Not just because he might have dragged me around the Mediterranean Basin, exposing me to countless hardships, and nearly drowning me in the ocean…among other things.

Here’s why I’m sort of unsure about friendship with Paul, and I’ll put it in the form of a question:

Do you know how we Christians today like to be prayed for (or at least how I like to be prayed for)?

We like to pray for our job to be blessed, for promotions to happen, and for us to get the guy (or girl) in the end. All good things! However, if you were Paul’s friend, and you shot him a text asking him to pray for you, do you know what he might have prayed instead of what you asked him for?

Paul would likely not have prayed for your outer circumstances but for your inner life. He prays for Christians in the ancient city of Colosse like this:

“…we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way…” (Colossians 1:9-10).

This says nothing about a promotion or a new house, nothing about the haters coming back and apologizing, nothing about your physical healing (although all those things can be good, and legitimate gifts from God).

Paul doesn’t pray for people’s outer world; he prays for their inner world.

Why?

Perhaps he knows something we’ve forgotten–something Jesus told us–that the quality of our lives does not consist in the abundance of our possessions.

It’s easy to forget that in a nation of tech gadgets and cheap trinkets.

Personal prosperity is relative and fleeting, it’s unpredictable and isn’t something that will last into the life to come…but your inner wealth can and will.

Therefore, Paul prays not that we would have great things, but that we would be great people.

So maybe, maybe, I just might want to be Paul’s friend, after all. On my best day, I want that. Do you?

To help us become greater people, and not just people who have greater things, we will be beginning a new series for much of this summer called:

We will see why spiritual and emotional prosperity, and not merely or only material prosperity, are what we need most in life. And we will see how we can get it.

Happy to be on the journey with you.

Morgan Stephens
Lead Pastor