“A servant of Christ.” We are all servants of Christ in a sense. If you are a Christian, you are a servant of Christ. Oh, what a privilege! There is no such thing as an unnecessary member of the body of Christ, as a useless member. In biology they try to tell us that we have certain things in our bodies that once were functional, but they have ceased to be so — they do not mean anything anymore. I am not saying that I agree with the biologists. There are no needless remnants hanging to our bodies. So in the body of Christ, every member has a functional responsibility. We are all servants of Christ — not servants of men, but servants of Christ, and our orders come from up there. You cannot go to a brother and ask him what you should do. You have to get your directions from Christ. Epaphras was a servant of Christ. What did he do? He was a mighty man of prayer. He was a laboring brother in a very special sense, and you are a laboring brother or a laboring sister in this sense. This is an avenue of service open to every Christian, and it is a most valuable one.
There is a brother who said something to me a number of years ago, and I have never forgotten it. He was speaking about prayer and how to pray, and he said, “Well, the best way to learn to pray is to pray.” You will never learn to pray by reading a book on it. You will learn to pray by praying. Here is a man who prayed, and it says he labored earnestly. It takes real purpose of heart to pray, and the fact that we do so little of it proves that. Oh, how Satan likes to keep us from our knees. What will our service amount to if it is not sanctified by prayer? A prayerless life is a barren life. You may be so active in Christian service that you have no time to pray, but it will be a barren life regardless of all activity. Epaphras was not satisfied to see every believer brought to the Lord’s table. The burden of his heart was that they might stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. Don’t we all need praying for, when we look at it from that angle?