Private Devotion and Public Conduct

Colossians 4:2- 6
2Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving; 3praying at the same time for us as well, that God will open up to us a door for the word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been imprisoned; 4that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak. 5Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity. 6Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person.

Observations
With so much emphasis on methodology, lots of people have full notebooks who are not fully engaged in the Lord’s work. On the other hand, many are engaged who are not prepared. This paragraph of six verses has the answer to this dilemma—three verses on preparation and three verses on practice.

1. Preparation means private devotion.
Devote yourself to prayer. I have heard people say prayer since I was a kid, and I have said them most of my life; but I have too seldom heard or experienced genuine prayers of devotion. Do people say the same prayers in their private devotions that they say in public worship? Paul didn’t say, devote yourself to repetition but “devote yourself to prayer.”
Keep alert in prayer. One doesn’t have to be very alert to mutter memorized words that he has repeated a thousand times, but he does need to be alert if he is attempting to express the deep thoughts and feelings of his heart to God. Two pioneer evangelists in an American restoration movement stopped at a frontier tavern for a draft of spirits and a meal. As they prayed, one of them drank the others portion. After the prayer and the startled look of the man who lost his drink, the other said, “Jesus said, ‘Watch and pray,’ and you weren’t watching.” The best negative example I know is that given by C. S. Lewis in his Screwtape Letters. Satan (Screwtape) assigns a demon nephew (Wormwood) to watch new Christians as they pray. His task was to divert their attention away from Christ to other objects. He was instructed to cause his subjects to pray to a picture of Jesus on his bedroom wall as he knelt at his bed to pray. Wormwood’s greatest success has been in diverting his victims from Christ to icons and “sacred” objects that surround them. In a little country church in WV, as the members were observing Communion, Wormwood diverted someone’s attention from Jesus to a ground hog sunning himself on a rock, and the new discovery buzzed throughout the assembly, diverting everyone’s attention. But the best positive example I know is that given by Benjamin Franklin in his Autobiography. He relates how his grandfather had a Bible secured under the seat of a chair. When devotion time came, someone would turn the chair upside down while grandfather read from it. Another watched at the door to make sure no one saw them reading the Bible. They were watching while they prayed. Paul says “Devote yourselves to prayer; keep alert and be thankful in it.”
· Be thankful while you pray. My maternal grandfather always said the same prayer at the table. As if he were anxious to get it over with and start eating, He prayed so rapidly that we were unable to understand what he said. “We thank Thee Father” he would say, “for these and all blessings of life. Stand by us in sickness and in death save us in Jesus’ name. Amen.” Failing to understand him, my younger brother tried to impersonate him by saying, “Vizer viser thank the father, vizer viser thank the father.” I wonder if we don’t often say, “Vizer viser thank the father” rather than devoting ourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving.
· Pray for others who serve that they may speak forth the mystery of Christ, making it clear in the way they ought to speak.

2. Practice means public performance. “Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity.”
Conduct yourself with wisdom toward outsides. Paul is assuming that Christians will conduct themselves properly toward one another, even though he has to deal with this matter elsewhere. But Christians often behave in such an appalling way toward outsiders that they become totally unattractive to those they are supposed to be winning for Christ. A Christian must certainly be wise when dealing with the world. It is hard to realize and harder yet to face the way we violate the covenant we made with Christ in the beginning. This very minute is the time to change that.
Make the most of the opportunity. In Bible College I had a grand old English and speech teacher named W. Claude Hall, who also conducted a “spoken English class.” He made our language come alive, particularly individual words. When one of us mispronounced a word, he would grieve over its abuse. “Just look at that poor little word lying there,” he would say, “you have wounded it and it is bleeding. He was severe with us, but he taught us to be exact in our speech, and we were recognized throughout the brotherhood as students of Brother Hall, who meant for us to “make the most of our opportunity” when we became ministers.
Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt. We sometimes think of “rude” and “crude” rather than grace as being connected with speech. But “grace” also means refinement, loveliness and charm. No rude person can communicate the grace of God to others. Salt is a preservative; it is also a seasoning. So, treat your speech as you would treat the food you are serving others.
Know how you should respond to each person. Gracious speech is certainly a good place to start in responding to both “outsiders” and insiders. But we have such varied backgrounds and temperaments that we must learn how to communicate with them individually. Years ago I heard Dr. Wayne Oats, a prominent psychologist and educator, speaking on how to train a child. He quoted a professor he had known as interpreting Prov. 22:6 to means, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will be himself.” This seems radical but it is profound! The text does say “child” and “he” and not children and they. Each child, just as each of those to whom we respond, is different, and his difference needs to be respected and treated with grace. If each child were “trained up” in this manner, he would be himself rather than some sort of a “generic” person.

Remarks
· During my years in ministry, I have served in a restoration movement, a reformation movement and a number of factions that weren’t moving at all. I have studied and written about movements, cults, sects, creeds, and a host of other aberrant systems, only to learn that most of them, using the same Scriptures and the same arguments, have claimed to by the “Lord’s church,” the “true church,” and the “only church.” But men have not been empowered to judge who belongs to Christ and who does not. “The Lord knows who are His (II Tim. 2:19). No sect or faction is solely and exclusively the “beloved brethren” in Christ, no matter how loudly it persists. If it were it would not be, fighting, debating, dividing, reforming, restoring, replicating restructuring and apostatizing until it is no longer recognizable as the Lord’s church. Men’s lives belie their claims.
· I have always been disturbed by the legalistic strictness of church theology – the example its devotees set for outsiders and the way they treat their members. I have also been disappointed by churches that are so lax that they have no standard of membership verification. I have decided that it is better to join Christ than to join a church, knowing that to belong to Him is to belong to His church. “On Christ the Solid Rock I stand; all other ground is sinking sand.”