Prayer (Give Away Your Faith #1)

All year long, our theme at Riverwood has been to know him and make him known. If I’m honest, we’ve spent most of 2026 on the first half of that sentence. We opened the year with 21 Days of Prayer, looking at twenty-one different names and titles given to Jesus. Then we spent months in Hebrews, seeing Jesus as the true and greater Moses, the true and greater Abraham, the true and greater Sabbath, tabernacle, sacrifice, and on and on. We wanted to know him.

Some of that was intentional. My hope has been that the more you get to know Jesus, the more in awe of him you’ll be, and the more in awe of him you are, the more naturally you’ll start to live out and share the gospel. But even the most naturally gifted athletes still hire a coach. Sometimes we need someone to show us what making him known actually looks like. So for three short weeks, we’re going to look at what it means to give away your faith.

The Kid Who Kept His Faith Quiet

Before we get to our key passage, I want you to hear what the apostle Paul declared in Romans 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”

To be completely open with you, I used to not like that verse. Growing up, I was a little ashamed of the gospel.

I was smaller than most of my peers. I was not a great athlete. I got really good grades, which apparently did not make you cool. I had what the kids these days would call no rizz. I had a girl’s first name and a last name that rhymed with turd and nerd. Just about anything in my life could be turned into fodder to insult me, so the last thing I wanted was for someone to take the faith that was so dear to me and use it against me too.

So I tried to keep it quiet. That was ridiculous, because everyone knew. I grew up in a small town. They knew I went to church. They could tell by the cheesy Christian T-shirts I wore to school. I didn’t listen to their music or join in some of their weekend activities. Everyone knew where I stood, and I still didn’t want to talk about Jesus. I didn’t want to be seen as odd for God.

Somewhere in my late teens or early twenties, I heard a quote attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, and I latched onto it: “Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words.” Perfect, I thought. I’ll let my life be enough. I’ll preach through kindness and actions, and I won’t have to say anything that makes it obvious where I stand.

There are two problems with that quote. First, we have no record that St. Francis ever said or wrote it. Second, it isn’t biblical. If you follow Jesus, you are called both to live out the gospel and to speak it.

A Cure Kept in the Drawer

Imagine a pharmaceutical company announces a cure for a cancer that has taken people you love. Great news, right? Then you find out they actually developed that cure thirty years ago. You’d start wondering why they sat on it. Was it money? Then the executives explain: they didn’t want families who had already lost someone to that cancer to feel slighted or offended. So they kept it quiet and tried to help people through other means.

You would be furious. They had something that saves lives and kept it secret so nobody would be offended.

If you are a follower of Jesus, you have the life-saving gospel that people desperately need. Why would we keep it quiet because we’re worried about offending someone?

And if you aren’t a follower of Jesus yet, please keep reading. This isn’t a secret handshake you only learn about after you sign on the dotted line. I want you to see exactly what God calls Christians to do, so that if the day comes when you put your faith in Jesus, you’ll have a head start. None of this is meant to twist anyone’s arm into duty. It is for your joy and for the good of the people around you.

Prayer, Care, Share

Our key passage for this whole series is 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. Walk 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.

Those five verses give us a simple process: prayer, care, share. We pray for the people we want to know Jesus. We show them care, letting them see the love of God through our actions. And we share, using our words so they have every opportunity to hear the gospel clearly.

So that fake St. Francis quote gets the first half right. Preach the gospel at all times. But you will have to use words. Those words will be far more heard and believed when people have seen the care. Too often when we talk about evangelism, we jump straight to sharing and skip the caring. Even jumping to care misses something vital, though. Paul starts somewhere else. He starts with prayer.

Steadfast, Not Seasonal

“Continue steadfastly in prayer.” Paul assumes that if you follow Jesus, you’re already praying, so he tells you to continue in it. Steadfast means persevering, not giving up. It’s easy to pray when things are going well. For a lot of us, the only time we pray is when things are hard. Paul is saying pray at all times.

Then he adds, “pray also for us.” When Paul wrote this letter, he was under house arrest in Rome. When we read “on account of which I am in prison,” we picture metal bars and a locked cell. But house arrest meant he could have guests. Friends came to care for his needs. Curious people came to hear from the former radical Jew who now told everyone Jesus was the Messiah. And a guard was posted right there, listening to every conversation. Sometimes Paul had that guard as a captive audience.

So Paul asks for prayer that he would have every opportunity to give away his faith. What he asks for is exactly what I think we should pray for ourselves.

Pray for an Open Door and a Clear Word

First, “that God may open to us a door for the word.” Pray for an open door into people’s lives. An open door to show you care. An open door to serve. An open door to a conversation or a question.

Notice who opens it. You don’t create that moment. God does. When it comes to sharing our faith, most of us get scared. We think we need the perfect words, or that we have to force the conversation somewhere awkward. No. God opens the door. You pray for the opportunity, and when it comes, you pray for the boldness to step through it. Serve them. Ask the question. Actually listen to what’s going on in their life.

Second, “that I may make it clear.” The “it” is the gospel, which Paul calls “the mystery of Christ.” To the people around Paul, it really was a mystery. Who is this Jesus? Why do these Christians keep talking about him? He died on a cross? And they say he rose from the dead? That doesn’t make sense. So Paul asks for prayer that he could make it clear. Pray for an open door, and pray for clarity.

On Our Knees for Someone Else

Those are prayers for ourselves. We should also pray for the people we hope will meet Jesus, and for that I want to take you to Ephesians 3. Paul wrote Ephesians around the same time he wrote Colossians, also from prison. He had never been to Colossae, but he had lived in Ephesus. He knew those people. Chapters 1 through 3 of Ephesians describe the gospel, and chapters 4 through 6 show how to live it out. Right at the hinge, Paul prays:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:14-19)

Before we get to what Paul prays, look at how he prays: “I bow my knees.” Come to God with humility. Don’t march into the throne room demanding things. Whether you’re praying for a friend or anything else, come humbly.

Every Family Gets Its Name from the Father

The first thing Paul prays is that people would find their identity in God the Father through Christ. He describes the Father as the one “from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.”

That doesn’t mean God’s last name is Smith, or that Jones is secretly Hebrew for father. Paul is doing a little wordplay. In Greek, the word for family is patria and the word for father is pater, the root behind our word paternal. The two words sound alike because a family comes from a father.

Some of you are thinking, I’m pretty sure a mom is involved too. You’re right, except for Adam. When God created Adam, God was his Father, with no mother. From Adam and Eve came Cain, Abel, and Seth, and from them came children, and from them more children. Every family on earth has received its name, its identity, the image of God in us, from the Father, whether we acknowledge it or not.

So pray that God would help the people you love realize they came from him. A relationship with God is really coming home to your Creator. If you have a strained relationship with your dad right now, you know the pain of that. If you’ve ever had a strained relationship with your father that was repaired, you know how mending that was to your soul. Don’t you want that for your friends and family?

And we say “through Christ” on purpose. Plenty of people, especially here in Iowa, would say they have a relationship with God. But Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Our identity as children of the Father comes through faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Zach and the Strength to Say No

The second thing Paul prays is that they would be “strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being.” We all know what it’s like to carry burden, pain, and struggle. We go looking for something like emotional and spiritual steroids. The people you love are probably grasping at all sorts of things for help, when the strength they truly need is Christ.

Years ago, when I was a young adult pastor in Cedar Rapids, I partnered with leaders from a few other churches to start a citywide young adult ministry called Watershed. We had a hundred or so young adults coming every Thursday night. One of our regulars, Tim, told me about a coworker named Zach who kept pestering him with spiritual questions. Tim didn’t know how to answer them, so I told him to invite Zach to Watershed.

Zach was like Bigfoot. People kept telling me he’d been there, but I never saw him. He slipped in late on purpose and slipped out during the last song. Eventually we set a lunch at my favorite barbecue place, and the moment we sat down, he started firing questions at me. I thought, so this is what Tim gets every day at work.

Somehow I turned it around and started asking him questions, and I realized Zach already knew it was true. He believed there was a God. He believed Jesus was his Son, that he died on a cross and rose from the dead. So I asked him flat out why he hadn’t given his life to Christ. He was honest. He knew what he’d have to give up: some substance use, some of the ways he treated women, and, believe it or not, the biggest hang-up was some software on his computer he’d gotten illegally. He’d have to delete it or pay for it.

We finished lunch and I gave him my email address. This was before cell phones. A week went by with nothing, so I emailed him. The reply came back: I’ve given my life to Christ.

Of course I asked what changed. He said he realized everything he was holding on to wasn’t worth anything compared to Jesus. And the moment he gave his life to Christ, a spiritual strength came into him. He realized, I can say no. I can make these changes. Zach didn’t go on to live a perfect life, but he lived a changed one. He was flooded with joy and became one of our most faithful servants. He started dating a young woman and helped her find Christ. They married, had a daughter with Down syndrome, and became such amazing parents that they adopted another child with Down syndrome from Ecuador. All of that flowed from receiving spiritual strength.

Love in Four Dimensions

The third thing Paul prays is that they would be “rooted and grounded in love” and have strength to comprehend “the breadth and length and height and depth” of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

That makes me laugh, because Paul just described God’s love in four dimensions. We’re three-dimensional creatures in a three-dimensional world. We get length, height, and depth. Breadth too? I’ll be honest, I don’t think I’ll fully comprehend it in this lifetime, and I’ll probably need most of the next one.

But more than anything else, that’s what I want for the people in my life who don’t know Jesus. I want them to know the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s love. If they get rooted and grounded in that, it will be the greatest thing that ever happens to them. It will give them the life they actually long for. This world is a liar. It offers everything and never satisfies. So seek that love for yourself, and pray that the people you love would have their spiritual eyes opened to comprehend it too.

Four Minutes, Four People, Four Weeks

Here’s how I want you to put this into practice. For the next four weeks, pray four minutes a day for four people. Write their names down somewhere you’ll see them.

• Yourself. If you aren’t settled in your identity in Christ, if you feel short on spiritual strength or comprehension, pray that for yourself. Then pray that God would give you an open door and clarity in what to do and what to say.
• A loved one. A family member or close friend, maybe someone you haven’t seen in a while who is still close to your heart.
• A colleague. I don’t love that word, but after workshopping it with several people, it was the best we had. A coworker, classmate, teammate, or neighbor. Whoever God keeps putting in your path.
• A person of your choice. Another family member or friend, someone famous, even a politician. Whoever the Lord puts on your heart.

For the other three, pray what Paul prayed: that God would open their eyes so they find their identity in him, find their strength in him, and fully comprehend his love for them.

Don’t wait until this afternoon or tomorrow. Start right now. Pray for yourself first, and thank God if he has already opened your eyes. And if you’ve never surrendered your life to Jesus, maybe in all this talk about giving away your faith, you’re actually finding it. Jesus loves you so much that he went to the cross to do for you what you could not do for yourself, to pay the penalty we all should have paid. You can surrender your life to him today and receive the identity, strength, and love we’ve been talking about.

Remembering Him at the Table

We closed our gathering at the Lord’s Table. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11 that Jesus took bread and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me,” and took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” Every time we eat the bread and drink the cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

If your identity is in Jesus, I invite you to remember him that way this week. Thank him for loving you enough to leave his throne, live the only sinless life ever lived, and die in your place. Then ask him to help you love the people around you the way he loved you, so that one day we leave behind what Jesus left behind: more of his followers.