t really prayed until we’ve struggled in prayer for others. A Christian’s prayer life is not complete apart from strenuous prayerful exertion on behalf of other people—in particular, on behalf of other followers of Jesus.
An Unseen Struggle
Before looking more deeply at what Paul hoped to gain by his struggle, we should note that his struggle for the Colossians and Laodiceans is an unseen struggle. He says, “I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face.” It’s possible that Paul had been to Colossae and Laodicea and that he’s classifying all the other Christians in other cities that he hasn’t visited as those “who have not seen me face to face.” But I think it’s best to include the Colossians and Laodiceans in that category as well. The New Testament never mentions Paul personally visiting either of these cities in his travels, and in 1:7 he mentions how they’d heard the gospel, not through him, but through a man named Epaphrus, whom Paul calls a ‘fellow servant.’ Furthermore, it’s believed that Paul wrote Colossians while he was in custody, unable to travel being, as he was, chained to a Roman guard day in and day out. He could get news, receive visitors, and write letters, but any ministry that Paul would have to these Christians would be, by necessity, a ministry of proxy—and that would of course include his ministry of prayer.
Never praying for the Colossians in person didn’t diminish the effectiveness of Paul’s prayers for them. Over and again Scripture reminds us that prayer is not to be a performance. And if prayer isn’t a performance, then we don’t need to be physically, visibly, audibly present in order to benefit others in prayer—it’s nice, but it’s not necessary. So if Paul doesn’t need to be present for his prayers to be effective, why does he bother even mentioning his prayer struggle for them? Is he bragging? No, it’s because he knew that his whole life (perhaps especially his prayer life) was to be in every way not just an encouragement but an example to other Christians. By saying, “I want you to know…,” Paul is essentially saying, “Pay attention! The way I’m praying for you—even though you can’t see or hear me pray—is good, and it’s right, and it’s normal.”
Struggling TO Pray –vs.– Struggling IN Prayer
Yes, it’s good and right and normal to struggle in prayer. But there’s a difference between struggling in prayer—as we see Paul did—and what many Christians would call a struggle to pray. “I just struggle to pray… I get started and my phone rings… I get started and I fall asleep… I get started and I don’t really know where to go… I get started, then I get bored because I’m just saying the same old things I always say to God… I know I can’t give up on praying, but sometimes I just want to because it’s such a struggle to pray…” Any of those sound familiar? I’ve experienced them all.
I struggled for a long time to exercise. Why? Because exercise is hard? No, because getting up and getting started was hard. But last summer it clicked, and struggling to exercise isn’t really a problem anymore. Now that I’m in the habit of being in the gym most mornings by 6, I struggle in exercising while I’m there. Some days are more intense than others, but I don’t dare stop getting up and showing up, because I don’t want to go back to struggling to exercise—I’ve won that part of the battle!
As we mature in our faith and grow in developing the personal and communal discipline of prayer—as we move from occasionally praying to making prayer the central occasion of our spiritual lives—the struggle to pray will eventually diminish and struggling in prayer will take its rightful, normal place at the epicenter of our Christian existence. If you struggle to pray, don’t give up; pray about prayer! Make a conscious, continual effort to ask God for help in praying consistently. Take action. Try things. Make lists, keep a journal, get a partner, set an alarm, set a timer, set a pattern! God is a gracious God! One day, I promise, it’ll click; that part of the battle will be won, and you’ll find yourself in a deeper, richer, better, more glorious, yet more agonizing part of the spiritual war that’s been the Church’s lot since the Spirit came down at Pentecost.
Struggle = “Agony”
The English Standard Version I’m using—says, “I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you.” The NIV says, “I want you to know how hard I am contending for you.” The KJV says, “Would that ye knew what great conflict I have for you…” Struggle. Contending. Conflict. Each of these captures a sense of the intensity with which Paul is going to bat for these Christians in prayer. Yet, I say that struggling in prayer is more “agonizing” than struggling to pray, because the Greek word Paul uses for ‘struggle,’ ‘contending,’ and ‘conflict’ is agona; it’s where we get our words agony, agonize, and agonizing, which the NLT captures: “I want you to know how much I have agonized for you.”
Various forms of agona appear over fifty times in the New Testament—including when Jesus prayed in the garden before his crucifixion; Luke says, He prayed with such agony that He sweat drops of blood. But the exact same form that Paul uses here appears in only four other places. He says in Philippians 1:29-30, “It has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict (agony) that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.” The writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews 12:1, “Let us lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race (agony) that is set before us.” In 1 Tim. 6:12, Paul encourages Timothy to “Fight the good fight (agona) of the faith.” And in 2 Tim. 4:7—his final letter before being beheaded—Paul tells Timothy, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” Hear the common thread? In each of these verses this kind of agony goes hand-in-hand with goodness or blessedness: “Fight the good fight, Timothy… I have fought the good fight.” God is not distant while we’re in the midst of spiritual agony; He’s being glorified in our prayerful agony!
Physical exercise is unappealing, until you get that endorphin rush and begin to see and feel the positive results of working out. Cleaning house is a dreadful undertaking, until you sit down and enjoy the calming effect of an orderly living space. Serving others can seem like torture, that is, until you experience the thrill of making someone else’s day (or week, or month) by a simple, selfless act of kindness. We tend to want to avoid struggle, until, we see and feel its benefits. Why? Because struggle involves effort, pain, strain, stress, difficulty, resistance—agony; and by nature we don’t want to undergo those things. But, just as the benefits of struggle are there in the physical realm pulling and pushing us to an ever-greater exertion, so also the benefits are there in the spiritual realm, not only for ourselves but for others.
The Benefits
What benefits did Paul seek on behalf of the Colossians and Laodiceans? First, he sought encouragement. “I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged.” And how are their hearts to be encouraged? Paul says, by “being knit together in love…” I don’t care if it’s walking down a dark street at night, facing a bully at school, going prayer walking, going on a mission trip, or charging the gates of hell on our knees in prayer, courage is going to be higher in every adverse situation when we have a partner. Being a Christian means being knit together to other Christians in love. And being knit together in love has an assuring quality about it: “being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery which is Christ.” Are there things about God and the Bible, things about Christ and the life of disciple-making that are mysterious to you? Join the club! I don’t care how many hours you study the Bible on your own, there’s a richness of wisdom and understanding in the Christian life that can only be gained in community with other believers. And as we gain that wisdom we gain deeper assurance; and deeper assurance leads to greater courage; and greater courage leads to more faithful, obedient living.
The word ‘encourage’ literally means to put courage into something—encourage. And if Paul wants to put courage into the Colossians and Laodiceans it must mean something is taking, or at least trying to take, courage out of them. He says in v. 4, “I say [all of this] in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments.” False teachers were spreading false gospels in those days. They did this by coming into churches and sowing seeds of doubt, particularly about the sufficiency of faith in Christ alone for salvation. They did this through what Paul calls ‘plausible arguments.’ What’s a plausible argument? It’s an argument that seems reasonable, believable, credible, probable, conceivable, likely and sincere. It’s an argument that seems to carry intellectual weight. It’s an argument that seems plausible because it’s presented by someone with a charismatic, persuasive, or even decent personality. False teachers aren’t always social scoundrels; they’re often decent, reputable, respected members of the community. But we have to look beyond social standing for spiritual truth, and ask, Does this argument add to or take away from the gospel of grace through faith in Christ alone, or does it affirm the gospel of grace?
Is praying for ourselves and other believers to be so encouraged—so knit together in love, so mutually assured in our understanding of the mystery of God in Christ—that we remain un-deluded by such plausible arguments a part of your prayer life? Do you agonize over this in prayer? Jesus promises in Matt 24:24 that in the last days, “false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.” If Jesus came doing great signs and wonders to confirm His message that He truly was Christ, false christs will perform great signs and wonders to turn peoples hearts away from the true Christ. As Paul says earlier in Colossians 1:21-23 (READ!)
Light, easy, tepid prayers like, “Lord, bless me and my fellow Christians with a good day today,” aren’t good enough. There’s no struggle in that, no wrestling with God to take hold of a blessing, no agonizing over the damage false teaching can do to the body of Christ or to the name of Christ, no brokenness or weeping over those trapped or who may become trapped in the ‘plausible arguments’ of anti-Christian teachings.
Conclusion
We don’t hear about the Colossians any more after this epistle; but we do hear about the Laodiceans. In Revelation 3, John records a message from Jesus to the Laodiceans: “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”
Paul went to his grave with a clean conscience regarding the Laodiceans. Their slide into spiritual lukewarmness wasn’t his fault; he’d done everything he could for them, most importantly he had agonized over them in prayer that they might be encouraged, knit together in love and built up in the truth so that they might not fall into a deluded, weakened Christianity. He prayed fervently that they might continue stable and steadfast in the faith, not shifting from the hope of the gospel. But apparently the Laodiceans didn’t take the hint, namely that Paul’s struggle in prayer for those things on their behalf was to become their struggle—their prayer agony—for those things too. And not just for their own needs, but for the needs of future Christians—those down line from them in the scheme of evangelism.
In Revelation 3, Jesus offers the Laodiceans hope if they’ll repent. That hope is available to us too, but I would rather we take our queue from Paul. Let’s avoid sliding into spiritual lukewarmness. Let’s overcome the hurdle of struggling to pray so that we can engage in the real battle by struggling in prayer on behalf of our fellow believers and those who are not yet our fellow believers.