Lord, Keep Me

In this episode of the PRESS Movement Podcast, we unpack Paul’s prayer in Colossians 1—a prayer focused on spiritual maturity, endurance, and truly knowing God.

Paul doesn’t pray for comfort. He prays that believers would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will, spiritual wisdom, and understanding so they can walk worthy of the Lord.

This episode explores the difference between knowing about God and actually knowing Him.

Intellectual knowledge isn’t enough. Degrees, theology, and information cannot replace revelation through the Spirit of God. Real understanding comes when the Author explains His own words.

Paul also prepares believers for reality: hardship will come. Longsuffering will come. Patience will be required.

But the instruction is clear:

Have joy anyway.

Because your circumstances do not change what God has already done.

You’ve already been delivered from darkness.
 You’ve already been redeemed.
 You’ve already been forgiven.

This episode is a reminder to keep growing, keep fighting, and keep the main thing the main thing.

And perhaps the most honest prayer of the episode:

“Lord, keep me—even when I don’t feel like being kept.”

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Transcript

Press means to apply force. When God said press, prayer reaches every single situation. He gave us permission to apply force to every situation that we will go through.

And in this podcast, we are going to learn to apply force to what's applying pressure to us. Welcome, welcome, welcome back, everybody. We are in a new book this week.

We are going to the book of Colossians as we journey through every prayer in the Bible. You've just checked us out for the first time today to make sure you go back. Literally, I believe prayer covers every topic you can imagine.

And if you'll go back through the 120 plus prayers we have done in this podcast, you will find that prayer really does reach every single situation. This is not hyperbole, but today we're going to learn some more about it in the prayer that Paul shared with us in the book of Colossians. So let's go ahead and dive right into it.

We have Ziya Owens here. She is a veteran of the press movement and one of our club leaders. And so Ziya, take it from there.

Okay. So for what we're going to be looking at concerning our prayer, it will be in Colossians 1, 9 through 14 specifically. But before I even start reading it, it's necessary that I give background because starting off, you're going to be confused.

So Paul, he is essentially speaking to the church that is in Colossae and he speaks of the things that he's heard about them. He speaks about their love towards the saints, their faith in Christ Jesus, their faith in the gospel essentially, and just what it's done for them. And so when it came to Paul hearing this, he begins to tell them the prayer that he's prayed for them.

And when we read in verse nine, that's where we begin to see it. Verse nine, it says, for this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of his will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all might according to his glorious power and to all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness, giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us to meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light who have delivered us from the power of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son, in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. So in reading this at first, I was like, okay, I don't know what was really all that much that came from this prayer, but I really had to have a different perspective in understanding this.

So when I was reading this, there were some key points that I got from it, especially when it comes to our walk with God. In verse nine, it talks about how he desired that they might be filled with the knowledge of his will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding. And bringing that back today, when it comes to saints that may be new in their walk with God, or who are figuring it out, or who may need encouragement as well, I would say that having the knowledge of what God has for you and what his will is, is important because that's what helps us continue to stand in our walk with him.

And I loved how it said that when we are being filled with the knowledge of his will, it speaks about an all wisdom and spiritual understanding. And when it comes to walking with God, there's definitely going to be things that we'll face in life we may not necessarily understand. But when it comes to having spiritual understanding, that word spiritual, it speaks about not humanly, not carnal.

And so we can have our own version of understanding, but when it comes to the things of God, there's a deeper and more broad and expounded viewpoint of what it is that's essentially going to happen. And if you could reference even to the scriptures about how all things work together for the good to them that love God and to them that are called according to his purpose. When it comes to talking about the things that work together, there may be some sort of battle that we even go through in life, but God, he uses it for something greater than we would ever even think.

And continuing how it talks about that we might walk worthy of the Lord and to all pleasing being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. One thing that I did highlight in this verse was how you're not being stagnant. And what I mean by stagnant, I mean, when it comes to your walk with God, you're not just staying at a point where you're comfortable and just not growing.

But one thing when it comes to walking with God, it's important that we are growing. The Bible talks about growing in his grace. He wants us to continue to grow because it helps us stand stronger.

It helps us in the fight. It helps us because today we can see there's definitely a lot of battles and there's going to be a lot of things that come up against us. But when it comes to increasing in the knowledge of God, that's what holds us in our walk with God.

And as we can see, it talks about being strengthened with all might according to his glorious power and to all patience and long suffering with joyfulness. And so seeing that word long suffering and patience definitely emphasizes that there's going to be things that are going to come against you. And so what's important is that we are having that patience and that long suffering.

And I like that it says with joyfulness, because though you're going through these things, our fight doesn't have to be that we're sad. It doesn't have to be that we're depressed, but we can still have joy even in the midst of the fight or the battle. And it even goes further telling us what to give thanks for, giving thanks that we have an inheritance, that no matter what it is that we're going through in life, there's more outside of this world.

And we can definitely look forward to that. It even talks about how we can think about how he delivered us from the power of darkness, that what we used to be in darkness no longer has a hold on us, but we have God and that we are translated into the kingdom of his dear son. So we get to be with him and we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.

And so no matter how things get in life, we have a hope in God that no matter how things look, we have the victory in the end. And so I think Paul, when he was giving this, it was just really to keep them going further, know that they were doing great in the beginning. Paul was happy about that.

And so when he was giving this prayer, it was that they can continue in God because there's going to be things, though it starts out all good, there's going to be more battles. And so that's essentially what I got from it, that Paul really, he was praying just so they can keep going further in God, that there wasn't necessarily anything wrong, but even praying this, it's still something to help strengthen the church. A few things you said stood out, but one in particular, when you started talking about spiritual understanding, it reminded me of being in college and I had a theology professor.

I'll never forget the first book they made us read started with the sentence, Jesus was neither a God nor a prophet. And I was like, what? Needless to say, I did end up in the Dean of Theology's office at one point, but it was all good. We had a great conversation.

But what I found is that many theology professors are people who are deep in scriptural understanding, don't even know God. Some of them even profess to be atheist because having a cognitive understanding of who God is, having intelligence is not the same thing as having a spiritual understanding. I compare it to being in an English class and we had to read a Shakespeare or you have to read poetry and they'll say, so what does the author mean by this? What does the author mean by that? And so you infer and you hypothesize to get to what the author is saying.

That is kind of what they do. Those people who, yes, may have all these degrees and all this learning, they have a cognitive understanding and they can infer what God meant, but without his spirit, you don't understand what he's truly saying or why he's saying it. Because his spirit is sent to lead us into all truth, John 16 says, without his spirit, you don't get it.

But to stick with my example of trying to decipher in class what the author meant, the difference is when you have a spirit that is having the author inside of you, who knows why he said what he said, knows what he wants you to get out of it. And so it's totally different to get that spiritual understanding because the spiritual understanding has to come from the spirit. And there's so many people out there right now who are looking for so many different types of things.

And so they look through the Bible and they don't get it, or they look through the Bible and they suppose this, or we suppose that, but truly we can ask the author because the author is not dead. And so listening to this prayer of Paul's as you were expounding upon it, but he wanted them to get a spiritual understanding. He wanted them to know what they had and he wanted them to take joy in that.

I love how you emphasize that even though he told them, it sounds like there's going to be problems, you're going to have long suffering, like you said, patience. But he said with joy, giving thanks unto the father. I love how he encourages them to keep the main thing, the main thing.

It's not a delusion where he's acting like, oh, nothing's going to go wrong. No, you might have to suffer long. You might have to have patience, but have joy with that.

One thing does not stop the other. And I love the way he encourages the saints and writes to them. I try to imagine what it must've been like to get a letter from Paul.

I wonder if the church, I was like, yes, come together. There's a new letter because this would have been so hard. I think it was like a hundred miles from Ephesus, which is in Turkey.

I wonder how difficult it was to get the communications going back and forth, how long it took. So when he did write, when he did say something, when the Lord did send a word, it was to be cherished. And he let them know they're not forgotten.

Their works aren't forgotten. That is a big deal to me. And I pray that as people are reading it, they'll understand that God wants us to keep the main thing, the main thing, that no matter what's coming, he's already delivered us from the power of darkness.

He's already redeemed us. He's already forgiven our sins. He is God.

If you had one prayer for the people listening, Ziya, what would your prayer for them be? I would say, well, something I always pray is that the Lord will keep me even when I don't want to recap. Because even as Paul was telling them about how hard things will get, even in life, it's like when I'm a college student, so there's definitely a lot of things that I have to go through and a lot of battles, even outside of college. And sometimes I just want to break like mentally.

And it's like, I'm already ready to just stop. But one thing that I'm very grateful for in praying that the Lord keeps me is that he does keep me. And he definitely helps me in ways that I never thought that I could be helped.

And I can definitely say that I'm a witness that God is able to keep you. Because that same prayer, Lord, please keep me from falling, is what kept me for about four years, I've been saying now. So I would definitely say praying that God is able to put something in your heart to want to be kept.

And he's very much able to put you in an environment where you are surrounded by people that will help you and guide you. And that will see you where you really are versus seeing just a smile. And so I would definitely say praying, Lord, please keep me even when I don't feel like being kept, or even when I feel weak.

I would definitely say that's a prayer to keep praying. And we can pray that today, just as Paul prayed for the people he saw fighting to walk with God and heard great things about that they continue in it. You have Sister Ziya praying even for you today that you be kept in standing as proof that God is a keeper.

And we know that when we pray, no matter what it is, prayer reaches every single situation. Be blessed. Join the movement.

Join the community. Like, share and subscribe to this podcast. Visit us at PressToPray.com or find us on Instagram or Facebook.

Did you know that when you are quiet, your voice is missing to God's ears? I know some of us have prayed and we're wondering how long should I pray about this? Why should I pray if God already knows? How will I know God is answering? And what do I do when I feel like God's not listening? But God is listening for your voice. It's too quiet in this world for the troubles we have. You have to raise your voice and God wants to hear from you.

It's Too Quiet, a book about prayer, is designed to answer your prayer questions and build your faith. Visit PressToPray.com

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