Praying with purpose

Blowing your money

This time next week, the NRL season will be about to begin, with two games coming from Las Vegas. It’s the same city in which countless people from around the world tuned in to watch the Superbowl.

It’s also the city which has a reputation for the big casinos. The place where the rich, and the not-so-rich, come and throw money into what may as well be a void.

Is there almost a sense of irony, as these mega rich sports stars earning big dollars go, and inn a similar way to those sitting in the casinos, dwindle their money away in a lot of reckless living.

Now, I’m not suggesting all sports stars waste their money recklessly. I suspect a lot of them a very forward thinking in it.

The top NRL stars are now earning over a million dollars a year. Assuming they retire in their early thirties, they should be well set up for the rest of their lives. Too many of them, however, have financial struggles after retirement.

You could look at the NBA in America, and the situation is even more exaggerated. Some of their contracts make the top NRL contracts look like small change.

A 2009 article in a Sports magazine once made the claim that after 5 years of retirement, 60% of NBA stars were reported to be broke. Now, some have questioned the accuracy of that figure, but I think there is sufficient evidence, that when people get a lot of money, there is a tendency to spend it on temporal things with little thought to the future.

Where is our focus?

For the majority of us, the idea of a million dollar contract is beyond our wildest dreams. But I want to suggest that there is something similar going on in the minds of these super rich athletes, that also happens in our minds.

And that is, we become fixated on the things that are directly in front of us. The super rich have the ability to throw money at those things directly in front of them. While we might not have that money to throw at it, it does still take our attention.

What ‘it’ is, may vary from person to person. It might be something superficial, like wanting whatever the current trendy thing is. Or the thing your fixated on, might be trying to solve some issue in your life, or should I say the many issues you are currently facing.

Depending on what those issues are in your life, it’s quite possible that you really do need to give it a lot of focus. And so please don’t hear what I’m about to say as trying to minimise the issues you are currently facing...

You see, here’s the thing… just like the rich sports stars that spend with no thought for the future, we too can get caught up on things of today, while losing sight of something bigger.

Seeing the future

This morning, I’m starting a new series where we’re going to try and get some lessons about praying from Paul.

And the lesson we’re going to learn today boils down to this simple idea… Paul’s prayers never lost sight of the bigger picture of where things are headed for us as believers.

And so, the big question I want us to ponder this morning is how we can stop our prayers from getting stuck in the temporal, momentary things of our lives, and instead to look up and see a bigger picture of what God is doing?

A few comments about praying

Now, before I get going, I want to acknowledge that many of the ideas for this sermon series actually comes from a Don Carson book called “A Call to Spiritual Reformation”. Like I’ll be doing in this series, he has taken an in-depth look at many of the prayers that Paul makes throughout his various letters, to help us shift the way we pray.

You see, there is a lot we can learn about prayer. Perhaps you might be thinking, it’s not that hard to pray, after all you’re just speaking with God.

There’s some truth to that. But let’s just put that in perspective… we’re communicating with the maker of this universe.

We don’t just pray to ask for things. We pray because this is our connection with the source of all life. Through prayer, we actually find a two way street, where we gain insights. By thinking about and improving how we pray, we’ll find that it’s not necessarily that better things will happen to us, but that our thinking will become more in line with God way.

Thessonalica

Okay, well the prayer that we’re specifically going to look at today is actually a short one we find in Paul’s second letter to the church in Thessalonica. The lesson that we’re going to see, comes more from the lead-up to what he prayers, rather than the contents of the prayer itself.

But first, let’s get a bit of background...

Well, both the first and second letter to the Thessalonians are believed to have been written not long after the he had actually established the church there, which had occurred on his second missionary journey.

You can read about his initial time there in Acts 17. What you’ll find there is that when Paul first goes there, many people decided to join the church, including (and this is in the words of the book of Acts), “some of the Jews... a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women.”

Unfortunately, it would seem that as fast as this church grew, the opposition grew just as fast, and Paul didn’t spend a long time there due to this fierce opposition.

But yet, as the letters prove, Paul kept contact with them.

From the first letter, we learn that Timothy has become a bit of a go-between so Paul can know what is happening. What seems to be evident is, that they keep undergoing hardship, but at the same time, they have remained faithful.

Now, one of the themes that we find running throughout both the first and second letters to the Thessalonians, relates to the second coming of Christ.

It would seem that the Thessalonians had become somewhat confused about the matter, or perhaps more likely, been told some misleading information.

But interestingly, as Paul corrects their understanding on this, he also uses it to reorient the way they think about things - which is where this becomes relevant for our discussion today - because it’s going to shape the way he prays.

Thanksgiving

So, let’s go to the start of the second letter, which is where I want to focus our time this morning.

Now, I don’t know about you, but often when I’m reading Paul’s letters, you find at the start, he generally has this section of thanksgiving, but if you’re like me, you generally quickly read over these sections because you want to get to the good stuff - you know, where Paul starts getting stuck into the main issues at hand.

Well, what I’ve begun to notice over the years, is that these are not just pleasantries to get out of the way before we hit the real stuff, they actually are words carefully chosen by Paul, and can usually help focus our thinking on what Paul is about to say.

You see, that’s exactly what is happening at the start of 2 Thessalonians.

Now the prayer itself, it’s actually not going to start until verse 11, but from verses 3 through to 10, Paul is going to give us some great groundwork. So I’m going to go through this now, because we’ll see how it colours his prayer.

Faith and love growing

Verse 3 starts out with Paul giving thanks to God for these brother and sisters of his in Thessalonica.

(Just as a bit of a side note, if you look in some translations, it will just include brothers, that’s because in the original Greek, it does just include the word which directly translates as brother, but because in the language convention of the time, it was clearly understood to mean both male and females, to avoid confusion, many modern translations include brothers and sisters, because this was the original intent).

Well, after giving thanks, he makes it clear what the thanks is for. It’s because their faith is growing more and more and their love for one another is increasing

A kingdom direction

Now, on one level we might just think - well that’s nice, isn’t it.

Actually, it’s more than nice. As we’re about to see, it’s in line with the direction that God wants for us.

You see, here’s the thing, we can often imagine Christianity as this line that we have to cross over. We accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, and we’ve crossed the line from being unsaved to being saved.

Now on one level, there is a truth to that. When we accept Jesus, we do go from a point of being unsaved, to a point of becomes co-heirs with Jesus.

Where we go wrong, is thinking that is the end of the matter.

You see, Christianity is actually about a movement towards the Kingdom of God.

It’s not about moving in our own strength, but in faith, allowing the Spirit to be constantly transforming us.

Now, I made mention about how Paul is addressing the misunderstanding around the upcoming return of Christ. Well, while Paul is going to be addressing some of the specifics of what to expect before Jesus returns, what seems clear to me is that Paul is saying throughout these letters is that end times discussions should make us think about our movement towards the kingdom.

This means, being more Christ-like in the way we live. I’d even say it means doing what we can to create an environment which is like the kingdom.

God’s judgement and present suffering

You see, let’s look from verse 5 onwards.

The fact that they are persevering in their faith throughout persecutions and trials, is evidence that God’s judgement is right and they can be counted worthy of the Kingdom of God.

Do you see how this verse links their spiritual movement to the coming kingdom?

Now the next couple of verses reinforce this.

It is all in the context of understanding what will happen when Jesus returns. What will happen when we get to that time that we call judgement day.

Now, there is a lot in these verses about punishment.

In verse 6, it’s punishment to those who’ve caused trouble to the church.

In verse 8 it’s punishment for those who don’t know God and do not obey the gospel.

That punishment gets further described in verse 9 as being an everlasting destruction, but perhaps the important aspect is that it is further described as being “shut out from the presence of the Lord”.

Now, I’m going to argue that Paul’s main aim in this is not to scare them silly so that they are forced into obedience so they can avoid the destruction. If you look at the flow, that’s not his point at all. Rather, his saying they’re already on that movement towards the true kingdom, the talk about punishment is rather to remind them that all of that injustice they face today will be dealt with.

The prayer

So what does all of this have to do with prayer?

Well, I’m going to argue that this movement towards the kingdom is actually what is important. We get so caught up in what is temporal that we actually lose sight of the kingdom. We lose sight of where we are headed.

You see, that’s what we notice when we actually get to the prayer in verse 11.

Now, knowing that persecution was a feature of their story, you might almost think that an end of persecution might therefore be a feature of the prayer.

But surprisingly, it isn’t.

He starts verse 11 with the words “with this in mind...”, in other words, all of these things I’ve just been discussing is front and centre in his mind.

Worthy of the calling

But then his prayer is this… “that our God may make you worthy of his calling”.

There’s a simplicity to this, but in many ways, it’s praying for what is important.

It’s acknowledging that there is a direction to our lives, and that we need God’s help to get there.

The prayer goes on… “and that by his power he may bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith”.

Now, it might have been nice if there was a full stop after the word “desire”, but it’s not just any desire we might have, but rather a desire for goodness, and that which is prompted by faith.

You see, there is a kingdom direction to his prayer.

And just look how it continues in verse 12. He recognises the bigger purpose in all of this. This is all for the glory of Jesus! All of this movement towards the kingdom ultimately means that the name of our Lord Jesus is actually glorified in you!

What about temporal things?

Now, let me just pause a moment.

Because it would be easy to conclude from what I’m saying that we shouldn’t bother praying about all of things in this world that might be considered temporal. Things like your job status… you relationship status… even things like your health and whether your being persecuted.

Actually, on the contrary, it is right and proper to pray for temporal things, but I say that with a big caveat. That is, we pray for them with a kingdom mindset.

But what does that mean?

Well, let’s take a health complaint as an example.

Our initial instinct is to pray that God will heal us. But what if we saw our affliction as part of the journey God is taking us on. That’s not to say that God won’t heal us. It might be that God chooses to heal us in order to bring glory to his name. It’s also possible that God is using this to help develop us. A bit like the mysterious thorn in Paul’s side that he talks about in 2 Corinthians 12.

This has the potentially to shape the way we pray. The focus of our prayer therefore becomes about God’s glory, rather than our benefit.

Now, don’t get me wrong, praying for relief from pain, or even at times just praying straight for healing, may be the right thing to do.

The lesson I want to give today, is rather that we see our life and the struggles we face in the bigger picture of what God is doing - that is, the restoration of all things.

A healthy prayer life should help us to see this bigger picture.

Praying for temporal things might not be wrong, but praying that we continue in this journey to the day of our glory in the Lord Jesus Christ, is better.

Conclusion

So how is your prayer life?

If your prayer life is always just reactive to whatever situation is in front of you, then it’s quite possible that you’re missing out on seeing a bigger picture of how God is moving.

If we can actually root ourselves in scripture, and see a God that is in the business of restoring all things, and that he’s bring his chosen people into a glorious inheritence… and if we pray out of this conviction, we’ll find a much greater depth to our prayers.

This is something we can learn from the way Paul prays.

Perhaps the analogy is a bit harsh, but when we only rpray for the things directly in front of us, it’s a bit like the people I spoke about in my introduction. The rich sports stars who buy a lot of luxury products, only to be broke shortly after retirement.

That is to say, we can pray, but not see that God has a bigger purpose. Even when it hurts. Even when it seems so unfair. But actually, in the long run, it will all be made fair and just.

Pray out of this conviction.

Before I finish, let me just add one more bit of advice.

Don’t just think that a revitalised prayer life is just going to happen because you’ve listened to a sermon.

Without planning, I dare say your prayer life will just remain reactive to the situation. While this is better than nothing, if we actually take the time to sit down and be with God… to take the time to explore scripture and pray out of it… there’s a good chance you won’t be understanding what God is doing in your life.

So plan out a time. Get rid of distractions. And like Paul, allow the good news that we learn from the Bible help shape the way we pray.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll learn a few more lessons from Paul about prayer, but in the meantime, let me just encourage each of you to work on your prayer life.

And now, let me pray...