To Encourage You

2 Thessalonians 1:11-12 “To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Prayer is a discipline for which every Christian needs much instruction. As the disciples walked and talked with Jesus and as they listened to Him pray, one of their requests of Him was this: “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1).  It was to this question that Jesus taught them what has come to be known as “The Lord’s Prayer.” However, in truth, this could be called “The Disciple’s Prayer” for it was given to them as a guide. 

But another way God has given us guidance in the area of prayer is by providing us examples of how the disciples He taught actually prayed. One such example is in the verses above, where Paul tells the Thessalonian church the ways he prays for them.  It is in examples like this that we see that one of the things prayer is meant to do is to align our way of thinking with God’s.   Paul wants nothing more than to see God’s will for these believers fulfilled, and he knows that “if we ask anything according to His will He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of Him” (1 John 5:14-15).

So, how do we see this in the prayer above?  First, Paul reflects back to the fact that Jesus is coming back someday “to be glorified in His saints” (2 Thessalonians 1:10).  They would one day be changed to reflect the very glory of Christ in all that they were and in all that they did.  Towards this end, it was Paul’s prayer that God would make them worthy of this right now.  In other words, Paul was “sure of this, that He (i.e., God) Who began a good work in (them) will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).  God had made them worthy of salvation by clothing them in the very righteousness of Jesus.  But, as Paul so often urged the saints and prayed for them, he knew that God wanted them to be what they were.  He knew that God would have us to grow more and more into the image of Christ, until the day when that image would be reflected perfectly in us at the second coming of Jesus.  With this prayer Paul was asking God to work in the believers’ lives so that they would glorify God in their character. He desired that they would love righteousness and hate wickedness, like Jesus did, and that they would love the Father with all their heart, soul, mind and strength and love their neighbor as themselves, thereby fulfilling God’s greatest desire for them. 

But not only did Paul pray that their inner nature would reflect the character of Christ, but that they would also fulfill God’s “every resolve for good and work of faith in their lives.”  Paul knew that God’s will for them was to practically live out the character that God was producing within them. He knew that God wanted them to “let (their) light shine before others, so that they may see (their) good works and give glory to (their) Father Who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).  And surely, as Paul prayed these things for the Thessalonians, he felt a deep responsibility to reflect these very same things in his own life. He knew that just as God would have the Thessalonian believers be and act in ways that led to others hearing the gospel and entering the kingdom of heaven, that he needed to be and act in ways that were an example of this very thing to them. 

May God help us to pray for others in accordance with the examples that He has laid down for us in His Word, and may He help us to act in ways that are consistent with the very things that we know God would have us to pray for others.