June 29 - Colossians 4:12-15

June 29 - Colossians 4:12-15

“Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured. I vouch for him that he is working hard for you and for those at Laodicea and Hierapolis. Our dear friend Luke, the doctor, and Demas send greetings. Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house.”

Notice again that Epaphras is another Colossian and is spending time with Paul.  He is always (never ceasing) wrestling in prayer for you.  The word ‘wrestling’ comes from the Greek word ‘agonizomenos.’  You probably see the word ‘agonize’ in that.  Another interpretation is that he was striving in intercessory prayer for his home church.  Epaphras was away from the people that he loved and wanted everything for them.

He stood before the Lord, praying for them ceaselessly that they would stand firm, grow up and be mature and be fully assured of the truth that is the saving grace of Jesus.

The next sentence is something I might have heard my father say.  “He is working hard for you.”  Of course he was!  Any young man that was spending any time with Paul would be working hard.

Luke was there – this is one of those verses that gives us just a bit of information about him.  Even though we don’t know from his Gospel or the Acts of the Apostles that he is a doctor, Paul lets us know more about him here.

While Luke sticks close to Paul through his ministry we discover in 2 Timothy 4:10 that Demas doesn’t fare so well.  He was too in love with the world and deserted Paul at some point. 

The very early New Testament churches met in homes. (Read about it here in my God in History blog post.)  It wasn’t until the middle of the third century that they began to gather all of the home churches into a single building so as to not lose the unity.  But, at this point, the people still met together for a meal, worship, reading scripture and communion.