Making the Best Use of Every Opportunity

Ministry Associate Calvin Chu preaches from Colossians 4:2-6. Discussion points: The apostle Paul was not above needing prayer from others in the church, Paul prays for gospel opportunities rather than a change in circumstances, life is a collection of opportunities to do good for others, the way we live is meant to attract others to Christ.

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  Scripture reader: [Colossians 4:2-6] Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak, walking in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

  This is the word of the Lord.

  Preacher: Thank you. I don't know about you guys. But sometimes when like, I'll open up a news page or, you know, social media and I'll look at the caption or what like the headline of the article. And I see it says something about like Christians. There's like a tinge of me that I was like, 00, like what, what, what is happening? What did, what did they do right? There, there's an element for me that says the article says a group of Christians showed up to protest this and I go, oh, what did they protest? Or a group of evangelical leader says, or did? And I go, oh, and, and a part of me gets really, really nervous because, as I click the link, I don't know how the, the folks who say they are following Jesus, they, they're like in the name of Christ. I'm doing this thing or I'm living in this way. I, I get nervous because I, I've seen lots of, you know, I have lots of options to pick from that made me go, oh, that might not have been the best action or the best thing to say in that moment.

  I'm sure you could argue that. Well, the mainstream media is just biased towards Christians and therefore they're going to hand select the worst. Yeah, I mean, ok, sure. I, I guess you could make that selection, make that, uh, argument. But part of me thinks that if there are folks who are behaving outwardly like knowing that they're the outside world, the, the, the world outside the walls of the church are looking at those who say yes, Jesus is my savior. I checked that box if they live in this way and they do these things.

  I think there's an element that perhaps it's because for those of us who say we follow Jesus and that have opened up our Bibles, maybe sit in pews every single Sunday and have, are choosing to live in a certain way, but are, are, are doing these things and living in a way that seems contradictory to how we might read the Bible. It makes you think that maybe there's an element that we don't know how we're supposed to live in light of the fact that there are people out there who don't know Jesus and are looking at us and seeing us at work and in the marketplace and seeing us in our neighborhoods or at our classes in our schools.

  And, you know, I, I think I, I get a sense of that because I, I think that a lot of times all people, certainly not just Christians, we don't have the market corner, but all people go into the world driven by our own sense of right and wrong and not what God calls us to. Right. We're, we're more driven by our politics or our feelings than Jesus. And I think that's the, the thing that creates this equation that comes up with this result of people living in ways that seem contradictory to how God might want us to actually live.

  And so what should a Christian's life outside of the church actually look like, you know, who are you? And I, those of us who follow Jesus supposed to be when we leave these pews, when we leave these seats, when we go out this ornate looking building and go out there and live and, and you know, interact with those around us when the worship music stops and the sermons end and the benedictions have been received. What is it that we are called to bring out into the world?

  And so as we prepare for uh as we prepare for, for landing on this sermon, what we're gonna hear is that Paul is gonna talk to the Colossians at the Colossians church and what God has in terms for them, in terms of how they are to live. And I think that God is speaking to us today still through it and that we can see how we are to relate to the world around us. So we've already read the passage. So, you know, I think the framework here is in a sermon like this. If you kind of break it down, it's really, really simple to just go. OK, verse two says, this continue steadfastly in prayer, prayer being watchful in it with thanksgiving. So let's do what that thing says. Let's pray. I'm gonna pray one more time and then we're gonna scrape a little bit deeper into this text so we can see really what God is calling us to. So let's pray.

  God, as we listen to this verse that tells us to continue steadfastly in prayer. God, we know that prayer is important and so God help us to approach the throne with the right mindset with the right mentality. And God let us have hearts that are ready and willing and able to confess the ways that we have not represented you well. And conf confess even maybe even on, on behalf of other people that maybe we should have spoke up against or we should have spoke in challenge or we should have spoke and been a loving voice in the ear of folks who maybe didn't do things that really brought your name glory. We pray that this word would speak to us as we do. Get ready to go back to work tomorrow. Or for those of us who are in school, go back to school very, very soon. And God, I pray that as those who follow you go into the schools go into our workplaces, that we would indeed bring much light to those places and not for our glory, but for yours alone, we pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.

  OK. So you know, like I would like start off when you see verses like that says, hey, pray continuously. It's really easy to fill in the blanks says, OK, like I get if you, this is your first time in a church ever, even if it's like in like in a building, you probably can, can guess that Christians care about prayer. Like you could go to a V BS growing up or a Ks A here and they probably talked about prayer, right? We, we know that there's the Lord's prayer and so it's really easy to go. OK. Well, talking about prayer it's, it's something that's really, really important. And ok, so verse two says, continue steadfastly in prayer and it's really easy to go. Ok. There's another sermon that just says, we need to pray more, right? And then some of us can feel that guilt. You know, we go, ah, you're right, you're right. I do need to pray more. My faith is not big enough. I'm putting too much in my own hands and that, yeah, that could be true, right?

  Or some of the like we, we even struggle like for those of us who say grace before meals, we were like like halfway to the food. Oh dear God, thank you for this food. Jesus pray. And then you eat like prayer is this thing that we can, we know a lot about a lot of us. Sometimes we can feel guilt about it that we're not doing enough. And if I just land here at this verse, just go. OK. Yeah, I need to pray more.

  Actually, I think what we see here, it calls gives a more nuanced thought in terms of it. And that's why we need the whole passage here. And we'll read verse two again, but really just the first section of verse three, I actually helps set the frame. It says, continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with Thanksgiving at the same time, pray also for us. And so what is he saying? Or Paul the the writer of this saying, he says, we all need prayer. Yes, you need prayer. Yes, you maybe we should all pray more. OK? OK, for sure.

  But Paul who is the leader, he's a leader in this the ministry. He's recognized as such. And he's saying, yeah, you need prayer, but I need prayer as the leader. And it sounds familiar. I was like, yeah, everywhere everyone needs to pray. It doesn't matter. You're high in the hierarchy, low in the hierarchy. You, you, we all need prayer. But it's actually really quite countercultural even in our American modern Christian like sensibility and context because I think if you are on Instagram and once you get past, like if you're a parent, the parenting Instagram or you, you know, you're into fitness and you scroll past the fitness ones or whatever and you get to like a Christian Instagram, like the pastor, you get a clip, there's like a 15 2nd clip of a pastor and the clips that we usually get are the pastor that's like slamming on his, on, on, on the the pulpit. You need to do this. How good is God! Like this big, it's a big show. It's a big loud call to action for you to go do something.

  But what Paul here who wrote the majority of the New Testament? What is he saying? He's saying if he, if he was on Tik Tok, if you were on Instagram, he would be saying, pray for us. We need your prayers. I don't know if I, I really see that on social media necessarily. I don't feel like I see Christian leaders crying out for their congregations to be praying for them. And so in asking for prayer, he's telling his congregation that I am not better than you. I need you to pray for me. Like I have been praying for you.

  It tells them that we are united in Christ. He never stops having that pastoral leader role. He's still the leader, he's still the apostle Paul that doesn't go away. He's not discounting that, that's still there. But in asking prayer for prayer, he exemplifies and expresses a deep need for mutual obligation of prayer partnership. He, he is not only a good reminder and a model for our church, it also amplifies the ultimate truth that no matter what you and I do, God is the one that's in control of all of it. And so whether you stand up here and you're preaching a sermon with an ornate uh pulpit with a giant Bible, or you're quietly working in the lab by yourself or you're studying in the library with a study group, whatever you do. God is the one who controls all of it.

  And so pastors, ministers, leaders, we don't have the market cornered in the church with the direct, most direct connection to God. We all need prayer. And I love that Paul in this passage is I need your prayer, pray at the same time, pray also for us, pray so that God would move, so that God would respond, pray that God would do. These are all the things that the leaders are praying for. We can't do anything without God. We may think we are an ultimate, we have ultimate control. But at the end of the day, we don't have the final say in life. And at the end of the day, in all of life, we need God to open up doors for us. We need God to create the opportunities for us in all of life.

  So then the question that pops in my mind as I was studying this is, well, what does Paul ask for prayer about? Right? He, this the framework is there. He's like, listen, can keep praying, keep praying, you need to pray more. That's important. But pray also for me so that God pray that God would do something, pray that God would open up these doors, give these opportunities. Well, what are the opportunities that He's talking about here? And so I think that's what you know, the, the, as we read it, we know that it says Paul is in prison, right? Like that's the context of the situation in which Paul is writing.

  And in those circumstances were difficult, like being in prison is, is difficult from my understanding. And, and, and if you think of anything. He'd be like pray that God would open the prison doors, give me the opportunity to get out of here. Why? So that I can go and preach the Gospel so that I can go and activate the church. Like that would be like a good prayer, right? That's what seems like be the most important thing in Paul's mind. God crack open the door so that I can go out and bring your name great glory, but he doesn't do that and said, he asked God to open doors for the word. Paul does not pray for circumstantial change. He prays for gospel opportunities.

  Let's read again. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving at the same time. Pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison. I think that we missed this a lot.

  I've been in, I've sat in countless small groups over the years in which I was, I was in ministry. lots of student, small groups, lots of adult, small groups. And when it comes to prayer time, I would say the majority of them when we're sharing prayer requests, it's about God, would God change my circumstance? There's a circumstance at work that I want God to change. There's a circumstance at home that I want God to change. There's a circumstance at school that I wanna change. There's a circumstance in my body that I want God to change. There's all these things of these circumstances that we ask God to change or we go God, I don't know what the situation is, but God, would you make the circumstance positive? Would you make the outcome of that a good thing? Would you make that happy? Would you make that joyful? Would you make that good?

  And now don't, don't get me wrong like that's important to do. Like don't not do that. Like that's, I'm not saying you're a sinner. If you ask God for like help, for you to, you know, help at work or help at school, that's good. And we should do those things. But after reading this passage, I can't help but feel like how different would our church be? How different would our faith journeys be? If instead of asking for prayer about our circumstances, we prayed for opportunities, opportunities to declare the mystery of Christ to embody and proclaim God's love to a world that desperately needs to hear it again. I'm not, I'm not saying don't pray for your circumstances, do do that. Like that's important. We should. But if our primary pro life centers around changing our circumstances and little else, it makes me wonder about our thought process when it comes to coming to church.

  Recently, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Recently, recently I was on a trip in to New Hampshire. And, you know, if you've ever driven to New Hampshire, sometimes you've got, like, long stretches, like, where you're driving for, for a little bit of time and then sometimes when you, like, hit, like, a city center or, or a town center, it's like, oh, like all of a sudden it kind of, you kind of notice things you kind of know. Oh, that's a church building. And for one, a lot of times when I'm, I used to drive to New Hampshire, like, New New Hampshire and Maine, like twice a year, every single winter and every single summer for like, church retreats and stuff. So, I've seen a lot of churches on my way up, to, to the final destination for the retreat center. But there was this one church that stuck out to me recently because of the sign out front and, and church signs are one of those things that are, they're kind of funny. Like, sometimes it could be informational, like church potluck next Tuesday. Don't put apples in your potato salad, Greta. Like, they don't like little things or they, sometimes they try to be cheeky. It's like, you know, follow Jesus and I don't mean Twitter or I guess now, like X or whatever, you know, I'm never gonna call it X.

  You know, like some of the church signs will, will have these, like, funny little things. But what was interesting about this church? Was it? Wasn't, it wasn't like the ones that you can swap out the letters. It was a permanent sign affixed over the door like as you walk in and the, the church sign said this, it said enter to worship, exit to serve, enter to worship, exit to serve.

  And so I have to ask us my friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, why do we go to church? Yes, it is to worship God. I love coming here. I love worshiping with you guys. It, it is an amazing thing. I love hearing the word that's important. It's good to do we, yes, we should 100% go to church to worship. But I think this passage shows us that we need to look beyond church services and church buildings. Yes. Our faith must have this vertical focus on God like 100%. That's the beginning of it definitely. And, and that's why prayer is necessary, but it also needs to have an outward vision.

  And I think we see this in the passage, right at the same time, pray also for us that God may open doors to us a door, sorry, open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak. Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, walk in wisdom toward outsiders. This is a call that God would open doors for us to focus beyond the church, beyond the programs, beyond the services. And there are plenty of passages that talk about building up the church and worshiping God the right way, plenty of them.

  And so again, not saying that those are not important, but this passage here is focused beyond the church walls. And this agrees with other parts of scripture. James 2:18 says, but someone will say you have faith and I have work. Show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my works. We both need, well, we need both faith and works. We need to worship God. Yes, we need to grow in our faith. Yes. But our faith should lead to action and a key space where we should do that is serving those outside of church, outside of the faith. Those who don't know Jesus, those who do not understand the mystery of Christ as this passage, as outsiders, we must walk in wisdom towards them and the faith produces works and you can't have one without the other.

  Then what are we building up every single Sunday? If we don't ask God for opportunities to live out and share the good news, the thing that we're hearing here every time we crack open a Bible and we're listening to a preacher share and call us to live differently to that. There's life change that the, the gospel is good news. If we're not thinking I need to share this with other people out there. Then what exactly are we doing?

  Let's recap. We should all be praying check. Right. We shouldn't be praying just for circumstantial change, but we should be praying for opportunities to exemplify God's love and the good news of Christ to outsiders. Sounds good. Right. But Paul, Paul goes one step further and, and I, I really love this. Not only does he ask for opportunities, but he asked that he would utilize the opportunities given to us that they would make the most of them say this here. I'm gonna read the 3 to 6 all the way through at the same time. Pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak, walk in wisdom towards outsiders making the best use of time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

  If we break it down to an incredibly simple concept, it's this life is nothing more than a collection of opportunities. So one more time, life is nothing more than a collection of opportunities from one moment to the next. We move from opportunity to opportunity, one chance to do good or bad to the next. And what this passage is telling us is that Paul asks that they would be affected, that He would be effective with the opportunities that He has. And so I love that asking God for opportunities to utilize them. He l he asks that, let me be great, right? He says, when the in the, in the way that I ought to speak, the opportunities that I have to speak with my speech with how I live my life may always be seasoned with salt. Let me know how to answer people's questions. Well, and so with every opportunity, let me be amazing. Let me be spectacular. God with, with every opportunity that I have. Let me be superior. Let me be all the adjectives that they use to describe Spiderman. Like let me just, just those things with the opportunities that I would be so good, so incredible.

  I want to note a couple of things here though Paul speaks a lot about speech and given the context, it would seem like he's talking about evangelism, right? Like going and sharing the good news in the like that, that evangelistic way, right? And, and in our direct sharing of the good news that Jesus died for our sins, we should be clear and wise and gracious with and having the right answers and, and yeah, I agree that that's, that's, that's certainly in the Bible, that's certainly here. But at the comment, one of the commentaries that I read it pointed out this also includes all the things we say, not just when we share the gospel. So it's not just when you have like a track in your hand or you're sending your friend a youtube video or, or something like that. It's not just in the evangelistic action, it's in everything that you say.

  One commentary put it like this. Paul envisages, envisages a church expected to hold its own in the social setting of marketplace baths and meal table and to win the attention by the attractiveness of its life and speech. God does not want his people to flee from society to be afraid of the world to hate it. God wants his people to live lives that are so attractive and so positive for outsiders and so they they can taste how good that life is. This is a seasoned with salt that it literally you can just and just get the flavor of how good, how savory that life is.

  Verse six already said that he he talks about that season salt, but it's not just about an attractive life that's like, oh well, how, how good are my kids at sports? Right? Or how amazing was my Instagram photos from vacation, right? It's not that sort of attractive, right? It's not. Look at my, look at my resume, look at my CV. Look how impressive I am. Oh And I also happen to be a Christian. Now, actually, what it's saying is that God wants his people to live in a way that attracts outsiders. Not to us, not to we, the, the, the lifestyle, not, not to our clothes, not to our outfits, not to our tech. No, but to him.

  And it, it, it brings the people who are outside, the outsiders, those who do not follow Jesus. It brings us to the point that goes, listen, I don't understand why you do this. I don't understand how you do this, but I'm grateful you do. I'm thankful that you are my employee. I'm thankful that you're my supervisor. I'm thankful that you're my neighbor. I'm thankful that you're my classmate because I don't, I don't understand who this whole Jesus thing is whatever. But man, I love how you live is different, is different. So yeah. Ok. Yeah. Yeah, you go on you. What are you doing on Sunday? Ok. That's fine. That's cool. But man, I can't wait to work with you again on Monday.

  And so do you want to live that type of life? I hope so. I want to live that type of life because I think that's what the type of life that this passage points us to. And so if you're there, if you're there and you say, yeah, I let let let, let's let's live that type of life.

  Ok. So now there's one more thing I wanna say before we wrap up. What is this? I did Youth ministry for years. youth ministry is a fun space because a lot of like, weird things happen and not good, weird things like, you learn a lot about how they speak. But one of the things for me that I found over the course of time, which I did youth ministries like a lot. We have these like, weird traditions that just popped up over time just because things are funnier and less serious in, in youth history. One thing for instance was, there was a, there was a week that we were supposed to have a regular scheduled program on a Friday night. but I became hospitalized later, later on, I realized I had a kidney stone. It was painful, it was a horrible.

  But basically, I messaged my, my team and say, hey, look guys like I'm in, I don't think I messaged him in the hospital because I was in too much pain. But I think when I, when I got back home and I was like, guys, I'm not gonna be able to make, I'm on like painkillers, I'm gonna be like loopy, like the students would be all confused. So we, we were gonna have to like, I don't know what to do guys, but most of the time I'm, I'm just whatever. So I, I leave it up to you. I said if you guys want, go do like a game night. And so that's what they went with and, and so we did a game night and so as a, as like a joke the following year, I was spending way too much time on this.

  The following year. I said, hey guys, it's, it's that same weekend again. Let's, let's commemorate my kidney stone and we're gonna call it kidney stone night. So basically, it's a game night. But, you know, we just put a little dressing on it and it's like, hey guys, so like, oh my gosh, I was sudden side we're like, hey, everyone bring your water bottle because you need to stay hydrated to avoid kidney stones anyway. That's one example of just the silly things that we do, but that, that's totally unrelated and then spend too much time and I apologize.

  But one of the things that we do do, one of the things that we do that is relevant to this is over the course of time in my ministry. Whenever I finished anything, whether I finished like sharing a message or whether I did an announcement I would look out into to the seats of where all my students were and they would all be like this and like, oh, and, and guys remember to do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then they would all look at me and they'd have their hands up like this and, and you what, what, what is happening? Are they getting ready to pray? No, no. We, we, I don't know when it started or how it started. But we have this tradition that says when I'm done with anything, I would go and break and we clap and so then everyone would decide it and break and then everyone would clap.

  And it's just a weird tradition and I, I thought it was really, really funny but it, it, it's, it was cool because like it united us. and, and it made us like, you know, part of one group, we had traditions, right? It was cool. And as I was thinking about this, I thought, oh, actually, you know what, this is a really apt response because when you do and break, if you've never played like sports before, you've never played like football like that, that, that's usually what you do at the end of the huddle in football. It's usually the quarterback, they get the play from the coach and the, the quarterback gives you the play. Here's the play. We're gonna run this, we're gonna pass, we're gonna do whatever and now that you guys all set, OK, and break clap and then everyone would go line up on the line, get ready to execute the play that they received.

  And I thought this is a cool analogy for how every single Sunday should go when someone is up here sharing God's word with us. That's the play when we share about what God is doing, who God is, what he's calling us to do. That's the play. And as we hear it, as you understand. Yep, I understand. And then the line is out there and as we walk up those doors, we need to be ready and break, we're gonna go out, execute the play, have answers, live life. That's drawing people to God.

  And so I hope that you guys every single Sunday, every single time you open up your the word, every single time you have a conversation with a fellow brother and sister in Christ that you hear the play that God is calling you to do. So that not that you just keep it inside here, that your best is only in this space, but that some of the best of you is also out there for those who don't know who haven't heard the good news who do not understand the mysteries of Christ. And I hope that when you walk out those doors, you're ready to execute and play. Well, it's because of Jesus that we can even do that cause if you're on our own, you ever see you ever see like pop Warner football? It is adorable, but execution wise is a mess. They got kids run lined up on the wrong side. You know, they, they, they think it's a run play, it's a pass play. It, it is just not great and without Christ, that's what it's like when we're doing that, that's why Paul centers is really on him.

  And that's why we, that's why every single Sunday we commemorate the Lord's Supper. And that's why we, we come and we say, yes, we need to be reminded that we are one united in Him, in his death and resurrection. So we like, like I said, we, we, we commune here every single, every single week. And I'm gonna pray for us to invite the worship team and those who are serving communion to come up while I pray.

  God, Heavenly Father, it's hard to ask for that level of efficiency that every opportunity, every chance that we get that we would be seasoned with salt, that it would be attractive to the world outside. Yeah, that's, but that's why it's not about us. It's not about how well we prepare. It's not about our, our willpower, our abilities. It's about you, and God would we just be mirrors that are reflecting your love to the world out there. Would we be just be mirrors that reflect your goodness to the world out there.

  God, we thank you that you died an unrighteous death and that it was accepted and that you were raised again so that we could be changed, that the Holy Spirit could dwell within us so that when we do step outside of these walls, step into our workplaces and our schools and our neighborhoods that we can do a even a fraction of this. And so God, I pray that this would stay with us as we prepare to take the elements, as we prepare to go outside. And we thank you that you hear our prayers. We pray all this in Jesus's name, Amen.