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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Talking Points 1st Quarter 2026: Uniting Heaven and Earth: Christ in Philippians and Colossians

Kameron DeVasher

Mark Howard

01 Persecuted but Not Forsaken

02 Reasons for Thanksgiving and Prayer

I'm Cameron DeVasier and I'm Mark Howard and this is Talking Points.

We're now on the second lesson of our uniting heaven and earth, Christ and Philippians and Colossians, our whole lesson series.

These 2 beautiful books of the Bible, small letters.

That's like 1 of the old Adventist book titles, you know, the original great controversy between Christ and his angels and Satan and his angels.

So we have a very full title for actually powerful little books.

These are a couple of those prison epistles that were written by the Apostle Paul.

And in these, well, the title for this week's lesson is reasons for Thanksgiving in prayer.

It's very kind of hopeful, uplifting, positive sounding message.

You actually put the talking points together.

What is the context or layout of this lesson?

Well, we're gonna be talking about reasons for Thanksgiving.

Really, the lesson is focusing on the introductions of both Philippians and Colossians.

Okay, well, and Paul will take the ball from there.

The quarterly itself says, and I've taken this from Sabbath afternoon, this week we'll consider Paul's opening words of Thanksgiving and prayer in Philippians and Colossians.

Okay, well, that's a very clear context for what we're studying and then we'll get into the content in just a minute.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this day.

Thank you for the Sabbath school lessons.

Thank you for the scripture that they're based on most importantly.

And Lord, as we continue to study these important themes, these important concepts from the books of Philippians and Colossians, help us to know you more, be more like you, and somehow hasten your coming.

So I suppose before we dive in, Cameron, we should probably highlight, as both of us have been working on lessons from this quarter, that they can be a little bit daunting, simply because of you're covering basically 2 books of the Bible in 13 weeks, and there's a good...

Waleen is a scholar, a New Testament scholar, so he wants to dive in to get some of the passages and stuff, which is great, but there's a lot of material.

And so when it comes to teaching the class you're gonna have to pick what you're gonna highlight.

Yeah well I think it's important you brought that up because some of them some of the points in the lesson are gonna be thematic like look at his scope of it but other times you'll dive into a specific word or phrase and so it can be tempting to drill down into that 1 thing and then lose the whole context.

So to your point you're gonna have to choose you want the wide-angle lens or you want to zoom in like a microscope on certain things and there's probably gonna be a mixed bag.

And so this is not to take away from the lesson itself but to say and it's something I emphasize when I teach classes to encourage the students to study the lesson because you can't as teacher you can't bring out all the gems that are in the lesson that's why we had the lesson to study and the quarterly guide to study ourselves and you can get it for free if you don't have any of it in the app, official General Conference Sabbath School app.

So having said that, this is how I drew away my points from this week's lesson.

The idea of course, the introductions of both Philippians and Colossians are prayers or at least Paul's talking about his how he prays for them.

And so I've distilled it into what he's thankful for in his prayers.

Talking point number 1 and then drawn applications for us.

Talking point number 1, we should be thankful for Christian fellowship.

I've drawn that from Sunday and Monday primarily.

Talking point number 2, we should be thankful for God's providences.

I've drawn that primarily from Tuesday's lesson.

And then talking point number 3, we should be thankful for God's promises, and I've drawn that primarily from Wednesday and Thursday's lesson.

Well at least those talking points go along with the title of reasons for Thanksgiving and prayer.

You could say, we should be thankful for.

So I want to start out with, before we get into, you know, topic point number 1, we should be thankful for Christian fellowship, with just an introduction to what the lesson calls others-focused prayer.

Paul's prayers were, according to Monday's lesson, others focused on behalf of the whole church and for its well-being, as opposed to self-centered.

And I think the lesson brings that out on Monday, that it talks about the potential of sometimes we can just pray for ourselves and never pray for anything but ourselves.

And so Paul understood the power of what we would call intercessory prayer.

If you've not heard that term, just praying for others rather than yourself.

Could be other individuals, could be praying for the church or the cause of Christ, you're interceding.

And we're gonna look at Philippians 1, 3, and 4.

If you would read that and then I'll read Colossians 1 and verse 3.

Philippians 1, 3, and 4 says, I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine, making requests for you all with joy.

So there he is praying for them, he says very specifically.

And then Colossians chapter 1 and verse 3 says, we give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you.

So he's interceding for them and he's praying for others.

His prayers are not just about himself and I thought it was interesting there in verse 8 if you would read Philippians 1 verse 8.

For God is my witness How greatly I long for you all with the affection of Jesus Christ.

So here he basically says the motivation for his praying for them is the affection Jesus has for them.

And this at least takes my mind back to when when Jesus in Luke chapter 22 told Peter, the devil has asked for you that he may sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith fail not.

And so this is Jesus interceding for Peter.

And I'm sure that Jesus interceded and intercedes for all of us.

We talk about him being the great intercessor.

And so Paul is getting this model from Christ and we should get it from Christ and Paul.

Yeah, that we should intercede for, pray for others in prayer.

We're surrounded by people who don't know how to pray, don't know that they should pray and we can pray on their behalf.

Well I was just thinking about how you said well we should follow Paul but actually we should follow Jesus because Paul followed Jesus.

Well, and Paul himself said, imitate me as I follow Christ.

So if we're following Paul's good example, he got it from good sources, Jesus himself.

And again, Jesus is the great intercessor.

Well, I think you have something in here now about when it says I pray he talks about always praying Yeah, and never see something in Colossians.

He says I Let me get back there In Colossians 1 that I just read in verse 3.

He says Praying always for you And there are other places like that where it's just like, so is he basically like a monk?

Well, he says we should pray without ceasing.

So does that mean I constantly have a prayer tab open and running?

And this is why I appreciated there in verse 5, versus, sorry, verse 3 and 4 there in Philippians chapter 1.

Yeah, we just read that when he got it said, thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making requests for all with joy.

So there's that caveat I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.

I mean just like we Paul was making tents, Paul was interacting with people, Paul had things he did work-wise and otherwise where he no he didn't have he wasn't praying 24 7.

He wasn't praying for the Philippians 24-7.

He wasn't even thinking of the Philippians 24-7 when he would remember them.

And I appreciate, So what I have in our notes here is that this is not to imply that Paul prayed non-stop for the believers, but that they were always on his heart as his interests were bound up with theirs.

So he'd go about the common things, but often he would think about the cause, and he would think about the people that he had ministered to.

You know, I know in my Christian experience, there was a period of time where I'd read passages like this and say, well, what am I supposed to do?

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Series

Talking Points 1st Quarter 2026: Uniting Heaven and Earth: Christ in Philippians and Colossians

02 Reasons for Thanksgiving and Prayer

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Other Teachings in Series

01 Persecuted but Not Forsaken

30m

02 Reasons for Thanksgiving and Prayer

31m

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