Philippians 1:9-11 (NASB)
And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

Paul’s prayer to the saints of the church in Philippi is something that I should pray for others, but also for myself. I had read these verses yesterday during my morning quiet time and at 4:30 am this morning I awoke and they came to mind, so took some time and prayed them. There are some amazing thoughts in these petitions.

1.  That love would abound more and more
2. We would gain real knowledge and discernment
3. We would approve and focus on only the excellent things
4. That we would grow in sanctification until the day we see Jesus
5. That we would be filled with the Holy Spirit and that it would result in the fruit of righteousness that only comes from Jesus Christ
6. And that we would give all the glory and praise to God.

I compare these petitions to the ones that I normally focus on in my prayers. I think Paul had a much better list.

Always praying for the glory of God,

Ephesians 4:1 (NASB)
Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called,

Romans 1:1 (NASB)
Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God,

Romans 8:16-17
The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.

Paul describes himself several times in his letters as a prisoner or bond-servant of Christ. He also states in Romans 8 that the Holy Spirit testifies to us that Christians are the children of God, heirs of the kingdom.

So which one is it? As I read scripture and meditated on the many verses about this, I realized that it depends on who’s perspective we are talking about.

From God’s perspective, He views us as His children, with all of the privileges and rights as heirs of the kingdom. Even though we are His children, our purpose in everything we do should be for His glory. It is the view of a slave or servant. The master may ask you to do something that will benefit another person, but the slave’s reason for doing it is not to receive thanks from that person, but to bring glory to the master.

That is what Paul is saying. He loves the people and the churches that he is writing to. He prays for them. But, everything that he does is for Christ. He is not interested in accolades from the people he serves, but only the glory that he can bring to Christ.

When I serve others, is that my mindset? Is it all for Christ, or does it matter what others think about what I do in service for them? Does my position as a child of God, give me the right to expect glory for my actions? I have to admit and confess that my motives are not always pure.

Father, thank you for your mercy and grace that has brought me in to your kingdom. What an honor it is to be your child. Never let me misuse that in a way that tries to bring glory to me. Rather may I always think of myself as your bond-servant, always serving as you command, and always for Your glory alone. Amen.

Always praying for the glory of God,

Psalm 27:11a (NLT)
11 Teach me how to live, O LORD. Lead me along the right path.

Prayers that focus on scripture (in other words, allowing scripture to instruct us) will lead us on the right path in life. Getting off that path is easy when we try to do it our way. That always takes us down by-paths and dead ends. As we pray believing in and following His perfect path, we find ourselves in the center of God’s will. There is no better place.

In 1540, Martin Luther’s great friend and assistant, Frederick Myconius became sick and was expected to die. After receiving word of that, Luther sent Myconius back a note saying that he had prayed in the name of God that Myconius would recover because there was still a great need for him in the work of reforming the church. Luther had such a sense of being in the center of God’s will that he believed that God’s will was for Myconius to survive even Luther. Shortly thereafter, Myconius completely recovered, lived six more years and survived Luther by two months.

Heavenly Father, I plead for your instruction to keep me on the right path. My prayer is for Your will to be done and that You would make your will known to me for my life. Keep me in the center of Your will. Amen.

Always praying for the glory of God,

Luke 13:1-5 (NASB)
1 Now on the same occasion there were some present who reported to Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.
2 And Jesus said to them, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate?
3 I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
4 Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem?
5 I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

Acts 8:22 (NASB)
22 Therefore repent of this wickedness of yours, and pray the Lord that, if possible, the intention of your heart may be forgiven you.

J.C. Ryle in “A Call to Prayer” and his thoughts on the role of prayer in salvation.

“I hold salvation by grace as strongly as any one. I would gladly offer a free and full pardon to the greatest sinner that ever lived. I would not hesitate to stand by his dying bed, and say, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ even now, and you shall be saved.” But that a man can have salvation without asking for it, I cannot see in the Bible. That a man will receive pardon of his sins, who will not so much as lift up his heart inwardly, and say, “Lord Jesus, give it to me,” this I cannot find. I can find that nobody will be saved by his prayers, but I cannot find that without prayer anybody will be saved.”

I suppose that someone with a truly repentant heart could pray only once to God, asking for His forgiveness and then receive the gift of eternal life. But I am more likely to believe that anyone that has at one time prayed and received salvation, would want to continue to pray regularly.

It is true for me that during those years that I was reluctant to pray out loud in the presence of others was because I had little prayer life in private with God. I suspect that is the same with most people.

Ryle’s book on prayer was a call for people to pray, for he believed that a person’s prayer life is a true reflection of whether they are a child of the kingdom. He believed that being a prayer warrior was not a special gift given only to a select few Christians, but to all Christians. And that the private life of prayer was a reflection of those that had truly received the gift of eternal life.

Sobering thoughts to reflect about those that fill the pews in church on Sunday. And a call to prayer for all.

Always praying for the glory of God,

Ephesians 1:15-19 (NASB)
15 For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you and your love for all the saints,
16 do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers;
17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.
18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,
19 and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.

Paul tells the Ephesians that he is praying for them. Not only that, but he tells them the specific prayers he brings before the throne of God. He has several specific petitions for them in verses 18 and 19.

1. Paul first prays for their sanctification through wisdom and the knowledge of Him.
2. That they would know just how special they are because God has called them and brought them into His family,
3. And finally that they would be humbled in view of the death they no longer face through the forgiveness of sin, and that they would have confidence knowing that His power is above all.

Our inclination always seems to be to pray for the physical health of a family member or loved one, but as I meditated on these verses, I realized that the substance of Paul’s petitions are much more important.

There is such a wide level of difference in the holiness of Christians. I wonder — is it because our prayers and petitions for ourselves and others are more often about health and welfare rather than sanctification and growing in our knowledge of Him? I’m sure there was illness, suffering, and poverty in the church of Ephesus. But Paul chose to pray for their holiness.

Father, I pray for the holiness of the saints, specifically the petitions of Paul in Ephesians 1. I pray those petitions for myself as well. May You be glorified as we grow in holiness. Amen.

Always praying for the glory of God,

“Praying and sinning will never live together in the same heart. Prayer will consume sin, or sin will choke prayer. I cannot forget this. I look at men’s lives. I believe that few pray.”
J.C. Ryle

This is an excerpt from Ryle’s book which was originally entitled, “Do you pray?”, but was later published with the title “A Call to Prayer”.

Last Sunday, we worshiped with a pastor at our summer worship service in our subdivision that we had not heard before. His pastoral prayer was a simple, heartfelt outpouring of his soul to God. It was as if it was an extension of his daily private prayer time, yet spoken out loud. No flowery language, nothing repetitious. When he finished, I knew that I had been in the presence of God. It was clear that he was someone that spends a lot of time in prayer.

Prayer in front of a congregation is not easy. It is tempting to try to impress the people, for then it becomes a act of attempting to be profound, but then it is not from the heart.

Our call to prayer is not to impress God, but to implore from the heart. He knows our sin and only wants us to be genuine with Him. That is what I heard last Sunday.

Always praying for the glory of God,

Luke 5:16 (NASB)
But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray.

Luke 6:12 (NASB)
It was at this time that He went off to the mountain to pray, and He spent the whole night in prayer to God.

When you question the power of prayer, you only need to go to Luke. Luke records that Jesus would “often” slip away to be alone in prayer . He also noted that Jesus spent the entire night in prayer. The human side of Jesus needed that communion with the Father to sustain Him, to give Him the power that flowed from Him as He ministered to the people and trained His disciples.

In Luke 6, the amazing thing about His night in prayer was what followed. The next day, He picked twelve of the many disciples to be His apostles. He and the Father must have had quite a discussion that night about that. Jesus knew that many people would be gathering the next day to hear what He had to say. It would be a demanding day, because large crowds had gathered from all of Judea, Jerusalem, Tire, and Sidon. All were being healed because power was coming from Jesus in an astounding way. Luke noted that Jesus then turned His focus on His disciples and began teaching them what is known as the Beatitudes, the blessings awaiting us as we follow Him.

I think about my feeble attempts at prayer and the power that could come from them through Jesus. It’s not the amount of time that is important, but the level of faith that is present when I pray. I know what is possible, but my faith is weak, especially compared to the faith of Jesus. I know that it has grown over the years, but it is still so small that a mustard seed would look like a mountain compared to it.

Father, I know my faith is weak. I pray that You would increase my faith each day. I pray that as it increases, power would flow to show your Glory. Make me a conduit of Your power. Amen.

Always praying for the glory of God,

The word evangelism strikes fear into the heart and generates cold sweats for many people. The idea of having to share the gospel with a stranger or worse yet someone you know is not comfortable for a lot of us. Many churches have training on evangelism and there are a number of evangelism techniques that have been developed and promoted by very well regarded theologians.

The typical stereotype of evangelism is someone standing on a street corner flagging people down and taking them through their formula for sharing the gospel.

The basis for evangelism is two verses at the end of Matthew. It has convicted many Christians over the years to focus their lives on sharing the gospel with as many people as they can.

Matthew 28:19-20 (NASB)
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

As I have prayed and meditated on these verses, the stereotype evangelist is transformed from someone standing on a street corner performing “catch and release” into one who invests their lives in the development of authentic disciples by teaching and sharing what God has taught us in His scriptures.

If you are a mature Christian, are you mentoring other Christians that are younger in their faith? If you are a young Christian, have you sought out a mature Christian that can mentor you?

If not, then is this something that you should be praying about? Ask God if you should be mentoring others as someone mentors you. It seems that His words in Matthew 28:19-20 are pretty clear.

Always praying for the glory of God.

Psalm 65:2 (NASB)
2 O You who hear prayer, To You all men come.

In this psalm of David, he sings to God, acknowledging that God is one that hears our prayers. He also declares that all people have a built in knowledge of the existence of God.

Many years ago, a pastor at the church we attended made it a practice to have lunch with someone new he had met each week, so that he could share the gospel and challenge them to begin reading the Bible. Occasionally, he would get approached by an atheist, who would use the lunch as a way to show him how foolish our pastor was in believing in the concept of God. During his sermon on Sunday, our pastor retold of his experience with an atheist that previous week.

When confronted with someone with that agenda, the pastor would do two things. The first was to ask them when they stopped believing in God. In a high percentage of situations, atheists at an earlier point in their life believe in God.  But because of a traumatic experience, decide to give up on God and then no longer believe that He exists. That was the case for this young man. The second thing that he would do is to ask them if they believed in prayer. For someone that doesn’t believe in the existence of God, prayer doesn’t make sense to them. And that was the case in this situation too. The young man said that prayer didn’t matter since there was no God to listen to the prayer.

Our pastor then told him that since that was his belief, he was sure that the young man wouldn’t mind if he prayed that God would rain down on him the destruction of his life, take away from him all of those that he held dear, and bring upon him all manner of sickness and illness.

The young man turned white and literally begged the pastor not to do that. The words of David rang true…”To You all men come.”

Heavenly Father, I praise you that your Glory is evident to all of creation. I thank you that you hear our prayers. May my prayers be worthy of the praise and honor that you deserve. Amen.

Always praying for the glory of God,