01 - Praying with Paul

I have chosen a passage that was made familiar to me by reading 'A Call to Spiritual Reformation' by Don Carson. I will base the next few posts on this passage. Here goes....2 Thessalonians 1:11 - 12...'So we keep on praying for you asking God to enable you to live a life worthy of your calling. May he give you the power to accomplish all the good works your faith promotes you to do. Then he will be honoured by the way you live, and you will be honored along with him. This is all possible by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.'

I was motivated to write about this prayer of Paul for the Thessalonians because I was so significantly struck by the content of the prayer itself. In comparsion to my own experience the content of Paul prayer here is so different to those I comomonly hear in church services, prayer meetings and indeed the types of prayers I offer in my own devotional life.

So often I feel my prayer life is narrow, and the things I pray for are seemingly insignificant and meaningless in the broader picture of life. Paul's prayer here blows this narrow view wide open....he prays some large and bold statements about what he wishes God to acheive in the lives of the Thessalonian believers. Firstly that they may live WORTHY of the one who called them, that they would accomplish ALL the good works their faith promotes them to do, that God would HONOURED by the way we live, and that they would HONOURED also.

I believe that so often our prayer life can be so self centred and so limited, we thus in turn limit God's ability to move in and through our lives in a drastic and powerful way...we pray each morning that God would give as opportunity to share our faith with somone, that God would bless our children in the sunday school meeting or that God would give us a new and clear sense of direction in our lives.

Instead of praying these seemingly limited prayers, let us think how differernt would our lives look if Paul prayer in 1 Thessalonians was accomplished in our life? Instead of asking God to bless our children in the sunday school meeting what is we prayed that our children would live a life WORTHY of their calling in Christ Jesus. Or instead of praying for one chance encounter with a person on a train and sharing a little bit about what it means to be a Christian, we prayed that God would give us power to accomplish EVERY good work our faith promotes us to do! Lastly instead of asking God to make purpose clear in our lives, perhaps we petitioned to God asking that, in EVERY word and deed and thought, God would be magnified, that he would receive all glory and honour. Surely God would accomplish all of the those small prayers I described earlier, and immeasurably more than we could begin to imagine!