The Power of Prayer (Phil. 1:3-11)

The Power of Prayer
Phil. 1:3-11

INTRODUCTION:
We are complicated beings, did you know that? We have to figure out, as we grow older, how to deal with ourselves. We have: 1) behaviors we have to think about; 2) attitudes; 3) words and tone of voice; 4) feelings, both positive and negative; 5) temptations, our weaknesses; 6) sins; 7) strengths, talents, and skills; 8) aspirations and hopes.

To make things even more complicated, we have a network of human relationships, radiating out from those closest to us: 1) our spouse; 2) our children; 3) our parents; 4) our siblings; 5) our friends; 6) our church family; 7) our coworkers; 8) our neighbors; 9) even strangers whom we contact on an irregular basis.

Then there’s our relationship with God. All of these aspects of our relationship with ourselves, we try to juggle in view of our relationship with God. Also, all of these different relationships we have with each other, we juggle in view of our relationship with God.

How can we handle it all? One component to a successful juggling act is prayer. Prayer is vital to a life of success and prayer is going to be vital to our spiritual lives to ensure that we can make it to heaven without allowing all of these factors in our lives to cause our own spiritual life to come crashing down.

The apostle Paul was in prison, in Rome, when he wrote the letter of Philippians. This is not the final imprisonment for Paul. He expects to get out of prison, an expectation strengthened by the prayers of the Christians in Philippi. A few weeks ago, we studied Paul’s “power within” from Philippians 3:8-11, which culminated in Paul’s deep-seated belief in the resurrection and his ambition beyond all else to obtain that resurrection from the dead.

So, how did Paul maintain his spiritual strength through all his trials and being treated wrongfully and unfairly? Part of the answer is prayer. How did Paul write the letter of Philippians from jail, and use the word “rejoice” or “joy” in that letter more than any other letter he wrote? Part of the answer is prayer. In fact, Paul begins that letter with a prayer, which will be the focus of our meditation this morning.

From Philippians 1:3-11, Paul says a prayer and we learn a vital point about prayer from nearly every verse. Let’s study together. In prayer…

#1 - GIVE THANKS - 1:3:
Verse 3: "I thank my God in all my remembrance of you.” The apostle Paul uses the verb “to thank” 24 times. That means on average, Paul is using the verb “to thank” almost twice in every single letter.

In being thankful, we are praising God for putting people in our lives, despite their imperfections. You may not like your job, but you can thank God that you have a job. There might be qualities in your spouse or your parents or kids, friends or coworkers, qualities that get on your nerves. But rather than being bitter, pessimistic, or self-centered, you can thank God for the positive qualities they have.

Even in those negative qualities, you can thank God that through them, God can and will teach you, in some way, to live more like Christ. Maybe your coworker is teaching you patience. If so, that’s a good thing. Maybe your spouse is teaching you humility. If so, that is a good thing.

And if you find it hard to be thankful, ask God to help you be thankful, to help you look for those attributes in others around you that you ought to be thanking God for.

#2 - PRAY WITH JOY - 1:4:
Verse 4 - “always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all.” Joy is happiness. Joy is looking at blessings and realizing that someone else is contributing to my life in a good way. Paul uses the noun “joy” 21 times, five times in this letter.

Because Paul was thankful for the people in his life, he was able to pray with joy. Different people in Paul’s life made contributions to Paul’s life in different ways. You remember that Jacob’s son, Joseph, was sold by his brothers into slavery. Eventually, Joseph was able to see the hand of God working in his life and, I’m sure, Joseph prayed with joy as he reflected on the fact that he would not have been in a position to save his family from starvation if he had not been in Egypt at the right time.

I wonder if the apostle Paul reflected ever on the fact that if he had not been arrested, motivated out of envy of the Jews, he would not have traveled to Rome at the expense of the Roman government and had the opportunity to teach the gospel in the capital city of the world!

To “pray with joy” is to pray for those people in our lives, understanding that they contribute, in some way, to our growth and maturity as a child of God. If we do not see that, we should ask God in prayer to help us see that.

#3 - AS A CHILD OF GOD - 1:5:
Verse 5 - “in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now.”

In this verse, Paul is expressly thanking God, with joy, for the Christians in Philippi, for their efforts, with Paul, to share the gospel of Christ. The word “participation” (NASV) is the word “fellowship,” a word Paul uses 13 times.

To the apostle Paul, nothing was more important than getting out the message from and about Jesus Christ. No one can be saved without hearing and obeying the gospel of Christ; it is the power of God unto salvation (Rom. 1:16). Those who do not obey it will suffer from eternal destruction (2 Thess. 1:7-9).

As you reflect on the relationships in your life, ask yourself and pray, how the message of Christ can be shared, honored, glorified, in your interactions with others. Paul told the Christians in Corinth that they were “letters” of Christ, “known and read by all men” (2 Cor. 3:2).

Beginning with your spouse, everyone in your life every single day, see the results of the gospel of Christ either working or not working in your heart and in your life. That is a high standard to maintain, and of course, we don’t do it consistently. But, we can pray that the gospel will show through in our lives and in our hearts every day, in all our interactions.

#4 - IN CONFIDENCE - 1:6:
Verse 6 - “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Confidence is conviction. It is a settled state of mind that something is true or is going to become true. If you drop down to verse 14, you will see how Paul could be confident. The word translated “trusting” in verse 14 is the same word as “confident” here in verse 6. How could Paul pray in confidence? Because he trust in the Lord.

Not only that, but the verb tense of “I am confident” in verse 6 shows an even stronger confidence. Paul was settled in his mind, because he trusted in the Lord. We could go even further and say Paul knew without a doubt that since God began a good work in the Philippian Christians, He would also bring that work to completion, to perfect it, by the time of the coming of Christ Jesus.

Paul had seen Jesus alive. Paul had been baptized into Christ for the forgiveness of sins. Paul knew the truth behind John’s words in 1 John 5:14: “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.”

Praying with confidence means that even if you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, you know there is going to be one ahead, somewhere. Why? Because you trust the Lord. He is perfect. He is all loving. He is all knowing. He is all powerful. He has: 1) the power to work out all things for our good; 2) the love to do the right thing for us; 3) the knowledge to work things out for us, for our improvement.

Pray in confidence.

#5 - WITH YOUR HEART - 1:7:
Verse 7 - For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart, since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of grace with me.”

When you pray, do you pray with your heart? Or is it just a memorized prayer that comes off the top of your head? There are religions that teach their members to pray the prayers of other people. That’s not really prayer. When people quote the so-called “Lord’s prayer,” that’s not really prayer. That’s not praying with the heart.

Do you remember Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel? She desired a child so badly but God had not given her one. The story is told in 1 Samuel 1. Hannah goes to the temple and prays before the Lord and the priest, Eli, was watching her mouth (vs 12). He saw her mouth moving but he did not hear anything; she was praying in her heart, with her heart. Eli thought maybe she was intoxicated but Hannah said, “No… I have poured out my soul before the Lord” (ver. 15). Praying with your heart is praying with your soul. It is pouring out your soul before the Lord.

Paul uses the word “heart” 52 times in his letters! 52 times! Paul says we need to put our hearts, our affections, our spirit into our prayers. When Jesus said, “Love your enemies,” in Matt. 5:44, and “pray for those who persecute you,” Jesus means take your enemy into your heart. Pray for your enemy; pray for what is best for him or her. Pray that God will work in their lives to bless them in whatever way God, in His wisdom, knows is best for them.

Pray with your affections. Pray with your heart.

#6 - GRACEFULLY - 1:7:
Verse 7 - "For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart, since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of grace with me.”

The reason Paul had the Philippian Christians in his heart was because they were “partakers of grace” with Paul. How important was grace to Paul? Well, he uses the word 101 times! Over 100 times!

We know what grace is, don’t we? We are all glad that God saves us by grace, that we can’t earn it and we don’t deserve it…? We love the idea that God saves us by His grace.

But are we gracious to others? When our spouse deserves to receive a tongue lashing, do we bite our tongue instead? When the cashier at the store deserves to get raked over the coals, do we extend grace instead? In Colossians 4:6, Paul writes: “Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person.”

To pray with grace is to pray with Matthew 7:12 in mind, the golden rule. To pray for the people in our lives, to pray for them with grace, is to pray: “God help me to treat them as I would want them to treat me.” We pray that God will help us to realize that we don’t deserve the goodness God has extended to us; but He extends it anyway. Therefore, we extend grace to others around us, to those who are hard to deal with and they don’t deserve it. But we do it anyway.

James, the Lord’s brother, wrote: “judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment” (2:13). Judgment will be graceless to the one who has shown no grace. Pray that grace will triumph in your heart over judgment.

#7 - WITH AFFECTION - 1:8:
Verse 8 - “For God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.”

This word “affection” literally means your intestines, your bowels. People in Bible times believed that your emotions originated in your intestines. We have a similar idea when we talk about having “butterflies in our stomachs.” The word is used literally in Acts 1:18 of Judas Iscariot’s intestines bursting open after he hung himself.

Paul prayed with affection. Affection carries the idea of action. Affection is love put into action, done so out of love for the other person. Paul uses the word in Colossians 3:12 alongside “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.” The apostle John says in 1 John 3:17, “whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?” That word “heart” is our word “affection.”

We need to pray with the heart that we will put into practice the right thing to do. This aspect of our prayer really focuses on our behavior. Let us do good to those around us, treating them as we should, with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. If we find it heard to treat others with affection, we should ask God to help us. To tenderize our hearts so we can respond with affection.

#8 - THAT LOVE WILL ABOUND - 1:9:
Verse 9 - “And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment.”

I have already mentioned love several times. Here, Paul explicitly uses the word love. How many times does Paul use the word “love”? 75 times! This word “love” is agape, which means to have the best interest of the other person in your heart, regardless of how it impacts you. God, of course, is the supreme example of love; God is love, after all (1 John 4:8). God loved man to such an extent that He was willing to pay His ultimate price - the death of His Son - to reconcile man to Himself.

So when Paul talks about “love abounding,” he means that we need to work more and more at being willing to sacrifice what it takes for the best interest of the other person. Do you sacrifice for your spouse? Do you sacrifice for your children? Your parents? Your friends? Your enemies? Your boss? Your neighbor? Certainly, this has some limitations - we can’t allow someone to live sinfully because we want to show them love. I’m not talking about that.

Notice Paul says this love should abound “in real knowledge and discernment.” So, we need to exercise our love within the boundaries of proper knowledge and discernment. I think we can understand “discernment” as a synonym for “wisdom.” Be knowledgeable and be wise. That’s how we are supposed to exercise our love toward our interpersonal relationships.

Again, if we are not sure how to express love at any given time, toward a specific person, we need to pray that God will help us see and understand how we are to express our love in a way that is in the best interest of the other person, and that will glorify God.

#9 - IN SINCERITY - 1:10:
Verse 10 - “so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ;”

Paul is praying that the Christians’ love will abound “so that” they may be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ.” Here is where we need to do a “gut-check” with ourselves. That is, we need to honestly and sincerely examine our own motives. Why are we doing what we are doing? Because as we do things to or for other people, often times they can easily see through what we are doing and they know we are insincere. They can see that we are doing things for them but not for their sake but for our own sake.

So we need to be sincere in our prayers. We need to sincerely pray for the good; we need to sincerely thank God for those people in our lives. We do not need to be hypocritical. Let’s not pray for one thing when our hearts are really hoping for something different. We need to pray with no pretension for anything except what is right and good in the eyes of God.

Pray with sincerity. Pray “blameless” - I suggest to you that when we pray for our spouse, our children, our parents, all those people for whom we are trying to pray, that we should pray as if they hear every word we are saying. That is a good way to make sure our prayers are blameless, that they are sincere. If we pray and word our prayers as if the person is listening to what we say, it will help us to be humble in our prayers and to be sincere and blameless of any wrong thinking or misplaced affections in our prayers.

#10 - FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS - 1:11:
Verse 11 - “having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

Finally, Paul prays here that the Philippian Christians will be filled with the fruit of right-living - righteousness. He speaks of the righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ and ends in the glory and praise of God the Father.

When you and I pray with the purpose that Jesus and the Father will be glorified, then our prayers are moving in the right direction. Do we pray for righteousness? Do we pray that all of these relationships that we are speaking about will be right in the eyes of God? That’s the highest motivation we have: let all things be done that are right in the eyes of God. If we live in order to be right with God and we pray, in our hearts and sincerely, that everything will be right in the eyes of God, it will help us to have the kindness, humility, patience, and love that we need to have with others.

We need to pray that our 1) behaviors will be right in the eyes of God; 2) our attitudes will be right in the eyes of God; 3) our words and tone of voice; 4) our feelings; 5) our weaknesses; 6) our strengths, talents, and skills; 7) our aspirations and hopes.

And we need to pray that 1) our spouse will be right with God; 2) our children will be right with God; 3) our parents; 4) our siblings; 5) our friends; 6) our church family; 7) our coworkers; 8) our neighbors; 9) even strangers whom we contact on an irregular basis.

Paul’s prayer here is that the Christians will be filled with the fruit of righteousness. How would our lives and our perspective on life be different if we prayed, from the heart and sincerely, that all these people will be right in the eyes of God?

What would the fruit of righteousness look like in our lives if we tapped into the power of prayer as Jesus Christ did?

Take home message: As we learn about prayer from Paul, perhaps we can find the faith and strength in prayer that Paul had.