Wartime Mission

We are coming to a close here in Colossians. Paul has taken us through what happened cosmically in our salvation as well as in the hearts and lives of the believer, and we have been looking at the new behavior that should develop in a believer as they put off the old self and live new lives of virtue. These virtues spill over into Christian marriages, Christian families, and even Christian workplaces. Today, Paul is going to attempt to tie everything up in a tidy little bow by talking briefly about the importance of prayer for the mission and personal evangelism.

These are two areas of the Christian life that many people struggle mightily with. It’s almost simple in comparison to obey your parents or love your wife because that is concrete and in the end there is very little to lose. However, prayer for a skeptic like me who believes in the sovereignty of God often feels a lot like I’m just mumbling to myself or I feel like the tiny ant seeking guidance from the massive human who is getting ready to stick his finger in my perfectly formed mound.

On the other hand, personal evangelism is where the rubber meets the road. All of these things that we’ve talked about over the last 20+ weeks are great. But if it’s so great then are you just going to hide the good news under a basket? Of course not, we’ve got a moral obligation to get out there and tell people the amazing news that we can have a restored relationship with the God not because of things that we have done, but because of what Jesus Christ has done for us in our place. That doesn’t mean it’s easy or that the social stigmas or awkwardness goes away. But it certainly helps if we keep our hearts and mind focused on the things of the kingdom.

I hope that by the time we are done today, you will sense a refreshing wind blowing through this text. Paul has a remarkably positive and happy angle on personal evangelism. I hope we can see and it and feel it before we are done.

The text (Colossians 4:2–6) falls naturally into two parts: verses 2–4 are the first part, and verse 5 and 6 are the second part. The first part has to do with our indirect involvement in evangelism through prayer for God's specially called spokesmen. The second part has to do with our direct involvement in evangelism through wise conduct and seasoned speech.

Let's focus first on verses 2–4—our indirect involvement in frontline missions and evangelism through prayer.

PRAYER FOR THE GLOBAL MISSION OF GOD

I believe that one of the reasons we feel so weak in our prayer lives is that we have tried to treat prayer like we treat Alexa or our Google Home when it is in reality more like a wartime walkie-talkie. Prayer is not designed to serve the domestic comforts of the saints. It's designed as a walkie-talkie for spiritual battlefields. It's the link between active soldiers and their command headquarters, with its unlimited firepower and air cover and strategic wisdom.

I get much of this idea of war-time Christianity from John Piper. He speaks about it often and I think it is a great way of stepping outside of our 21st century western comforts. Christianity has always flourished in the fire. Knock it down and beat it back and it grows and thrives. If you imagine yourself as a soldier on the battlefield, I think it really helps to bring home the message of the gospel and how we should live as believers.  

This is the picture that I think helps capture the spirit of prayer in Colossians 4:2–4.

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison— that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.

So carrying this wartime analogy, we picture Paul and Timothy (1:1) as well as others in Colossians like Aristarchus (4:10) and Epaphras (4:12) as a unique team of advanced tactical troops in the spiritual battle to recapture the hearts of men for God. They have made a strike at the enemy lines and met a tremendous counterforce. Paul and Aristarchus are prisoners of war. And it beginning to look as though the enemy has achieved a tactical victory.

But Paul has managed to smuggle a message out of the prison camp that is calling for his fellow soldiers stationed to the rear. That's the Colossians specifically and all believers in general. In the letter, he asks them to get on their walkie-talkie, call command headquarters, and ask headquarters to fire a missile that will blast open a door in the prison wall and in the enemy's front line so that Paul and his squad can get on with their mission to release people from the power of Satan and bring them to God.

So the point that we are most interested in here is this: the soldiers to the rear with the walkie-talkie of prayer are very crucial in the frontline successes of evangelism and missions. If they weren't, this text would be pointless.

How to Pray: Three Aspects

Of course, this analogy like all analogies is imperfect. So let's look straight at the text for a few minutes and I think we will see at least three things that tell us how to pray and three things that tell us what to pray in this context of frontline evangelism and missions support.

1. Persistently

Verse 2: "Continue steadfastly in prayer." Or: "Devote yourselves to prayer."

Here’s another analogy for you. Prayer is like a muscle. Why do we go to the gym and exercise? And I’m using that word we very loosely here. We go to be more healthy and to build muscle. If we sit around all day doing nothing but playing video games, reading, and playing on computers then although there is muscle there, it will lose its strength and not be as powerful as it could be.

Prayer, like a muscle, gains strength and power the more it is exercised, but when you don’t work it, the power begins to drain out of it. It is not an easy or automatic task to regularly get up early and make your protein shake and head off to the gym where you put your muscles under stress for hours. That’s not something that happens automatically or we would all look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.  

In the same way, it is not easy to carve out quiet time to slip away from distractions to lay ourselves bare before the God of the universe in prayer so the communication lines can be strengthened. However, Paul is telling those in his rear guard to be steadfast, diligent. and devoted to building up that muscle of prayer. Forget leg day, don’t skip prayer day.

If you want to have a crucial role in the great spiritual warfare of these days, and not just be passed over as a useless soldier, you need to keep the walkie-talkie with you all day, keep it in the on position and ask again and again for God to give you your bearings and guide you through the mine fields of temptation and make you alert to every opportunity to witness to his promised victory.

2. Watchfully

Not only do we remain steadfast, praying diligently, but we are also to pray watchfully. Verse 2 continues, "Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it."

We don’t battle with flesh and blood but with principalities and powers and our enemy knows the danger of our ability to communicate with headquarters. There is buzz in the news even today about countries like China, India, and Russia who are boasting of arms with the ability of taking down a country’s satellites.

Our enemy is similar. He will try to sabotage our communications through a couple of different ways. He could jams the airwaves by filling all of the frequencies that we might use with static. Do you ever feel like the atmosphere of your lives is just cluttered with nonessentials, ever feel like your mind is abuzz with all kinds of things but none of them are the actual thing you are trying to communicate. Is it so easy to turn on music or a youtube video to drown out the silence that there is nowhere to be free of the noise.

In addition to jamming the airwaves, he could just steal the transmitter or make us believe that the equipment is broken and defective. If we are deceived into believing that prayer is broken and won’t work then when it comes time to use it, we will just look over it saying there’s no use in even trying this because it is obviously broken.

Finally, the enemy could attack by sabotaging the radio operator. Maybe it is through bombing and shelling all the night before so we couldn’t get any sleep, and now we are so tired we are failing on our watchman duties because our eyes are so heavy. Or maybe he tries to distract us with a giant wooden horse as a gift. Flattery, pleasures, and pride are an easy tool in our enemy’s arsenal to seek to put us out of commission. We get confused over who the enemy really is. The only way to get victory over Satan's devices is to be watchful.

The reason I stress this wartime analogy of the Christian life is because I don't see a better picture to paint to keep the dire need to remain vigilant before us. We must remain alert in our spiritual lives every day. Without watchfulness we are sitting ducks for Satan's constant barrage of flaming darts.

3. Thankfully

The third answer to how we are to pray is thankfully. "Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving."

In case the wartime analogy gives you the jitters, this word is added to help take them away. Watchfulness and vigilance might signify a lot of nail biting and perspiration and heart thumping. But this would be a big mistake. Sometimes our hearts do thump and the hands get clammy, but that is not supposed to be the normal feeling of the Christian soldier.

If we remain steadfast in prayer, then what we are supposed to feel naturally is a sense that the command headquarters in heaven is in control, progress is being made on all the strategic fronts. That the battle is the Lord's. The decisive engagements of Christ and Satan in the wilderness and in Gethsemane and on the cross and at the empty tomb have all been won by Christ, and he is leading his church in triumph to a great day of worldwide consummation. And so woven through all our walkie-talkie requests for fire cover, are sentences like: "Nice shot, Sir, thank you." "The door blew open wide, Sir, thank you." "We made it through, Sir, thank you." "Aristarchus' arm has healed, Sir, thank you." "Coming now in with 20 happy captives, Sir, thank you."

When Paul says that our praying is to be done with thanksgiving, he means that we should keep our eyes on the victory of God. We do not fight as losers, we are not the underdogs, or even as those who are uncertain. We know God will win. And if we have eyes to see, we will recognize the path of his power again and again.

What to Pray: Three Things

So verse 2 showed us how to pray, now in verses 3 and 4 Paul tells us three things about what to pray in our support of frontline evangelism and missions.

1. For the Advanced Guard

Pray for the advanced guard. Verse 3: "At the same time, pray also for us."

God has called some people to give most of their time to direct gospel warfare. All Christians are soldiers. All of us have walkie-talkies. That is one of the cool things about the priesthood of believers. We don’t have to find the communications soldier in the middle of the fray to get the message out. Every soldier has a direct link to headquarters. At the same time, there is a differentiation of assignment on the battlefield. Ephesians 4:11 says that God has gifted and trained some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors or teachers. I think that these believers are in essence no different than the average soldier, they have just been tasked with a different mission. They are the advanced guard.

And Paul here is asking his fellow soldiers not to just use the walkie talkies for their own personal interests but to use them for the sake of those in the advanced guard. We should each of us be praying for missionaries and missions work around the world as well as for pastors and evangelists and teachers right here at home that they would be strengthened and protected from the schemes of the evil one.

2. For Openings for Gospel Opportunities

Second, we should not only be praying for the Advanced guard themselves but we should be praying for their missions. There is no top-secret mission in the Christian life, we all have the same mission to bring the light to the darkness. So, we pray for gospel opportunities to open in the world for those who are part of the advanced guard. We see this in the next phrase of verse 3: "At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word."

Paul knows that there is a difference between regular, ordinary speaking to those he is with, even if he is talking about Christ, and what he would see as a door for the word. These are periodic, extraordinary opportunities for effective proclamation. Paul uses this illustration regularly. In 1 Corinthians 16:9–10, he says, "I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries." And in 2 Corinthians 2:12 he said, "When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, a door was opened for me in the Lord."

This should be our constant request going over the walkie-talkie for the storm troopers here North Florida and among the unreached peoples of the world—"O God, blow the door off the hinges in Albania, Morocco, India, and China as well as Williston, Dunnellon, Gainesville, and Ocala!"

Paul was wise enough to know that the mission didn’t push forward on the strength of his teachings or logical arguments, though those things have their place. God’s mission and the redemption and reconciliation of men back to God is primarily and ultimately a work of God and while we play a part in that work and seek for him to work, at the end of the day, he is the one that opens the doors, not us.

3. For the Mystery of Christ to Be Made Plain

Third, Paul asked that we would pray for the whole mystery of Christ to be made plain when God opens a door. Let’s read the end of verse 3 and through verse 4: "A door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear, as I ought to speak."

Simply put, Paul is saying that the goal of evangelism is to make clear a mystery. The gospel is not a mystery because it is confusing or obscure like a tricky riddle. It's a mystery because no one would ever know it or think of it unless God had made it plain. I say this from my own experience. Even though I was in church for all of my young life and I heard the gospel preached hundreds of times, it wasn’t until God made the simple truth of the gospel clear to me that the mystery was solved.

The good news that we believe has been hidden from the minds of unbelievers. It is incomprehensible nonsense to them. That the Son of God should become man. That he should live a life of poverty and love. That he should die in the place of sinners and bear the curse of the law though he was sinless. That he should rise from the dead and reign in heaven today. That the ungodly should be justified by faith. That Jew and Gentile, red and yellow, black and white should be reconciled in one body to God. And that Christ should dwell in our hearts and seal us for glory.

These are things that even humanity’s greatest storytellers would have never dreamed of. They are the mystery hidden from the ages in God. This mystery was revealed and made plain to believers in Jesus, and the mission of shining light on this mystery is evangelism. That is what we pray would be happening all over the world, and right here.

But notice that while this mystery is the greatest truth the world has ever heard, it is also violently opposed. That’s why Paul says that he’s in prison because of the mystery of Christ. This is the underlying reason why so many people are terrified of evangelism. If you obey God in the mission of bringing the good news to all people you will encounter resistance, ridicule, and possibly violence and injustice.

This is a war. A war for the hearts and minds of men. If we treat it like we are handing out coupons at the mall, people see it as of little value because we are treating it that way. But if we are tactical and vigilant and take risks and reorient our lives around the mission then we will face opposition and like with all wars, some of us might lose our lives. But as Paul says in Romans 8:35-39, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will trouble, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we encounter death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we have complete victory through him who loved us! For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor heavenly rulers, nor things that are present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

THE TOOLS AND TASK OF PERSONAL EVANGELISM

I want to turn now to verses 5 and 6 and shift our focus off of our indirect involvement through prayer, to the daily direct involvement in evangelism that every soldier is supposed to have where we live and work and play.

Colossians 4:5-6, “Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer every one.”

I said at the beginning that Paul has a remarkably positive and happy angle on personal evangelism in this text. There is a refreshing wind that blows through these two verses.

These verses answer the question how all of us believers are supposed to relate to the unbelievers in our lives. Paul has in view accomplishing as much spiritual good as we can in these relationships. That's what he means in verse 5 when he says to "make the most of the time." Literally in Greek this could be translated, "Buy up the opportunity."

In other words, life is a series of never to be repeated opportunities for buying up spiritual blessings. This is an exhilarating way to look at life. Every hour of your life brings a new unique situation that can either be bought up for eternity or missed.

Jesus said, "Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven..." Do you remember the parable that Jesus told about the Kingdom of God where the master went on a long journey and gave money to each of his servants to deal with while he was away? What are we to do? Buy up the opportunities of life for eternity. There is never a dull or insignificant moment for the Christian who is radically devoted to shrewd purchasing of life's moments for eternity.

How Can We Buy Up Every Opportunity?

So the question Paul answers in these two verses is how can we buy up every opportunity as we relate to the unbelievers in our lives? He gives three answers. Wise behavior, salty speech, and individual attention.

1. Wise Behavior

Verse 5: "Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders." Wisdom is knowing what to do for the glory of God when the rule book runs out. It's knowing how to become all things to all men without compromising holiness and truth. It is creativity and tact and thoughtfulness. It's having a feel for the moment, and having an eye for what people need and want. In order to buy up opportunities for God, we have to be wise in our behavior.

We stand before a watching world and while we cannot change their hearts to make them know and love Jesus without the help of the Holy Spirit, we certainly can, if we are not wise and upright soil the good name of Jesus and cause their hearts to be hardened as they look at our hypocrisy.

We must be wise in our behavior and find this wisdom in three basic ways:

1. By meditating on the Scriptures as we see in Psalm 19:7, "The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple."
2. By keeping open the lines of communication in Prayer: James 1:5, "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God."
3. Seeking out and listening to wise counselors. Much of this is what the books of wisdom are all about, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, etc. We have these books preserved in scripture because they show us the lives and struggles of real people as they wrestled with their faith and lived lives that were not perfect. The other place for wise counsel is from other believers, particularly those who have gone before. Like we looked at William Wilberforce last week.

2. Gracious, Salty Speech

The second answer to how we buy up opportunities for eternity is salty speech. Verse 6: "Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt."

I take this to mean that what we say about Christ and about the Christian life should be made as appetizing as possible. When food is not salted, its taste is bland. People don't want to eat it. It's unappetizing. Our speech is not supposed to be like that.

This is one of the most refreshing things I have ever heard anyone say about personal evangelism. Think about it for a moment. How can you develop the ability to speak about Christ so that there is an appetizing flavor to it? How do you learn to talk about Christ in a way that makes people's mouth water?

I think the answer is simply to spend time every day reminding yourself from Scripture why the gospel tastes good to you. Some of us who have been Christians for a long time begin to neglect the crucial business of enjoying Christ. Then an opportunity comes along to commend him to someone and we realize that all the reasons he is wonderful have been neglected and the keenness of our own taste buds has grown very dull. It's hard to salt your speech with the deliciousness of Jesus when you haven't been enjoying the taste yourself.

So the wonderful thing about Paul's advice here is that the best way to prepare to be an advertisement for the satisfying taste of Jesus is to enjoy him yourself. Every day we should go to the Bible and look for reasons why knowing Christ is the greatest thing in the world. And when we get up off our knees with our hearts happy in him, we will be in the best position to make our speech appetizing for Christ.

You want an example? Look to Jesus when he was speaking to the woman at the well in John 4:13-14, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” She responded with her mouth watering and said, “Sir, give me this water!”

When you talk about Jesus do you make him sound appealing? Have you tasted and seen yourself that the Lord is good?

3. Individual Attention

The final answer to the question how to buy up every opportunity for God is that a person should get individual attention. We see this in the end of Verse 6: "... so that you may know how you ought to answer every one."

The point is simple: each person is different and each situation is different. The gospel is the same, and Christ is the same, but there are countless ways to serve the meal. Canned, pat answers to questions are rarely satisfying and they feel rehearsed and impersonal. One of the best ways to buy up opportunities for the gospel is by loving people and caring for them as people. Not as notches on your belt. I’ve never liked the statistical side of evangelicalism whereby churches compare numbers of baptisms or conversions.

I’m also not a big fan of just handing someone a tract and considering my job done. That can be a tool that we use, but we should be seeking out ways to bring the gospel to each person so that it is seen as wisdom, instead of foolishness, appetizing instead of appalling, and personal instead of pre-rehearsed.

So in conclusion, let's pick up the walkie-talkie of prayer and support the advanced guard with persistence and watchfulness and confident gratitude. And let's buy up every opportunity for eternity with wise conduct and salty speech and individual attention.

Under all of this, let's set our eyes on Christ in the gospel until we taste how appetizing and satisfying he is for our own souls. "I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst."