Men of Prayer

Epaphras . . . is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully asssured. (Colossians 4:12-13)

Prayer is not a work that can be allocated to one or another group in the church. it is everybody's responsibility; it is everybody's privilege. Prayer is the respiratory function of the church; without it we suffocate and die at last, like a living body deprived of the breath of life. Prayer knows no sex, for the soul has no sex, and it is the soul that must pray. Women can pray, and their prayers will be answered; but so can man, and so should men if they are to fill the place God has given them in the church.

Let us watch that we do not slide imperceptibly to a state where the women do the praying and the men run the churches. Men who do not pray have no right to direct church affairs. We believe in the leadership of men within the spiritual community of the saints, but that leadership should be won by spiritual worth.

Prayer
Make me an Epaphras, Lord.

Thought
Prayer is never the least we can do, it is always the most! Epaphras, a man, was always wrestling in prayer for the Colossians that they might progress to full spiritual maturity. Would that every church had an Epaphras!

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