This week we are looking at Paul’s prayer for the Colossian church and that they work to grow spiritually. Last time we saw the first aspect of spiritual growth being related to seeking God and knowledge of His will. Today we will look at how when growing spiritually we need to focus on endurance and patience. In Colossians 1:11-12 we see, “May you be strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience, with joy giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the saints’ inheritance in the light.”
Endurance and Patience
Paul prays that the Colossian church will be strengthened by God so they can exhibit endurance and patience. The purpose behind this is when you start to live out your faith you are bound to encounter trials and persecution, Paul understood this and prayed that God would give the Colossian church the strength to stand in such time. It is far too easy when times get tough because of our faith to take a step back and tone down our beliefs, but that actually hinders us. Growing spiritually is much like growing physically, when we grow physically we often encounter growing pains as we mature, growing spiritually is much the same we have to encounter the trials and tribulations in order to grow.
The need for endurance and patience is not just because of our own spiritual growth but also as we are shaped into the men God wants us to be. The trials and hardships are not just growing pains but also serve as a means to make you useful in doing God’s will. If you have ever seen the method that Native Americans used to use when making arrowheads they would take basically two stones and use one to chip away bits and pieces of the softer stone until an arrowhead was formed. The trials and hardships that we face where we are needing to have endurance and patience do much the same. They shape us and form us into until we are a tool useful for God’s purpose, then like sharpening a knife it is a process that keeps us useful. The thing to remember is that all believers face this, we are never told we will have an easy life as a Christian, that is why Paul prays for believers to be strengthened for endurance and patience, as trials and hardships are almost guaranteed to the believer.
Give Thanks
As we are strengthened to be able to exhibit patience and endurance giving thanks to God should naturally flow out from that. When you think about it when we were children we all wanted to grow, we would get excited about a mere fraction of an inch of growth; and we will celebrate each year as we get a year older. It is only natural that we should exhibit the same we have regarding physical growth when we see the evidence of our own spiritual growth. You see we are not giving thanks because we are facing the trials and hardships themselves, but rather we are giving thanks because it means we are growing in our faith.
Giving thanks is not just because of the evidence of our growth but also because we are saved. We give t hanks because we will take part in the inheritance that fellow believers will share in. The reason we are to give thanks to God is because He is the one that makes us able to share in the inheritance, it is not by anything we have done or could ever do; but it is all because of God’s mercy and grace. Next time we will look further into other reasons we should be giving thanks to God as Paul points out to the Colossian church.
