EPAPHRAS – LABOURING IN PRAYER

Always labouring fervently for you in prayers – Colossians 4:12

“Epaphras, Paul’s fellow-prisoner, cherished an intense solicitude for the Christians of his native Colosse and in the neighbouring Lycus valley. “From my own observation,” Paul wrote, “I can tell you that he has a real passion for your welfare.” He was one of them, a fellow-citizen, but the warmth of close natural ties passed over into the passion of spiritual concern. “He is always wrestling for you in his prayers.”

Prison walls could not restrain the flight and freedom of the soul of this spiritual giant. Denied personal contact with his loved flock, he could still exercise on their behalf the most potent of all ministries. His concern for their spiritual advancement expressed itself in agonizing prayer – for that is the very word used – a pale reflection of his Lord’s Gethsemane travail. No more passive and benevolent desire this praying! He took it seriously. So real was his identification with his children in the faith that it became a matter of life and death. The picture is of a perspiring wrestler straining every muscle, summoning every last ounce of strength as he contends in the games. Epaphras prayed to the point of exhaustion. Indeed, it became almost an obsession: “Always wrestling for you.”

His prayers were not concerned with the trivial. As he prayed, his soul soared in aspiration for his friends. He prayed for their constancy, that without wavering, they might stand firm in the face of seduction and opposition, not easy of attainment in a licentious pagan city. He pleaded for their spiritual maturity, that they might go on to perfection, standing perfect and complete. He asked that they might have spiritual discernment and conviction, being “thoroughly convinced in all that concerns the will of God.”

It was Epaphras’ kneeling which kept the Colossians standing.”