March through Colossians - 1:9-14

Most definitely it is not bad for us to pray for our health issues. Or for financial matters. Or for job struggles. Or for whatever is on our mind. But we could also be challenged and trained by Paul’s prayer (really a summary of his prayers) in these verses:

-He and his companions have not ceased to pray for the Colossians (this was a perfectly common way of saying "we have been praying for you regularly," not necessarily "we have organized a 24/7 prayer rotation," though there's certainly nothing inherently wrong with that practice).
-He asks God.
-He asks God that they would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will (think “knowing how to glorify God in my life,” not “knowing what will happen in the future”), which requires spiritual wisdom and understanding, which he asks for.
-He asks God for the above so that the Colossians would walk (live daily) in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him (not a bad goal viewed with a gospel lens), bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God (kind of sounds like what the gospel does/produces, from 1:6).
-He asks God to strengthen them with all power according to His glorious might (a necessary power source for the kind of walking/living described above), so that they could
endure with patience and joy and thanksgiving in this crazy world.

I’m not quite sure how we transfer all of that from the reading-it-on-a-blog part of our brain to the putting-it-into-practice part of our brain, but let’s try to be appropriately challenged in our own praying.