Nothing illustrates the weakness of modern Christianity like comparing our prayer lives with those people of the Bible. Like a stew, we may have lots of ingredients in our prayers – our missionaries, the sick, God’s glory, etc. But the broth is so watery that we can see the name of the bowl manufacturer through the stew. I think that stew should be so thick that you could eat it with a fork. But so often the stew of our prayer lives could be sucked up into our mouths with a straw. Rarely do we put much time, thought, faith, or compassion into it.
One of the many books related to C.S. Spurgeon that I own is probably out of print now. It contains nothing but the public prayers at the beginning of several dozen of his church services. It is obvious that man knew the Lord better than any of us know the backs of our hands. His prayers ran from ten to fifteen minutes, and they were filled with as much doctrine and scripture as any of his forty-five minute sermons. I don’t know who would quit first, you or me, if we had that same kind of public prayer. But I guarantee that the Lord wouldn’t quit – the Lord loves the kind of man who love Him that much. From time to time, we need to look at the devotional lives of God’s great servants – both in the Bible and in Christian history.
Let’s briefly consider Paul’s prayer to God for the Christians in Thessalonica, Macedonia. It is fitting that it falls at the end of a chapter filled with instruction on faith. Where you find true faith, you’ll find genuine prayer – and vice versa. There is a lot of modern prayer were there is very little faith at all. We are mostly complainers or hopers, rather than bold supplicants walking into the presence of God. How did Paul pray here in this chapter?
He prayed in the context of what was happening in Athens.
What lays behind our prayers is often important. Many of our prayers are reactionary – we are responding to what has just befallen our friend or ourselves. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but if that is all that our prayer ever is, it denotes a spiritual weakness. Paul was in Athens, but he was concerned about his friends and the new converts back in Thessalonica. We know that he had sent Timothy, and that he had just returned with a report about the church.
The background of this prayer was Athens, Macedonia and the state of the world in general. The motivation behind these words was a combination of love for God and a love for those suffering people. And a part of the catalyst for it was Paul’s position of human helplessness. There were miles between where he was and where they were. And besides, what could he do to stem the tide of hatred and persecution against those poor saints. If he had been there, his presence would probably have intensified the fires already burning. Isn’t one of the reasons we don’t pray as we should is that we aren’t willing to recognize our impotence. Isn’t one of the weaknesses of our prayers lives is the overestimation of our own strength, or that of the government, or of the medicine that we are taking? “I’d pray about this particular matter, but it’s so trivial that I doubt that the Lord is concerned about it. Besides, I think that I have it under control. “Thanks anyway Lord, but I’d rather try to take care of this myself. I don’t want to bother you with it.” One of our great needs is more realization of our utter helplessness. We need wisdom which we don’t possess, strength beyond our muscles, and heavenly miracles.
I don’t know if this anecdote is true, but I’ve heard it often enough, and maybe you have as well. Three seminary students were visiting London for the first time, and were hoping to sit in one of the services of the great Metropolitan Tabernacle, but the seats were already filled – they couldn’t get in. It was a cold and miserable day, and as they were standing outside stomping their feet, one of the young men wondered out loud about how they were able to heat such a huge building. An old man heard the comment and volunteered to take the visitors into the basement to show them the power plant. They agreed to the tour and were led into a room were more than four hundred men were earnestly praying for the upcoming preaching service. The old man accurately suggested that the heat and power of the church was in the Lord, and it was piped into the Tabernacle through the prayers of the saints. It is only when we realize that there is no strength in us, but that there is unlimited strength in the Lord, that great things can be accomplished for Christ’s glory.
What were some of the characteristics of Paul’s prayer?
First of all, it was uttered in the spirit of praise and joy. Verse 9 – “For what thanks can we render to God again for you, for all the joy wherewith we joy for your sakes before our God.” As you should know, it takes a lot of love to mother a bunch of sorry rascals called “the kids.” Mother cooks meal after meal without hardly a word of thanks, even when it is absolutely delicious. But then when the veggies are far from the kids’ favorites, or the main course was not what they anticipated, even though there may not be grumbling, there are those negative facial expressions. And then there is the left over food, and complaints of starvation just an hour down the road. Not being mother myself, I’d be prone to tell those kids to eat what’s there or go to bed hungry. Like it or lump it.
Where would we be if it weren’t for the love of our mothers and for the Love of our Heavenly Father? When you pray is it only about aches, pains, problems and complaints? “Lord, I need this; I need that.” Or maybe we get really spiritual and we plead, “Lord, my sister needs this; my brother needs that.” I’m not saying that we should not pray for our needs and the needs of others, but is that it – all of it? Paul had much about which he could have complained, but at least this prayer started more joyfully. “Where are the nine,” asked the Lord Jesus? Is there a mathematical equation involved here? Is there reverential joy in our prayers? Thanksgiving? Happiness? Surely there must be a thousand things in which to rejoice before Christ. Part of our problem is that we haven’t trained ourselves to look for things about which to praise the Lord. And after all, you’ve only got 3.5 minutes in which to get all these important requests uttered. Job had his problems, but at least initially, he could praise God in the midst of his disasters. David showed us the same kind of heart as he fled like an hart from before the wrath of Saul. And look at poor Joseph in the heart of the prison, unjustly charged with crime. Paul’s prayer was an happy one, and this surely must have caught the ear of the Lord.
Then too it was INCESSANT, just as the Lord has taught us. “Night and day, praying exceedingly.” Is it a lack of faith to pray for something over and over again? It wasn’t a lack of faith in the Syrophonecian woman – Mark 7:25. When the Lord tested her faith by talking about feeding the children and not the dogs, she refused to give up. If there wasn’t faith in this woman, she would have quit and run home. A.W. Pink says, “Nothing pleases God more than to behold his people continuing to supplicate Him for good even when they are temporarily denied.” Paul stopped praying about the thorn in his flesh, only after the Lord told him to stop. Until the Lord tells you to cease and desist, insist on continuing in prayer for that lost person, that spiritual victory and that physical victory.
Paul’s prayer was incessant and it was INTENSE. “Night and day, praying exceedingly.” It was not cold & mechanical, filled with the same old repetitions that he used yesterday & the day before. The word “praying” in verse 10 is translated elsewhere as “beseeching.” This kind of prayer doesn’t care about grammar and linguistic content. It’s like the can of pop on a hot, hot day shaken around in the back of the car. As soon as it’s invited to speak its mind, it explodes out of the can. Someone has said that Paul’s prayer was intense because it had to defeat the weakness of his flesh. – I don’t know, but perhaps. It had to be intense because of the opposition of Satan to his prayer life. It had to be intense because these things were really important to his Apostle. These are the same reasons why we ought to be animated and extreme in our prayer lives. If we wish to see Jehovah work in our lives then we need to learn to properly pray.
Another characteristic of Paul’s prayer was its SUBMISSION to the Lord. Verse 11 – “Now God himself our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way unto you. And the Lord make you to increase and about in love.” If we pray, “nevertheless, not my will be thine be done,” does that suggest a lack of faith on our part? It may suggest a lack of faith in ourselves – our wisdom and our strength – but not a lack of faith in God. Submission to the Lord doesn’t deny us the wisdom to make plans and preparations for something. Paul wanted to revisit Thessalonica, so he was working on the logistics of another journey. But his prayer remained, “May God the Father, direct our way unto you.” His faith was in the wisdom and love of God, not in his own plans.
Very briefly, what was Paul’s purpose in this prayer?
His desire and his prayer was to perfect that which was lacking in his friends. Earlier when I said that our prayer lives aren’t duplicating the prayers of the Biblical saints, did my comment irk you? When I imply that you aren’t as Biblically knowledgeable, spiritually strong, or as Heavenly-minded as you ought to be, does that make you angry? Paul said as much of his friends in Macedonia, because his standards were pretty high. What is higher – our standards, or our pride? As Joshua said, “there is much land yet to be possessed.” As soon as we that we think we’ve arrived, you can be sure that we’ve stopped moving forward.
Paul implied that his friends were deficient in faith – verse 10. “Night and day praying exceedingly that we might see your face, and might perfect that which is lacking in your faith.” That refers to the quality of their faith. It probably refers to their lives, because real faith is expressed through the way that we live. It may refer to their grasp on the truth of God. And it touched on their steadfastness in the faith under persecution.
Then he went on to speak of their deficiency in love. As far as the expression of our Christian nature, what is the most God-like quality? I suppose that the answer could be debated, but love has to be near the top of the list. I’m not talking about love towards God or the brethren, but love in general. Isn’t love toward the lost a really difficult thing to maintain, especially when those people hate us?
And what about holiness and unblameablitity? Paul was praying that those saints would have the blessing of God, “to the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness.” If we are striving for holiness, but we lack faith, are we the sort of Christian we ought to be? If we have faith, but lack love, have the prayers of Paul been answered in us. We need the whole package, and we should be praying for the whole package.
I was talking to a Christian brother the other day who has a job selling furniture. He told me that every week there is a company staff meeting, with donuts, coffee, store information and a pep talk. One day it occurred to this brother that one of the other employees came in and greeted all the rest of the staff, but not this Christian man. As he thought back over previous weeks, it occurred to him that this man had never even said, “hello” to him or responded to his word of greeting. So he later went to that man, asking if there was a problem between them. The man simply replied, “I have nothing to say to you.” – apparently not even “hello.” My friend has not been able to figure out what his problem is.
There may be several lessons which we might draw out of this situation. Someone might say that this is terrible, and that the Christian should do everything in his power to correct the situation. Everything? Could it be that the other man is a Satanist or cultist, and he senses the holiness of God in our brother? Could it be that we should see more of this kind of treatment towards ourselves, but we are not as godly and Christ-like as we ought to be? Are we too worldly for the world to recognize that we are Heavenly people? Should we not pray for that co-worker who seems to hate us without a cause? Absolutely! But maybe we should pray for ourselves because there isn’t more cause for him to hate us. Perhaps we lack faith, we lack Godly love, we lack holiness. Perhaps we should be praying for ourselves in the same way that Paul was praying for his Christian friends in Thessalonica.
There is a lot of theology in Paul’s prayer.