When boldly approaching God’s throne of grace ever wonder how one should pray for others?  Coming “face to face” with an all-powerful and all-knowing God the last thing one wants to do is to babble like the pagans, using many words of repetition without consideration of their spiritual meaning (Matthew 6:7), or ask for things for loved ones that would actually hurt rather than help them!  Prayer is powerful and effective (James 5:16) but only when given in the Spirit and in accordance with God’s truth (Ephesians 6:18; 1 Corinthians 14:15).  Living in a fallen world where truth is situationally dependent on situations that tend to change with the shifting sands of culture, means above all intercessory prayer must go beyond asking for superficial, temporal comfort but instead focus on what eternally matters, knowing and following God’s will in one’s life. In today passage Apostle Paul gives us an example of his intercessory prayer for the Colossians.  He started his prayer by asking God that the Colossians would not formulate truth based on cultural norms but stand firm and be filled with the absolute truth of the Gospel message.   Paul then prayed that the church at Colossae would live their lives worthy of the Lord by bearing fruit, growing in the knowledge of God, strengthened by God and forever joyful for the deliverance and inheritance they were about to receive.  In today’s sermon we are going to look at each of these components of Paul’s prayer for the Colossians not with the intent of “babbling” it mechanically but to use it as a model of how one can effectively intercede for our loved ones before a holy God!