We know we should pray. And I’m sure most
of us do pray. But even though we pray, and even though some of us have
been praying for a long time, we still sometimes struggle with the idea of
prayer.
What I mean is that we sometimes feel like we don’t really
know how to pray. We feel like there’s something different we should be
doing, some words we should say, some attitude we should have, something.
We feel like our prayers are kind of inadequate, and we wonder what God really
thinks of them.
And I think that’s especially true when we pray for other
people. We pray for healing, we pray for God’s protection over them, for
God’s blessings on them. And don’t get me wrong, it’s fine to pray for
all those things. But still, sometimes
it just kind of feels like we don’t quite know what we’re doing when we pray,
like there’s something missing or something.
We’re not alone in that feeling. Jesus’ disciples
felt it, too. In fact, in Luke’s gospel,
his disciples specifically asked Jesus to teach them to pray. Luke says
that’s what prompted Jesus to give them, and us, the Lord’s Prayer. It was Jesus teaching the disciples how to
pray.
The Lord’s Prayer is a great prayer, obviously. We’ll
say it together in a little while, while we share in Holy Communion. But
I think there are other places in the Bible that can teach us about prayer,
too. Especially, they teach us how to pray for others. And one of those places is our reading from
Second Thessalonians today.
Paul, in his letter to the Thessalonians, gives us two
examples of how to pray for others. In the first, he says that he needs
to thank God for all of the people of Thessalonica. But listen to why he says he needs to thank
God for them. He says he needs to thank God for them because, “your faith
is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is
increasing.”
When we think of the times we’ve prayed for people, and the
times we’ve thanked God for people, how often have we included something like
that? How often do we thank God that someone’s faith is growing? Maybe once in a while, but probably not very
often. And how often do we thank God for
the fact that someone’s love for others is increasing? Probably even less
often.
When you think about it, those are the things we really
should be praying for. Again, I’m not saying the other things--health and
protection and blessings and so forth--are not important. But it kind of
gets back to something Jesus said to Peter.
Our prayers tend to focus on human concerns, and not on heavenly
concerns.
Health and protection and blessings are human
concerns. And it’s legitimate to be concerned about those things, because
after all, we are human. Human concerns are naturally going to be
important to us. But we need to remember
that human concerns are temporary, because our lives on earth are
temporary. Heavenly concerns are eternal, because heaven itself is
eternal.
So, when we pray for others, we need to make sure we pray
for the heavenly concerns. Pray that someone’s faith in God will
increase. Pray that someone’s love for
others will increase. Pray that someone will accept Jesus as the
Savior. Pray that someone will feel
God’s Holy Spirit being poured out onto them. Pray that someone will
dedicate their lives to serving God and being faithful to God.
And when we pray these things, we don’t pray them with the
attitude that we’re better than anyone else. We need to pray these things
for ourselves, too. If you want to pray
them for me, that would be wonderful. Because all of us, no matter who we
are, need to have our faith in God increase.
We all need to have our love for others increase. We all need to
feel God’s Holy Spirit being poured out onto us. We all need to dedicate our lives to serving
God and being faithful to God. And we all need all the help with that we
can get. We all need the support of
others and the support of God in doing it.
These are things that it’s always appropriate to pray for
everyone. And they’re things that we too often don’t include in our
prayers. Again, it’s fine to pray about
the human concerns, but we also need to pray about the heavenly concerns.
But that’s not all. At the end of our passage, Paul
says this: “We constantly pray for you, that God may make you worthy of
his calling, and that by His power he may bring to fruition your every desire
for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith.”
How often have we prayed for something like that? I
mean, I think most of us believe that God has a plan for our lives.
That’s another way of saying each of us has a calling from God. God is calling each of us to do
something. Maybe lots of things, but certainly something. But how often have prayed that God would make
someone worthy of what God is calling them to do? In fact, do we ever
pray that way?
And how often do we pray that God will bring to fruition
someone’s desire for goodness? How often do we pray that someone’s every
deed will be prompted by faith? Does it
ever even occur to us to pray for those things? Again, it’s fine to pray
for the human concerns that we often pray for.
Those human concerns are important.
They’re very important. But as important as they are, they’re not
as important as the heavenly concerns that Paul talks about. Those heavenly concerns, that we be worthy of
God’s calling, that our desires for goodness be fulfilled, that the things we
do be prompted by faith--those are the things that are really important.
And we need to remember to pray about them.
We need to remember to pray about them for one other reason,
too. Paul tells us what it is. He
says, “We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you,
and you in him.”
That really is, in the end, what it’s all about. In
the traditional catechism, we’re told that the main purpose of humans is “to
glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” Everything we do, everything we
say, everything we are, is to glorify God in some way. That should be our goal. It should be our prayer for ourselves.
And it should be our prayer for others.
Paul also tells us that the stakes here are pretty
high. He reminds us that God is just.
And he says that, because God is just, those who believe will be
included in “the presence of the Lord and...the glory of his might on the day
he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all
those who have believed.” And those who do not believe will be shut out
from all that.
I think all of us want to go to be in the presence of the
Lord. But I suspect that, as we go through our lives from day to day, we
don’t think about that too much. I don’t mean that as a criticism. It’s just the way most people are. We know heavenly concerns are more important
than the human concerns, but the human concerns are--well, they’re more
human. They’re more tangible.
They’re more immediate. They have
a direct effect on our lives right now.
The heavenly concerns--well, they can be hard to really get hold
of. Yes, our purpose may be to glorify
God, but how, exactly, are we meant to do that? How can the things I do
every day, as I work at my job, or take care of my family, or run into people
uptown--how do those things glorify God?
How could those things glorify God?
That’s why we need to pray about these things, both for
ourselves and for others. Because sometimes the answer is not that
obvious. Sometimes it’s hard for us to
see how the things we do can glorify God. But they can. If we truly are following God’s calling for
our lives, if we really are living our lives the way God wants us to live them,
then the things we do can glorify God. And if we pray and ask God to help
us, God will show us how the things we do can glorify God. And if we pray for God to help others, God
will show them how the things they do can glorify God, too.
It’s always good to pray. But if you’ve ever felt
like something was missing in your prayers, especially your prayers for others,
this might be it. So try it. Pray
for someone you care about. Pray that
their faith in God will increase. Pray
that their love for others will increase. Pray that they will be worthy
of God’s calling on their lives. Pray
that their every deed will be prompted by their faith in God. Pray that the name of Jesus Christ will be
glorified in them. And while we’re at it, let’s pray for those things for
ourselves, too.
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