This is My Prayer
What She Said - Part 7
Barbaranne Kelly, Gueset Writer
Today’s Treasure
And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
Philippians 1:9–11
We’ve all been there. The question coming unexpectedly: “How can I pray for you?” I don’t know about you, but I need to prepare to answer this question—in part because I take it very seriously. At the simplest level, prayer is talking to God, a conversation with our Creator, spending time with our loving Father on holy ground. The Westminster Shorter Catechism defines prayer as “an offering up of our desires unto God for things agreeable to his will, in the name of Christ, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgment of his mercies” (WSC Q/A 98).
Considering all this, I don’t want to just ask for prayer that I “have a good day.”
But how can I know that I’m praying for things agreeable to God’s will? One way is to model our prayers after those we find in Scripture. After all, if Paul not only prayed this way for his friends in Philippi but was moved by the Holy Spirit to include his prayer in the holy, inerrant, and all-sufficient Scriptures, then it must accord to the will of God.
Let’s take a closer look at Paul’s prayer for the Philippian believers in Philippians 1:9–11.
Paul opens with “…it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more”. Whether the love Paul intends is our love for God or our love for one another isn’t clear. What is clear throughout the Scriptures is that a believer’s growing love for God must necessarily be accompanied by a growing love for other believers:
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.
1 John 5:1
So, I think it’s safe to read this in a “both/and” sense: may our love for both God and one another abound more and more!
This love abounds—grows—with knowledge and all discernment. We cannot genuinely love someone we don’t know, so our love for God must be fed by knowing Him. In his masterful work, Knowing God, J. I. Packer writes that “knowing God involves, first, listening to God’s Word and receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it, in application to oneself; second, noting God’s nature and character, as his Word and works reveal it; third, accepting his invitations and doing what he commands; fourth, recognizing and rejoicing in the love that he has shown in thus approaching you and drawing you into this divine fellowship.”1
As we learn to know our God in this way, through His Word, applying it to ourselves, learning His character, doing what He commands, and rejoicing in His love, the Holy Spirit will work in us “…more and more so that [we] may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.” And this will necessarily result in lives that are lived to the glory and praise of God.
LIFE-GIVING ENCOURAGEMENT
This most definitely is what every believer needs. We need to know God better, and out of that knowledge live lives that bring Him glory. But if we end with this thought only, we may feel pressed into a task which is too large, too heavy for us to carry. I, therefore, want to leave you with another passage from J. I. Packer which has brought me load-lifting encouragement for years.
“What matters supremely . . . is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact that underlies it—the fact that he knows me. I am graven on the palms of his hands. I am never out of his mind. All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me. I know him because he first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when his care falters.
This is momentous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort—the sort of comfort that energizes . . . in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good.” 2
Unspeakable comfort; O hallelujah and amen. When someone asks how they can pray for you, or when you are praying for another, whose needs you don’t know, turn to Philippians. This is a prayer we all need.
PRAYER
Father, I pray that my love for You and my fellow saints may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that I may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of You alone. Amen.
1 J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1973), 37.
2 Packer, 42.
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Sharon W. Betters is author of Treasures of Encouragement, Treasures in Darkness, co-author of Treasures of Faith. and co-author with Susan Hunt of Aging with Grace, Flourishing in an Anti-Aging Culture. She is Director of Resource Development and co-founder of MARKINC.org, a non-profit organization that offers help and hope to hurting people. Sharon enjoys quality time with her husband, children, fourteen grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
Contact Sharon with comments or questions at dailytreasure@markinc.org.